“In Shenzhen, everyone walks fast.” This is Xu Liang’s experience. On his first day on the subway to the IT training school, he noticed that the people in front of him suddenly began to sprint, then to trot, and everyone started running along with them. He was caught in the crowd and found that it was the train doors that were closing. He also started sprinting on the platform, cramming himself into the car just before it started. Before he could catch his breath, Xu liang looked up and saw that he was actually taking the train in the opposite direction.
A green light
At the center of the desktop is a traffic light, programmed with red, yellow, and green lights, all of which a qualified programmer can do in two minutes. But sun Ling was awed when she first saw the image 11 years ago, when she was 19, and realized that it was technology that made everything simple, fast and straightforward.
At that time, Sun Ling just learned that she failed in the college entrance examination. After a promotion channel was closed, she came into contact with the job of programmer by chance. She immediately wanted to apply for the IT training school, but something happened to her aunt’s family. Later, after a year working on an assembly line in a cell phone battery factory, Sun Ling saved some money and decided to leave the factory. The first thing she remembered was the red, yellow and green lights.
An IT training school in Huaqiangbei, Shenzhen, secured Sun ling’s ticket to become a programmer, and her story began — getting her diploma through self-examination, moving from job to job, learning English to graduate school in the United States, and eventually landing a job at an American Internet company.
Up to today, the school sun Ling went to is still living very well in the industry. On the sofa at the gate, there are all kinds of people, middle-aged people with vicissitudes of life, young people with confidence, and parents who are overwhelmed, solemnly write down their names and contact information. As long as you fill in an information form at the front desk, All kinds of people — admissions teachers, training teachers, school superintendents — will come knocking and enthusiastically invite you on your way to becoming a programmer.
For those who want to go to IT training school, Sun Ling is a “myth”. During the interview, she was constantly mentioned with a yearning look. She is a coordinate, representing a trajectory that can be mimicked, as the article that went viral last year put it: “She went from assembly-line girl in Shenzhen to high-paying programmer in New York in 10 years.” It arouses the imagination that an ordinary person with no basic knowledge, once he becomes a programmer, has the chance to start a completely new life in the Internet wave. To do so, they are eager to find their way into the Internet world, and attending an IT training school may be the cheapest and lowest barrier.
Xu Liang, 25, is one of them. The IT training school he chose has been running in Shenzhen for a decade and remains modest, with four classrooms and a scattering of small offices crammed into an old office building. The admissions teacher received Xu Liang and promised him that his future job would be guaranteed at a minimum of 6K. She said in front of Xu Liang, “It is completely possible to get 8K if you have more.” She pushed the brochure in front of him. The first page read: “Choose IT. Choose Success.”
Incredulous, Xu looked around at the walls of his training school, plastered with information about “employment stars” whose starting salary was no less than 10K. The admissions teacher continued to sketch out a bright future for him: finding a job, settling down, becoming a new Shenzhen native — and he was encouraged.
To be a new Shenzhen person has only existed in Xu Liang’s imagination. He was born in the countryside and was in the middle of primary school when his parents owned a small hardware store and moved into a county town with only two main roads. My older brothers and sisters either went out to work in factories or stayed in the county to make a living. Only one brother was recognized as “promising” and worked in an Internet company in Shenzhen.
In the summer of 2018, Xu liang received a call from his brother, inviting him to study IT in Shenzhen. At the age of 22, he was working in a carving factory. He was the youngest carver in the factory. The old masters told him to buy cigarettes and betel nuts, but he never said no. One day, he accidentally mentioned to them that he might go to a big city to study IT. “Stop talking nonsense.” His closest teacher said, “I don’t know your mind? Impossible.”
He looked back at the gate of the factory. Everything in the sculpture factory was gray, with granite dust everywhere. As his masters toiled endlessly on the stone and the newly installed CNC carving machine screeched, he felt as if his life had fallen on granite if he stayed any longer. When his brother called again, Xu liang decided to leave for Shenzhen.
Crowds passing through the streets of Huaqiang North. For many, working in IT here means “making IT” and “making money”
shortcuts
“I have no foundation.” In the IT training school, Xu Liang hesitantly asked, “Can you really learn?”
