Binance Ultimate Efficiency and Basic Tools

Binance The Ultimate Solution for Optimal Efficiency and Essential Tools

Author: Wang Hanyang, Source: crypto4.wtf

Less than two hundred days since its establishment, Binance has become the world’s largest blockchain exchange. Some founders consider their company as a product that needs to be polished, but Binance boarded the rocket of growth without being polished yet. In a short period of time, the remote work team grew from tens of people to thousands. The rocket not only needs to fly higher, but also needs to figure out how to avoid disintegration due to this complex collaboration model.

Prior to Binance, GitLab, an open-source software company with over two thousand employees, was the role model for remote work. The company wrote the most detailed remote work guide, “GitLab’s Guide to All-Remote,” covering everything from how to work non-linearly to evaluating remote work outcomes.

Today, there are more options for emerging companies than GitLab. The remote work trend brought about by the pandemic has driven significant growth in collaboration software: Zoom has over 800 million monthly visitors, Microsoft Teams’ daily active users nearly doubled within a year, from 145 million in 2021 to 270 million in 2022, and collaboration tool Linear completed a $35 million Series B funding led by Accel in 2023. All founders understand one thing: if you want efficient remote collaboration, it’s best not to skimp on investing in collaboration tools.

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But Binance is an exception. It proves that there can be no relationship between super-fast growth and collaboration tools. For a long time, Binance’s entire management was based on group chats. If there’s something to discuss, they do it in the group; if there’s nothing, they focus on their work. For anything urgent, they create a separate small group for private discussions. All information is directly stored in online documents. In the face of rapid growth, all professionalism disappeared. In 2020, Binance supported a total trading volume of over $30 trillion relying on group chats and online documents.

From 0 to $30 trillion, all you may need is Telegram group chats and Google Docs.

Remote Collaboration

In the previous article (click “Who is Creating Binance: A Borderless Company from 4,000 Resumes” to view the original), we mainly discussed the staff of Binance scattered around the world. The curious question is: how do these people collaborate? Does Binance have some unique ways of working that allow it to rise rapidly?

The simple answer is: Binance does have unique ways of working. Binance’s unique way of working seems to be that it doesn’t care about collaboration and management while growing at the highest speed. Since the makeshift rocket is still heading towards the moon, there is no need to worry about the crude assembly method before it slows down.

In the early days, Binance had a Telegram group chat for all members. The group chat was very flat, for example, if someone needed to design a poster, they would directly @ the person in charge in the group. After the person in charge completed the task, they would directly post the result in the group. Almost all information about everyone was in this group. In other words, Binance’s collaboration revolved around the large group of all members. If there were documents, they would generally be stored in Google Docs. Just like how Bezos at Amazon asks employees to write documents instead of slides, CZ also started in 2019 hoping that the whole company would collaborate using Google Docs. Only presentations can still be done with slides.

I jokingly asked if they weren’t afraid of leaking information to the US government, who wanted to sue Binance? One of the interviewees replied, “Binance is running directly on AWS, so why bother?”

In addition to the main group chat, Binance also has many groups, such as separate Mandarin-speaking groups. The main language in the main group is English, but there are also many Binance employees who speak Mandarin, so there is a lot of private communication based on WeChat. Perhaps using WeChat is a more convenient option, but it is not without risks – WeChat may impose stricter censorship on blockchain topics in group chats (private chats are not restricted).

For urgent work, they create smaller groups. If there is a product-related question, developers will join, and in some cases, the legal team will also join the small group. Once everyone is present, they synchronize tasks and decide if a meeting needs to be scheduled. Binance employees refer to this as the “TG group collaboration mode” and believe it is very efficient. One employee described the group chat style at Binance as follows: “If you don’t like something, you can confront it directly in the group chat. Everyone believes that this is a good way to maintain efficiency. The unwritten rule is not to have private chats and to discuss everything in the group chat, to maintain transparency.”

