Prologue: It started with a "dramatic" fluke
When did I first get into operations?
When I really think back, the starting point was a little dramatic.
It was around October 2024, at 11:59 — one minute before the deadline to apply for a group lead (applications closed at 12:00) — that I posted my own bid for the role in a course community group.
I honestly wasn't expecting much. I just figured: well, I saw it, so I might as well try.
To my surprise, I actually got picked. I'd had no idea it would happen — but that was the official start of my operations career.
01 Starting as a group lead: the basics are the price of admission
That first season of course operations ran for about two months, and it was my first time doing any community work at all.
It was only a group of twenty or so, but the leads carried out the operations officers' instructions every day, followed the community SOP, ran icebreakers, nudged people to check in, chased down missing check-ins, and tallied everyone's progress each night.
All of it was basic — and all of it built my first real understanding of how community operations work.
Looking back, the basics matter enormously. A lot of people look down on the most basic work, dismiss it as grunt work or scut work. But for someone just starting out, this is the only road in — every promotion, every bit of being noticed, starts from the bottom. If you walk in already turning your nose up at the small, the basic, the tedious, and never get your hands dirty, you won't get results in any field.
Whether you're willing to do the most basic things well decides whether anyone hands you anything more important.
After the first season, I went on to do the second and third seasons of the same course operations.
In the second, I was paired with another lead, the two of us co-running a forty-person group. Compared to the first season, this added a layer of collaboration: coordinating task assignments with my partner, managing the group together. The rest was much the same — except for one fun addition: the group produced a video. From planning to delegation to chasing it forward, the finished cut took second place among a community of around five hundred people, and everyone who pitched in split the prize evenly, ¥60 each (second place paid ¥300).
Across those first two seasons, I owe a special thanks to the ops senior who took me under her wing. She was the one who picked me as a group lead in season one — the accident that opened up this whole career for me — and throughout, she answered our questions patiently and in detail. A genuinely good operations officer. It was the good impression from that first season that made me want to rejoin the community she led for season two, and in the end I made it back in.
By the end of season one, I'd earned the title "Super Lead" — so I suppose I did reasonably well.
Honestly, at the start of season one I had no fantasy of doing great. I just wanted to do the work in front of me well, and the outcome was a pleasant surprise. With season one as a reference point, I wanted to do even better in two and three.
In the process, I threw everything I had at keeping my group lively and pushing the check-in rate up — daily DMs, freshly varied check-in copy at fixed times, just chatting with members day to day, and so on. Three seasons in, I'd genuinely laid the foundation of my interest in operations.
02 From experience to system: the academy gave me the methodology I'd been missing
In early 2025, over winter break, I unexpectedly received an acceptance email from an operations academy. At the end of a course, I'd casually filled in a form expressing interest in becoming an operations officer — and to my surprise, I got in.
In that stretch we studied operational thinking, copywriting, poster design, event planning, data analysis, and more. Compared to feeling my way through by trial and error in the earlier course communities, the academy felt more like it took all my scattered experience and reorganized it from scratch.
During that period I also earned six "featured assignment" picks and the title of "Outstanding Student."
Writing this, I notice that every time I drew closer to operations, there seemed to be a little "coincidence" attached.
The first: signing up to be a group lead at the last minute — and getting picked.
The second: casually filling in an interest form — and ending up in the academy.
03 The community group: where I first truly felt the power of an SOP
A later stage ran from June to September.
In that window I took part in two community operations. One of them was running a community group.
That work leaned heavily toward execution: pushing tasks forward per the community SOP, responding to instructions promptly, owning the corresponding actions. It was also my first time using an enterprise messaging tool — my first time doing community work inside more formal tooling and process.
The biggest thing this experience left me with was the importance of the SOP.
Back as a group lead, I'd run mostly on a sense of responsibility and a simple daily SOP. But this group made me realize that for a community to run steadily, it can't depend on one person's enthusiasm — it needs clear process, standards, and a mechanism for collaboration.
When to post what, how to remind users, how to handle feedback, how to set the rules — these seemingly mechanical actions actually decide whether a community can keep delivering, stably, over time.
