Rebirth 04: Starting from Taking an Unconventional Approach

Zhang Ruiyi peeked in, and Han Fei was organizing his detailed plans for the next few days.

"You're here. How did you sleep last night?"

"It smells really good!" Zhang Ruiyi sat down across the desk, her voice filled with cheerful laughter. "Guess what my dad said after I brought the magazine to him?"

"Let me guess. Uncle Zhang will probably first flip through a couple of pages with an air of superiority, then casually ask you, 'Who designed this cover?' You'll say it was you, and he'll nod and say, 'Hmm, that's kind of interesting.' And then when you leave, you'll find him with the magazine on your bedside table, right?"

Zhang Ruiyi looked at Han Fei in surprise: "How do you know so much? It's as if you saw it yourself."

"This is the standard procedure for men to say one thing and mean another."

Zhang Ruiyi laughed loudly.

Han Fei glanced at his watch; it was just past 8:30. He stood up. "Sit down for a bit. I'm going to talk to Wen Jie alone."

"Why do you want to talk to me alone?"

"To ensure a smooth handover with the technical team at headquarters this afternoon, I'll go and talk to him again."

Han Fei arrived at the entrance of the archives room. Ever since Wen Jie moved his office here, he had treated it as his own private office. Wen Jie definitely needed a quiet, independent workspace, Han Fei thought. He planned to install a separate circuit and dedicated network in the archives room, converting it into the technical department's office.

Han Fei walked in without knocking. Wen Jie was sitting in a chair, pulled very close to the computer screen.

"Hey, Wenjie."

"Fei-ge is here." Wen Jie turned around. "Come and see."

Han Fei sat down in the chair.

Wen Jie opened a folder on his computer: "Last night I compiled a system architecture specification and a list of areas for optimization. The progress of the database splitting, the load balancing deployment plan, and the monitoring logs for the SP interface are all here. When the technical team from headquarters arrives, I can explain them to them one by one."

Han Fei pushed his chair closer and, seeing the neatly arranged file names and a clear architecture diagram on the screen, immediately knew his worries were unnecessary. Wen Jie was already prepared for professional coordination.

"Great, you're well prepared."

"And this too." Wen Jie swiped the mouse to switch to a new interface. "I wrote a simple A/B testing module, just a framework. If it can be successfully implemented, we can directly compare conversion rates in the backend when pushing different copy, without having to manually calculate them."

"Oh?" Han Fei raised an eyebrow. "This... is something you wanted to do yourself?"

"Yes, you mentioned in the previous meeting that the copy needed to be broken down into smaller parts, so I was wondering if we could use technology to automatically compare them. Right now, we've just created a prototype based on foreign internet companies. When the people from headquarters come, I'll ask them for advice and see how to optimize it."

Han Fei felt he should say something to express his appreciation, but couldn't find the right words. Wen Jie seemed to understand and patted him on the shoulder in return.

"Brother Fei, I was overthinking things before. Don't worry, I'm all ready now."

......

At 2 p.m., the gray van carrying the headquarters technical team arrived at the entrance of Qingniao Publishing House.

The group has four members, three men and one woman. The leader, Zhou Ming, is of medium height, has a serious face, wears a blue baseball cap, and looks to be in his thirties or forties.

The two men behind him were a tall man carrying a laptop backpack and a shorter, stout man carrying a black instrument case. Both were wearing the same gray work clothes.

The woman at the very back had short hair, wore a blue suit, had a pale face with sharp features, and a serious expression.

Han Fei and Wen Jie gave brief self-introductions, shook hands with each of the group members, and led the four of them into the large conference room of Qingniao Publishing House.

It took the entire publishing house staff an hour to rearrange the meeting room. The meeting table was covered with a new light blue tablecloth, and six cups of freshly brewed tea and a plate of fruit were placed on it.

The 45-inch Sony rear-projection TV at the end of the conference table was something Zhang Ruiyi had temporarily taken from her living room. The TV has a VGA port and is currently connected to Wen Jie's laptop.

Six people took their seats around the conference table.

Han Fei looked at Zhou Ming: "Engineer Zhou, General Manager Zhang specifically mentioned you on the phone, saying that you have a technical background, don't talk much but are extremely reliable. This system check-up and upgrade will mainly rely on you to oversee it."

"Mr. Zhang, you flatter me. Headquarters sent us here to help you get things done." Zhou Ming leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped together, his face expressionless. He had a pair of sleepy-eyed eyes, as if he had worn glasses his whole life but suddenly decided to switch to contact lenses or get laser surgery.

"Engineer Zhou," Han Fei's gaze swept over the three people beside Zhou Ming, "Now that everyone is here, why don't you formally introduce these elite soldiers you brought? Let us get to know them so that we can assign tasks more effectively later."

Zhou Ming nodded to the three men, signaling them to introduce themselves.

The tall man stood up. He had long, grey hair and a beard like a lion's mane. His deep, rumbling voice gave off an ominous feeling, but his words were still clear: "My name is Lin Feng, a systems engineer, responsible for the backend, mainly code optimization and architecture adjustments."

Han Fei smiled slightly and pointed to the bulging black laptop bag on the table: "Engineer Lin, just by looking at your equipment, I know you're in charge of the core code. When you see Wen Jie's architecture diagrams later, you two can have a good discussion."

"President Han, you're too kind. We can learn from each other."

"My name is Wang Zhe," said the short, stout man with a smile on his round face. "I am responsible for handling user profile access and data model design. My position is data engineer."

"Hmm," Han Fei said, "I've heard that people carrying suitcases are usually experts in charge of hardware interfaces and low-level debugging. I'll leave the stability of the SP interface to you from now on."

"Of course, President Han," Wang Zhe said.

Han Fei looked at the woman. The woman stood up, without saying a word, and scanned the crowd, as if she had stood up only to look at everyone, rather than to be looked at.

"She's our documentation specialist," Zhou Ming said. "She's not a core technical staff member."

Han Fei smiled and said, "The documentation is the blueprint for system construction and the key to keeping up with the pace of technology. The fact that Engineer Zhou brought the documentation specialist shows that headquarters has considered everything thoroughly, and we welcome that. Thank you all for making this special trip. Our technical lead here is Wen Jie. He built the entire system architecture and code for Qingniao Reading from scratch. He understands the logic of every line of code best and is also very clear about the bottlenecks we are currently facing. He will fully cooperate from now on, and the publishing house will provide unconditional support for any resources needed."

"Don't worry, President Han," Zhou Ming said. "Our mission has been clearly explained by General Manager Liu. Shall we begin?"