Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Highlight:

On programmer's Day, we discussed with a number of practitioners. Many of them have anxiety, especially in middle age. are their lives really unbearable in the face of heavy pressure in the workplace and family?

Today, 1024 programmer's Day is coming as scheduled. On this day, many companies prepare plaid shirts, special performances and rich afternoon teas for their programmers. And encourage them to go home early on this day and refuse to work overtime.

However, the courtesy of individual festivals can not change the psychological pressure and anxiety that long-term intensive work brings to programmers. In communicating with Wealth, many programmers who have been rolling in the workplace for many years still complain that "the work is so intense that I feel that my body is about to be overwhelmed." When it comes to workplace planning after the age of 35, individual programmers who feel hopeless for promotion are even more worried, "I really don't know how to deal with myself when I think that at that time there will be old and young, and the workplace will not be very friendly to older programmers."

Is the life of a 35-year-old programmer really that bad? After communicating with a number of senior programmers over the age of 35, we got different answers.

Programmers are not teenagers, and there should be no age bias.

★ character: 53 years old | founder of Tao Jianhui Taosi data

Tao Jianhui, a 53-year-old serial entrepreneur with three entrepreneurial experiences, is the founder and CEO of Taosi data, an enterprise on the big data platform of the Internet of things, and has previously founded Hexin and Happy Mommy.

When he decided to create Taos data in 2017, the 47-year-old Tao wrote 18000 lines of code in two months, completed the initial research and development of the company's first product, TDengine, and received angel investment from investors. Today, Taos data has received multiple rounds of financing from Matrix Partners China, Sequoia Capital China Fund, GGV and others, with the most recent financing quota of $47 million, valuing the company at $300m.

As a typical older programmer, after years of workplace anxiety over the age of 35, Tao Jianhui has started a number of businesses. And finally won the recognition of the market and investors by virtue of the code, and achieved the most successful start-up in their career when most people are approaching the age of retirement.

When it comes to how to treat the workplace environment as unfriendly to older programmers, his view is, "programmers are not teenagers. In fact, the software industry is not changing fast. Basic database and other technologies basically existed more than 40 years ago. As long as you master some basic principles and logic, it changes very little." there should be no age bias against programmers. "

In his view, the 35-year-old problem is not really a problem in the programmer industry. In any field, the structure of personnel must be a pyramid. It may be difficult for you to be a CTO at 35, but if you are still willing to take the salary of ordinary people, you will still be very popular.

"older people are more experienced and have a more accurate grasp of their needs. as long as they keep tracking and learning about technological evolution, they will still be very competitive." Tao Jianhui said. According to him, in the United States, there are many programmers who are still coding at the age of 35 or even 50, but very few at home. The reason is that there are very few programmers in China at the beginning.

But now it's getting better. According to Tao Jianhui's introduction to Caizhi, at present, six of the technical staff of Taosi data are over the age of 40, not a few between 35 and 40, and the post-80s are in the mainstream. "as long as the technology passes, older programmers are not a problem."

The age of 35 is the year of playing, programmers "the older the better."

★, 40 years old, founder of Yuan Jinhui's first-class technology.

In fact, because the largest employment group of domestic programmers is mainly Internet companies, the product cycle of these companies is fast, and the technology accumulation and technology stack are relatively shallow, which leads to the imperfect ecology of domestic programmers. Programmers are more exposed to business-based transactions after entering the workplace, so it is difficult to calm down and study the underlying technology. Over time, confidence has been hit by endless business needs and dazzling emerging technologies. As a result, the workplace age crisis began to occur.

In the view of Yuan Jinhui, the first-class founder of science and technology, in fact, in some basic technology fields, programmers can become more and more popular as long as they go deeper into the technology stack. "the IT industry itself does iterate fast, but if you master something at the bottom, you will find that the difference between Rust, Java and other languages is actually very small, and the transfer and learning ability between different fields will actually be very fast." Yuan Jinhui said.

In Yuan Jinhui's view, in order to avoid the 35-year-old crisis, programmers can focus on some low-level, more stable technology trends. In addition, you can also focus on interest, to know how to study and become an expert in a certain field. "as long as the front-end has reached the architectural level, it has been more in-depth, and when you have the killer mace skills, there will be no career crisis."

"if you start writing code after graduating from college, after a long period of accumulation, after 35 is actually a period of prime, when you play, you will be more competitive than those who have just graduated." According to Yuan Jinhui, he started writing code in several start-ups from graduation, joined Microsoft Research Asia at the age of 33 in 2013, and wrote a lot of code after the age of 35. "after a long period of code writing, I found that my ability for the system has been greatly improved, which has laid a solid foundation for the subsequent creation of first-class technology."

"I have been doing technical management all the time, and now there is room for these people to live in China." Yuan Jinhui said. In his view, in some areas with relatively high technical requirements, "many skilled young people are absolutely unable to handle it, and there must be people who have studied this field for a long time."

Believe in yourself, 35-year-old anxiety is common in every industry.

★ is a 39-year-old senior software engineer in Liao Hao, a technology company

Liao Hao, a senior software engineer in a technology company, is 39 years old this year. After graduating in 2011 and becoming a programmer, Liao Hao heard his colleagues talk about 35-year-old anxiety, but at the time, Liao Hao's mentor told him, "in China, this group of programmers have not yet reached the stage of losing competitiveness." only after you have been working for a while will you find that you are not alone in facing such problems, but there are similar problems in every industry. "

In fact, by the time you reach the age of 35, everyone may have some anxiety, because at that time you will find that some people around you have developed very well, and there will be a lot of pressure. At this time, how to make a good psychological balance is very important. "at this time, what you need to do is to believe in your abilities."

In China, due to the existence of engineer bonus, with the same competitive advantage, enterprises naturally want to give priority to those fresh graduates. As a result, people who are older and relatively uncompetitive are not easily treated in a friendly manner. In essence, this is still a competitive problem, and there are not many good means to fundamentally solve these problems.

"We can only meet this situation through our own changes, everyone has to face this problem, competition is born, we can only improve ourselves." Liao Hao said. In a highly competitive environment, for practitioners in the software industry, continuous self-improvement is not an option, but a must. "35-year-old anxiety is not terrible, the terrible thing is to forget to move forward because of anxiety."

Conclusion: pay attention to the development of programmers.

At present, although the "typical cases of labor and personnel disputes" published by the Supreme people's Court and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security have clearly pointed out that "996" seriously violates the legal provisions on extending the upper limit of working hours, the relevant company rules and regulations should be found to be invalid. However, in many Internet enterprises, the phenomenon of working overtime to catch up with progress and busy business day and night still emerge one after another. Especially in the field of program development, it is common for program developers to work overtime.

In Yuan Jinhui's view, if enterprises pursue too much to give full play to the existing abilities of programmers, but forget to provide them with corresponding growth opportunities, the development of programmers will gradually stagnate and eventually float on the surface and be dragged down by the business at the same time. 1024 programmers' Day, when giving programmers temporary preferential treatment and courtesy, enterprises should also consider how to pay more attention to the long-term sustainable development of programmers, rather than blindly asking for "fishing in the face of water".

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