In the previous three articles, I gave readers a general education about the situation of vice presidents, directors and manager-level management of major Internet companies. In today's last article, I will tell readers how the core executives of major Internet companies are trained.
The so-called core executives are the executives who appear in the investor relations column of the company's official website or the About Us column and appear in the list of the management team; Second, although they do not appear in this list, they control the core business and core revenue of large manufacturers, or are the heads of core departments, such as Wang Puzhong, CEO of Meituan's core local business group, Zhang Chuan, senior vice president, and Li Shubin, senior vice president.
The senior management teams of different large factories also have different statements, such as Baidu is called E-Staff, Meituan is called S-Team, Tencent is called the general office, Kuaishou is called the operation and management committee, and Ali is the partner system. Bytes, Didi, and JD.com don't have a special statement.
So, what kind of people can become executives of major Internet companies, and how do they become executives?
On the whole, to become a senior executive of a major Internet company, it takes the right time, place, and people. Specifically, there are two main situations, one is a good fate, who has joined when he was a large factory or a start-up, and has always fought side by side with the founder in the subsequent development process, and finally became an executive; The second is to rely on personal ability to conquer cities and villages in the process of expanding the territory of Dachang, and make great achievements. Rely on personal performance to rise step by step, and eventually become an executive.
The first type is that the executives who join the (future) of the big factory at the start-up stage can be said to be the original shareholders of the big factory, and with the development of the big factory, this kind of executive can be said to be worthy of the name.
As a classmate of Nankai University, Liang Rubo and Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance, graduated from Nankai University at the same time in 2005 and also established a deep friendship. Since 2009, the two have been starting a business side by side. In 2012, Liang Rubo and Zhang Yiming co-founded ByteDance. As the head of product R&D at Byte, he was responsible for a number of important products and businesses in the early stage, including Toutiao, Toutiao, advertising system and user growth system. Since 2016, Liang Rubo has been responsible for Feishu and Efficiency Engineering, which serves as a communication and collaboration platform for enterprises. Since 2020, Liang Rubo has been responsible for the Group's human resources and management. However, until 2020, his status in Byte was only at the vice president or director level, which looked far inferior to senior vice presidents and business leaders like Chen Lin, Zhang Nan and Zhang Lidong.
However, on May 20, 2021, Zhang Yiming issued an internal letter to all employees that Liang Rubo would take over as the new CEO. After all, although Liang Rubo does not manage as many businesses as other senior vice presidents, he is the co-founder of ByteDance and a real original shareholder.
Coincidentally, Meituan co-founder Mu Rongjun is the younger brother of Meituan founder CEO Wang Xing. In 2005, he received a master's degree in computer science and technology from Tsinghua University. Later, he joined Baidu for 2 years, and in 2007, Mu Rongjun co-founded Fanfu.com and served as the technical director. In 2010, he co-founded Meituan with Wang Xing, and as a co-founder, Mu Rongjun is in charge of human resources, administration, IT, procurement, legal affairs, government affairs and other departments. At present, Mu Rongjun's shareholding in Meituan is about 1.934%.
In addition to well-known co-creation executives of large factories such as Liang Rubo and Mu Rongjun, Kuaishou also has 2 not-so-well-known co-creation executives.
According to the management list on Kuaishou's official website, in addition to founders Cheng Yixiao, Su Hua and CFO Jin Bing, Kuaishou's senior management also includes senior vice president Yin Xin, who is in charge of centralized procurement, administrative management, IT center and infrastructure construction, and senior vice president Yang Yuanxi corporate social responsibility and content security. Judging from the resumes of the two, they both joined Kuaishou (Gift Kuaishou) in 2012, when they were just ordinary server and Android engineers, and since then, with the development of Kuaishou, the two have been responsible for the development and management of multiple infrastructure platforms.
As co-founders and senior vice presidents, Yinxin and Yang Yuanxi are far less well-known than business leaders such as Wang Jianwei, Yu Yue and Ma Hongbin, but they have been sharing weal and woe with Cheng Yixiao in the 12 years since Kuaishou was established, and their current status is well deserved.
The second type is an executive who joined later but played a key role in the development and growth of a large company, serving as a number of core business leaders.
For example, Zhang Xiaolong, senior executive vice president of Tencent and president of WeChat business group. Zhang Xiaolong graduated from the Department of Telecommunications of Huazhong University of Science and Technology with a bachelor's degree and a master's degree respectively. He developed the domestic email client Foxmail, which was later acquired by Tencent, and Zhang Xiaolong also joined Tencent. In 2011, the Guangzhou Research Institute led by Zhang Xiaolong launched WeChat, which helped Tencent get the ticket to the mobile Internet. Since then, WeChat has launched functions such as video calls, Moments, and official accounts, and has become one of the indispensable apps for Chinese Internet users. In recent years, with the development of short video apps such as Douyin and Kuaishou, WeChat has also launched short videos and live broadcasts on Channels, which has become Tencent's "hope for the whole village". In the process of Tencent's evolution from the PC Internet to the mobile Internet, Zhang Xiaolong has made great contributions.
