Original link: https://feihu.me/blog/2022/engineer-growth/
Stay
Hungry, Stay Foolish – Steve
Jobs
Growth is a long-standing topic, especially in the information age where technology is exploding. Wu Jun said in “Top of the Tide”:
The development of technology is not uniform, but in the form of waves. Everyone should see the tide clearly and catch up with the tide. ——
Wu Jun
We are also in the midst of this wave, the best of times, the technological changes over the past few decades exceed hundreds of years, we have the potential to do things every day that change the world, a single line of code can affect thousands of people millions of users. This is also the worst of times, in the face of the explosive update of technology, technology is eliminated at a faster rate than ever before, everyone is facing enormous pressure, and anxiety is always with us.
Born in the era of mobile Internet, Byte is a young company with a young product line and young and energetic employees. Although everything is young, its business is in the wave of short video, with both opportunities and challenges.
Recently, the team has a lot of new recruits/interns. Most of the students are zero-based clients and have no client development experience in school. Compared with schools, companies are very different, and how to adapt quickly has brought a lot of pressure to newcomers.
At the same time, there are students who have recently graduated and have gradually adapted to the rhythm of the work after a period of workplace experience, but the needs of the work are followed by the needs, and many times there is no time for improvement. It seems that the knowledge acquired in one month is enough to cope with the work for many years to come. Where is the future growth? When the school is faced with the single goal of employment, it can move forward step by step with clear goals. But after graduation, we are faced with countless choices. We have lost the school that helped us pave the way. Every path now needs to be chosen and faced by ourselves. How can you keep your head down and look up at the stars?
This article wants to talk about the topic of engineer growth.
Table of contents
growing up stories
When I was preparing this article at the beginning, I wanted to talk a lot. I wish I could bring together all the problems I encountered in the past and the pits I stepped on, and instill it into everyone. However, this idea was quickly abandoned. On the one hand, it was unrealistic, and it would be unimaginably long to write down. On the other hand, since childhood, we have experienced so much cramming education, what is the effect? Why do you think this time will be good?
This article also does not want to discuss technology in depth. After all, there are so many fish, how can they be exhausted? And for an already battle-hardened engineer, mastering a technology itself isn’t very difficult.
I remember watching a speech given by Steve Jobs many years ago. It was at the graduation ceremony of Stanford University. He did not tell how to create a great company and how to make a great product, but told three small stories. The words are fresh in my memory. As an ordinary engineer, I would like to discuss growth through three short stories in the same way.
initiative
My first job after graduation was also an Internet company. I came down from my hometown to Shenzhen. After experiencing the roar of the train all night, I took Line 1 from Dachong Station. I was shocked by the magical scene in front of me. It was a dismantled and dilapidated construction site (it was only later that I found out that the construction site was a valuable lot after many years), and on the other side was a modern city with many high-rise buildings. Although I have been to a big city, when I saw the building in Shenzhen for the first time, I was still so excited that I could not speak, not because of the high-rise building itself, but because of the logos embedded in the building: Lenovo, Konka, ZTE, Mindray, Oracle. Until now, I still clearly remember that the white clouds in the sky were very low and thick, as if within reach, not as high as the sky in the central area. I was like a primitive man drilled out of a cave. When I saw the real company on TV displayed in front of me, I was speechless with excitement, thinking, this is where I want to come.
At that time, the mobile Internet was just beginning, Nokia still dominated the market, and the four major operating systems competed for the market like the colorful bicycle sharing later: Symbian, iOS, Android and Windows
Mobile, the department at that time had a very ambitious goal, one called UI
Engine, a cross-platform solution that supports four operating systems, I think that is the originator of various cross-platform solutions for many years in the future.
After joining the company, I mingled with the old drivers privately all day, staying up late to publish, and playing Dota during lunch breaks. Because of my weak foundation, it may have been the fastest growing period. I remember that during the induction training, a technical expert introduced the debugging method, saying that the log is easier to use than the debug. At the time, I didn’t know why, so I asked, how to log? Daniel was probably stunned by my sudden question, and answered: Hit where you want to hit. As you can imagine, I still don’t get it.
It was during this year that I completed the initial transition from school to the workplace. It was also at that time that I heard the first suggestion in my career from the mentor, which is the most important word for newcomers: initiative.
Yes, not a big secret, but the road is simple, isn’t it. But when I was young and frivolous at the time, I thought that this was some kind of advice. Saying it means not saying it. However, knowing and doing are completely different. It was not until many years later, when I looked back at the road I had traveled, that I realized that these were the two most important words after work.
As engineers, there are many things we can do on our own initiative. Taking the requirement development cycle as an example, in the requirement review phase, we actively understand the benefits of the requirement, discuss with the product manager how to make the requirement better, and understand the logic behind it; in the development phase, we take the initiative to understand the three parties. Libraries and underlying principles, actively use a more “better” architecture design, consider scalability, and pursue code cleanliness; after the requirements are completed, they actively pay attention to the online requirements, actively summarize the precipitation, and understand competing products. You see, the same is to make needs, what is the difference between actively making needs and passively accepting needs. From the perspective of growth, there may be no obvious difference in the short term, but once it is extended to a longer time horizon, the gap between the two will become larger and larger. This is why graduates have the same starting point at the beginning, but the growth rate of the subsequent years has shown huge differences, and initiative has almost played a decisive role in this.
