2019, A Little Closer to the Future

Today is the winter solstice — everyone, remember to eat tangyuan (dumplings)~

The winter solstice is an important holiday in my hometown: once you have finished your tangyuan, it means you have grown another year older. Writing a year-in-review on the winter solstice has also always been 阿汤’s habit.

From last winter solstice to now, 阿汤 has been through some ups and downs, and has come out stronger than ever.

The Internet Winter

In December 2017, for all sorts of reasons, I left a startup I had originally planned to stay with until after graduation. It was already the tail end of autumn recruiting, and many companies had filled their openings. I applied to three internet companies in Beijing, and also got an offer from my former employer 果壳网.

Some may ask: why not wait for spring recruiting?

Because I wanted to devote myself completely to my graduation project. A job can be found later, but there is only one graduation project — I didn’t want to leave any regrets behind.

In fact, my graduation project remains the work I am most satisfied with to this day. It was the fruit of most of the tech stacks I had dabbled in since college (Python, Java, Web, Android, machine learning).

I have never regretted any decision I have made. If I could choose again, I would still choose the same.

After graduating, I became a front-end engineer at 果壳. Although I had a lot of Web development experience in college, all my previous projects were traditional PC pages, so my understanding of front-end work never went beyond native HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (ES5) — probably the consequence of my randomly scattering skill points across the skill tree during college, haha.

To hold my ground in the internet industry, I had to close the gaps in my front-end skills as fast as possible.

This is the daily schedule I kept until the very day I left.

05:30 wake up
05:57 catch the first train at Xingong subway station
07:00 arrive at the office
07:10 run on the treadmill at the office
07:30 memorize vocabulary
07:50 read technical blogs
09:30 dive into work

I liked that regular, productive rhythm. My commute plus my morning study time let me quickly make up the knowledge I was missing. Little by little, I also began to have the energy to explore the frontiers of front-end development, things like PWA. My first technical article, A Corner of PWA, was written at the end of August 2018; from choosing the topic, to gathering material, to trying things out myself, to finally finishing the piece, it took about a month in all.

Thanks to solid performance and fast growth, I also passed my probation review with a high score.

On December 28, 2018, at the morning meeting I was still listening to the product director lay out the direction of the coming year’s work; that very afternoon, HR and the technical director called me into a small meeting room for a talk. Because my attitude, ability, and output had all been excellent, right up until HR took out the separation agreement, I thought this might be about giving me a raise. Hahaha, I was still too young.

The moment I saw the separation agreement, my mind went completely blank. As a colleague would ask me later, “Why me?”

Right — why, and by what measure?

After going through this, I also came away with some thoughts on the internet industry, on how companies are run, and on career development. I will find time to organize them and share them with everyone later.

It was the first time I had ever seen that deadpan HR rep cry, and the technical director looked awful too. I imagine they must have made some effort to keep me.

I held back my tears, signed my name on the agreement, and said goodbye to my colleagues with a smile.

When I got down to street level, facing the cold wind, the tears I had been holding in finally broke free — I cried the whole way from Tonghui River to Jiulongshan. I probably will never cry like that again in this lifetime.

The rather funny thing is, all three companies I had applied to in my senior year had layoffs.

I guess I was simply fated to go through this trial, hahaha.

A Trip on a Whim

I had meant to line up my next job before Spring Festival, but the plan came to an end for a reason that sounds a little absurd: “the apartment I rent has no heating”.

Honestly, on ordinary workdays I never felt the missing heating was much of a problem, because after getting home I would basically just wash up and sleep, and my comforter was fairly thick on top of that. But reading or writing code at home, outside the shelter of the covers, was sheer bliss. Friends who know me well know that I don’t wear a down coat in winter, yet I was forced to dig out the down coat I had buried away for ages. Even so, I still shivered uncontrollably every day.

Unable to bear this double torture of body and mind, in the end I bought a ticket home, stopping by Wuhan along the way to visit my college roommate.