“As long as you know how to turn a computer on and off, you can learn.” The admissions teacher promised.
He went to audition, from the teacher’s operation for the first time know that you can use Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V shortcut keys to copy and paste, he saw the taste of “professional programmer”, “programmers have some unique habits, such as using a lot of shortcut keys.”
Xu liang, who hated school life, found a different feeling in the training school. Four hours of classes in the morning, and self-study in the afternoon and evening. By ten o ‘clock in the evening, his butt was sore, and Xu Liang was reluctant to leave. The school’s computers were old, and students often cursed because they crashed, but Xu always waited patiently. He needed time to stop and think, to catch up with the pace of classes and assignments.
He started teaching JAVA fundamentals, collections, multithreading, arrays, IO streams, and these concepts confused him. As soon as he figured out HTML, CSS3 came along. Fortunately, he learned to search online tutorials, there are online answers, this is his first use of self-study learning.
There are six textbooks, each with nearly 100 pages, and the teacher’s teaching method is “cramming”, teaching only what is in the textbook without further expansion. Xu liang would go to the training school to smoke in the smoking room specially set up for students. Amid the smoke, the smile of the “employment star” on the wall was still conspicuous.
Before in the sculpture factory, Xu Liang can smoke a cigarette for half a day, here, his patience is only enough to smoke half a cigarette. After smoking, I had to go back and memorize the code paragraphs I didn’t understand. In the training school, no one talks about the principle behind the code, really do not understand, to use the time can write down. What groom school Cao teacher understands is, what they pursue is “should test education”, nevertheless “try” what point to is the interview of the enterprise. To the point, it was his custom to slap the blackboard and warn students, “Here’s what to ask in an interview.”
The training school also arranged outstanding graduates to come back to exchange, is a JAVA engineer working in a start-up company, more than a year, he got 15K monthly salary. Xu Liang saw the real person, feel from the speech, this person is not as good as their own. His confidence increased, and he felt that he would soon become a skilled keystroker.
“In Shenzhen, everyone walks fast.” This is Xu Liang’s experience. On his first day on the subway to school, he noticed that the people in front of him suddenly began to sprint, then to trot, and everyone started running along with them. He was caught in the crowd and found that it was the train doors that were closing. He also started sprinting on the platform, cramming himself into the car just before it started. Before he could catch his breath, Xu liang looked up and saw that he was actually taking the train in the opposite direction.
People catch the subway in Shenzhen
Speed has always been synonymous with Shenzhen, where software companies are developing so fast. In 1995, IBM came to Shenzhen. Then, compaq, Seagate, Sanyo, Xerox and other multinational companies set up branches in Shenzhen, bringing technology, jobs and money. Shenzhen became the land of the software industry.
At that time, smart phones were not popular and the era of mobile Internet had not arrived. The market needed people who could write code for portal websites. JAVA was the most commonly used language to develop websites, but C language was still taught in universities — IT training schools emerged to solve this contradiction. Huaqiang North, Nanshan Science park, Longgang Central City, in the edge of the Internet companies, IT training schools crowded into office buildings, employers will directly come to the training school to hold job fairs, each company occupies a small compartment, students lined up to enter the interview, few failed.
Xu liang is eager to catch up with the speed of Shenzhen. In his imagination, the training school is a magic school, teaching the most scarce things on the market, and entering it means a good job and a good future. The IT training school in Shenzhen has the fastest teaching progress of any branch school in China. Students from various provinces are eagerly waiting for the qualification to enter the labor market. What other branch schools teach for a year and a half can be completed in eight months here. In addition to the JAVA language, the course also interspersed with the development of Internet TV wizard, press release system, rental network and other projects, claiming to train students into qualified software engineers. It is like a shortcut key in life, with the fastest speed to the next stage of life.
People are flooding in, and training schools are expanding like crazy. From 2010 to 2012, the most famous Peking University Jade Bird IT Training School opened six branches in Shenzhen. The slogan “Learn IT, get a good job, come to Peking University Jade Bird” has appeared like a mantra on leaflets and TV ads. Danner Education, the largest IT training institution in China at that time, was also listed on NASDAQ in 2014.
