novellhall Chapter 24 Motivation
Chapter 24 Motivation
Lin Shen's small team had already achieved efficiency almost as soon as it was established.
This success is attributed to both the fact that all team members have backgrounds in Light and the talent pool inherent in the Tencent platform itself.
Meanwhile, a notice regarding Lin Shen's personal position and salary assessment was also issued.
Due to the unique nature of this experimental organization, his job level and salary needed to be reassessed. The person in charge of this matter was Li Wei, the HRBP of Tencent's Wireless Business Systems Department, who was also considered an "acquaintance" of Lin Shen.
When Li Wei received this communication task, she was organizing the human resources data after the merger of the Light project. When she saw Lin Shen's name, the image of the young man who used strange metaphors during the interview immediately came to mind.
The strange memory and the title "Project Leader" in the email now appear in a bizarre contrast.
"How long has it been?"
Li Wei put down the mouse, leaned back in her chair, and looked at the view outside the floor-to-ceiling glass curtain wall.
As a senior HRBP sent from Tencent headquarters to a business group, she has seen too many geniuses and people with their own resources, and she is also clear about the promotion channels within Tencent, which may be fast or slow but are always traceable.
But the path through the forest...
Well, even among these exceptional individuals, they belong to the category that requires individual model building and analysis—less than three months after joining the company, they went from being specially approved junior engineers to being about to independently lead an experimental project that reports directly to Zhang Xiaolong.
What concerns her even more is that it was Zhang Xiaolong himself who drove this. This usually means that, within Zhang Xiaolong's value system, this young man or the direction he represents is given a different weight.
She suppressed the mix of surprise and professional curiosity in her heart, picked up the phone and dialed Zhou Botao's number: "Mr. Zhou, I need your time regarding the reassessment of Lin Shen's salary. I need your professional judgment."
The meeting was held in Zhou Botao's small conference room.
When Lin Shen pushed open the door, Li Wei habitually scanned him with the kind of gaze an HR professional would have: a simple polo shirt and jeans, not much different from a few months ago, but his entire aura had changed. The "fresh face" common among recent graduates, the kind that shows they're trying to fit in, was completely gone, replaced by a calm focus. His steps were unhurried, and when his gaze swept over her, there was a composure and penetrating insight beyond his years, as if she weren't an employee waiting for a salary assessment, but a partner there to discuss cooperation terms.
"Lin Shen," Zhou Botao pointed to the chair opposite him, his tone carrying the care of a senior, "you know, this kind of one-on-one negotiation is usually a procedure only for project leaders."
Lin Shen nodded, sat down opposite the two men with a calm expression, and casually placed a dark blue, ordinary folder on the clean conference table.
Li Wei and Zhou Botao's gaze lingered on the folder for less than half a second before they looked away, not taking it seriously, assuming it was just a personal profile or something similar.
Li Wei sat up straight, adopted a professional demeanor, and began to explain according to the similar process she had handled countless times: "Lin Shen, first of all, congratulations on taking charge of the 'WeChat' project. Due to the special and experimental nature of the project, your organizational relationship is temporarily independent of the regular business sequence. Therefore, your job level cannot be processed and confirmed according to the company's existing promotion process at present."
She paused here, observing Lin Shen's reaction. The young man's face remained expressionless; he simply listened calmly. She continued, her tone slightly gentler than before, carrying a hint of "good news":
"However, regarding salary, General Manager Zhang has paid special attention and explained it to the headquarters' human resources department. Based on your contributions and project needs, adjustments can be made at the discretion of the senior engineer's standards." She specifically emphasized "General Manager Zhang" and "paying special attention," which, in the cases she has handled, is already a very generous starting point with a clear signal of support.
She looked at Lin Shen, bracing herself for a barrage of questions about the specific range of salary base, the effective date of the adjustment, whether the base for the five social insurances and one housing fund would be linked, and whether there would be any special subsidies. This was only natural; it concerned the real money that would fall into her pocket each month, and no one would be indifferent to it.
Lin Shen remained calm, and Li Wei had no choice but to begin the next step of the process.
