Insights for Young Developers - Part 2

Hello everyone, I'm a Frontend Architect. Follow my WeChat official account [David's Career Talk] to get free high-quality frontend resources.

The internet dividend has now disappeared, and I deeply understand the challenges faced by young programmers. Below, I'd like to offer a few humble suggestions.

Commercial and Life Directions

China has a large population base, so it's crucial to cultivate your business acumen. If you can make a product a bestseller, you can gain immense wealth. Writing an article for a public account that gets tens of thousands of views can earn hundreds of yuan; you might think it's difficult, but there's a lot to it. Therefore, freelancing is very common in China, and I'm determined not to let my children work for others in the future.

From a young age, we are taught in school to follow rules and be a "good child." However, in the business world, it's about thinking how to break rules, copy, take shortcuts, and speculate—all without breaking the law. So, how do you cultivate this? First, read more business-related books to enhance your understanding, as understanding dictates action. Second, look at everything with a money-making mindset. For example, when browsing Douyin live streams, observe how others sell goods and courses to make money; then check what people are selling on Xianyu (a second-hand marketplace) and how they profit.

I only slowly developed "business awareness" in my thirties, while children from wealthy families might start cultivating it in their teens.
Young people can try various professions; sometimes, sales can indeed be a good direction.

My sister used to work in data operations at an internet company, where she faced high pressure and low pay. Later, by a stroke of luck, she joined Ping An and became a telemarketing agent for financial products. Unexpectedly, she was very well-suited for the job and enjoyed it. She no longer had to deal with complex interpersonal friction daily, and with commissions, she earned over 30,000 yuan per month, becoming the company's top salesperson.
Try shooting short videos. As "bottom-tier" coders in society, we have no face or shame to lose. If it can increase our wealth and provide a better life for our families, why not give it a shot? You might not know that many official media outlets, such as Xinhua News Agency, are live-streaming on Douyin to sell daily necessities. Everyone's life story is “worth a million.”

In reality, shooting short videos is not as simple as it seems, for example, how to appear more natural in front of the camera, or how to choose a niche. I've already shot dozens of videos and am still learning.

The book Antifragile mentions: When you can use a relatively small cost (the time cost of shooting and editing videos) to leverage something that might have infinite returns (like becoming an influencer with millions of followers), then it's worth doing.
If you don't have any family background and you've studied a computer-related major, then you must push forward relentlessly to become a technical expert. You might feel lost at first, but once you reach a certain level, you'll discover that writing code can actually be quite interesting.
Start a family first. Life is a long journey, and finding a girlfriend (or boyfriend) is more important than writing code! When you wander alone for too long, emptiness and loneliness are inevitable. With someone by your side, you have someone to discuss things with and draw strength from.
Save money. When your salary arrives each month, develop the habit of saving before spending, putting aside 20% to 30% (you can check out the book The Latte Factor). You can set up a separate dream fund, for example, to fulfill childhood "painting dreams" or "dancing dreams." Who knows, you might even discover your talent and escape the grind of a typical 9-to-5 job. To this day, I have never used credit cards or Huabei (Alipay's credit service).

Frontend Directions

You need to be very familiar with the company's overall business, such as how frontend code is deployed, how CDN works, how monitoring is implemented, and what the approximate PV and UV figures are, etc.

This is because after you turn 35, if you're interviewing for a Leader position, technical ability might only account for a small portion, while your understanding and familiarity with the business will carry more weight. I missed a great opportunity because of this a couple of years ago.
After working for a few years, if you constantly feel your skill level is average, don't know what to say in interviews, and can't present decent project experience, then you might consider enrolling in courses to systematically organize your knowledge system. This is because most articles on Juejin (a developer community) tend to be fragmented content.

You might find this strange, thinking it's just "cutting leeks" (a term for exploiting people). Let me tell you a real example. I have a friend who studied Java and had been working for many years. Two years ago, he lost his job due to a poor economic environment. Later, he enrolled in a course taught by Teacher Ma Shibing and quickly found a new job. I asked him what he said in the interviews. He said that often, as long as you can guide the conversation to an area you are familiar with and deeply understand, and get the interviewer to follow your line of thought, time flies by quickly. Before the interviewer has a chance to fully expand their questions, the interview is over, and you successfully receive an offer.
If young people feel unhappy at work and experience long-term discomfort, that's definitely not good. You need to adjust quickly or leave. Staying in a negative energy environment for too long is very damaging, so always pay attention to your physical and mental state.
Find ways to keep yourself full of energy; willpower is actually very important.

Over a decade ago, a university classmate of mine was a PHP backend developer, with average frontend skills. He actually had a blood disorder and needed to take medication year-round. But he always had a strong desire—to join Tencent. After several attempts, he unexpectedly made it into Tencent Shenzhen's frontend team. Later, he left Tencent and didn't have much success at a few smaller companies. Just then, Ping An had a good opportunity, and I introduced him there. His year-end bonus was over a dozen months' salary. He was truly lucky; although his frontend skills were inferior to mine, he earned a lot of money over the years, settled down and bought a house in Shenzhen, and still has hundreds of thousands (of yuan) in hand. He never bought a car, believing it to be a consumer good, and I think his understanding of this is impressive.

Another thing: a friend once recommended me for a frontend interview at Tencent, but I felt I wasn't capable enough and hesitated to go. However, a backend developer whose skill level was even lower than mine at the time went for the interview, and later thrived, now working as a backend developer at ByteDance.

So sometimes, I can't help but feel that one must believe in destiny.
You should still practice simple algorithms, not just for interviews, but also to train your programmer's mindset.
When you're studying an article, if you can't understand it at first, there are usually two possibilities: one is that your current skill level isn't sufficient; the other is that the author's ability and writing skills are poor. If you've been working for many years and still can't understand it, then it's highly likely the author didn't write it well, and there's no need to waste more time on it.

I once bought a "Juejin Booklet." The author's technical skill was actually quite high, but much of the content in the booklet was essentially copied from his own Juejin articles. The overall booklet was confusing and difficult to learn from, and at the time, I constantly doubted my own abilities. It wasn't until years later, looking back, that I realized it wasn't my problem, but rather that his depth of technical understanding and writing skills were quite average.
Promise is a very important concept because it's used in HTTP requests and various asynchronous operations. Therefore, it's best to implement it yourself once to understand its principles. I see many junior programmers' code where async is nested within promise, and promise is nested within async.

Finally, do your best, and leave the rest to fate. "Do your best" means to strive, and "leave the rest to fate" means to let go, without overly blaming yourself for outcomes you cannot control.