(Photos taken by a sad person come out a bit sad, too)

I had hoped the trip would help heal my heart a little, but during that stretch, whenever I was alone with myself, an inexplicable sadness would always well up.

Probably, the only way out of an inner low is to find the next company you like, sooner rather than later.

An Unexpected Encounter

Actually, my initial idea was to pick a company doing internet education or enterprise services.

After Spring Festival, once I was back in Beijing, I interviewed at 头条, 神策数据, 猿辅导, and HIGO within two days, and received offers from 猿辅导 and HIGO.

Of all the companies I interviewed with, HIGO was the most sincere with candidates. Two things during the interview really moved me. First, it was the first and only company to discuss my blog posts with me during an interview, which is the greatest form of respect for me. Second, at HIGO, nearly every candidate who passes the four interview rounds gets one more round with the CEO; a company’s top leader setting aside all of his work to spend a full hour talking with a candidate face to face is genuinely rare.

The conversation with the CEO also made me rethink my career plan, and the interview experience made me feel valued, so in the end I chose HIGO, even though the other offer paid more than 50% more.

Everything Is Getting Better

After starting the job, I consciously made a series of adjustments and gradually got my old self back.

I picked my vocabulary habit back up and started practicing spoken English as well. (A screenshot of the 墨墨背单词 app)

(A screenshot of the 英语流利说 app)

I even applied to do a book translation, but I didn’t pass the sample translation. (sobs)

Not quite willing to let it go, I began translating the V8 blog (before, I had only read it), hoping to grab the next opportunity when it comes.

Starting from mid-February when I joined, it took a little over a month before I fully recovered my old form.

Being in good form also helped me better take on the challenges of all kinds of new technologies and handle the dense run of development and iteration tasks in the months that followed.

As my abilities gradually won recognition, I took on more and more important development tasks, became an interviewer for Node.js roles, and earned the first quarterly bonus of my life.

As the saying goes, what doesn’t knock you down will surely make you stronger.

Recognition from the Community

In 2019 I wrote two articles in my V8 series, and the hat of “low-output blogger” still hasn’t come off (boo-hoo).

Partly it’s that I really was too busy, and partly it’s that I have always held my articles to a fairly high standard.

(The chart above is my own tally of the metrics of all the articles I have published on 掘金 so far)

Object Representation in V8 got likes from 4 out of every 100 readers on 掘金; a few days ago, after I moved it to 知乎, it quickly gathered 23 upvotes and even earned the approval of the well-known justjavac.

The JavaScript Execution Pipeline in V8 broke my own records for both views and likes. It was picked up by 奇舞周刊 and 政采云前端周刊, and also won recognition from some 掘金 bloggers I admire.

Thanks to 掘金 and all my fellow 掘金 friends for the support. Next year I will keep striving to produce more quality articles; I may adjust my writing style a bit, aiming to explain things in a more approachable way.

Small Hopes for 2020

In 2020, in life, I hope that while keeping up vocabulary practice and spoken English, I can cultivate more “micro-habits”.

Do HIIT every day after moving (my current room is so small there isn’t even space to roll out an exercise mat)
Keep 20-30 minutes of reading before bed (mostly non-technical books)
Digest 1 high-quality technical blog post every day

In 2020, in technical sharing, I hope to broaden the range of what I write about, do some thinking on where technology is heading and on career planning, and put real care into running my blog, my website, and my WeChat public account. At the same time, I hope to put out my first open-source work.

Winter has come — can spring be far behind?

Here is a painting by a good friend of mine; wishing everyone a beautiful winter.

(If you like it, you can follow 鳄鱼紧张 on Weibo and on their public account; searching “鳄鱼紧张” in the WeChat sticker store will also find lots of adorable sticker packs)

Winter, though cold, is also beautiful.

2020 — everything will get better.

Let’s keep cheering each other on!