Similar to Zhang Xiaolong, Jiang Fan, who was born in 1985 and graduated from Fudan University, joined Google China and participated in the research and development of Google Maps, search quality, and content advertising. In 2010, Jiang Fan founded Umeng and received investment from a number of VC institutions, estimated at 50 million US dollars. In 2013, Alibaba acquired Umeng for $80 million, and Jiang Fan joined Alibaba. Since 2014, Jiang Fan has started to promote the functional research and development of the mobile Taobao App, and led the team to build the Taobao content system, realizing and creating a "consumer media platform" integrating goods, transactions, sharing, interaction, video, and live broadcast. On March 6, 2019, Jiang Fan served as the president of Taobao and Tmall.
Although in 2020, Jiang Fan was canceled as a partner because of the Zhang Dayi incident, removed from the position of president of Taotian, and demoted from M7 to M6, and "assigned" to the international digital business group. However, in the following years, Jiang Fan led the international digital business group to achieve good results, and Jiang Fan himself became a partner of Alibaba again, and was included in the list of senior executives of Alibaba Group.
On Byte's side, Zhang Nan (female) also participated in the creation of the picture community App Tuba, and the company was acquired by ByteDance. Zhang Nan led the team to join and began to take charge of ByteDance's UGC business. In 2016, Zhang Nan launched products such as Douyin and volcano videos from 0 to 1. In 2018, Zhang Nan served as the CEO of Douyin and the head of ByteDance's market brand, fully responsible for the market brand of Douyin and Volcano. Douyin has also become the hottest product in the mobile Internet era in addition to WeChat. Since then, Zhang Nan has led the team to create products such as light face cameras and Jianying.
On March 12, 2020, Zhang Nan served as the CEO of Beijing ByteDance, and as the general head of China business, he comprehensively coordinated the product, operation, marketing and content cooperation of the company's China business, including Toutiao, Douyin, Xigua Video, Search and other businesses and products. At the beginning of 2024, Zhang Nan announced that she would step down as CEO of Byte and head of Douyin, focusing on the CapCut business, but she has made indelible achievements in the development of Byte in the past 12 years.
Unlike Zhang Nan, Wang Jianwei, a member of Kuaishou's economic management committee and senior vice president, is the main participant and leader in almost all of Kuaishou's core businesses. In 2019, Wang Jianwei, who has worked at Tencent for 8 years, joined Kuaishou and served as the head of Kuaishou product and the head of the main station production and transportation line, responsible for Kuaishou's product design, user growth, live broadcast, content ecology, etc. In 2020, Wang Jianwei entered the Kuaishou Economic Management Committee. In 2022, Wang Jianwei will enter the Kuaishou Business Ecology Committee again. In November 2022, Wang Jianwei succeeded Liu Feng as the head of Kuaishou commercialization. In November 2023, Kuaishou released an internal email, Wang Jianwei served as the head of the e-commerce business department and the head of the commercialization business department, reporting to Chairman and CEO Cheng Yixiao, who will no longer be in charge of the e-commerce business.
In just 5 years, Wang Jianwei has gone from the main station to commercialization, and then to e-commerce, and the three core businesses of Kuaishou are (once) under the control of Wang Jianwei.
There is also a typical case is Wang Puzhong, in 2015, at the age of 31, Wang Puzhong joined Meituan as the person in charge of Baidu's takeaway products, first as the senior product director of takeaway delivery (L11), and since then, he has taken Meituan Takeaway all the way to the city, successively serving as the head of the takeaway business department and the delivery division (L12), the senior vice president of the group (L13), and the president of the Daojia business group, In February 2024, Meituan CEO Wang Xing announced that he would take the home delivery business group, the store business group, the Meituan platform, The basic R&D was merged into the core local business, and Wang Puzhong served as the CEO. Became the only CEO of Meituan besides Wang Xing.
On the whole, if you want to become the senior vice president of a major Internet company and the core executive at the CXO level, the three factors are indispensable, and it is also a great test of a person's luck, ability and patience.
Appendix 1: The annual salary of core executives of large factories
According to Tencent's 2023 annual report, Tencent paid an annual salary of up to HK$4.61 billion to 13 senior executives, including directors, CEOs, presidents and other senior executives, including salaries, bonuses, subsidies and benefits of HK$567 million, retirement plan contributions of HK$720,000, and the largest share of shares was HK$4.61 billion. Among them, the annual salary is 800-50 million 1 people, 50 million to 200 million 4 people, 2-400 million 4 people, 4-800 million 2 people, 8-1.2 billion 1 people, 12-2 billion 1 people, of which the five highest annual salaries of the five executives do not include any directors (not on the board of directors) The above units are Hong Kong dollars. Tencent founder and CEO Ma Huateng's annual salary is 42.923 million yuan, and the outgoing director Martin Lau's annual salary is 52.478 million yuan.
