Are Chinese programmers really "short-lived"?

I don’t think so!

Let’s talk about the career planning of programmers

Foreword

With the popularity of mobile Internet, a large number of Internet-related careers have been born. , there are also a large number of young talents pouring into this market. Although it is a blue ocean and full of dividends, how can we move forward under this wave instead of being fleeting like a wave? We can judge from the professional value of this wave of Internet industry , conduct in-depth research to discover the supply and demand relationship, the real value provided to the enterprise, and understand the true core competitiveness to keep moving forward like a bicycle and achieve real stability.

The true value of programmers

The reason why the boss hires us is because he wants us to bring value to the company. To put it bluntly, we mean to help the company make money, directly or indirectly. Our salary is generally regarded as the company's labor cost. While controlling costs is important, the real focus is the difference between the value you bring to the company and your salary.

So when your boss thinks your salary is too high, he is actually saying that the value you bring to the company is not enough. When we come to work in a new company, since there is no actual work data to measure, there will be a certain error between what you think you are worth, what the company thinks is your value, and ultimately the actual value you bring to the company. The purpose of resumes and interviews is to bring your value closer to what the company thinks you are. A resume is actually a value proposition. What it says is: I come to this company, can complete these and those tasks, and bring this and that value to the company, and I only need such a small salary, so hire me quickly. .

In short, I must change the way I think about others giving me money when I go to work, and switch to the direction of what value I can create for this company. This kind of empathy can help you understand many things, for example:

The same person with a series of skills often creates different values ??in different companies, so the salary he can get It's different.

When a company hires a person, it is not based on how good he is, but on the value he can bring to the company. Although in most cases there is a positive correlation between personal ability and the value that can be brought to the company, if you can propose and prove a better value proposition, you are likely to be more suitable for the company than this talented person. An extreme example is: a top architect may have no use in a startup company using serverless architecture, while a client master may be able to handle everything in this company.

The supply and demand relationship in the programmer market

When the supply of a position exceeds demand, the recruiter has more weight to lower the salary, thereby obtaining more residual value; And when the supply of a position exceeds demand, candidates have more choices and are more valuable. In the long run, the supply and demand of a position is affected by the development of industry and technology. For example, with the large-scale development of the Internet, people who are also engaged in software development work, the demand for traditional software development positions is not as large as that of Internet and mobile development positions. ; In the short term, positions in emerging markets and high-profit industry cross-segments brought by each wave will be more valuable, and as long as you focus on emerging markets and market segments, you will always be in the wave. Be at the forefront and enjoy the dividends this wave brings you. For example, when ios first came out, your competitiveness could catch up with or surpass the senior engineers who developed J2ME development function machines in a short period of time.

The Essence of Programmers

Automation Work in other industries needs to be done by people; what is done today may have to be done again tomorrow. But that's the way humans work, not the way machines work.

Software, if you think about it carefully, isn’t it just a series of commands that can be executed repeatedly?

In order to let the machine do repetitive work, we need to code and tell the machine how to complete a specific job through various programming languages. After that, the job is completed by the machine. , humans are no longer needed to participate. The programmer's attention will shift to the next task that has not yet been automated.

Why can a good programmer replace many ordinary programmers?

After you have a deep understanding of programmers and the insufficiency of repetition, you will understand why a good programmer can replace hundreds or thousands of ordinary programmers, because the machine amplifies this gap. If an ordinary programmer is duplicating work, then a good programmer spending one day writing a piece of code can take away his work for a year.

So you see, programmers are a profession that constantly eliminates their own fallbacks, forces themselves to do creative work, and continuously improves productivity exponentially.

Engineering is about how to complete set tasks with low cost, high efficiency, on time and quantity.

So to judge whether an engineer is excellent is not how creative or famous he is, but how stable he is and how many Getting Things Done he can do. Chinese is reliable.

Sometimes a good solution may not necessarily use the latest technology and framework, but it may look simple and unpretentious, and the skills are contained in the details behind it.

Just like the Slok billiards played by top players, every shot is unremarkable, just because the return of the previous shot is too good.

Similarly, a good engineer will choose the solution that best suits the needs and team, consider the balance between development efficiency and system efficiency, so as to achieve the optimal effect; instead of arguing with others all day long. Which languages ??are the best and which frameworks are outdated.

Engineering and automation may be the two most important beliefs in the career of programmers. How to creatively avoid duplication of work through automation while ensuring the quality of the project is worth our time. , issues that should be considered and practiced at work. Thinking about this issue will help you gain unprecedented competitiveness. For example, if you have a series of semi-automated tools, in an era of increasingly mature artificial intelligence, they may become fully automated tools. The profession behind this The value and commercial value speak for themselves.

Programmer’s Anxiety

The Internet is an emerging but rapidly developing industry. Emerging means that there are not so many industry giants to provide guidance to newcomers, and there is no generally accepted set of reliable and replicable career development tips. Rapid development means change and competition. A large number of new people are pouring in because of the general trend. If you don't want to be beaten to death on the beach by the waves behind you, you must continue to learn and improve yourself to maintain a level above the elimination line.

