While pursuing his PhD in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, he wrote a multiprocessor version of the Unix operating system and was the founder of the JAVA programming language, James Gosling.
With the popularization of the Internet, Java has become a popular development language all over the world. The 60-year-old father of Java has posted on Facebook about his experience with age discrimination.
He was once told in an interview, “Normally we don’t hire programmers your age, but you’re a special consideration because of your situation.”
While working at Google, I heard that several 30-somethings wanted plastic surgery to make them look younger.
According to statistics, the average age of a working worker in America is 42, but in Silicon Valley the figure is even lower. Apple is 31, Google and Tesla 30, Facebook and LinkedIn 29, and others are even younger.
To be fair, age-related job anxiety is not unique to programmers. It can be found in many jobs. Have you ever had this anxiety?
I don’t know about others, but there are very few programmers living in 2018 who are not anxious. Experienced the skyrocketing housing prices and halved, can calm people that inner strength is probably not ordinary people can reach.
I in addition to give you write the article, also often take part in all kinds of business activities, in a lot of the public heard the same words, “in China, the success of a programmer is not depends on whether your code to write good, but depends on whether you are in the right time, right place, bought a right room”.
Frankly, there are many sources of anxiety besides houses. For example, many people suffer from low battery anxiety. They start to worry when the battery of their mobile phone is only 70%, and they always like to plug it in and charge it wherever they go. Others have WiFi anxiety and are at a loss when they disconnect from the Internet.
But the sum total of countless such anxieties is not as great as the fear we have in this age of uncertainty, of uncertainty between speculation and hard work, of not knowing where the right direction is, of not knowing what the next generation is going to do, of not knowing where we are going to end up.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Everyone, like you and me, is just a speck of dust in this era, how many years later, we will not have any memory in history.
However, in the 5,000-year history of Chinese civilization, such an era has gone through many cycles. In this broad context, what we are worried about today is nothing.
In the past, many capitalists were anxious that they were not the third generation of poor peasants. Now, many poor peasants are anxious that they are not capitalists. In those days, many people worried that they did not have commodity grain, but now many college students with urban hukou worry that they can no longer become farmers.
Too often, we like to magnify the impact of what we don’t get and ignore the positive value of what we do get. So, a lot of things that today might seem like a huge anxiety, but decades from now, you might be anxious about what you get.
But so much for the nonsense. We programmers are anxious enough, and each one can crush us:
If the salary is too low to afford, the house may seem affordable or unaffordable (if the salary is too low to afford, the problem is not considered at all).
New technologies are coming every day, concepts are coming; My boss makes me work overtime every day and I can’t seem to learn anything from what I do.
The dog next door doesn’t have a degree, but he’s worth tens of millions just by buying houses. Why do I wish I had bought that house?
I am always a senior engineer. I work so hard and work so many years. Why can’t I be a scholar-bureaucrat and engineer?
Children looked at the big, the reading, Beijing and Shanghai and other places to read how to do? There are so many people competing…
The combination of these anxieties has done great harm to our programmers’ careers, as we have no way to settle down and work on technology. Since studying may be useless, it may not be very useful to write excellent code, after all, one year earlier to buy a house of five or six million yuan, one year later, double, many engineers coding for a lifetime.
So we every day desperately coding, and ignore to buy a house, what hope?
Let’s be honest and acknowledge that these anxieties are real, and some of them may not be fixed any time soon. So we have objectively existed in the case of these anxieties, to explore some ways to alleviate.
- Depression or positive self-talk?
First of all, of course, from the psychological level to ease, to establish an optimistic, heroic state of mind. At all times keep, hell, living one day at a time, happy one day at a time, and don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about tomorrow.
Don’t magnify the negative effects of what you can’t get. For example, can not rise scholar-bureaucrat engineer, then we think, rise again how? Is that gonna stop the anxiety right now? You’re gonna get ahead of everyone right now? Is it really impossible to get through a day without a promotion? Everything is A dynamic process. A high position in company A may mean nothing in company B. If I have a low position in COMPANY B, I may be recognized and promoted quickly in Company C. Believe that gold will shine.
- Leniency or is it all for personal gain?
As an engineer, you already have a miserable life. If you don’t have three or five good friends in the company, who support each other, laugh at each other, fight with each other, but also have to stand up and pretend to push to the end, then the life is not easy.
Our friends in the company are likely to be the ones who will help us through the most difficult times in the future. I personally lucky to know a lot of good friends in life, they helped me at the key time, can say, without them, I have a lot of trenches in front of the cankan can not walk past.
So, can we sacrifice the interests of colleagues for the sake of personal promotion and salary increase? I don’t think so. Life is a long run, by throwing a banana peel to trip up others and run to the front of the practice, not fair and square. The person who stepped on the banana skin is probably not a fool. So, the person throwing the banana skin is likely to step on the bigger watermelon skin, if the conservation of gain and loss.
Cherish the colleagues around us, they may be the people who can help us in the end, they are friends rather than enemies, although there may be short-term conflicts of interest, but the final gain may be much more.
- Learn the underlying technology or the money-making technology?
My personal opinion is that we should not give up the idea of making money, for example, it is clear that the future of hardware is delicate, you must go to learn high-speed PCB design. So when choosing a direction, definitely have to consider making money.
For example, Mr. Cha once told a story that one of his younger brothers asked him whether it was better to work on the Linux kernel or JAVA or Python, and Mr. Cha told him that it was better to work on the upper level. Later, the younger brother invited him to dinner every time he saw him, thanking him for showing a clear way.
The direction of making money is important, but laying the groundwork may be even more important. If the basic principles of the computer are not understood, the basic operating system is not understood, even PV operation, mutex and so on, then it is very likely to be blind in any direction.
There are many programmers in the work, never think, nor refine and sublimate their knowledge system, so that in fact, everything is in a cloud, so it is difficult to make progress in technology, it is probably better direction is to change careers. Although there are numerous technical directions, surprising similarities can always be found in all technical directions. People with good foundation and strong learning ability seem to learn everything quickly.
- In one place to die or see the world?
Coding should not only sink down, but also come out. Coding is quiet as a virgin, play when moving like a rabbit. Coding is not everything in life.
Technical direction and investment financial management, eggs put in a basket, there are also great risks. Therefore, when we are working hard to solve a bug today, we can also read more books, learn about cutting-edge technology, expand our horizons, and hibernate first, waiting for opportunities.
So a good combination of skills is to be very proficient in one direction and very knowledgeable in several directions. If we write a USB driver in Linux, and then other drivers do not look at the mechanism of the kernel, do not look at the upper programming, D-bus do not look at what, then there is a greater professional risk.
In addition, Coding is not the whole world, and there is also a world when you open it up. My brother’s wife, she owns a grocery store, physical stores, and she buys all kinds of food online, which is a good thing, we warmly welcome it. On the one hand, it can add spice to life. On the other hand, it can earn money to support the family. Life is not just about code, it’s about buying and selling and having fun.
Reading extra books can also relieve anxiety. JD, taobao to buy a book, really do not have much money, eat a crayfish, is several books. Read more books on VR, artificial intelligence, human civilization, and social history. Every time I read them, I found myself less anxious.
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