LINE Careers

About work

Q Please briefly introduce both LINE's Service Planning Organization that you used to work on and the LINE Messenger's Note service that you are responsible for now.

The Service Planning Organization is responsible for planning and operating a variety of services provided by LINE Messenger, such as LINE Call, Keep, Album, Search, Profile, Camera, and OpenChat. It is also responsible for generating revenue by establishing product strategies and then planning, releasing, operating, and developing the details. In addition, it is in charge of managing UX localization, which enables LINE to effectively convey the purpose of services to users through labels, provides a common platform that is essential to the operation of our services, and carries out communications with users. Within the organization, our team is responsible for planning services that help LINE users store and retrieve their valuable information and memories. I am in charge of planning the Note service. Note, which is like a bulletin board, allows members to share important announcements or information they want to use together. I plan and add new features as well as improve existing features. I organize the roadmap for how the Note service should grow and plan what needs to be improved and what features should be provided to users in order to grow in the desired direction. Furthermore, I prepare specific plans to ensure that the features I have planned are actually released and then work on projects with other project members, including developers, designers, and QAs.

Q As a planner, what do you think is the most important part of your duties?

I think is the most important thing is to think about how users can safely store important information and find it conveniently. As users' conversations usually need to be stored for a long time, they need to be well kept, and an environment should be configured so that they can easily find them when they need them. For this, I try to constantly try to think from the user’s point of view and answer questions, like “What if the important photos I saved suddenly disappeared?” As Note is a service I use a lot myself in my everyday life, using it often gives me ideas for improvements, which I then share with my team members.

Q Please tell us about the global side of your work.

I'm Korean, so I need to use methods that allow me to listen to the voices of each local area from all over the world. Generally, I check user reactions on Twitter or their reviews on the app, and if I determine that further investigation is necessary, I commission the User Research Team and Data Analysis Team to explore more. I also seek opinions from the LINERs responsible for the service in each country. Since each country has a different culture, user characteristics are slightly different. Japanese users are relatively more cautious about sharing information with others. I have found it interesting that Thai and Taiwanese users use Note to make group purchases and post many different kinds of media —photos, videos, etc.—as texts. When I view user data like this, I really feel that I am working on a global service. As for my most fun experience, it was when I was in charge of Search. We were working on recommending keywords to users so that they could have a richer search experience in the home/chat tab of LINE Messenger. I changed the keywords from the previous smiley icons to rabbit- and dog-shaped ones, as well as some icons that moved. Right away, I could directly see that click-through rates were increasing in all countries. Although it was a small improvement, I could immediately see a positive response from users.

Experiences of failure and growth

Q Please give us an example of a failure you’ve encountered.

There was a feature that was supposed to be released by me, as I was in charge of both planning and development as a Product Manager. But ultimately, it was not released due to important issues that arose while reviewing security matters. I reviewed a number of alternatives, but ultimately decided not to release the feature due to usability problems and a failure to fulfill our goals. Everyone who worked on the project with me also felt bad about the failure, so I didn't know how to express my regrets to them. However, it did give me an opportunity to feel that LINE's security is thorough and safe. Thanks to that experience, I am now more meticulous when I review security matters in the planning stage.

Q Please tell us about any experience in which you felt you are growing.

I don't have any specific cases to tell you, but even when designing small features, I've come to make a constant effort to clearly explain why I make certain choices. Usually, in order to release a service, it is necessary to explain it to many people in charge of development, design, and QA, so I felt that it should be supported by logical reasons and data that everyone can understand. Even when I write a proposal, I keep thinking about that part. It includes the background for me to plan features, an overview of the features, their detailed specifications, the positive impact they will have on users, and even exceptions that can be considered. Also, as I collaborate a lot with related departments, I constantly strive to express the functions in language that the other party can understand.

Thoughts on competence

Q What kind of competencies do you think you need to perform your work well?

I think it's important to have affection for the service. We are creating services that users enjoy and find useful, and we need to keep thinking about how the users are engaging with the service, what they are uncomfortable with, and what additional features would be good for them. You also need to be familiar with the details of the service you are in charge of. The LINE STYLE that I like the most is "Go Brave. No Fear. No Regrets". Even for things that are challenging or very difficult to achieve, once I make a plan and start working on it, I feel like I can eventually find the answer. Even if there are many difficulties, if I succeed in challenging myself, I will get a great sense of achievement, and even if I fail, that’s okay because I can learn lessons from failures and increase my chances of succeeding the next time.

Special experiences at LINE

Q Are there any aspects of working at LINE that were particularly surprising or memorable?

The first is that work is being carried out effectively even in the telecommuting environment. To tell you the truth, I was very worried about working from home when I first joined LINE because I rarely did it at my previous job. I received so many questions from people around me about whether I could do my job well in a purely telecommuting environment. But having worked from home for a while now, it turns out that there is no difference major difference compared to going to the office, and it increases the efficiency of my work because there is no energy wasted on commuting. In addition, since LINE utilizes many different communication tools—Zoom, Wikis, Slack, etc.—there are no problems conducting business. Of course, working alone can be a little lonely at first, but I was able to quickly adapt to the company's system thanks to the various onboarding programs and my team's coffee chats, which we hold for 30 minutes every Friday. The second thing I want to mention is the horizontal organizational culture. Since there are no ranks, anyone can comfortably express their opinions to others. I was very surprised when I learned about the diverse backgrounds of my colleagues. They have different majors, from Industrial Engineering to Political Science & International Relations, Business Administration, and even the Arts, along with different previous jobs and tastes. The teamwork is really good despite having so many different people in one place. I rather believe that such diversity allows team members to respect each other's opinions more, gain various insights from our colleagues, and have fun conversations.

Q Is there any benefit or culture that you think is particularly notable?

I am proud of our LINE Hybrid Work 2.0 system. LINERs can work remotely not only in Korea but also overseas, as long as there’s a time difference of less than four hours. I really like our system because it allows our employees to have more flexibility in where we work, making it possible for us to choose a work environment that works best for us. One of my team members worked remotely in Bali for a month. I was really envious when that colleague showed us the gorgeous scenery in the team's group chat. I think that if I could work in such a scenic place, I would naturally have a sense of loyalty to the company. (Laughs)

Wrap-up