Inside Lianjia’s Tech Team: How a Former PHP Star Drives R&D Culture and Management

In any era, a great product is backed by a great team, and Lianjia’s recent success prompted an interview with “Bird” (Hui Xincheng), a renowned PHP expert who recently joined Lianjia.

InfoQ: Please introduce the product and R&D situation when you joined Lianjia, and what you have been working on.

Bird: I joined Lianjia in September last year and now lead the basic‑technology team, covering the public site, frontend, mobile, testing, operations, DBA and platform groups. The company already had a mature R&D organization with many former BAT engineers, but the business itself had existed only a little over a year, so we are still in the early stage. This year we focus on quality, improving development efficiency, building the team and recruiting talent.

InfoQ: How does Lianjia’s culture differ from that of internet companies you previously worked for?

Bird: Our culture is light, free and simple, much like the internet companies I came from. The main difference is that we are smaller, with fewer layers of politics, and most team members share similar values because they also come from internet backgrounds. The group gives us high expectations and a lot of autonomy.

InfoQ: What are the main products and system architecture of Lianjia?

Bird: We have two major product lines: user‑facing services (Lianjia.com, mobile app) and broker‑facing tools (Link). Business covers second‑hand houses, new houses, rentals and finance. Technically we run a hybrid‑cloud model with our own data centre and public cloud services. Core data includes a nationwide property dictionary similar to the U.S. MLS, plus search, recommendation, image hosting, data‑mining, logging, call‑center and business‑opportunity systems. Compared with my previous work, the focus has shifted from pure performance to stability and sensible processes.

InfoQ: You have moved from a development role to a management role. What have you learned?

Bird: Management is about coordination, motivation and talent development. I believe talent is the most important asset; we must ensure people are happy, can fully use their abilities and have a satisfying environment. Instead of doing the work myself, I try to help engineers become faster and better.

InfoQ: After the release of PHP 7.0, what has been your focus in the community?

Bird: PHP 7.0 has been widely adopted because of its performance boost, and many cloud providers now support it. Development of PHP 7.1 is underway, introducing type inference and new optimization patterns (but not JIT). My current work is mostly bug fixing, patch review and communication, which I find relaxing and enjoyable.

InfoQ: How do you see the future of technical communities?

Bird: Strong communities are essential for a language or tool to thrive. As technology becomes more interdisciplinary, we need communities that address broader system‑level knowledge, such as high‑availability groups, to fill gaps left by single‑language forums.

InfoQ: What stage are technical communities at, and what problems need solving?

Bird: They are in a rapid‑growth early stage, but many participants are still immature. People chase new frameworks and neglect fundamentals. Communities should guide members back to basics, avoid language wars, promote positive energy and encourage learning a wide range of tools to choose the best one for each situation.

InfoQ: How can engineers improve themselves and their influence through communities?

Bird: Engage in industry events, meet diverse people, learn new technologies and apply them to projects. Influence comes from competence and speaking out—writing blogs, sharing on Weibo or WeChat, and being open to feedback. Overcoming the fear of expressing opinions accelerates personal growth and builds reputation.

InfoQ: Thank you for the interview.