In April 2017, Huawei announced the dismissal of 34+ employees.
In December 2017, a 42-year-old ZTE engineer jumped to his death.
In November 2018, at Tencent’s 20th anniversary conference, Lau said that in the coming year, 10 percent of managers who are no longer competent will retire, especially in the middle level.
In March 2019, JD.com cut 10% of its senior management, and middle management is said to be next.
…
It seems that the people of a certain age are encountering a very serious crisis, and a lot of people can hardly hold their worries: is it true that software and the Internet can not accommodate us older youth? Is 35 really our last word?
I’m sorry to tell you that the age of 35 is the fatal death of about 75% of the Internet population.
Why do you say so? For IT professionals like programmers, there are three big obstacles at age 35:
- Energy,
- Time,
- Ratio of candy
The so-called energy barrier refers to the natural decline of a man’s energy when he reaches his late 20s. The young man of 20 years old, stay up all night the next day still can fight again, and the pseudo middle age of 35, an overnight rest for three or five days can not come. Not long ago, a friend sent me a message on wechat, saying that she could not bear overtime and asked me to help keep an eye on the work.
The so-called time barrier refers to that, at this stage, there will be a wife, children, the elderly, work and other needs to take care of, time is forced to disperse in many aspects, can be used for work time is reduced. For example, after my daughter went to primary school in 2016, her parents had to pick her up after school at 3:30 p.m. every day. What would you say? Even if I don’t pick it up and put it in the day care, THEN I have to leave on time and get the kids out of the day care as soon as possible. It seems that overtime is out of the question. On top of that, I have to take time off from work now and then to attend parent-teacher conferences and attend my children’s activities. As a result, my working hours are much less than those of younger people.
The so-called cost performance barrier refers to the fact that most IT elderly people around 35 years old have a much higher salary than young people, but the quality and results of what they do are not much better than young people. By comparison, the cost performance is relatively low. Why is that? Let’s use the Dreyfus model to explain:
The Dreyfus model divides people’s mastery of skills into five levels: novice, advanced novice, winner, master and expert. The percentage of people at each level using the same skill is 10%, 55-60%, 15%, 10%, and 2-5%, respectively.
Take programmers for example. Most people’s software development skills are stuck in the advanced novice stage, doing copy-and-paste programming day in and day out, unable to use design patterns well, let alone accurately understand and apply architectural patterns.
It usually only takes 2 to 3 years to go from a beginner to an advanced novice. A little bit of math shows that a programmer who has mastered the skills required for his job at the age of 35 at the advanced novice level is getting a much lower price tag than someone who has been using the same skills for two or three years.
If a person is around 35 met the above three big candy, that nature is 35 years old he come kill: energy to keep up with, have enough time, price as well as young people, looking at spending surged, concerns about income growth, worry NuoNuo nest is hard to find the same income work, worry about all day was laid.
How can we break this situation?
A clue can be found in the theory of career development stages put forward by D.E. Schuper, an American career planning master.
Schuber’s theory of career development regards the process of career as the whole process from birth to death. This can be divided into five successive stages: growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance and decline. There are different career projects to be completed at each stage. If the current career project is not completed, it will affect the subsequent career development and life.
The 35 we are talking about is a special period in the establishment stage (25-44 years old). In the establishment phase, the main vocational topics include:
- Gradually settle into a job
- Establish security for your future
- Identify appropriate paths for advancement
Schuber’s summary of career topics is abstract enough to apply to most people. Specialized to programmers, we use a word, in setting up stage, should slowly stability in a niche technology and business areas, continuous cultivation, proficient skills to achieve the dreyfus model said phase, able to understand demand business, perfect supporting business implementation can use skills, based on the two form the advantage, and constantly improve, consolidate the advantages, Progress to a higher level as quickly as possible along certain steps.
To put it simply, at thirty you should establish your advantages, at thirty you should consolidate your advantages, expand your achievements and seek promotion to a higher level.