On Meituan's side, as of December 31, 2023, the five highest-paid people in Meituan do not include any directors, and the total salary of the five highest-paid people is HK$520 million, a decrease of about 10 million from 2022. Among the five individuals, one has a salary of about HK$172 million, one has HK$142 million, one has HK$106 million, and the other two have a salary of HK$84 million and HK$71 million respectively.
For the annual salary of executives of other large factories, you can check the annual reports of the corresponding companies.
Appendix 2: List of senior executives of major Internet companies (compiled according to the official annual report list and media reports, not necessarily completely accurate)
Ali:
Chairman Cai Chongxin, Group CEO, Taotian, Alibaba Cloud CEO Wu Yongming, Director and President J. MICHAEL EVANS, DIRECTOR WU WEI, CFO XU HONG, CHIEF TALENT OFFICER (CPO) FANG JIANG, CHIEF LEGAL OFFICER YU SIYING, DIGITAL BUSINESS GROUP CEO JIANG FAN, ROOKIE CEO WAN LIN AND BIG ENTERTAINMENT CEO FAN LUYUAN;
Tencent:
Founder and CEO Pony Ma, President Martin Lau, Chief Information Officer Xu Chenye, Chief Operating Officer, IEG, PCG President Ren Yuxin, Group Senior Executive Vice President and WXG President Zhang Xiaolong, Chief Strategy Officer and Group Senior Executive Vice President James Mitchell, Group Senior Executive Vice President and CSIG President Tang Daosheng, Group Senior Executive Vice President and TEG President Lu Shan, Group Senior Vice President Ma Xiaoyi, Group Senior Vice President Lin Jinghua, CFO, Luo Shuohan, Senior Vice President of the Group, Guo Kaitian, Senior Vice President of the Group, Xi Dan, Senior Vice President of the Group, and Yang Guoan, Senior Management Consultant;
Baidu:
Robin Li, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Luo Rong, CFO, Haifeng Wang, CTO, Shen Dou, Executive Vice President of the Group and Head of the Intelligent Cloud Business Group, Liang Zhixiang, Senior Vice President of the Group, Cui Shanshan, Senior Vice President of the Group, Li Zhenyu, Senior Vice President of the Group, and Wang Yunpeng, Senior Vice President of the Group, General Manager of the Mobile Ecosystem Business Group, Vice President of Baidu Group and President of the Intelligent Driving Business Group, who are not on the list of executives on Baidu's official website.
Byte:
Founder Zhang Yiming, Group CEO Liang Rubo, Chairman of ByteDance Zhang Lidong, Head of Jianying Business Zhang Nan, former Head of Human Resources of ByteDance, Head of Game Business Hua Wei, former Head of Game Business Yan Zhun, CFO Gao Zhun, Tik Tok CEO Zhou Shouzi, Vice President of Technology Yang Zhenyuan, Vice President of Technology Hong Dingkun, Head of Large Model Business Zhu Wenjia.
Meituan:
Founder, Chairman and CEO Wang Xing, Co-Founder and Senior Vice President Mu Rongjun, CFO Chen Shaohui, Core Local Business CEO Wang Puzhong, Senior Vice President Zhang Chuan, Senior Vice President Li Shubin, and Head of Preferred Business Group Guo Wanhuai.
Quick worker:
Founder and CEO Cheng Yixiao, co-founder and executive director Su Hua, CFO Jin Bing, co-founder and senior vice president Yin Xin, co-founder and senior vice president Yang Yuanxi, senior vice president, head of e-commerce and commercialization Wang Jianwei, senior vice president, head of main station and community science line Yu Yue, senior vice president and chairman of the server development channel Yu Bing, senior vice president and head of international business Ma Hongbin.
JD.com:
Liu Qiangdong, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Xu Ran, CEO of Retail Group, Shan Su, CFO, Zhang Yan, CHO, He Chengfeng, Chief Compliance Officer of the Group, Cao Peng, Chairman of the Technical Committee of JD Group, Hu Wei, CEO of JD Logistics, Jin Enlin, CEO of JD Health, and Li Yayun, CEO of JD Technology.
Didi:
Founder and CEO Cheng Wei, Co-founder, Permanent Partner and Chief Talent Officer Liu Qing, Senior Vice President and CEO of International Business Zhu Jingshi, CEO of online ride-hailing platform company Sun Shu, etc.
Pinduoduo:
Founder Huang Zheng, Chairman and Co-CEO Chen Lei, Co-CEO Zhao Jiazhen, COO Abu (Gu Pingting)