The work in China's Internet industry is very intense, and front-line startups are even busier. However, 60% of most practitioners who have just entered the industry will join startups. Adhering to the principle of running fast in small steps and iterating quickly, developers are like cavalry on the battlefield. They overdraw their bodies for a long time and drive with high loads on the highway. Even top-level sports cars will be unable to do their job and cause anxiety.

Compound interest in the programmer profession

Just like the calculation method of financial management interest, with the same funds, the return from compound interest far exceeds simple interest, and the longer the term, The effect of compound interest becomes more obvious. The professions we engage in also have this effect. Choosing an excellent profession will show higher and higher compound interest returns in the later stages of the career, just like the exponential smile curve. Lawyers and doctors are career choices with high compound interest. Choice is greater than effort, and an excellent choice can achieve overtaking in corners.

The poor career compounding interest of software developers is mainly reflected in the following two aspects:

Developers in different directions have development languages ????that they are familiar with and are highly professional. Although the syntax has a certain degree of versatility, the technical depth takes time to accumulate, and only general information such as programming design ideas and coding standards can be transferred.

If there is no clear plan or salary-oriented programming, even if you catch the trend, you will get the first dividend. But what you accumulate in your daily work is not general knowledge and comprehensive abilities. It may just be proficiency and experience in a certain technology. If you don’t have self-driven self-discipline and motivation and just complete the company’s business, then it is business-driven and work experience. Instead, it becomes a burden to you and drags you down into the quagmire.

Barriers to the career of programmers

Most developers working on the front line closely link their careers with a certain skill. As a developer, you will definitely understand a highly coupled code. It must be entangled, and the whole body is affected by one move. Only highly abstract functional programming can be as stable as a mountain in iterative reconstruction. The Internet industry is changing too fast. It is said that one day in the sky and one year underground, Internet practitioners are floating in the sky. Looking back at the development of Nokia and the development of desktop applications, the entire industry is in turmoil. With the rise of various cloud platforms and the opening of various API services, the work efficiency of developers will be greatly improved, just like an agricultural society turning to an industrial society. , it is not that the agricultural population has a surplus of labor force, but that technological innovation has liberated more labor forces, thereby flooding into new industries. The same is true for the Internet. The improvement of production efficiency will eliminate more low-yield practitioners on limited land. If you reach the middle of your career and rely solely on proficiency and seniority as your core competitiveness in the company, then you will be liberated (fired)...

And the Internet In fact, the industry has long been shuffled and invisible, such as basic operation and maintenance engineers, DBAs, basic algorithm engineers, security engineers, image algorithm engineers, data engineers, etc. are all included in this list. In the blink of an eye, three-quarters of 2018 has passed. I don’t know how long the dividends of the Internet will continue. I stand on the trend and follow the trend. However, looking back on the past, the trend is so short-lived.

From the earliest Weibo and WeChat social wars, it has been popular for three years, then 020 and P2P inclusive finance have been popular for two years, live streaming and ***bike sharing have been popular for one year, and the smoke of unmanned shelf layout It is no longer diffuse. Just in 2018, many hot topics such as live answering questions, knowledge micro-business, blockchain, short video platforms, etc. are also becoming more and more attractive. Opportunities never get smaller, as long as you keep studying and keep hungry. Your transferability continues to improve, and you will eventually stand out in the waves.

The value that the programmer profession can leverage is limited

The more people the profession can influence, the higher the value it creates, and the higher the upper limit value of the profession.

The supply and demand relationship and value system in the Internet industry have created a phenomenon. The mass entrepreneurship and innovation wave in the past few years has resulted in a shortage of programmers. What can be seen everywhere is I have a An idea that can move the earth and change the world is now only one programmer away from launching an MVP in 3 months and getting an angel round in 5 months. Nasdaq is not that far away. As this phenomenon has spawned a large number of training institutions, the Internet market has also become a mixed bag, with uneven technologies. As well as the continuous iteration of the pigs on the trend, the o2o bubble has disappeared, the market has become less in short supply, and will eventually return to the era of good money driving out bad money. You have to know that the people who made huge profits during the California Gold Rush were not the gold diggers who traveled across the ocean and faced countless dangers, but the sellers who sold shovels and provided infrastructure. The only people who rely on technology to gain a foothold in the IT world are those technical experts who have spent countless days and nights and put in a lot of energy to improve production efficiency. There is no shortcut. Even if you are talented, there are thousands of people who practice harder and work harder. People compete with you. For ordinary developers, they don’t have such a deep love for technology, and their salaries tend to stabilize after five years of work. For most companies, your proficiency and experience have reached a certain threshold, which has a significant impact on the company’s benefits. Improvement is limited. In the five-year bottleneck period, employees who have enjoyed high growth for a long time will cause anxiety during the bottleneck period of slow growth.

How to deal with it

The so-called stability is the biggest lie. There was a popular article in the circle of friends before. The iron rice bowls of highway toll collectors who once squeezed their heads to get into the industry are slowly being replaced. Eliminated, there are also many popular memes such as BB machine maintenance engineers. This fully illustrates that a person is like a bicycle. Only by moving, letting go of the past, and moving forward as much as possible is the most stable. Reposition your career, do not regard proficiency as your core competitiveness, and do not bet your career on a single target. Instead, keep studying, keep hungry, and continuously improve your transferability. , vision, structure, etc., continue to strengthen their irreplaceability in existing companies.