A former employee joined Binance in 2019 and their first impression was “shock”: the entire company was too transparent, seemingly trusting everyone, including new employees. In their first meeting, they learned about the progress of various departmental products and the next steps. And there was never a situation where they couldn’t access documents. This made them feel like “nothing is difficult to move forward with”; when CZ or He Yi gives instructions, the required resources are immediately available, and they start working the same day. Most successful startups are transparent and have strong execution capabilities in the early stages. But Binance’s situation is a bit more complicated: on the one hand, it is still a startup that has only been around for two years; on the other hand, in 2019, Binance was already the largest blockchain exchange globally, serving over 15 million users in more than 40 countries or regions. Considering its two-year existence, the transparency of Binance is not surprising, but in terms of scale, this level of transparency and execution is truly remarkable. Parts of it have already become a giant, while other parts are still growing.

Although this group chat-based collaboration model may seem crude, it doesn’t mean it’s convenient for slacking off. The majority of employees maintain an effective working time of 12-14 hours per day, and even “have to take two steps to go to the bathroom”. They still work until 11 p.m., and if someone can’t be found at “this time”, they are considered unsuitable.

As a rapidly growing company, the workload can push people to their limits. The time each Binance employee wakes up depends on when the first meeting is scheduled. However, this is closely related to the time zones they collaborate in.

When someone joins, their first daily meeting might be at 10:30 AM in GMT+8, but it later changes to 9:30 AM because of the time difference—eventually, it becomes 2 PM because their superior went to Dubai. Some people have to start their first meeting at 6 AM for multinational collaboration. Daily meetings are generally not long, around half an hour. They continue working until 11 p.m. when they send out the daily report, and only then does the day end. For Binance, a company with offices spread all over the world, the most time-friendly time zones are usually Europe and Dubai. They are in the middle of different time zones and can accommodate GMT+8 and PST efficiently—keep this in mind, as many Binance employees are located there.

Because remote work does not involve commuting and meals are also takeout, the majority of the time from morning to night is devoted to actual work. Compared to this, even 996 (working from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week) is not that extreme. But even though the collaborative mode based on group chat is efficient, it cannot escape meetings: any company with thousands of dispersed employees needs a large number of meetings to communicate with each other. Some people recall that their peak was having to attend ten meetings in one day, “I really didn’t do anything all day, just in meetings.” Some teams try to control the frequency of meetings, aiming to keep the number of meetings for grassroots employees within five per week. However, this is not the norm.

Perhaps because too many meetings affect productivity, but remote collaboration requires meetings, so CZ and He Yi have very high expectations for meeting efficiency. In 2018, CZ directly taught employees how to make more efficient presentations: speeding up the process by listing key points in written form. When meeting with him, unless there are special circumstances, it cannot exceed thirty minutes. Every quarter, CZ conducts QBWs (Quarterly Business Review) with department heads: results, progress, challenges, and issues. Essentially, it is a way to quickly let him know if there is anything that needs higher-level assistance. Some people say, “If you don’t get to the point in the first sentence, CZ will definitely interrupt you.”

The marketing department led by He Yi began pursuing efficiency early on. Because the marketing department is the most globalized department at Binance, the need for information synchronization is also the highest. The marketing department holds a weekly meeting every Wednesday night at ten o’clock: more than a hundred core members attend, and each project leader has to give a speech. The speaker is only allowed one slide and one minute to speak. The content on this slide is very simple: the most important achievements and progress of the past week, what will be done in the next week? Especially if there is any work that requires cooperation from others. For example, if an event requires translation support from different regions, it needs to be notified in advance. The meetings are short and efficient, usually ending in about forty minutes.

Cross-cultural communication issues also arise at Binance. The Asian team is relatively less concerned about the difference between working time and rest time compared to the European team, especially when it comes to remote work, which further blurs the distinction. They can only adapt to each other. Most Binance employees would agree that it is a company that provides relatively little training, but it gives employees $100 each month to learn English on a software called italk. CZ’s habit of loving to read books is also reflected in the company. On the second anniversary, Binance gave each employee a customized Kindle e-reader with a Binance case, and there is also an allowance for buying books. He even held book clubs for managers.

