Hello everyone, I am “Fan Wenjie”, a front-end practitioner, recently wrote my first booklet “Webpack Core Principles and Practical Applications”, which is a big career breakthrough for me, so I can’t help but want to make a summary, share my growth experience in the past nine years of work, as well as my thinking and growth suggestions for the front-end profession, hoping to help which friends are still on the road.
My career starting point is not high, 6-line seaside town origin, unknown two colleges graduated, no background and no connections, fortunately when I graduated (13 years) the job market is relatively loose, plus the sophomore year began to consciously participate in the school’s various computer laboratories, in advance to accumulate some project practical experience, so the beginning of the job search is still smooth.
Picture Note: My hometown, Shanwei Red Bay, Guangdong
“2013: Conquer a number of technical points, from an ignorant student to a worker who can do ordinary work”
My first job is in a number of people no more than 10 super mini enterprises, the front end of the two, norms, technical precipitation of what nature is vacant, but this is the first time I can get a fixed income every month, there is a stable pace of life and work, for the small town youth do not feel that there is anything wrong, the overall mentality is relatively stable, plus I myself love to toss, always willing to see if there are better tools and programs in the realization of basic functions.
At that time, the domestic just began to discuss the concept of “front and back separation”, the mainstream technology stack is still jQuery, the level of engineering is still very low, I read a lot of information, the company’s technology stack from jQuery + JSP gradually migrated to jQuery + Grunt + Require.js + Less + ECharts + Bootstrap + a variety of dazzling technologies at the time, I still clearly remember that these tools were gradually introduced in the project. And smoothly reconciled the joy and excitement of the moment of landing.
This stage is not much of a deep accumulation of technology for me, but at least it gives me a relatively free and relaxed environment, which allows me to boldly practice various technical ideas, and also allows me to develop the habit of relying on myself (ΤΎβΈΤΎ), actively thinking and actively introducing new ways and methods to solve old problems, which can be said to be constantly conquering individual technical points, and gradually “transforming from an ignorant student into a worker who can do ordinary work”, although many technical judgments made at that time were not necessarily accurate But for me personally, I am constantly trying, constantly breaking through, and gaining a lot.
“2015: From Junior Engineer to Advanced Engineer”
Later, after several rounds, in the two years after graduation (15 years) I went to another start-up company that had begun to take shape (50 people), and at that time, another service-side classmate who had cooperated for a long time and was more senior favored by me, and recommended me to be a front-end supervisor, although when I first went in, this so-called front-end team was still relatively small – plus I was alone π.
After going in, a lot of time spent in recruitment, team formation, new training, combing development specifications, combing cooperation processes and other transactional work, leaving myself to write code (in fact, so far I have not given up writing code) time is relatively small, at that time it was completely to catch the duck on the shelf π, management methods and the cognition of things, industries, and technologies are very immature, did some absurd things, I was deeply impressed that at that time because the recruitment progress was not ideal, wrote an article “Front-end, why don’t I want you” complained π, The content of the article is real but very irrelevant, and at that time, I was directly sprayed off the account and did not dare to read the comments again.
Archaeology: “Front-end, Why Don’t You (https://www.cnblogs.com/vans/p/4550356.html)”, spray, forgive me for my immaturity at that time.
Just went in, several of the company’s main applications are looking for a group of students based on jQuery + PHP to write, the amount of code is very large and very messy, poor performance bugs, lack of documentation, almost hit a software project can think of all the bad features, basically can not continue to write π€¬.
So while I had limited staff, the first thing I needed to do was redesign a more robust, maintainable, iterative, and collaborative front-end architecture and development workflow, which unexpectedly precipitated some of the technology stacks that seemed cool at the time, including: RequireJS, Sass, Glup, Browserify, and Angular@1.x. These technical points were relatively new at that time, and there was very little Chinese information, so after I finished learning, I had to spend a lot of time doing team training, combing practical cases, and analyzing technical principles.
Secondly, in the process of forming the team, I gradually realized that the convention is not as good as the specification, the specification is not as good as the tool, so in addition to the regular training, I also made some scaffolding tools and plug-ins around Angular, formulated ESLint development rules, introduced automated testing tools, etc., in an attempt to give the tedious things to the “tool” as much as possible.
In the end, the result was relatively lucky, stumbling and finally building a team of about ten people, getting things done in the expected time, and these technical designs, rules and regulations, and tools that took a lot of effort could be successfully landed, even after I left, it was still used until the company also declared bankruptcy.
This stage made me start to have a sense of “enlightenment”, allowing me to go out of the familiar field and take the initiative to contact a larger and broader technical aspect; Preliminary learning to review the value of technology applied to the technology itself from the perspective of managers; Attaching importance to teamwork, norms, tools, efficiency, and initially learning some MVVM, OOP/FP, engineering and other thinking, can be regarded as “from a junior engineer gradually to the middle and high level”.
“2016: Nothingness”
After that, 16 years later, I was lucky to enter the first real big factory in my career: Tencent, the process was not smooth, there were almost 10 different positions before and after, and finally I was reluctantly photographed π₯΄. Tencent was my biggest career goal at that time, and I thought it was a relatively high market recognition of my own ability, and if I could achieve this goal, my future career should be much smoother.
Tencent is the most comfortable company I have ever been, the work pressure is not large, the happiness is very strong, but slowly it really becomes the role of screws, becoming sluggish, there are many factors, but the main reason is that my own personality is not suitable for this stable work rhythm, unconsciously I am used to applying a variety of ready-made, mature ways and methods in the team to solve business problems, the efficiency is high, but there is not much room for technical growth and thinking for individuals.
