Zhang Yiming
Delayed gratification
The trait he rates highest
Interview with Caijing, 2016, and his early microblog posts
Asked which quality he values, he keeps giving one answer. What the phrase actually means in his hands.
What actually happened?
In interviews Zhang Yiming has said that delayed gratification is one of the qualities I value most, and that graduates who put never losing out first are spending themselves in advance. In his usage the phrase covers three layers. Choosing work: do not trade the fastest-growing seat for this year's salary. Building product: hold off monetising, as early Toutiao pushed commercialisation back and worked the recommendation engine and retention first. For the company: refuse to be satisfied by the result of the current fight. His own gloss on the reverse side is that most people want too badly to win the round in front of them.
What is delayed is the payout, not the feedback
The common misuse is to invoke it while enduring years with no signal at all. In his practice the feedback is immediate, data watched daily, retention chased daily, and only the conversion into money and reputation is postponed. Delay with feedback is investment; delay without it is self-admiration.
Holding revenue back while growing, with the retention curve checked every day. Without that curve it is not delayed gratification, it is drifting.
Cashing in early has a hidden price: compounding stops
The cost of early monetising never shows on the statement. Damage the experience for this period's revenue and you shrink the base that every later period grows from. The trait is really a compound-interest sum: move the payout later so the principal turns more times. People who can do the arithmetic need no willpower.
One more ad slot on the home screen lifts this month and is deducted from retention three months out. Put both curves on one chart and restraint stops being a virtue.
It is a filter for choosing people, not only a private discipline
He applies the trait in hiring, by looking at a candidate's past choices: always the highest current pay, or sometimes the steepest slope? Every move on a curriculum vitae is a delayed-gratification question already answered, and it answers more honestly than an interview does.
Two records: one where each move added thirty per cent of salary and no capability, one with two pay cuts to change field and real command now.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: a payout now and a steeper growth slope are sitting side by side.
Ask first: during the delay, do I have a signal I can observe, and what does the compound arithmetic say the gap is?
Where it goes wrong: using delayed gratification to grind through a dead end with no feedback; or delaying for ever and leaving the fruit to rot on the tree.
Same situation, other people are asking
When people near me do well, something in me goes cold.Is he better than me, or just three years earlier?He's a step ahead of me on everything.Am I doing the work, or proving something?Someone is ahead of me · all 14 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.