I was told early on that career paths for programmers are narrow once they reach the age of 35. But I don’t believe in that. I’m 38 years old and still active on the development front.

People occasionally ask, how do you break the 35-year-old rule? As I did not have a systematic summary before, I never answered this question directly.

However, during the epidemic this year, a chat with my friends in the same field made me think for two days: in fact, I have gone through many detours before, but compared with most of my peers, I am the most fortunate. After sticking to three paths, I finally found the one most suitable for me. Friends who are confused about career planning can listen to me slowly.

The reason

Let’s face it, layoffs are common in the development industry. But layoffs during this year’s pandemic seem to have hit many in the industry particularly hard.

That’s why I got a call from a friend in the same industry. He said that the people around him are being laid off one by one, although he stayed, but the anxiety is increasing, because around many unemployed peers, the interview after one or two months without any progress, not a few! It’s time to really think about self-improvement.

You should know that my friend has always been a “not motivated” type. I laughed on the phone and asked if you had recently read the news that “During the epidemic period, Beijing has increased 580,000 delivery drivers, of which 21% are technicians”, so you were stimulated.

However, “self-improvement” is a cliche that everyone knows, but as someone who has experienced it, I know that most programmers can’t escape from this law except when they start out with a high level of enthusiasm for learning. Every two or three years, they will soon enter a state of “rapid decline in enthusiasm for learning”. This is why so many people talk about improving themselves, but don’t actually improve themselves.

The older you get, the less enthusiastic you are about learning. Why is this a common problem for programmers?

The fundamental reason is that programmers are too rational!

When you think about it, every new skill you learn is a great way to feel good about yourself in the early days of your career, because in the long run, each step is a step toward a career change and a raise, and in the short run, it saves you from being scolded at work.

But after a few years? I can basically deal with all the problems I encounter in my work. Further study, even if I spend a lot of time and energy, may not be able to understand how much it actually helps me in my daily work. I really can’t say. And who knows if you’ll need it for your next job?

The marginal benefit of learning decreases with age, which is the root cause of the gradual decline in programmers’ enthusiasm for learning, and the root cause of the 35-year rule. It’s dangerous if you don’t break this rule in a world where technology is changing faster and faster.

How did I escape the 35-year-old rule?

Here are three paths I’ve taken over the years. Of course, I did not know which road was more suitable for me at the beginning, so I tried all over again, we can learn from my experience and lessons, less detours, directly choose the most suitable one for their own:

1. Transformation management

This was my first choice that year, and SINCE around 2008 I’ve been thinking about moving slowly into a technical management role. After my exploration, to successfully transform to be a technical manager, we must first meet a condition: the line has the strength.

That is to say, every time the leader gives you a task, you can be efficient and complete more than enough, then the leader will give you more important tasks, after the cycle, the leader will gradually let you lead people, lead projects. The reason why I failed in my attempt at that time was that I was not skilled enough to do the things I was doing well and could not finish them, so I could not enter the cycle I just mentioned.

2. Get involved

Transformation management failed, I’m here at the invitation of friends to participate in a venture project, can under the determined at the time, so is the man doing things together, the second is the project itself clear profit model, three is thinking about dreams or to have one thousand entrepreneurial success, whether in economy, or the industry influence, will work with completely different.

Unfortunately, the venture failed. Of course, I do not regret this experience, because when you really go to start a business, your vision, the perspective of the whole industry, have a qualitative change. However, based on my experience, I still want to warn friends who plan to take this road, before starting a business, you should make at least two psychological preparations:

One is whether you and your family can really accept the huge impact of entrepreneurship on your life. Once you start a business, you must devote all your time and energy to it. Two is to be prepared for two or three years without any income.

3. Get back on the front lines

After going through both transition management and entrepreneurship, I became convinced that the best path for me was actually back on the development front. Some people don’t understand. Aren’t you going backwards? What do you fight young people with?

Yes, if I have been developing for ten years, I am still the same as when I was young, just plugging away at the code every day and answering baidu when I meet problems I don’t understand, let alone 35 years old, I will be retired in my early 30’s.

But in fact, there are different levels of development, plugging away at the code programmer, that is to do physical work, of course, rely on time and energy to pile; Senior architects, on the other hand, do more mental work, that is, think more, do less. Once you do, it must be the key to do, so as to break through the age.

In my experience, to be a senior architect, you need to work on two things: building your own complete body of knowledge; Secondly, I should constantly improve my comprehensive ability in induction, analysis, integration and design, as well as my creativity and imagination in code implementation.

In short, as an old code farmers, standing in the perspective of experienced people, I suggest you as soon as possible to make a long-term plan for your career. At the same time, as much as possible to learn from the experience of predecessors, less detours.