Whether it is on Zhihu, wechat or various technical forums, the 35-year-old threshold for programmers is always a hot topic.

Recently, when I talked with my team mates, many of them felt confused and anxious. Some of them even started to worry about their 35-year-old job at the age of 25 after only working for two or three years.

Trance 35 years old has become a programmer “devil’s age”, the essence of the problem, may be because of the rapid dissemination of social information, social media will also become a magnifying glass of some workplace cases, constantly stimulate the nerves of workers, virtually spreading workplace anxiety.

How do you avoid anxiety at 35?

This article is about my thoughts.

Conclusion: No matter what your age, your industry, or your job, if you want to be anxiety-free at 35, remember these eight key words right now:

Study, practice, summarize, output.

I define it as a growing closed loop.

My Story Let’s talk about my story first. Before I graduated, I joined a software company as an intern, and my main job was coding.

After working for one year, CONSIDERING the city and other reasons, I chose to change jobs. I was 23 years old this year.

What I gained from my first job was that I entered the software industry, learned and mastered basic programming techniques, and gained practical experience in several projects. I was able to use technology as a stepping stone to seek the next job that could give me greater promotion.

In my second job, I joined a traditional software company, engaged in the development of innovative business, mainly coding. I worked in this company for 5 years. Later, I decided to change my job because I felt I had reached the technical ceiling.

What I gained from the second job is that I consolidated my programming skills, gained enough understanding and practice of the depth and breadth of technology, and was able to independently do business and system architecture design. I am no longer confined to the research of technology, but also have a new learning of project management and communication and coordination, and begin to try to explore some fields that I have never touched before.

In my third job, I joined an Internet company. My main job is to lead the team to do business development support for various products. I am still working now, and I am getting closer and closer to the “devil’s age” of 35.

What I gained from the third job is to apply the technologies I have learned to different products and to think and summarize how to design suitable system architecture for different types of business, products of different sizes and development stages. I began to contact and practice team management, and found that management is a more difficult challenge than technology, and it is a subject that requires constant learning and thinking. Start thinking beyond the programmer and really think about what is the nature of your product and business? What pain points are solved for users? How to design and implement the business model? Also began to do their own experience, knowledge summary, output.

Up to now, I find that I still have a lot of knowledge to learn, there are many unknown areas to dabble in, and I have not summarized a lot of knowledge and experience well.

Anxiety, Excitement and Longing Are I anxious right now? Maybe, but more of a sense of excitement and longing.

Anxiety is the discovery that there is so much to know and learn, and there is never enough time.

This feeling comes from the feeling that the more you know, the less you know and the more time you need to devote to learning.

When those science masters are interviewed, they often say that their knowledge accumulation is still very little, and there is still a lot to learn. I used to think they were being modest, but now I think they might be telling the truth.

It’s like, you start out as a dot, and your contact with the outside world is limited to the boundary of that dot and your contact with the world, and you find that you know a lot more than you actually know very little.

One day, the dot slowly becomes a small circle, slowly becomes a big circle, you and the outside world contact more and more surface, also find yourself less and less understanding.

Excitement is the realization that you can influence and change something.

For example, this month I tried a new r&d tool in my team, which can save a lot of unnecessary work and improve the efficiency of development.

For example, we organized an internal code contest, which was well attended and many people showed off their favorite code designs.

For another example, our product iteration was well received by many users and finally solved the problem they had been feedback for a long time. These make me feel like I’m influencing and changing things, and these influences and changes often bring feedback and bring me back to work with excitement.

Desire, because still want to get more feedback and recognition, to play a greater value.

As for whether I will be eliminated after I turn 35, WHAT I think is that the pits I have stepped on, the experiences I have experienced and the knowledge I have accumulated over the years will always be A valuable experience. There will always be A company A or B that needs me and I can make full use of it.

Growing Closed Loop Comes back to the question: What can you do today to not be anxious at 35?

Learn: Whether it’s technology, products, business, etc., commit to learning.

Practice: find an opportunity and scene, try to apply what you have learned to work, just like you just learned to drive to get a driver’s license, always want to go on the road, to feel where knowledge is used, to play its value, you will be able to find their own excitement and sense of achievement.

Summary: Try to make some summaries, sort out your experience of many setbacks in practice, to think about whether there is a better technology, a better solution.

Output: the summary of their own, output. Whether it’s in person, text or video, or even the work itself is output.

How much you export represents how much value you have.

When you can achieve a closed loop of learning, practice, summarization and output in a segmented technical field, then switch to a segmented technical field;

Once you’ve done this closed-loop in all your technical niches, try other areas like product, business, business, management, and so on. It’s like a snowball, and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

If you are 25 now, believe that after 10 years of accumulation, at 35 you will not be obsolete, but will become a leader.

It all seems simple, but you taste it, taste it, and then forget about it and start rolling your own snowball.

I hope you, reading this article, will become something someday.