For individuals, the biggest challenge may be that completely remote work without any offline connection can make people lose their sense of connection with others. Many people before full-time remote work didn’t think it would be a big deal. But being alone all day, without many real people around to meet in person, over time, people still yearn for more face-to-face communication.

The Way of Work

Even though the pressure is high and the intensity is strong, Binance’s growth rate continues to attract more people to join.

When Binance was first established, there was a window of opportunity where ambitious individuals could directly reach out to the founder to secure an interview. The standard interview process consisted of four rounds, including a round with the direct supervisor, peer colleagues, and HR. At Binance, HR does not have veto power – this probably makes many big company programmers happy. But on the other hand, when you manage to find CZ or He Yi, these big bosses, online and have your first interview with them, the other rounds are just going through the motions.

An interesting detail is that many of those who joined Binance during this window of opportunity say that most of the conversation with CZ or He Yi during the interview was not work-related, but rather focused on life, ideals, vision, or “empty” things. CZ would even share his passion and views on blockchain with the candidate after interviewing them carefully. Perhaps CZ and He Yi would agree with Sam Altman’s perspective: values first, aptitude second, specific skills third.

In the beginning, employees used their own computers, but later, for security reasons, new employees were assigned a 13-inch MacBook Pro. Compared to other companies at the time, Binance offered a higher salary. Many people admitted that if it wasn’t for joining Binance, with their qualifications and experience, they wouldn’t have been able to enter a big company; under normal circumstances, their salary wouldn’t have been too high. If willing to go to Dubai, the salary could be even higher, with monthly subsidies. However, there is a great disparity in treatment among different departments, with contract positions receiving the best treatment, followed by technical roles, and the marketing department being the lowest.

Binance has a review process every six months, and if performance is good, employees can receive a bonus of 4-6 months’ salary. If not, they only receive a bonus for two months. So, for most job seekers, this is a very generous offer that allows them to receive around 20 salaries per year. This can be compared to Temu, which is still experiencing high growth and can only offer candidates 14-16 salaries. However, later on, the review process became once a year, and the bonus was reduced.

Good performance is measured by scores. At Binance, employees are rated on a scale of 1-6. 1-1.5 is the best, most exemplary superstar, with each team having at most one or none. The normal range is 2-3 or 3-4. Anything below 5 points would face a PIP (performance improvement plan) with a one-month probation period. If the performance still does not improve, the employee will be “optimized” (a euphemism for termination). However, such cases were rare for a considerable period of time.

Each person’s manager is responsible for giving the scores, but they need to convince their superiors (previously directly convincing CZ or He Yi). He Yi used to review everyone’s bonuses in the early days. However, one humane aspect of Binance in the early days was that the bonuses considered each person’s basic salary. If the basic salary was low, a higher bonus would be given.

Ordinary employees will have a probation period of 3-6 months, while executives may need 6-12 months or even longer. For positions that require team management, training is necessary and takes two hours every day to do customer service. This is a typical style in Chinese internet companies. For example, JD.com used to require every executive to work as a delivery person for half a day each year.

Once you officially join Binance, the only thing you need to do is to help this rapidly expanding company expand even more crazily. Unlike many startup companies that burn money for market share, Binance is a money-making machine while expanding crazily. Therefore, it does not strictly control ROI like unprofitable companies. For example, in the marketing department, only new business has ROI, and there is no control for brand, media, or community initiatives. And it does not use KPI for management, but instead uses OKR to set goals, similar to large Silicon Valley companies.

Going Beyond Rules

For Binance, as long as it does not hinder growth, everything can be put on hold, including management.

