Before, many readers asked me to be a project manager, and wanted to ask me about my experience and lessons. I promised many people to write it, but I haven’t written it yet. Now that the end of the year is approaching, what I promised in 2018 should never be put off until 2019. I’m going to talk to you today. It might be a little long.

In fact, I wanted to write this article for a long time, but to tell the truth, the reason for not writing it is a little guilty. After all, I have only graduated less than five years ago, and I am not a giant in the industry, nor a well-known big V, so I am afraid that my writing will lead readers to mislead. However, on second thoughts, who is not like this? Most people can not find a satisfactory job immediately after graduation, and most people are also confused about their career plans. They are slowly accumulating, feeling the stones all the way across the river. Today I boldly write out, even if there is a little inspiration for you, can help you take a little detour, I think it is worth it.

I graduated from an ordinary undergraduate university in 2014, majoring in computer and science and technology, which can be regarded as the so-called koji background. In terms of obtaining graduation certificate and degree certificate after graduation, I am qualified, but in terms of professional skills required for graduation and employment, I am a student with poor performance. I don’t want to overemphasize the disconnect between College education in China and the job skills society needs. In today’s Internet age, almost any technology you want to learn is available. It’s all about how you use the resources, so don’t complain about your school or college environment.

When I think about it now, I enjoyed my college life so much. Basketball, DOTA, girls, a bunch of good brothers, lively classes, and recklessly squandered my youth. The four years in college can be said to be the best memory in my life so far. But time is fair, some people wanton youth, graduation is faced with unemployment, and some people as early as the postgraduate entrance exam or work preparation, they can also do. I am the former, but I do not regret, that time is short and beautiful, youth without regret.

At the end of my junior year, although I had poor professional skills, I still had some basic knowledge of programming, so I tried to find a job in an e-commerce website company. What I remember deeply is that the boss of that company offered me a monthly salary of 2000. It should be noted that it was 2013 and I had not graduated yet. Besides, I was living in a small inland city of 4th and 5th tier, so 2000 per month felt really a lot. I went in with a few internship students, privately I asked only 1000 points. My heart was so happy at that time, I think this is mainly from my performance in the interview. In fact, the technical level was very low at that time. I felt that the boss thought I had stronger comprehensive ability and hoped that I could lead a small team in the future. I was the monitor in college, I think communication ability is good, I think this is the main reason, in the interview communication process, I showed confidence, called bragging force also line, I feel conquered that boss, of course, may be because I am too handsome (oh, the boss seems to be a woman).

Later, as graduation approached, my family took an examination of civil servants. I did try my best to take the exam and almost entered the interview. To be honest, I think about it now. If I had been a civil servant, I would have regretted it. After I failed the civil servant exam, I thought to continue to look for a computer related job. At that time, I didn’t really want to go to a big city. I thought that going to a big city like Beijing might be to look for death. A cousin to my suggestion is that you have to make up his mind to work in the computer industry, don’t small cities development, want to go to the IT hub north wide, at that time he gave me an image of the example, remember well, do IT in a small town in Idaho like boating in the river lake, only to the big city of rivers and the sea, can after wind and rain, the sails. Looking back on the past few years, it is.

From thinking that I could not find a job and was looking for death, to making up my mind to come to Beijing, I experienced a lot, including the opposition of my family and my own painful ideological struggle. I’m glad I beat myself, and I’m grateful for the courage I had to make up my mind. Don’t take risks and try when you are young, should you wait until you are old?

I learned Java in college. When I first came to Beijing, I only had some basic knowledge and limited coding ability. I applied for part of my resume and received few interviews. In contrast, many of my classmates did attend the training, and they did find jobs faster than I did. Because of the previous internship experience, I still have confidence in myself, I think I can find a job without training, I prefer to learn on the job, rather than go back to the days of classes, facts have proved that I can. Although there are few interview opportunities, I seize every interview opportunity, every interview is an opportunity to improve myself. Basically, I interviewed during the day and came back to study at night, which I found very efficient. In order to prepare relevant knowledge for the job requirements, I remember that I stayed up until 2 or 3 o ‘clock at night during the week of job interview. Finally, my efforts paid off and I received offers from two companies, one of which was to do testing and the other was to do Java development. Considering the future development direction, I chose Java development.