"As for equity incentives..." Li Wei's tone became serious and objective again. This was a key part involving long-term interests. "It needs to be determined gradually after a comprehensive and prudent assessment of the project's long-term risks, potential market value, technological barriers, and your personal continuous contributions to the project. Usually, the company will set a certain observation period and milestones."
After delivering a complete and logically clear explanation, Li Wei closed her notebook. This time, she was genuinely waiting for Lin Shen to speak. Based on her extensive experience, the following conversation should follow the path of "confirming salary details - clarifying benefits - discussing equity valuation process." She even quickly reviewed in her mind the company's salary range for senior engineers and the ambiguity surrounding special project incentives, preparing for a measured tug-of-war.
Lin Shen listened quietly, his gaze sweeping calmly over Li Wei and Zhou Botao's faces. A few seconds of complete silence fell over the conference room, broken only by the faint sound of airflow from the air conditioning vents.
Then, he uttered his first words.
"Mr. Li, Mr. Zhou, regarding the monthly salary," his voice was as calm as stating a fact, without any hesitation or probing, "I can maintain the current level for now, or just make a symbolic, procedural adjustment. This is not my focus at this stage."
Li Wei's fingers, which were flipping through the salary and bandwidth data page, paused almost imperceptibly. She looked up at Lin Shen, wondering if she had misheard.
Maintain the status quo?
Symbolic fine-tuning?
Not the point?
She had handled nearly a hundred salary negotiations, ranging from recent graduates to senior engineers, and this was unprecedented, especially when the one making the request was such a young project manager who should have been in even greater need of cash rewards.
Doesn't he realize the enticing gap between a senior engineer's monthly salary and what he's currently earning? That gap is enough to pay the mortgage on a decent apartment in Shenzhen, or significantly change a young person's quality of life.
But Lin Shen seemed completely oblivious to the fleeting surprise and confusion in Li Wei's eyes. His expression remained unchanged as he continued in his calm yet unwavering voice, "My focus is on stock options. More precisely, it's on long-term returns that are deeply tied to and grow proportionally with the value that the 'WeChat' project may create in the future."
As soon as he finished speaking, he reached out and opened the dark blue folder that the two of them had previously overlooked. His movements were unhurried. What he took out was not a personal profile, but an A4 sheet of paper with clear Song typeface printed on it.
He turned the paper around and gently pushed it to the center of the conference table with his fingertips, facing Li Wei and Zhou Botao.
Li Wei's gaze fell on the paper, the title of which was in bold black font: "Suggestions on the Performance-Based Incentive Framework for the Core Leaders of the 'WeChat' Project".
Her breath, under the powerful control of her professionalism, was held almost imperceptibly for half a second. Her gaze quickly swept over the listed clauses, but her heart was like a deep pool tossed with a boulder, churning with turmoil.
It's not because the terms themselves are complicated or obscure; quite the opposite, they are clearly structured, directly expressed, and even somewhat overly concise. But behind these concise terms lies the place and timing of their emergence, and the mindset of the person who proposed them.
For the first time, Li Wei felt that this strange young man was somewhat frightening.
At a compensation review meeting, a 22-year-old project manager didn't ask how much more cash he could get. Instead, he presented a logically sound performance-based agreement. He wasn't passively accepting the company's arrangements or haggling for better terms; he was proactively initiating a transaction—a deal where he used his short-term, certain personal gains as leverage to gamble on a huge, uncertain future.
What made it even more challenging for her was that the proposal precisely addressed the core concerns of the company's management, especially decision-makers like Zhang Xiaolong, regarding such exploratory projects: the risks and uncertainties of resource investment. He used this proposal to demonstrate that he not only understood these concerns but was also willing to use his personal interests to offset them.
This is no longer something she can decide.
At this moment, Li Wei looked at Zhou Botao, then shook her head at him, while focusing her gaze on Lin Shen. Her role now was simply to listen to Lin Shen's request in its entirety.