Management is the most important thing for many founders. How should people collaborate with each other? Various collaboration software has emerged: Linear, Notion, Lark, Slack… From Silicon Valley to Beijing to Bangalore, entrepreneurs from different countries discuss the same topics: what is the best management model (and programming language)? Management books are also displayed in airports around the world.

But Binance has demonstrated a different path: when a company is experiencing epic growth, is it really necessary to care about management? As long as it does not impede growth, what’s wrong with being a company based on Telegram group chats?

Binance is not the only company that proves growth and management tools are irrelevant. Chinese e-commerce company Pinduoduo is also known for its rapid growth. According to LatePost, Pinduoduo once had a QQ group with thousands of members for communication, and important tasks were mainly spread through word of mouth. Even after going public in 2018 and reaching a market value of 30-40 billion USD, Pinduoduo’s administration still exported data from the attendance machine and manually imported it into Excel for attendance records. Someone who joined Pinduoduo after 2019 believes that “adopting primitive management methods stemmed from the fact that, for Pinduoduo at that time, the most important thing was to just survive.” The same applies to Binance. It’s not only about surviving, but also about surpassing all competitors and breaking through any regulatory obstacles. If surviving is already difficult, then which management tools to use becomes less important.

From Disruption to Dominance

However, this does not mean that conventional management practices are meaningless. Even Binance has felt the drawbacks of extensive growth as the number of employees gradually increased.

In the second half of 2020, when the company approached a thousand employees, Binance initiated its first migration. Telegram was gradually abandoned, and the entire team was moved to Cisco’s WebEx. However, this was only a transition, and the final destination was Binance’s internally developed software called Wea.

If you have used ByteDance’s software Lark (Fei Shu), you will find that the two have similar UI interfaces, and even the logos have similarities. However, unlike the Telegram era where everyone used one software, Wea can only be provided to the Binance main team. Teams acquired by Binance, such as the Coinmarketcap team, cannot use Wea.

And this is also where Binance gradually becomes less flat and transparent. For Binance, compared to transparency, it is more important to ensure that employees do not leak information. The cost of the flat and transparent era of Telegram has resulted in many incidents of information leaks, directly related to the installation of security software on computers. Starting from WebEx, Binance canceled the all-member group. And CZ does not allow larger colleague groups. However, there are still some interest groups. These groups can only maintain a small scale of several dozen people and are not allowed to grow larger. At the same time, some of Binance’s larger WeChat groups were also disbanded. From this point on, Binance employees can no longer contact each other at any time. Sometimes, two Binance employees may meet for the first time through a third-party introduction. For example, two people who cooperate daily may recognize each other for the first time during a break at a blockchain conference, introduced by someone else.

Coincidentally, Pinduoduo, which once had thousands of QQ groups, also became a company with very strict information control: “Employees cannot see the organizational structure or employees outside of their own department in the internal office system, and they are not allowed to create WeChat groups.”

It is also during this period that Binance stopped its crazy growth. Issues such as regulation and compliance began to emerge. Binance also started to resemble other giants. The days when you could apply for a job by directly contacting the founder are long gone. Binance started to value academic qualifications and experience, making it difficult for people from non-major companies to have an opportunity to join Binance.

Some employees say that from this point on, there are two types of people within Binance: the old Binance people and the big company people.

The majority of the old Binance people were members who joined Binance at the beginning. Many of them have grassroots backgrounds but joined the cryptocurrency industry and Binance very early. Many of them hold a large amount of BNB. The big company people are the shiny professionals we can see in Silicon Valley and Zhongguancun. They generally do not speculate on cryptocurrencies and immediately sell any tokens they receive.

Although the big company people may not look as crypto-native, they may be more suitable for Binance now – after all, no matter how unique, Binance will inevitably encounter problems that many large companies have encountered. At this time, it is obviously a better choice to find people who have experienced these types of problems. These big company people have worked in giants, and even governments, have seen ups and downs, and have strong abilities. Many blockchain exchanges rise fast but also collapse fast. Although Binance faces challenges, it still stands tall, and these newcomers play a significant role. There is a Chinese proverb: you can quickly seize power, but you cannot immediately govern. Starting from the second half of 2020, Binance is also shifting from a period of crazy growth to a normal growth state.