In the first half of the year, I basically worked on projects with others in the company during the day, and then went back to study by myself at night. To tell you the truth, it was very hard, the level was too low at that time, we were also very busy, when there was a problem, I would not easily ask others until I had to, the basic is their own information, their own groping. Here, sometimes some technical problems if they have not been solved for a period of time, you should be shameless and ask your colleagues, there is no shame, skills are not as terrible as people, terrible is that you dare not face, others’ advice can let you take a lot of detours. After half a year’s efforts, I gradually began to follow the project from a Java white, and learned to build a framework. Although the work is hard, often work overtime, but there are a few peers into the company, we work overtime and play together, gradually become friends, the salary is not high but still happy. After nearly two years of this kind of life, I gradually found problems. First, there was not much I could learn in this company, the technical atmosphere was not enough, and the space for improvement was limited. Second, the leader has been verbally saying that he would give us a raise, but he has been putting it off. Every time after working overtime for a period of time, he would take us out to eat, drink and share a brotherly love. Only blame at that time we were too young, unexpectedly every time were moved by the leadership of the brotherhood, anxious for him on the mountain of fire. Later, I learned that the two old employees who love drinking and play with their leaders gave “benefits” to their leaders in private. And they’re the ones who tell us what to do, when we do a lot more work than they do. Recognizing this, several of us changed companies one after another. When we left, the leader still tried to retain us, saying that the current market is not good and it is difficult to find a job. Who can believe your bullshit anymore? I don’t know, our salaries have almost doubled or tripled. Children who are reading this article, if your leader is this kind of people who always take brotherly love to wash their brains, now is the market economy, listen to the elder brother’s words, find an opportunity to quickly withdraw.

In the next company, I started to do Java development. At this time, my level was far from the top, but I could play an important role in the project, even in some projects. But gradually I found problems again, this time not with the company, but with myself. At this time, I have been doing RESEARCH and development for nearly three years. When I was thinking about my future development direction, I was lost. In what direction? During that period, I read a lot of books about career planning, and many of them basically pointed to two paths, one is management direction, the other is technical bull, architect direction. I compared myself and asked myself a few questions, do I like writing code? Can I go deeper into technology?

To tell the truth, at the beginning of the university to choose a major, most people, like, do not know what they like. When I chose my major, I thought that computer symbolized science and technology and the future, so I chose computer. In fact, I don’t know whether I like this major or not, and whether I will like to write code in the future. After writing code for a few years, I found that sometimes I like to write code, especially when I use my own ideas to implement an awesome feature. At that time, I even thought I could change the world. But I find this kind of inner satisfaction and pride is not so much, but more likely from completing a task. I’ve also found that this is true of a lot of people around me, but there are a few people who not only like writing code, but are good at it. For example, the same feature development might be completed in half a day by someone who is good at it, but I can also finish it, but it takes a day or more. Some people may say, this shows that you don’t work hard, you didn’t grasp the great technical knowledge in time. Even if you work hard at the same thing, you have to admit that some people are more gifted at it. It’s called good at it, and you like it at best. I especially like playing basketball, sometimes even fantasy to play NBA, watching NBA all know Kobe is awesome, except my department every day to see Los Angeles at 4 o ‘clock in the morning sun, do you think people have no talent, efforts and talent, people this is called good at, I even 24 hours a day to try to play basketball, at most called like.

Recognizing the gap between liking and being good at it, I gradually realized that I like writing code at best, but I’m not good at it. It may take 5 years to become a technical genius, but it may take me 10 years or more. Maybe if I try harder, it’s theoretically possible, but sometimes the choice is more important than the effort. Maybe others will become a big bull in 5 years, while I have become a bald man on my way to becoming a big bull. After I recognized myself, I decided that I would not take the route of technical bull. Of course, this only means that I take into consideration when choosing the route. Different people have different situations. It does not mean that management is good and technology is bad. Even though I was determined to go into management, I didn’t slack off on technology until I became a project manager, because that’s what I was built for. As for the management route, at that time is also half-knowledge, do not know their specific management route how to go. But I planted a seed in my heart, waiting for it to sprout.

Under the condition that I was determined to take the management route in the future, I did not give up the improvement of technology. I would pay attention to some things THAT I did not pay attention to before, such as some communication on the project, requirements proposed by customers or product managers, project scope control, project milestones, project stage summary and so on. I used to think of them as chores, useless things. Spending time on these things would be better if I just wrote a few lines of code and didn’t have to deal with so many people and things. I think most programmers feel the same way, but these things that don’t seem to matter to programmers turn out to be essential to completing a project, and sometimes more important than writing code.