"I know the company has concerns about cutting-edge exploratory projects like 'WeChat,' and the initial resource investment will inevitably be very cautious. I completely understand and accept this caution." Lin Shen's voice rang out at the right time, not loud, but clearly reaching Li Wei's ears. He began to calmly explain the logic of the plan, as if explaining a technical architecture. "Therefore, I propose this option acquisition plan, which is strongly tied to the completion of the project's key objective indicators. We can use the first product release and verification cycle, for example, three months, as a performance evaluation unit."
He explained the core metrics one by one: the product must be released stably on schedule and the core failure rate must be below the threshold; at least 10 real, organically grown users must be acquired, and the user retention rate on the second day must be higher than 80%; key technical points planned when the project was initiated, such as emotion compression, need to achieve a 5% quantitative improvement... He added that the specific values of all metrics can be discussed, and the data team can even be asked to jointly calibrate them, but the principle is: the metrics must be objective, accurately measurable, and sufficiently challenging. He needs to jump to reach them in order to receive the reward.
User growth needs to be "authentic and natural," avoiding inflated metrics... As Li Wei listened, she simultaneously conducted a rapid professional assessment in her mind. This attention to detail made her realize that the young man's thinking had far exceeded the scope of a simple technical lead, and even surpassed the focus of a typical product manager on functionality.
He was considering the project's sound foundation, long-term reputation, and true value. This holistic perspective and risk awareness, transcending age and experience, gave her a sense of familiar strangeness. Familiar because these are usually qualities possessed by successful entrepreneurs, strange because they came from a young engineer at a large company who should have been more focused on technical implementation.
His growth trajectory was so steep that it deviated somewhat from the familiar model curve of "talent development" that Tencent had already established.
From a purely HR perspective and based on the company's risk management logic, this plan can be described as "brilliant." It almost completely minimizes the company's initial human resource cost risks, while simultaneously using a highly imaginative expectation of future returns to "hardly bind" the core interests of the executor to the success or failure of the project.
Li Wei had only seen this style of clause in one scenario: when venture capital firms faced founders of startups who had absolute control and an almost obsessive confidence in their ideas, the agreement served as both a constraint and an endorsement.
"If we fail to achieve any of the core indicators by the end of this performance-based period," Lin Shen's voice pulled Li Wei back from her wandering thoughts. His tone remained flat, yet his words were clear. "Then, I will voluntarily relinquish all options allocation eligibility involved in this round of performance-based payments and accept any subsequent arrangements made by the company regarding the 'WeChat' project, as well as any readjustment of my personal job position."
He paused very briefly at this point, clearly having already grasped the rhythm of the conversation.
"If," Lin Shen spoke again, the word carrying a subtle weight, "we have achieved all, or most, of the core objectives confirmed by both parties..."
He raised his voice slightly, each word carefully crafted and embedded in the sentence:
"Therefore, I hope that the stock option allocation criteria I receive should not be based on my current job level, but on the standards of core leaders who have made decisive contributions to the success of the product. Furthermore, this mechanism should be long-term and dynamic. In the subsequent development of the project, if more important and recognized milestones are achieved, such as the number of users exceeding one million, ten million, or even one hundred million," Lin Shen at this point sounded just like a MLM instructor, "the corresponding stock option pool should also have a clear and transparent replenishment mechanism to ensure that incentives and contributions are always synchronized."
As the last syllable fell, he gently placed the black ballpoint pen, which he had been holding loosely in his hand, next to the thin yet incredibly heavy A4 sheet of paper. The movement was so light that it made almost no sound.
The meeting room fell into complete silence.
Only Zhou Botao seemed to be meeting Lin Shen for the first time, his expression complex.
Surprise,感慨, worry, and even a hint of barely perceptible admiration intertwined on his face. He had witnessed too many negotiations and transactions—those involving interests, technology, and resources. But he had never seen someone so young so casually set aside the most secure and visible short-term gains, instead betting his entire fortune on a future shrouded in mist and uncertain in its outcome. This transcended ordinary confidence or ambition; it was more like a near-mad rational choice based on profound insight and strong inner resolve.