How Understanding Business Can Accelerate Your Tech Career

Alibaba senior technical expert shares his experience of joining Alibaba in 2014 without business awareness, later transitioning from a technical specialist to a comprehensive tech lead by actively learning business, engaging with operations, and analyzing data.

He emphasizes that technology’s primary duty is to support business, and that understanding business drives better technical decisions, resource prioritization, and R&D efficiency.

Business Wins First, Technology Follows

The author categorizes the impact of R&D on business into six levels: on‑time delivery with average quality, technical value (process and tool improvements), technical value with high product quality (performance, stability, security), domain‑specific technical value (e.g., SEO, payment, advertising), business value driven by technology, and direct participation in business decisions.

He explains how technical value can be hard to quantify but still improves developer motivation and mission, ultimately enhancing delivery speed.

How to Understand Business

Understanding business is not the same as understanding requirements; it involves grasping the roles, pain points, and motivations of all participants, analyzing market data, reading industry reports, conducting field visits, and interviewing users.

Practical methods include reading reports, analyzing internal and external data (SQL/ODPS), and conducting on‑site market visits to gather insights.

Examples of market visits: wholesale markets in Yantai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, etc.

He stresses the importance of drawing one’s own diagrams of product matrices and processes to internalize business logic.

Personal Gains from Business Understanding

Deep business insight gives a sense of mission, helps prioritize projects, and enables tech‑driven business initiatives. It also aligns personal strategies with CBU’s broader goals, such as the “source‑to‑store” strategy.

Conclusion

The author reflects that while not all engineers need to become business decision‑makers, a solid grasp of business improves R&D impact, and combining technical depth with business perspective is increasingly valuable for senior roles.