Initiative is actually an attitude, and what drives this attitude is something more internal, such as curiosity, the pursuit of elegant code, the desire to grow, etc. Further abstraction is truth, goodness, and beauty ?.
In order to pursue “good” code, many theories have been derived in the computer field, such as a large number of refactoring methods in “Refactoring”, 23 “Design Patterns” proposed by the Gang of Four, etc. (but it is really difficult to remember so many tools, What impressed me the most is the “bad smell”, exercise my “smell”, find the “bad smell” in the code, and then refactor based on the pursuit of “good” code), these pursuits drive the initiative of engineers , to promote personal growth and technological development.
As Jobs said: Stay
Hungry, Stay Foolish!
stop complaining, act
Before the age of 30, you develop a habit, and after the age of 30, the habit will make you——
provenance unknown
I only stayed in the first company for a year, it used to be a brilliant company, but we often ridiculed our work style as a small workshop, because it was just in the initial stage of the mobile Internet, and the whole industry was not mature enough to learn from where everyone is crossing the river by feeling the stones. Instead of being a professional, I was always full of insecurity, and seemed to have a strong stubbornness to norms. There was a period of time that I could only go home late at night every day. I remember that after taking a taxi to the downstairs one day, the streets were empty in the middle of the night, and I inadvertently looked up and saw the moon. I remembered that my classmate who lived in the same area said that I had not seen me for a week, and I suddenly felt that I should change place. . So there was the first job hopping.
This time I chose to jump from the Internet to a foreign company, because I was stubborn and wanted to see what software development in a mature industry was like. So I live a nine-to-five life every day. Due to the maturity and stability of the business, the code in one year is not even as good as the previous month. I have heard that the average amount of code in a year of Microsoft engineers is 1000 lines, which may be true. Having said that, it was here that I had the biggest gain since graduation and heard the second sentence that has influenced me to this day.
At that time, the manager of the R&D department was an elderly German (Germans can hardly tell his age from his appearance), and he held a department meeting as usual. I have long forgotten the content of the meeting, but he said something at the meeting. Let me keep in mind:
Never complaint. Turn complaint to a proposal. Turn
proposal to an
action.
I recorded it on Evernote after the meeting, and the date the note was created showed was 2012/5/4.
Complaints are the source of innovation, and behind every complaint is an opportunity, and everyone who can turn complaints into action has a better chance of success, ranging from state power to products, tools, and SDKs. Jobs created the iPod because he was dissatisfied with the bloat and capacity of the Walkman/CD, and quickly led Apple out of the quagmire. The iPhone was invented because he was dissatisfied with the functional machine, which opened the era of smartphones and brought Apple to the company with the highest market value in the world; Jack Ma found Alipay because he was dissatisfied with the security of Taobao transactions; Zhang Xiaolong had WeChat because he was dissatisfied with the social experience on the mobile terminal. , allowing Tencent to get the most important ticket in the mobile Internet era; Thiago
After de Arruda submitted multiple MRs and was rejected, he was dissatisfied with Vim’s R&D efficiency and compatibility, so he got NeoVim , which also led to a substantial increase in Vim’s update speed; software developers created countless tools and SDKs due to inefficiency . Such examples abound. They have one thing in common, don’t complain, take action.
Before that, I often complained that there was too much demand and no time to study, I complained that I didn’t learn the network, database, operating system in school, I complained that I didn’t have the opportunity to conduct technical exchanges, etc., but I didn’t take any action after complaining, and I fell into complaining.
-> Inaction ->
A vicious cycle of complaining. It was after hearing this sentence that I tried to break this cycle and began to spend a lot of time on the basics of computers. During that time, I read almost all the classic books in the computer field. In order to have the opportunity to precipitate, I also set up a personal blog and began to try to write high-quality technical articles.
Some people will say that learning so many things do not know when they will be used, but as Steve Jobs said in his speech, collecting
the
Like dots, you can’t predict the future in advance, you just need to collect it quietly. At a certain moment in the future, what you have learned in the past will come in handy. A profound example for me is this six days and nights of tracking down flashbacks in Alipay. This flashback problem uses knowledge of assembly, compilation, linking, signals, debug tools, etc. The accumulation of useless, I am afraid that I do not know how long it will take.
Stop complaining and act.
independent thinking
The last topic I want to talk about is independent thinking.
When we were in school, we had clear goals. Middle school was for university entrance exams, and college was for employment. Schools, teachers, brothers and sisters had already set goals for us. Although the road was rough, our goals were clear. What should be done and what should not be done is clear, and the answer has been verified by countless people. All we have to do is work hard and follow the steps. But everything changed after work.