Binance’s challenges are not unique at all. These problems have been faced by internet companies that have experienced rapid growth. ByteDance, for example, initially hired a large number of young frontline employees who had no big company background but had enough drive to achieve results. However, after 2020, ByteDance also began to look for more experienced managers in the market, such as former Didi Chuxing CEO Chen Xi or former Xiaomi partner Zhou Shouzi.

Although it is inevitable to bring in employees from big companies, this has also caused complaints from the old Binance employees: some say that Binance never had upward management before 2020. But starting in 2022, everyone needs to do upward management. In the early days, what mattered most to Binance, under the leadership of CZ and He Yi, was user focus, creating value, and thinking from the user’s perspective. But now, should one also think about doing something that would be helpful to the leaders? What credits can be obtained from the leaders for better advancement?

This is probably not what CZ hoped to see. During meetings before the pandemic, he always emphasized avoiding office politics, avoiding conflict, and encouraging cross-level communication. But once a company becomes big, no one can completely avoid the problems that arise in big companies. The disease of big companies cannot be escaped; it is the fate that all giants cannot avoid.

A Crossroad of Change

But Binance’s transformation will not stop here. In the middle of this year, Binance carried out a large-scale layoff. The cyclical law common in technology companies seems to be reflected in Binance: rapid expansion, large-scale recruitment, and then contraction and layoffs. Whether a company is ephemeral or can have a long road ahead generally depends on the reflection and rebuilding after the first major contraction.

The growth rate of a company often surpasses the founder’s learning speed in the short term. How big can a company become? How far can it go? The speed at which the founder catches up and adjusts is very important in this regard. Some companies are lucky enough that the founder has already gained a lot of depth even before the company was founded. The founder of CATL, Zeng Yuqun, gained a lot of experience through trial and error in his previous company, so he never mentioned the need to learn from the management of another company at CATL. More founders choose to quickly learn from other founders who have already overcome these pitfalls. For example, the founder of NIO, Li Xiang, actively sought advice from Alibaba Group’s Academic Committee Chairman Zeng Ming, discussing how Alibaba built its organization and conceived its strategy.

CZ is one of the latter, always learning from various people. However, compared to Li Xiang, he is more like a solitary learner, relying on a lot of reading to enter the world of other founders. Shortly after the layoffs at Binance, Walter Isaacson’s “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future” was released. CZ read it as soon as possible and shared his reading notes with everyone, hoping that everyone would read it too. He realized that Tesla was a great learning subject and that Musk’s values were similar to his own. Perhaps because of the recent layoffs, CZ specifically mentioned that Musk hires people very quickly, and Binance should learn from that.

But like Musk, CZ, He Yi, and new CEO Richard Teng, along with the management team at Binance, are doing many things that have never been done before: How to make a company that is being watched by countless regulatory agencies in various countries and regions operate legally? How to maintain the position of the world’s largest exchange in this unregulated market? How to manage a remote team of thousands? There are too many things that cannot be learned and can only be figured out by Binance itself.

On November 22, 2022, CZ resigned as CEO of Binance. People familiar with the history of tech companies in the past five years may not be surprised by this. Chinese founders often leave their positions as CEOs: Pinduoduo launched its rapidly growing Temu after founder Huang Zheng retired; ByteDance also conquered the market through Tiktok after founder Zhang Yiming gradually faded out; and there is the earlier example of Jack Ma, who retired with a grand performance. The departure of a founder from a certain role does not mean they have no connection to the company, but regardless, it signifies a new phase and a new challenge for the company. Binance already has more questions to answer than other companies, and now it has one more.

But whether these answers are ultimately correct, they will undoubtedly enter the textbooks of future generations.

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