During this period I also published a few illustrated posts in an online circle, which I found pretty fun. I owe thanks to a senior who looked out for me in that stretch, and to the other operations officers I collaborated with — running that group was a genuinely happy experience.
04 Langqian operations: high pressure, breakdowns, and the fastest growth of my life
July, the big one: Langqian operations. Without exaggeration, Langqian is absolutely a defining chapter in my operations history.
There I served as a company commander — no longer a basic execution role like a group lead, but a level up, with my abilities climbing alongside it.
In that period I took part in early-stage prep, maintaining order in the communities, managing group leads, coordinating the academy track, and a great deal more. The thing I remember most was serving as overall lead for one of the course's major pillars — the "academy track" — and preparing my own Reading Academy.
The Reading Academy was the first time I took an event from zero to one entirely on my own.
From writing the plan and revising it version after version; to preparing livestream materials and copy; to coordinating the academy's operations officers; to designing the event flow and finally landing the delivery — that stretch was genuinely exhausting, but also exhilarating.
In the end, the Reading Academy drew 200+ participants, with a satisfaction score of 4.7/5.0.
As one of the overall track leads, I also had to pull each academy's community SOP and chase its execution, write the master plan for the track, help every academy head move forward smoothly, design and vet the recruitment and satisfaction surveys, and coordinate the livestream scheduling.
The pressure in that period was enormous.
For a while, it was basically: eyes open, start working. One task after another, one message after another — so much to sync, confirm, push forward, and backstop.
There were moments I was crushed by it — probably the first time I truly felt how hard work can be, and how an adult's breakdown often comes in a single instant.
But thankfully, I got through all of it in the end.
Come to think of it, at Langqian I seem to have done a bit of everything; what I've written above is only the part that stuck with me most. If my operations ability before Langqian was a 50, afterward it was at least an 80 — a high-pressure environment brought correspondingly high growth. There's so much I want to say, and I don't quite know where to start.
Finally, I want to thank the operations officers who fought side by side with me the whole way, and the seniors who gave me help and guidance. We spent a meaningful summer together.
05 After the burnout, I started running away
After two back-to-back high-intensity operations over the summer, I grew a little tired of operations work.
For a while I told myself: rest a bit, come back to anything operations-related in a few months.
When I actually started looking at operations job descriptions, I found the requirements were quite a lot, and I got a little unsure of myself — thinking, "let me marinate a bit longer, prepare more thoroughly, and then go look for related work."
But looking back now, that was just an excuse to avoid it — we always invoke "I still need to prepare" to dodge the things we should have faced long ago.
06 Starting from an assistant gig: some chances look boring at first
Around late January, early February 2026, a senior connection reached out to me again, asking whether I'd be interested in an online assistant-type job.
I looked over what it involved, and since I genuinely hadn't done anything operations-related in a while, my interest came back.
After we connected, I found that the person I'd be working with was a lead I'd worked alongside before at Langqian. In that moment I even remembered the time I'd coordinated a points spreadsheet with her back then — I'd been pretty nervous, ha.
The first work was finding study-abroad-related topics on Xiaohongshu and breaking down the viral posts.
Honestly, my real thought at first was: this work is so boring, I feel like I'm doing manual labor.
But I finished it anyway.
Now I'm glad I did — I griped with my mouth, but my body was honest, and I got the assigned work done, dutifully.
Because a lot of chances don't show up looking like "an important project." They might be small, basic, dull-looking tasks.
The other side hands you a small thing first, to see whether you can do it well. Only when you do well does a more important thing become possible.
As for that little mindset I had back then, it's since been completely undone by something Cai Shu — a blogger I read — once said bluntly: "Afraid of being treated as free labor? If a company is freeloading off you, if someone's making use of you, it means you have use value. That should be your honor." Having no use value is the truly frightening thing; if you have a chance to be sharpened in the workplace, why not cherish it?
07 AI opened up new possibilities in my operations work
After that, I kept doing operations under the same lead.
In March, we began pushing a new event plan: an MBTI study-abroad intel project.
This project made it vividly clear to me how enormously AI helps my operations work.