Establish advantage this point, need not say more, because each kind of occupation skill, have its upgrade to beat strange system, reference similar “programmer thinking practice”, “programmer practice: from small work to expert”, “clean structure”, “deliberate practice” and so on books, you know how to do.
We are going to talk about “consolidating advantages, expanding achievements and seeking promotion” after establishing advantages. How do you do that? Let’s talk about height, dimension and insight.
In 2015, AT the age of 35, I failed to start my own business and went out to look for a job. I went to interview for the position of R&D director in The Xi ‘an Branch of Eastcom. I was asked a question by the then director: How do you manage up? I was confused. Managing up was such a strange word that I had to make a few random remarks about what I had done, goals, expectations, etc.
In that interview, several questions were above my level of practice. This made me realize that in technology and management, it is far from enough to be here and now, focusing only on the scope of my current work and thinking only at the current level. After reviewing it, I realized that if we want to advance further, both on the technical and management lines, we need to do several things:
- Know what’s going on at the next level, how people at that level think about things, how they do things, and what’s the minimum knowledge/skill/mindset they should have
- Construct a dopper for yourself in daily work, look at what you do from a higher level perspective, rehearse in your mind what high-level roles do, store knowledge, change your thinking, improve your cognition, and prepare in advance
Here’s an old joke.
Rain, we are running, but a man is slow, we wonder why he did not run, the man said: “the front is not also raining?”
The man who did not run in the rain did not run, because he felt that it was raining in front of the rain, and running was not immune to the rain. The reason for this conclusion is that he sees only space, not time. If you add in the time dimension, it’s easy to understand: running can shorten the duration and decrease the amount of rain.
This man looks ridiculous, but in reality, many of us are making the same mistake: seeing things in a single dimension. For example, some technical people think that technology is the only right way to solve problems, communication is not important, interpersonal relationship is flattery, look down on the promotion of managers because of excellent communication and interpersonal skills. There are technical people will look down on business, feel business messy, delay time, hinder their own advanced technology. But in fact, the competitiveness of the workplace is multi-dimensional, technology a dimension, at 100 points, with a dimension, technology 80 business in 80, the result is better than technology, plus a dimension, technology 80 80 90 people, the result will be better, plus a dimension, technology business interpersonal 90 80 80 80… If you add another financial dimension and slowly shift your work income into passive income, your personal life will be more calm, your work will be more calm, and it will be easier to see the nature of the problem. Of course, the premise of building multi-dimensional competitiveness is that one dimension is very strong. If every dimension is bad, then multiple dimensions are worse.
A person’s knowledge is very important, it often determines how far you can go. You don’t know you’re actually a piece of cake until you’ve seen someone better. Without experiencing hardship, I don’t know why some people can see things in the workplace so lightly; If you haven’t invested, you can’t understand why the big shots invest in 100 companies and 90 companies fail; Until you have run the whole race, you can’t imagine why so many people fly from one city to another to sweat and run those dozens of kilometers.
To meet new people, to have meaningful experiences, to do a few things every year that you thought were impossible… By reviewing new information and experiences and constantly improving our knowledge, we can break through our own information cocoon and become better people.
Standing at a higher level to examine ourselves, with a higher level of work in the way, methods, strategies to demand their own, will help us to break through the current realm. Constructing an advantage dimension, then looking at problems from different perspectives and constructing multi-dimensional competitiveness can make us become richer and more resilient individuals. Meeting people from different backgrounds, doing challenging things we’ve never done before, creating experiences in different contexts, and expanding our knowledge can help us break out of the here-here-here and now and take us further.
Those are the three strategies for breaking the 35-year-old conundrum.
conclusion
Workplace or life, each stage has certain obstacles and bottlenecks, which are needed to experience. If you can identify who you are and where you are, think about it in a targeted way, keep doing the right thing, and put in more effort than others, you will be better than others and have more opportunities. This is often called the Matthew Effect: the harder you work, the luckier you will be.
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