We grew up in the ocean of various exercises. There is only one answer to objective questions, and machines can mark them. In addition to objective questions, there are so-called subjective questions, such as thinking questions and reading comprehension, but they are not actually subjective, because subjective means that there are a thousand Hamlets in the eyes of a thousand readers, but in our world, subjective questions are only a standard answer. So we get into the habit of thinking about the correct answer when we see a question. Before we do the question, we think about whether it has a reference answer. After we finish it, if we don’t have a reference answer, we even feel that we can’t go on. But after graduating, I gradually discovered that no one can give you a reference for work or life, and there is no answer. There are only results. All results can only be verified by time, maybe a day, maybe a year, maybe a lifetime . After getting used to having standard answers, our life and work seem to have lost the courage to move forward, and we can only passively accept it.
I like watching the NBA very much. I remember that after each game, I would go to the corresponding star’s post to read the posts. In fact, I wanted to see everyone’s “answers”. How do you feel about this game? Do you have any opinions with me? consistent. The same is true for reading books and movies. I like to go to movie reviews and book reviews after reading to see what other people think. It seems that others can give me the answer. After work, I gradually dare not express my own opinions. Everyone tends to have a unified mind. They dare not express themselves in front of group thinking. The ability to think independently is gradually lost.
One day in 2013, a friend came to the house to play and forgot what topic we were talking about. I suddenly realized that my ability to think independently was gradually losing, and I was doing things by feeling. This had a huge impact on my work and life. influences. So I ran to the library and started frantically looking for books about thinking, “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, “The Art of Sober Thinking”, “The Technique of Thinking”, “Li Tianming’s Thinking Art”, “The Power of Thinking”, “Systems” Thinking”, “Beyond Feeling: A Guide to Critical Thinking” and so on, these two words were firmly grasped by me like a life-saving straw, and every book with the word thinking in the title was borrowed back.
However, just as the loss of thinking ability is not caused in an instant, regaining the ability to think cannot be accomplished overnight. For example, according to the research in “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, the brain is “lazy” by default, and can rely on intuition to never use the brain, so independent thinking is very anti-human, so thinking is a habit that needs to be practiced and persisted for a long time. But it will let you not blindly follow the complicated world, let you quickly grasp the essence of things when faced with complex problems, and let you return to a world where you are no longer bound by standard answers.
The thinking of technical people is very simple. Sometimes we are often satisfied with this simplicity and feel very focused. We will set our idols as Facebook founder Zuckerberg and Linux author Linus
Torvalds, Google founder Larry
Page and ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming, they are all models of technical people. But concentration does not mean closing oneself, it does not mean turning one’s ears out of the window and reading only the books of sages. Charlie Munger said:
Recognize and adapt to the true nature of the world around you, don’t expect the world to adapt to you. Constantly challenge and proactively revise your “favorite notions.” Recognize reality, even if you don’t like it — especially if you don’t like it.
Be a practical person, don’t live in your own imaginary world, this sentence is also given to me.
write at the end
I had a chat with a big boss when I left a job. He talked about how he made career choices in the past. I can’t remember the original words. The gist is as follows, for reference. In fact, the same as the company described in “Top of the Wave”, look for that wave, choose the most dynamic industry, choose a good company, business and team, and grow with the business. Never make choices purely for jobs and money.
Growth is continuous and even more jumping. It sowns a seed in the heart because of a person, an event or a sentence at a certain moment, and then quickly or slowly takes root and sprouts. When you look back, you think, yes, it was at that moment that you started to have an idea, which Buddhists call epiphany. One of my favorite movies, “Inception”, visualized it. To change a person’s mind only needs to plant a seed in his mind, let it grow on its own, and eventually it will destroy the entire empire. If many years later, you say that I planted the seed of growth in my heart after listening to your words, that is the greatest success of this article.
There is too much chicken soup and successful learning in the world. The ancients said, read thousands of books and travel thousands of miles. In the end, you need to walk on your own. Growth is a personal matter. Everyone has their own understanding of growth, the above are just some of my superficial understanding. The so-called easier said than done, even I can not fully do the above three things, but the growth has been on the road.
Finally, I end this article with a slogon I like and share with you: Just
do
it!
(End of full text)
feihu
2022.06.27
in Shenzhen
One More
Thing
Stay Hungry
Stay
Foolish
Jobs Stanford University 2005 graduation speech, in memory of Joe
recommend some books
I can’t help but recommend a few books that I’ve read that have had a huge impact on me.
technology
- Code Encyclopedia: The Encyclopedia of the Real Software Development World
- “In-depth understanding of computer systems”: it is no exaggeration to call it the magic of the Nine Suns in technical books
- “The Mystery of Coding”: If university teachers teach like this, there will be more talents in China’s computer industry
Industry & Vision
- “Top of the Wave”: The best books to understand the tech industry, the pinnacle of technical human writing
- “Hackers and Painters”: The founder of stackoverflow, he not only founded the favorite website of programmers, but also has a prophetic understanding of the Internet
think
- “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”: Aristotle said that “excellence is not caused by a single action, but determined by habits”, and this book is about habits
- “The Road to Wealth and Freedom”: Li Xiaolai is not only in the currency circle and New Oriental, this book will refresh your cognition, the originator of various online books/public accounts related to cognitive awakening
- The Pyramid Principle: How to Make Your Expressions More Organized
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