A quick recap of the whole flow. At first, I used Claude to generate a Word version of the plan, but the result read more like a manual than an actual product, so I set about improving it. By the second version, I'd just casually sent the AI a message, and it generated a web demo. I handed it to the lead to review, and she confirmed the direction was viable. Around the same time, I came across Claude Code. I then set up a dedicated folder for this project and kept polishing around that initial web version — iterating through a first, second, and third version, each step continuously optimized based on feedback, the handoff task list soaring past forty items. In the end, we successfully produced an H5 lead-generation mini-site that genuinely helped the company acquire customers.
I'm grateful that I started getting into AI the summer after I finished high school, and that I've used it almost every day since. Gradually, I developed an "AI first" mindset: when I hit a problem I'm unsure about, I discuss it with AI first, break it down, look for an approach, and then go execute.
Every operations project I've been through carries the shadow of AI assisting me — it's only a matter of more or less. Sometimes I can't help but marvel: the very arrival of AI tools is itself a kind of dividend.
The MBTI project sharpened both my operations-planning ability and, along the way, my skill with tools like Claude Code.
Using AI in a real production environment really is different. For me, it was a double progression: doing operations on one hand, and folding AI into operations on the other. This gradually formed what is now a fairly clear direction for me: operations ability + AI application ability.
08 Daring to say "I'll give it a shot" is a skill too
Later I pitched in on a few more projects and got to know another lead. In working with her, new tasks kept appearing, and honestly, at first I felt the dread of difficulty — unsure I could pull them off.
To be honest, I had that dread from the start. I'd worry I wouldn't do well, worry the task was beyond me, worry I wouldn't be able to deliver in the end.
So a lot of the time, I'd say one line: "I'll give it a shot." — not overpromising, but daring to roll up my sleeves and try.
As it turned out, every attempt did run into snags, and there were moments I had no idea how to proceed. But as long as I was willing to keep pushing, most tasks eventually found a solution.
More importantly, the results I ultimately delivered, the other side was basically satisfied with.
And my use of AI within operations took another step forward because of it.
09 The offline internship: the earlier threads finally tied into one line
As my abilities grew further, layered on top of the operations experience I'd accumulated and the sediment of time, it happened naturally: I landed an offer for an offline internship.
Looking back, there really was an element of luck along the way.
If I hadn't submitted that group-lead application in the final minute before the deadline, the rest of the story might have been completely different.
If I hadn't taken part in the community group and Langqian operations, I might never have gone through that kind of high-intensity growth.
If that senior hadn't reached out to me, if I hadn't gotten interested in that assistant job, I might never have touched the later projects — let alone arrived at this offline internship offer.
But there are no ifs. I made it here.
Some might say: you got these chances because someone recommended you.
True. I won't deny it.
But the fact that chances are willing to flow toward a person usually means that person has, at some point, demonstrated some kind of ability. When others think of you first, when they're willing to pass an opportunity your way, there's always a reason behind it.
To forge iron, you yourself must be strong.
If you haven't shown a reliable, responsible, can-deliver side of yourself in the past, then even with an opportunity in hand, others won't necessarily think of you.
Chances aren't simply waited for. Part of it is luck — but a large part comes from the trust you've accumulated every time you did something well in the past.
10 Interest is forged by doing
Finally, back to one question: do I actually like operations?
If you'd asked me at the very beginning, I probably couldn't have answered.
Because at first I came into operations more by chance — being picked, trying it on a whim.
But as I went on doing it, I found I actually quite enjoy it.
I really do like watching an idea land into an executable plan. The start is painful, but the joy of having made the thing far outweighs the pain of the process.
My current view on interest is this: a lot of interests don't exist from the outset — they grow out of action, time and again.
Go do it first. Go bump into it first. Go shoulder a little concrete responsibility first.
As you keep doing, you'll learn whether you're suited to it.
As you keep doing, you'll slowly grow a genuine love for it.
This is my operations growth story, up to now.
From a sign-up in the final minute, to landing an offline internship offer today, this whole road had flukes, had people who lifted me up, had pressure, had breakdowns, and had a lot of times I gritted my teeth and pushed on.
But either way, I made it here.
And from here, I keep walking forward.