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The current state of mobile developers
After ten years, the mobile development ecosystem has been growing from germination to explosion, and is now stabilizing. You don’t need to be sophisticated to build a beginner app these days, there are a variety of open source components to choose from, and most development questions can be answered on Google.
During the five years from 2012 to 2016, the hottest period of mobile Internet, there were a large number of Android/iOS/H5 recruitment in the market, and the salaries were very high, mainly for business line development positions. In China, most developers are engaged in this type of business development, and only a few are engaged in basic technology areas.
With my current team, the ratio is about 9:1.
Because of fast business iteration and various online problems and coordination and communication, it is easy for an engineer to reach the technical ceiling after three or four years of business development. It may not affect the promotion and salary increase, because the business is cash flow, the company must ensure the stability of the backbone members of the business line, but it will certainly affect your job-hopping.
An employee’s sense of security is not given by the company, it is easy for you to jump ship.
The future of mobile developers
How does an average mobile developer break through the ceiling? No choice but to expect a new terminal ecosystem to emerge that requires a lot of mobile engineers to write UI interactions. Or try to break into the bottom 10% of developers. All questions come down to the computer troika: data structures, algorithms and principles of composition, and the three romances: operating systems, principles of compilation, and graphics.
Based on my own understanding of the industry, here are five areas of mobile development that need to be explored in the long run.
Of course, there are also some basic technical fields, such as IM communication technology, AR/VR, and so on. There are relatively few positions, so we will not discuss them.
For most people, it is easier to choose performance & network and infrastructure direction, which has a certain crossover with business development, and the transition is more natural, but what is easy for you is easy for others, and what you want to do is not easy to excel.
Luo Zhenyu said: “difficult to walk on the road is always a few competitors.” Let me add: the easy way is always the easy way.
For those who are strong in learning ability and energetic, I suggest studying multimedia technology. With the breakthrough of hardware and network bandwidth, information will be presented in more and more abundant forms, which will inevitably be highly graphical and video-oriented. The emergence of Douyin Kuaishou is the best proof that this industry is on the rise. In addition, this field has a large amount of pre-subject knowledge to learn and a relatively high threshold, which means that 90% of the people have been blocked out, and the competition is far less fierce than other subdivided fields.
As for mobile AI, that is, edge computing, in fact, mainly do AI technology migration to the terminal, there is a lot of engineering and algorithm optimization for models, very dependent on the actual project, if there is no one to lead, carefully into.
Let’s talk about cross-platform technology. This field has been going from hybrid at the beginning to RN to the hot flutter technology in the past two years. We can see that the leading players in the front end are committed to cross-platform technology, and their essence is to revolutionary improve efficiency. Only a few big companies have the strength to develop their own cross-platform technology, most just cite it, which brings us back to the beginning.
Aside: When choosing a technology, look at “today”, “tomorrow” and “the day after tomorrow”. For example, live streaming is today’s technology, the industrialization of artificial intelligence is tomorrow’s technology, and driverless driving is the day after tomorrow’s technology.
For us individuals, life is limited, and the golden age of our career is even more limited. From the bottom disciplines, we should choose a basic technology field that is useful today, can expand the market tomorrow, and can rise to the top of the wave the day after tomorrow.
Third, other ways to explore
Architect: It is recommended not to take architect as the target easily. Architect is the product of team size and business expansion, and has no direct relationship with technology. It is difficult for an architect of Company A to be parachuting into Company B to be an architect, and it depends too much on team qualifications, unless you are also an expert in A certain field.
Transfer to technology management: If you really have no sense of technology, have good comprehensive literacy, technology management is a good direction. Young friends are not recommended to enter too early, depth determines height.
Product transfer: It is a great way for talented engineers who are passionate about products to transfer products. There are many such cases around, and the support of technical background is welcome in the product team. Personally, I think that as China’s IT technology becomes more and more mature, there will be some basic industrial-grade software such as Photoshop and MATLAB in China in the future, and IT is difficult for product managers with business background to be competent.
These are my thoughts on mobile development. Welcome to exchange and discuss
Welcome to follow the public account: Sumsmile/focus on image processing mobile development veterans