How old can a freelance programmer be? Are they still young?

The number one career risk for programmers is being ruthlessly eliminated by the wave of technology.

In many industries, the career journey of practitioners from entry to exit is like riding on an automatic conveyor belt at an airport. When there are few people, you can move forward, or wait for an opportunity to take the expressway and pass those confused people blocking you, but that's all you can do, and you can't go much faster; when there are many people, you can You can only wait in line patiently, and you will be in a certain position at any age. If the person in front does not leave, you cannot take his position. You walked slowly and steadily this way, but at least it was not that hard. Unless there was a drastic change, the chance of you being kicked off the conveyor belt was slim.

Programmers are different. From entry to exit, it's like a tomb run game: the monsters behind you are chasing after you, and you can only keep running forward. Although you can harvest a lot of gold coins (packages) along the way, once you slow down or fail to change lanes in time, you will have to take the initiative or be kicked out. It is generally honorable to take the initiative to quit - become a manager, become a legal person, switch to VC, switch to sales, teach, be a banker, etc. In short, change roles and forget about the previous role; being kicked out is not a good idea. Respectable - before making enough money, he was ruthlessly abandoned by his employer who had served him for many years. In order to support my family, I had no choice but to restart and return to the track. But it’s so easy to get back on the track - Uncle Ben Si, who is slightly bald, has silver hair mixed with some black hair, and has such a thick belly that you can’t even see his toes when looking from top to bottom, is in his early twenties. Young boy interview: Uncle, tell me, what value can you bring to us?

The second biggest career risk for programmers is that the Matthew Effect is too obvious. Sometimes a slightly lower starting point means years of struggle that are several times that of others.

For fresh computer graduates in 2017, I heard that the price of cabbage is 250,000. I believe it, but this may be the level of the top 10 in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. For the rest, the average income must be at least midway. Five years later, the average price of these top 10 companies will reach 500,000 to 600,000 yuan, and the average price of the rest may not reach the so-called "cabbage price" of their peers five years ago.

This is how the game is played:

You study well, work hard to get into 985, and then study and develop seriously during the four to six years of college. After graduation, A job comes to you. I got an offer from a front-line company such as BAT. I work conscientiously. My salary goes up, my company’s stock doubles, and I’m surrounded by excellent people. Some of them get bored and study for an MBA when they have free time. Some go abroad to accept greater challenges. Some run away. Being the CTO of a start-up company is very frustrating, so you are forced to constantly learn and maintain an excellent state so that you will not be at the bottom. The market is full of olive branches thrown to you, and you can easily get a 20-30% increase by moving to another place, but you don't want to see them;

You are not good at studying, you can only get a bachelor's degree, and college is a bit Abandoned, with not a few lines of code written. After graduation, you look for a job, and the soles of your shoes are worn out. You can barely get an outsourcing company to take you in. You work day and night, but the company is at this level, it is difficult to increase your salary, and the colleagues around you are confused. You are just hanging around, but if you work a little harder, you will stand out from the crowd. Go ahead if you want, but if you have a poor resume, you won’t get good results - I sent my resume to a few big companies that I liked, but it was like water on a lotus leaf, with no trace at all.

This industry is so fucked up: if your starting point is lower, your life trajectory will be much worse. You have to recognize this. If you are unfortunate enough to be the one with a low starting point and a poor status quo, then work harder and find a way to prove that you are no worse than others. In consulting, an industry where birth determines destiny, there are many opportunities to prove your level in this industry - at least, talk is cheap. Show me your code is the best knowledge in the industry.

The third major career risk for programmers is too much temptation, which can easily ruin their careers.

The temptation here is mainly the temptation of market opportunities.

As mentioned earlier, there is a serious imbalance between local supply and demand, so there is no shortage of job opportunities for waving huge amounts of money. If you don't have a good career plan and don't clearly calculate the opportunity cost, it's easy to be tempted by high salaries and change jobs at unreasonable times and inappropriate opportunities. When the new job doesn't turn out as well as you imagined, or the new company collapses, you have to cut your losses and get out. At this point, finding your next job can be tricky. The market does not recognize your value, but you have gone through the process of transitioning from frugality to luxury and are unwilling to look back. Therefore, the next job is still not a well-thought-out choice. After a few wrong choices in a row, your career is in jeopardy.

I have seen people who have changed eight jobs in five years, and I have also seen people who have no stable positioning for themselves and drift back and forth in several directions. I have also seen people with backward resumes - in Silicon Valley, I have seen more career switching between Google - FB - Airbnb, but I have seen career switching between FB - Google - MS (I don't mean to belittle MS). This kind of failure to think clearly, and just changing jobs at will just because the package is temporarily high or low, is the "injury Zhongyong" of programmers.

Above. Hope it can trigger your thinking. Before falling into deep contemplation: please give your appreciation first