Every programmer knows one thing from the bottom of his or her heart. You can’t do technology for a lifetime.
So where do programmers go if they stop doing technology? So how do you deal with a programmer’s 35-year midlife crisis?
Think about it and talk about it today.
Many programmers worry about a mid-35 life crisis. So where are all the 35+ programmers? What are the ways to break the game worth learning from?
In my own observation, there are a lot of technical programmers who have done well, not just in the technical field, but in a lot of successful programmer transitions.
These examples are summarized into the following three categories:
- Become a freelancer.
- Choose entrepreneurship.
- To become a product manager,
Become a Freelancer
Make a side business a priority and develop your second career
Usually see the public number is more, give a few examples of freelancers:
- StormZhang (public account: StormZhang, quit his job to become a freelancer, and then choose to start his own business)
- Cheng Jun (official account: Jun Brother’s Note, former technical director of Ele Me)
- Passerby A (Official Account: Passerby A)
- Brother Smile (Official Account: Pure Smile)
Advantages of freelancing:
Jumping out of the corporate system and not having to go to work frees up your time and puts you in complete control.
The risks of freelancing:
Because having no job means losing a regular income every month, it can be a challenge to your financial situation and to have a steady cash flow.
We can’t just see that time is completely free. Behind the time is another challenge to the self-discipline of individuals.
I’ve heard a lot of freelancers say that when you become a freelancer, you actually put in more hours at work than you were supposed to in a company job.
The company’s rule is generally 8 hours, and it is normal for programmers to work 2 to 3 hours overtime, so they work about 10 hours a day.
Being a freelancer without a regular paycheck is generally stressful, so work harder to make money and spend more time on the business you earn.
Some people reported that after becoming a freelancer, they put in about 14-15 hours a day at work, except for eating and sleeping, all the time for work.
If you’ve ever thought about starting a side business as a freelancer, I hope it’s been helpful.
Quit people who want to become freelancers:
If you’re not a self-disciplined person and don’t have self-control, it’s advisable to quit, you might not be a freelancer. Good freelancers are people who are highly disciplined and follow their own plans to the letter.
If there is no stable income in addition to the salary, it is recommended that you do not quit your job naked and become a freelancer for the sake of becoming a freelancer.
If you want to earn an income in addition to your salary, consider developing a second career (sideline) for yourself. As for how to choose a second career, you can explore from your own strengths and hobbies.
Recommend a few common sideline direction.
Middleman mode, no technical threshold: Zhihu, Taobao customers, take-out CPS.
Technology service provider model: can accept outsourcing, can also try to do their own products, such as small programs; Record paid video tutorials and post them on various platforms (Tencent Classroom, netease Cloud Classroom, MOOCs, etc.). These platforms have a lot of traffic, so the course will get more exposure and relatively higher conversion rate. In short, they make money by selling their skills.
Professional advantages in vertical fields: through the output of content and values, attract target groups to do community operation, which is called private domain traffic in advanced terms. For example, knowledge charging can be provided through Knowledge Planet to screen user groups, precipitate content and do a good job in community operation. In Out of Control, Kevin Kelly says that anyone who creates or works in the arts — artists, craftsmen, teachers, science popularists — will be well off if they can get a thousand die-hard fans.
Below the circumstance that the income is more stable, sideline income is your advocate course of study income 5~ when 10 times, can consider quit advocate course of study, turn sideline into advocate course of study. Here’s an idea from a bigwinger as a guide to when you should quit your job and become a freelancer.
Remember the premise, income is stable, if not very stable, for example, last month made twenty thousand dollars, but this month only made two thousand, then becoming a freelancer has a lot of risk, because for the next month may make how much money, there will be no expectation, this time is not recommended to quit to become a freelancer.
About how to develop sideline, become a freelancer, here recommend a good friend of the public number Liu bad classmate, a keen to make trouble of the technology curfew. Some correct positions for programmers to do sideline work
He recently quit his job to become a freelancer. If you want to know more about his side business and freelancing, I recommend following his official account.
Choose a startup
To start a business, to explore the scenes that need to be satisfied in life, to solve the pain points in the industry, and to provide products or solutions for them.
In fact, there are many cases of programmers starting their own businesses. I will cite the familiar examples around me:
- Fenng (Feng Dahui, public account: grapevine, company: Hangzhou Woo Code Technology, well-known product: Lucky Draw Assistant, user number: 130 million)
- Li Jiapeng (public account: you fake stupid, company: Hangzhou stupid horse network, former Ali technical person)
- Left ear mouse (Chen Hao, known as mouse uncle, company: MegaEase)
I don’t know enough about the startup story to read too much into it.
To become a product manager
Make a good product or tool, so that it better meet the needs of users (customers), to provide good services.
Compared with the above two paths, it is relatively common for a programmer to become a product manager, and it is relatively easy for a technical person to become a product manager if he knows more about the business and has some product thinking.
A lot of technical background of the Internet bosses say they are product managers, such as Ma Huateng, Zhou Hongyi, the father of WeChat Zhang Xiaolong and so on.
Today, I share an example of a technical person successfully transforming into a product manager, Xu Shiwei, CEO of Qiniu Cloud.
I’ve seen an interview with him in which he said this:
In the first six years of working in WPS, it can be summed up as a technical person, who was very satisfied with his constant iteration process and constant improvement.
After six years of work, this satisfaction was replaced by another puzzle: we were doing a good job at WPS, but why didn’t we make money?
If you ask me to think from zero, what kind of business should I do, which is in line with the Internet era, what kind of business can be successful in business.
So after seven years, I decided to transform myself from a technical staff to a product manager, because only if you are a product manager, you are a role that can explore the success in business.
The first product made by Xu Shiwei after he was transformed into a product manager is Qiniuyun, which is believed to be familiar to many technical people.
Final Thoughts
How should technical people develop? How to Break the 35-Year Midlife Crisis
** strives to become a T-type talent.
T in the vertical refers to the depth, in the technology to go deep, this is the roots of the technical people.
The one in T refers to breadth. Technicians should not only understand technology, but also dabple in other fields, such as product thinking, business model, economics, psychology, etc. If they know more about other aspects, they will have different ways of looking at things. 支那
It’s like looking at a line through a point, you always see a point, but looking at a line through more dimensions, you see the whole face.
Because only if you are a product manager, you are the one in the business who can talk about success.
This sentence has a great impact on me, which makes me rethink the four words of product manager and the relationship between technology and products. In the next article, we will talk about the relationship between technology and products.
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