The shift took place around 2015, when the boom period was over and giant companies began to emerge. The requirements for code in huge systems were no longer “just work”, but simple, beautiful and sustainable optimization. “Companies are digging their moat.” “Said Zhu Rong, who attended the training school 10 years ago. At the heart of this moat is the highest quality programming, which brings barriers of education, experience, and birth.
Moat repair, ordinary people can not go into, Cao teacher also clearly feel. His school, training materials updated every year and a half, is already the fastest in the industry, while in those large enterprises, “is really changing with each passing day, a month does not learn, will be eliminated by the company.” Training schools are also being phased out. In the three years from 2017 to 2020, the number of Peking University Jade Bird Shenzhen campus was reduced from 6 to 2, and the small training institutions were closed one after another, leaving only the institutions in the head and middle. By the end of 2019, The company had lost 91 percent of its value and received a nasdaq delisting warning after missing its earnings.
The IT trainees are exposed to courses such as JAVA object-oriented programming logic, JAVA Advanced Utility development technology and Web front-end development technology, which seem to meet the production needs of a programmer by name, but are only names. The courses teach the basics of the basics, outdated and rudimentary knowledge. “The same is building a building, head Internet company asked employees to build a skyscraper, the training class can only teach you how to build a brick house.” “Said a senior programmer.
On the market IT training class brochure on the teaching content
Replenish onr’s stock
But some people outside the circle are unaware of all this and still want to get a ride. A few years ago, zeng feng, 22, graduated from a computer science major at an ordinary university and was lured to an IT training school by advertisements, fretted that he had not learned skills that could be directly applied. He has a vague memory of what he learned, but he remembers the anxiety of waiting in line for the bathroom after class. There were so many people that he had to wait six or seven people in front of him at a time.
At that time, he learned that IT training schools also have classes called amateur classes, in which most students from assembly line factories or service industries work on weekdays and study only in the evenings and weekends. Generally, only half of the students in a class can complete all the courses. For them, expensive tuition and large amount of time are obstacles to learning.
But jiang Jie, an enrollment teacher at the training school, sees no difference between part-time and off-job students. They pay the same tuition fee, which means she gets the same commission. For every student who signs up, she will earn 2,000 yuan.
At the training school, Jiang jie didn’t get a basic salary, and every potential student was the money she could get. When she started three years ago, the IT training industry was no longer booming, and fewer students and parents came to consult, leaving her to take the initiative.
For every student who enters the training school, the school requires them to leave the contact information of five classmates around them. Jiang Jie will call them one by one and ask them if they are willing to learn IT. If not, “Do you know anyone who wants to learn IT?” If a student successfully introduces a new student, the student will receive a $1,000 bonus and a $2,000 tuition waiver.
Another way to recruit new students is to take them from poorer universities. The computer majors of these universities will carry out “practical training” courses in the summer vacation of the junior year, and the schools will invite teachers from the training schools to come in exchange for the opportunities of recruitment promotion.
“The most important thing is to forget the past.” Miss Jiang taught the skills of recruiting students. “Whatever the person has been in the past, empathize with them first, then tell them it doesn’t matter, and then look to the future.” She is best at dealing with worried parents who are worried about their children’s future, and she talks about her nonexistent “brothers” and “brothers.”
“My brother, too, is so addicted to games that he has a very strange personality.”
“My brother stopped studying and wanted to work. He didn’t have a job for two years.”
“I asked him to learn how to program, and now he’s working.”
“I don’t earn much, but I can make my own living.”
Tuition is not cheap, around 20,000, each training institutions are this price. However, it doesn’t matter if you can’t afford the tuition, you can use the tuition loan function of the Internet financial APP to pay in installments. The class started with 15 or so students, and more were added, eventually growing to about 30, about half of whom took out loans to pay for tuition.
Another HR came to our door and invited the training school to organize students to interview with the company. There were many jobs for them, including software development engineer and operation and maintenance engineer. She also wrote, HR of the employment cooperation company is once again looking for talent and enjoying first-class corporate benefits and benefits.