Here are two situations, see if you have encountered them. When I just wrote the code, the group leader assigned a development task, I did not ask anything, think understand directly started to do, the result was almost finished, the group leader told me that he did not want to be like this, god, hard to write a long time of code to rewrite. This is a typical problem encountered by programmers. On the one hand, there is a lack of understanding of the functional requirements. On the other hand, lack of communication with the assignment person. Another kind of circumstance, sometimes customer demand made it very clear, we understand very clear, communication is good also, as we do all right, but there’s a real let us very pain, feel to do more and more function, nima what time can finish ah, demand feel infinitely didn’t head, to time limit for a project we have to work overtime helpless pain. It’s understandable that you’re working overtime toward your goal, but a project like this can take a lot of mental stress away from the excitement of changing the world. The first situation mentioned above requires us programmers to understand the requirements and communicate more when writing code, so as to escape into the thinking trap of the island. However, the latter situation seems to have nothing to do with programmers writing code, but directly affects us, which is actually the problem to be solved by the project manager.

The second condition mentioned above, called project scope creep in project management, belongs to the problem of project scope management. So how do project managers generally deal with this problem? It comes to defining project scope in project scope management. Defining scope is actually the process of defining requirements, determining which requirements are in the project scope and which will be checked outside the project scope, so as to define the boundaries of project products, services or results. The process of defining the scope included an output called the Project Scope Statement, formerly known as the Project Statement of Work (SOW). This document generally needs to be determined by party A and Party B of the project. In most cases, it is a very formal written document signed by the responsible persons of both parties. Need a project manager in the process of project according to the the control scope of the project in time, if there is a scope creep will find customer related party manager timely communication, general customers see this when we agree on file will no longer forced to force the new demand, of course there are exceptions, then escalate as necessary. The problems in the practical project is not just this kind of circumstance, there are many, such as the project time management, cost management, quality management, communication management, risk management and so on, each one can write an article on, limited by space, here is not a speak one by one, later have the opportunity to pick everyone interested in what I understand.

Back to my experience, when I constantly improve my skills, I will pay attention to what the project manager does, and often assist the project manager to deal with some work on the premise of finishing my own work. At one time, the company had many projects, but the project manager was limited. The project manager was always in charge of several projects at the same time. In addition to completing my own development tasks, I will try my best to help the project manager to do some things, such as writing project documents, analyzing business requirements and communicating with customers. I have learned a lot about the different ways of communicating with different customers. But also very tired, many times in the middle of the night to help write documents, do not think that the project manager is very easy.

Instead of developing, it’s more about focusing on your own code and just getting the features done. The project manager is concerned from start to finish. At the beginning of the project, the project plan should be made and the project scope should be defined. During the implementation process, the project progress should be kept in check and various risks should be assessed. During the project acceptance stage, the customer acceptance criteria should be ensured. Sometimes I feel like I’d rather just write code, but I feel like everything has a process and I can’t do everything right at the beginning. Gradually, I got familiar with the complete process of a project. On one occasion, my own projects, project managers have had to leave in the home, need a man who can control the progress of the entire project, the project manager to lead recommended me, I’m under pressure to meet, after all, this is an opportunity, I can’t solve the problems encountered during, lead to report in time, and finally was married last projects. The department manager noticed all my efforts. Through this opportunity, I also proved myself that I could not only write code, but also carry out projects. Although there was no change in my position in the short term, I started to lead projects in the subsequent projects. I worked as a project manager, and I did get promoted.

It should be noted that the project manager from technology, mostly start from the project, slowly experience, a lot of times is promoted, not to say that you graduate from college or suddenly want to turn the project manager can do, this requires a process, need your steadfast do their work under the premise of pay attention to more, to learn more. Others who are sensitive to customer needs and interested in product design can also become product managers, which is another option in the management route.

Unconsciously, I feel that I have written a long time, thank you very much to see here, AND I will often share some of my feelings here later. Whether it is technology or management, I hope everyone can find their own way. Finally, no matter what you do, cultivate your writing skills. Take notes, summarize, and share more. Every time you write, it’s a great conversation with yourself. Welcome to my public account “Kevinsheng”. In the future, I will often share my career experience and sentiment. I look forward to communicating with you and making progress together.