How should a programmer handle a mid-life crisis?

We often hear programmers talk about their mid-30s crisis, but we rarely hear people in other professions, like doctors, bring it up. As long as you work hard, there is no such thing as a mid-life crisis at the age of 35. You see, foreign programmers can work until they are 50 or 60. There is no such thing as a mid-life crisis at the age of 35, is that really the case?

Today, we’re going to talk about whether there is such a thing as a mid-life crisis, and if so, what we should do about it.

Is there a midlife crisis?

I’m a big believer in the midlife crisis. Is 35 a mid-life crisis, mainly because programmers are engaged in this industry, competition threshold is low, also do not have much technical challenge, not too many barriers to competition, so that at the age of 35, begin to enter the career plateau, or even decline period, salary, position can’t continue to rise, even a lot of guys upside down.

But 35 is just a statistic, and not everyone has a midlife crisis when they hit it. Some people have their midlife crises earlier, others have them later, and some people don’t have them until retirement.

Let’s take an example. If you do technology in a very small and low company, because the project users are not many, the performance pressure is not big, pure CRUD translation business, no technical difficulty, technical challenges, you do the work just graduated 1 or 2 years can also do. In this case, if you are purely technical, you will not be able to continue to rise in salary and position after only a few years of work, and you may experience a midlife crisis before you are 35.

What are 35-year-old programmers doing?

To tell the truth, now has been 35 years old programmer, 10 years ago has been in the line, not bad luck, should mix of all good.

Mix of good point, achieved the middle and high level, or bet on the company, already financial freedom. At least, I am a Leader or a technical expert in a small team. I can take the lead in all aspects and have the right to speak, make decisions and dignity in the workplace. Of course, there are also poor mixed, may still be with young people to grab the basic post of rice bowl, much younger than their own leaders call around.

In first-tier cities, these 35-year-olds also have the advantage of having bought a house when prices were low, and quite possibly several. A lot of people rely on rent or investment finance, has been very comfortable.

How to deal with a mid-life crisis at 35?

I think the first thing you need to do is polish up your resume, in terms of degrees, projects, and companies, so that you can separate yourself from the 90% or more of the average programmer, so that you have the opportunity to choose a high-end track, so that your midlife crisis can be delayed. Like the example above, many low-end circuits have mid-life crises at 35 or even 30, while high-end circuits can postpone their mid-life crises until they are 40 or 45.

For example, you are qingbei FTC graduate, BAT factory working background, it can not be in the “small low company” track, with “small low goods” competition, no technical challenges of low-end technology post. You can go to BAT, FLAG and other high-end track competition, even if job-hopping can also be a higher posture (position) to join other companies, there is no need to compete with the grassroots young people.

In addition to honing a ticket to the top track on our CV, we can also build our own competitive barriers in technology. If you are interested in technology and want to keep doing technology, you should choose a position with technical content and technical barriers. These positions tend to focus on underlying technology rather than business relevance, such as middleware development, framework development, infrastructure development, database development, or more technical verticals such as data mining algorithms, autonomous driving, image recognition, etc. All in all, these positions are characterized by high entry barriers and technical difficulties, and it takes years of experience to become a technical expert.

If you’re not particularly interested in technology, or if you’ve done business-oriented development in the past, going the management route might be a wise choice if you want to avoid a midlife crisis. Of course, when to switch to management, there is also a technique, not the earlier the better, about programmers to switch to management, we will talk more about this in the next public account tweet.

The above is all about developing your career as a way to cope with your mid-30s crisis, but you can also hedge against it by starting a side business. If the side business is well developed, and the work is not to support the family, but to kill the boredom, in order to stay in society, there will be no “crisis”, because most of the “crisis” is still “poor”.

I don’t have much experience with how to make money on the side, so I would like to share three things that I have learned. First, don’t do what others do for money. The second is: make sure you choose something that you have an advantage in and that you are interested in. The third point is: if you can’t find your strengths for a while, try more, try to find your strengths.

Don’t foreign programmers have midlife crises?

There are a lot of people say, why foreign programmers can do very old, 50, 60 years old is still knocking code. In fact, many programmers abroad, can be 50, 60, a situation in which he did it work really have the technology content, it took years of accumulation of experience, and as we said above slant at the bottom of the development of post, another more common situation is that they can accept sitting together with the tender with the same salary, same level and position and do the same work. If it’s okay with you mentally, you can stay until retirement.

In fact, one of the more passive-sounding strategies for dealing with a midlife crisis is to accept defeat. Always trying to rush ahead in your work, always comparing yourself to those who are doing well, does nothing but increase your anxiety. Have the courage to admit that you’re just not that good. Take a more objective and positive view of your work, stop making it your whole life, and enjoy it a little more.

In fact, the midlife crisis of programmers at 35 does not mean that no one will want them at 35. To be honest, no 35-year-old programmer has ever been laid off and lost a job. It’s just possible that the salary, position, etc., doesn’t meet your high expectations. “crisis” is actually a feeling of self. There is no such thing as a midlife crisis if you are not looking for a high salary or position and are willing to do the same job for the same salary as a teenager.

We can do the analogy again. Nurses, workshop workers, civil servants, and other traditional employees can work peacefully for a lifetime without constantly pursuing higher wages and higher positions. Why can’t we programmers? In fact, we can, too, as long as we don’t think of the programmer’s job as being so lofty and sophisticated.

Zheng Wang, a former Google engineer, is the author of “The Beauty of Data Structures and Algorithms” and “The Beauty of Design Patterns”. Wechat official account: Xiao Zhengge, follow wechat official account reply PDF, get 100+ pages of Google engineers’ algorithm learning and interview experience sharing.