The other end of the chat screen shot is Zhao Li, an HR employee of an Internet HR outsourcing company. “HR” is what she calls herself. In fact, people in the industry refer to these positions as “sales.” Her job is to sell heads to party A’s employers. She introduced the students who graduated from IT training school to Party A for an interview. After passing the interview, the students would work for Party A with low salary and sign the contract with the human resource outsourcing company, which would pay a certain fee to party A.
Recruitment requirements are getting higher and training schools’ output is not keeping up with market demand, and resume fraud is starting to emerge. But Zhao never cares whether the students’ resumes are real or fake. What she cares about is her own quotas and commissions. In a month, she will introduce more than 150 people to party A for an interview. If one of them can pass the interview and become a regular outsourcing employee, she can get 1,000 yuan commission from the company. “No one goes to a training school, except a staffing company.” She said. “When I go to a training school, it’s like buying from a wholesale market. I don’t care about the quality of the product, I just need to sell it.” A fake CV means it can be sold more easily.
The stairwell of a building in Huaqiang North is covered with different recruitment notices such as shopping guides and developers, so many employees passing by will stop and notice
outsourcing
Xu didn’t have time to thoroughly research what each company did, so he applied for every position labeled “software engineer” or “JAVA engineer.” Eventually he was hired by a small company with a monthly salary of 6-7K. After signing the agreement, he looked back at the company’s profile and realized he was working with a project outsourcing company, with a long list of major partners ranging from government agencies to film and television companies.
The project outsourcing company is Party B, responsible for contracting the project from Party A and developing software according to Party A’s requirements. Without its own products, the work content and progress shall be determined by Party A. If you ask online whether to work for a software outsourcing company, you’ll get almost no advice. But Xu Liang had no other choice, when the class when the loan, tuition is more than twenty-three thousand, did not start to look for a job, urging repayment of the message has been sent to the mobile phone, must find a job, this idea in his brain stretched into a string, urging him to do everything.
He finally came to shenzhen software Park, the first day of work by subway, has been accustomed to the rhythm of Shenzhen, he walked out of the subway along the stream of people. “Good for you.” His mind was so full of joyful thoughts that he almost fell on the subway steps. But when he really began to work, his heart a trace of luck immediately disappeared — because he was too “vegetables”.
At the beginning, he was afraid to ask his colleagues questions for fear of appearing too incompetent. I reinforced this idea every time I finished my work. Once, the deadline given by the supervisor was too tight, so he had to find a ghostwriter on Taobao, but the ghostwriter was not good enough. They studied methods together and submitted the task on time.
At a sharing session at his training school, Xu liang revealed why he dropped out of high school: his head teacher caught him reading online novels in class and forced him to read the content in front of the class. He was already humiliated by his poor grades, and he always suspected that his teachers and classmates despised him. Now the humiliation had returned. In a meeting, his supervisor asked him, “How do you write the program log? No kid just going to college would write it like this.” Xu liang sensed several colleagues nodding approvingly. He feels wronged. He didn’t go to college. How does he know?
But then he became less likely to back down, and he corrected everything he was criticized for. One of my colleagues with the best technical level is a computer major who has been working for one year. He went to consult him about the framework and read a lot of technical forums.
With only a few days until his first project’s delivery date, he was practically living at the company. He lives in Ping Chau, only 20 minutes away from the software park, but he is reluctant to spend such a little time. He began to plan that after finishing this project, he would contact as many different projects as possible and learn more. He would definitely stay here for less than a year, and then he could jump to another company.
Two days before the delivery date, he worked late at 12:30 PM and was waiting for the bus to take him home downstairs when his supervisor’s phone suddenly came. He picked up the phone and heard the sad news: “Party A has changed its demand.” He was so stunned that he couldn’t sleep all night.
Xie Fei is the same, his sales company business is very simple, but just from the training school for him is difficult to deal with. Xie Fei always surreptitious to the Internet to check some code to knock, the only programmer colleagues in the company sat beside him, from time to time gather together to ask him how the progress, he hurriedly put the web fork off, for fear of each other to see. Once he got used to the pace of the company, he quickly realized he wasn’t making any progress. He looked for a new job and, with few options, joined a staffing outsourcing company.
