Personnel Turmoil

April 6th, early in the morning.

Lu Zhou was eating breakfast while reviewing the document he had written the previous night. A name came to his mind - Cheng Xuyuan.

Lu Zhou and Cheng Xuyuan were roommates. Back when they were still at Yixian University, they had pulled off a prank through the dormitory's network port.

Research in the field of computer science often requires accessing a large amount of foreign literature, and many websites in this regard require bypassing the firewall to access the internet.

Therefore, most computer science schools provide students with wall-crossing services within the campus for their academic purposes. These services are usually limited to the academic building and the laboratory building, and Yixian University was no exception.

At that time, Lu Zhou and Cheng Xuyuan were working together on a research project and needed to access relevant information. They wanted to work in their dormitory without spending money on proxies.

So they did something crazy - they bypassed the network control router of the dormitory building through the dormitory port and gained control over it. After obtaining control, they accessed the school's network center's wall-crossing service. In the spirit of sharing good things, they opened proxy tunnels for all the network ports in the Bamboo Garden dormitory building.

Word quickly spread, and the male students in Bamboo Garden were naturally thrilled. Some watched movies, some conducted research, and various inexplicable investigations and discussions on exotic topics became unstoppable.

As a result, the school's network center detected this unusual traffic. The school acknowledged their good intentions but used educational measures. Later on, they provided wall-crossing access to relevant academic websites for Bamboo Garden as well.

If Cheng Xuyuan hadn't left for Beijing to work early after graduation, Lu Zhou would have definitely found him before starting his own business. Although they hadn't started a business together in their previous lives, they appreciated each other during their time in school.

In his previous life, Cheng Xuyuan became known as the person who single-handedly took on the development of the entire backend system when he worked for Toutiao's short video platform in its early stages.

The people who knew him gave him the highest praise - "a figure like Zhang Xiaolong."

"Let's see how things go step by step. Weng Ge hasn't been fully convinced yet, and the more I think about it, the more possibilities arise."

Lu Zhou rode his bicycle to Yixian University and arrived at Room 305 just after nine o'clock. Only Wang Zhengye and Tang Yutong from the marketing team were present.

From the time when Dream Valley's advertising went from zero to internal testing and then steady iteration, the Dream Valley team had been working almost day and night. However, starting last week, Lu Zhou slowed down the pace of the entire team's work, and now Room 305 exhibited the natural atmosphere of an internet company.

There were no strict working hours, and team members could arrange their working hours according to their own schedules and rest habits. Considering that if he stayed present all the time, there would inevitably be "passive overtime" within Room 305, Lu Zhou had also been leaving before 8 o'clock every day since last week to avoid putting unnecessary pressure on others.

"Good morning, everyone."

"Good morning, senior."

After exchanging greetings, Lu Zhou approached Wang Zhengye. "Morning. The others are still sleeping, I suppose."

"Yeah, they'll probably come after 10 o'clock."

"Didn't you go home during the break?"

"No, it's too far. It takes half a day by train. I've been coming to Room 305 these past few days whenever I have nothing to do. Strong Ge and the other three are the same."

"They're sodiligent. I must be the most slack one."

"No, it's all voluntary. It's good to have more communication and learn more things."

"Alright, you guys manage your own schedule. The workload has been intense recently. Has it affected your studies?"

"I'm fine. Me, Fei Wen, and Zhou Wen are all in our third year, so we don't have many academic courses. It might be more challenging for Jun Da, the newcomers Chen Jin and Jiang Chao. They are in their second year now, and they will have some courses in the next semester of the third year."

"Okay, carry on. There are still many pending tasks regarding the banana issue in the document."

"Okay."

In fact, the initial plan was to set the location at Yixian University and recruit team members from current students. There are many advantages to this approach. Judging from the progress of their work during this period, these team members have performed their tasks well.

However, there are drawbacks to consider. The main issue is that as students, they still have academic work to complete. In the earlier stages, due to tight development schedules, they may have had to take leave or skip classes to work in Room 305.

Of course, team members need to adjust their own schedules, and now that the internal testing phase of Dream Valley's advertisement is over and there is no rush, they can coordinate their time to balance their studies.

For Dream Valley's advertisement, this level of commitment is sufficient, considering the need to reduce costs in the initial stage.

But if Lu Zhou plans to proceed with the regular development of WeChat, continuing to rely on interns to build the team and complete the work will inevitably impact the development progress. After all, WeChat is more complex and challenging than Dream Valley's advertisement, with a significant increase in the complexity and difficulty of the functional logic.

Although the team working on the secret development of WeChat within Tencent is currently not receiving much attention and initially only consists of a dozen team members, including nearly half as interns, they have Zhang Xiaolong and the entire backend technical team and research group at Tencent, along with a code repository accumulated over more than ten years. Lu Zhou dares not underestimate them, and he won't be able to recruit second-year interns anymore.

For the regular development of WeChat's functionalities, Lu Zhou's plan was to recruit recent graduates from the same year as Fang Qiang. However, this approach poses a difficulty. The time for autumn and spring campus recruitment has already passed, and most of the outstanding candidates among the recent graduates have been snapped up by large companies in advance. Additionally, Dream Valley's current appeal is limited, so if Lu Zhou doesn't want to settle for less, he may not be able to recruit anyone at all.

At half-past nine, Meng Xiaoqin also arrived at Room 305 and approached Lu Zhou.

"Senior, there might be some changes in the team members."

"Oh? What happened?"

"It's about the new members of the development team, Chen Jin and Jiang Chao. Their attendance rate in their courses last week was a bit high, so the counselor approached them before the break and they just told me about their intention to resign."

Lu Zhou couldn't help but worry. The problem he was concerned about had indeed occurred. He said to Meng Xiaoqin, "Okay, no big deal. Approve it and pay them their wages per day."

Initially, Lu Zhou selected development team members based on their abilities rather than their year of study, depending on whether their personality and learning abilities were a good fit for Dream Valley. But now it seems that this approach is no longer practical. While someone like Dong Junda, who is genuinely passionate about technology, might still be willing to skip classes or take leave to work at Dream Valley, using this standard for selection will inevitably lead to increased personnel turnover.

"What about Huang Dong?"

"Senior, Dong-ge is in his third year. He came to Room 305 during the break, so there shouldn't be any issues."

Lu Zhou smiled upon hearing this. "Why do you even come to Room 305 during the break? Your job is not like development, there's no need to come during the break."

Meng Xiaoqin smirked mischievously. "It's because of Xiaotong. She said she wanted to see if Senior is hungry. Not you, Senior, she didn't include Fang-ge."

"..."

Tang Yutong let out a sharp voice, "Xiaoqin!"

"Uh, any other issues?"

"Yes, the director of entrepreneurship at your school, Director Yuan, just notified that he wants you to come over."

Lu Zhou pondered for a moment and realized that Yuan Haizhou was probably using the situation with Chen Jin and Jiang Chao to put pressure on him.

"Okay."