Preface by author:

Hi, I’m Robbin. Words more than ten days into 2016, think of this, I can not help but mixed feelings. 2016 is a special year for me, because I will be 40 years old, officially leaving youth in my life and entering middle age.

In the entertainment industry, no, in the youth industry of programmers, there is a topic that everyone is afraid of. It is called “aging.” As long as you’re a programmer, you’re always wondering, “I can’t sell color when I’m old, and I can’t write code anymore. What else can I do?” . Today let’s talk about this taboo topic.

When I was 25, I had the same worries as many programmers: what happens when I get old? Can you code until you’re 30?

When I turned 30, I found myself starting my own business. It was painful, but fun and challenging. Of course, there is no retreat from entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship if failure, it is estimated that no one wants more. So let’s think about starting a business first. The 35-year-old programmer problem is five years from now.

In a flash, I was 35 years old, the startup was sold to CSDN, and I became A CTO at CSDN. In fact, this CTO is helpless and painful. He has too many things to worry about, and he doesn’t dream about the topic of midlife crisis.

Then I was 40 years old, not rich, but I had no problem supporting myself. I thought I could do something while I still had a few years to hop around, and then I came to the Lilac Garden.

Now that I was 25, my fears were misplaced. I have no problem writing code now, and occasionally I do code for fun. But since 2010, when I was 34, I’ve been out of my job writing code. It is not that I am unwilling to write code myself, but I feel a sense of achievement in writing code, but I am more valuable to the company if I do not write code. I need to put my time and energy into planning product direction, making decisions on technical architecture, cultivating the team and improving the company’s combat effectiveness.

Have all those post-70s programmers disappeared?

If you go to an Internet company now, you will find that the majority of programmers are born in the 1990s, there are few born in the 1980s, and there are almost none born in the 1970s. So an interesting topic is: “Have programmers born in the 1970s disappeared?”

In fact, IT has not disappeared, but the post-70s programmers have become the top of every Internet company, every IT company. So you ask, “How can there be so many positions for the post-70s generation when there are only a few senior positions in a company?”

The answer is, “There weren’t many IT companies 20 years ago, and programmers born in the 1970s didn’t have the millions they do now.” Over the past 20 years, the entire IT and Internet industry has expanded more than 100 times, creating a huge number of jobs, both at the top and on the front lines.

So are there any post-70s programmers working in the forefront of coding? B: of course! Gao Chunhui, who is one year older than me, is the living fossil of China’s Internet. As the boss of a company, Lao Gao still refuses to give up the fun of coding and insists on writing codes himself.

So it seems that at age 40, whether you write code or not, you’re not going to grow old, and the shelf life of a programmer seems to be as short as that of the entertainment industry. As a young programmer, how should you extend your freshness?

20-27 years old: skill accumulation stage

Assuming you graduated from college at the age of 22, your first five years on the job are the groundwork. During these 5 years, you need to accumulate enough code to hone your technical strength and become an expert in a specific technical niche.

And I myself in that year at this stage of the effort is very hungry, Spring Festival do not go home, squatting inside the rental gnawing technical documents. When I first started working, I slept on the floor of the company for a month.

28-35 years: the formation of thinking methodology and knowledge system stage

When you accumulate enough code, for example, more than 100,000 lines of code, you should form your own thinking methodology and independent learning skills. Any new technology in your eyes can quickly see the essence of the technology and quickly absorb it into your knowledge system.

At this stage, you will find that you do not understand the new technology and new knowledge is very little, new technology is just a few days for you to play with a good toy, learning more and more relaxed, master more and more knowledge reserve.

You start thinking more and more about how to transform technology into productivity. What technology can be most valuable in what context; How the technical team should be structured; How can I get the most out of my technical skills in a company?

At this stage, accumulating skills is a piece of cake for you, but you need to hone your thinking skills and develop your own thinking methods and knowledge system, which will help you throughout your life.

After 35 years old: the stage of understanding oneself and realizing oneself

Needless to say, your first-line coding skills will definitely decline after the age of 35. You can’t write code as fast and efficiently as a 25-year-old programmer. But it doesn’t matter, because programming is the least important part of your Arsenal. Your experience, your vision, your architectural skills, your management skills, and your analytical and problem-solving skills extend far beyond the technical realm.

Between the ages of 30 and 35, it’s important to know who you are. It is the wisdom of life to know what you are good at, what your strengths are and how to maximize your value. At the same time, you should also know what your weaknesses are and how to avoid doing things that you are not good at. You should not force yourself or put yourself in an unfavorable environment.

It is very difficult for a person to have an objective view of himself. Many people go through life without knowing how to develop their talents and refuse to admit their defects. After the age of 35, you should accept an imperfect version of yourself and know how to maximize your personal value while maximizing your strengths. For programmers who can do this, middle age is not the end of a programmer’s career at all, but the peak of their career.

Some of the team

In this article, I did not mention many specific technical personnel to choose the path of development, for example:

  • Grow into the core backbone of the core business
  • Grow into technical management
  • Transformation business expert, transformation business consultant
  • Transformation product manager, product director, product line

These are all ok, are some specific career development path choice issues. But no matter what you choose, as long as you remain open to learning, accumulating knowledge and experience, building your knowledge, honing your thinking skills, and constantly introspecting, midlife is not a crisis at all, but a peak.

If you are a technical personnel, in the choice of development of their own experience, welcome to contribute to us. You can contact us directly by leaving a message.