One day when I was in the training school, the teacher said that a senior had brought back a job opportunity and asked everyone to go and have a look. When he got there, he found out the job was to develop gambling software in Cambodia. At least, he thought, the outsourcing firms were better than the illegal gambling industry. Xie fei didn’t even know the address of the company he signed. His on-site work provided by Party A does not belong to Party A in the contract and his position does not belong to Party B. No one could provide him with a sense of belonging.
What awaited Xie was the usual overtime and endless projects, without seeing how his work was published or used. Contractors don’t get paid to work overtime, and their bosses often post assignments at 4 or 5 p.m., only to catch the last train.
“It’s like typing code into the air,” he says. “You are just a human resource, and can be replaced just like a desk or chair.”
In vain
A food delivery platform once shot a promo about a programmer who delivered food to an Internet company, saw a problem with the code, and sat down like a savior from heaven to help them fix the bug. “Delivering food is just to stretch your muscles.” The programmer in the promo gives a big smile to the camera.
It’s better to deliver food — a joke Xu and his colleagues often joke about. After two or three months on the job, the initial passion faded away. When he lay tired in bed at night after working overtime, he often thought of this joke mockingly: delivering food is to carry the code, but nothing new can be produced.
Sometimes he wants to optimize the program on a whim, but he doesn’t think it’s necessary, and he doesn’t get extra credit for creating a better program. The goal of his work is only one, is to complete the task, so many tasks that he can not breathe, his best way to relieve stress is to imagine how he will quit gracefully, how to annoy the supervisor he does not like. After working for half a year, his colleagues had changed and the skilled college student had left.
Probably in May this year, Xu Liang’s right wrist began to hurt, and it was difficult to lift his hand when knocking code. It should be tenosynovitis, and his colleagues diagnosed him with certainty. Xu Liang is not willing to go to the hospital, oneself just work less than a year, said to have tenosynovitis, hypocritical.
On that day, it was raining heavily in Shenzhen. A project had been finished a few days ago, but the new project had not yet arrived. Everyone in the company looked lazy. “I write about this filth every day, and it gets dirtier every day.” Similar thoughts wandered through his mind. “Dirty” is the word programmers use to describe overly redundant code. He looked around, suddenly unable to bear the deadness of the atmosphere, and the scene of his resignation, which he had imagined before, came to him. He walked to the director’s office. “Boss, I want to talk to you about resigning.” “Good.” The supervisor listened to him quietly, didn’t say a word, gave him a quick explanation of the procedure and escorted him out of the office door.
Xu Liang walked out of the company building. It was raining harder. Everything is back to square one, he thought. Working experience in an outsourcing company is not a good plus. In this industry, the outsourcing company is equivalent to low technical level. Now looking for a job, he is most likely to join another outsourcing company. He ran three or four interviews and gave up.
Not many of his training school classmates were in touch with him; one of his closest started at a startup, was laid off, and was once again looking for work. He heard vaguely that the only girl in the class had returned home to get married. “Most students do that. After a year or two, they go back to their profession.” Cao teacher said.
Cao teacher taught the amateur class, he has a student surnamed Zhao, working in the NUMERICAL control factory, in order to get the opportunity to attend class every night, find a relationship to let the director of the original three shifts of the working hours are arranged in the daytime. He slept three or four hours a night, and at first he was the most studious and talented person in the class. But Teacher Cao still saw his spirits go down. Not everyone can insist on such a life. Zhao began to doze off in class. At first cao teacher would wake him up, but later reluctant to disturb him, strong support for more than half a year, he gradually couldn’t keep up with the rhythm of the class, also dropped out.
Xu Liang also feels confused, he finally understands “myth” Sun Ling is only rare solitary example, for most people, go up training school, do a programmer of the bottom layer, more just a futile leap. Do you want to make a delivery? He began to think about it seriously, his only concern being that his right wrist would continue to hurt even if he stopped typing.
A part-time delivery programmer turns on his computer on the side of the road to tweak the code
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