Therefore, this stage in the work fell into the same skills repeatedly used in the situation, the technical growth is basically 0, in addition to the various computer basics that I picked up and learned in my spare time, there is basically no input, this situation makes me feel very anxious, naturally I can’t stay long, just 2 years to choose to withdraw.
Anti-spray: It’s not that Tencent is bad, it’s just that it wasn’t for me at the time.
“2018: From Single-Sided Technology Developer to Three-Dimensional System Designer”
After coming out of Tencent, the choice is still quite wide, and after some comparison, I finally went to a small and beautiful artificial intelligence startup. This company has less than 100 people in total, and there are only 4 full-time front-ends, but it is an artificial intelligence company invested by SoftBank in China, which has won numerous awards at home and abroad, and the founder, algorithm leader, and technical leader have a strong background, and in my opinion, the prospects are unlimited and there is enough room to play, which perfectly fits all my imaginations of “small and beautiful”.
The company did meet most of my expectations, and Leader gave me enough trust and authority to let me go:
If the front is in the “thick accumulation”, this stage is really let me “thin hair” a bit, and fortunately has not made any mistakes, slowly the company even let me bring the service, data, algorithms, products and other different functions of the students to do more things together, out of the front-end functional role from a higher and more comprehensive perspective to examine business needs, design application systems, organizational development rhythm, etc., “from a single aspect of the technology application to a more three-dimensional and more mature system designer”, can string together students with different functions, Completely and completely do a slightly more complex business direction.
“2020, the future can be expected”
Then, I came to the company I am in now – ByteDance, the interview process is actually not very smooth, four rounds of technology a round of HR, all the way there is no danger and luck passed, after coming in, the overall feeling is still very much in line with expectations:
Here I have done a lot of interesting things, thanks to the care of the students around me, technology, management, soft quality, industry cognition and other aspects have improved. And many of Byte’s cultural views have gradually affected my spare time, allowing me to start doing some things that I have always wanted to do but have not done well in my spare time, such as the recently completed “Webpack5 Core Principles and Application Practices” booklet:
Booklet address: https://juejin.cn/book/7115598540721618944
Although this is not a difficult thing for many “big guys”, but I am already a very big career milestone, I almost all the functions of Webpack have been debugged, all the code has been read again, spent more than half a year, and the editor repeated polishing many times, only to save such a book, I personally have more confidence in the quality of the content of the book, I hope to help the students in need.
In the future, I will continue to do more things in my spare time, including writing articles, doing open source, eating seafood, and occasionally helping some students with fate to do career counseling, career planning, etc., hoping to see a bigger world.
Looking back over the years, from the very beginning of the unknown entrepreneurial small company, to now into the forefront of ByteDance and can output some community works, although in the industry background to see nothing, but for me as a small town youth has been very good, although the luck component is mostly, but there are some artificial, deliberate efforts in it:
Although it is a bit of an afterthought, it is actually a career path suitable for most ordinary people: “competent = > excellence = > creation = > influence”. In the context of this year’s cold winter, I think we need to calm down and think about how to take the next step in addition to anxiety, so that we can enter the occupational safety zone as soon as possible, hoping that this path can help you and encourage you together!
So down, I have worked for almost ten years, before and after the large, medium and small companies have been staying, even if it is a few years older than many small students, rich experience is lost, so there are some views on front-end career and personal growth I want to share, throw bricks and lead the jade.
“Q: The front end ceiling is low? π€γ
There are many people who think that there are many front-end ceilings, this point of view I dare not agree, for example, although I have been working for 10 years, but there are still a lot of things that I do not understand, from the so-called “ceiling” is still 108,000 miles away.
Secondly, although the front-end field is relatively rare in the server-side high-concurrent computing scenario, there are also many complex things that can be done, such as: engineering, editors, visualizations, IDEs, etc. Each of these directions will have many complex technical points, which are worth a long time of investment, learning, and can also bring you long-term career development space.
So, it is possible that those who have been advocating that “the ceiling at the front end is low” are either geniuses or just still at the “top of ignorance.”
“Q: What should I do if I encounter career confusion and feel that I have low potential and poor growth? π€γ
In the past year, various coincidences, and many students of different ages, I have found that most people do not actually have a clear, specific career growth plan, do not think clearly about what they should do now, where to go in the future, the overall life is more confused and anxious.
In the final analysis, I think these students do not want to, but really can’t or won’t, some of them are “too busy” for work, consuming most of their energy and having no time to think; Some lack the necessary “cognition” of the industry, do not know how to make appropriate judgments and choices based on their own situation; There are also many serious “lack of self-confidence”, excessive arrogance and hesitation, and so on.
Well, there’s no standard answer to this question, and it’s worth writing another long article to expand on, so I’ll just want to share a simple thought pattern here:
Every step is not easy, especially, how to exercise the ability? There are two ideas, one is to find a job that perfectly matches your ability level and growth goals, which requires a favorable time and place, and it is not easy; The second is to “take the initiative” to learn, “take the initiative” to fight for opportunities, “take the initiative” to create scenes outside of daily business work, and “take the initiative” to do something that others do not ask you to do, but you feel the right thing.
“Q: What am I doing right now and getting the most out of it?” π€γ
To tell the truth, I don’t know… However, there is a more general idea: “build your own core competitiveness”! This sentence was given to me by the interviewer a few years ago when I was rejected in my interview with WeChat, and there was a very strong feeling of empowerment at that time, after which I had the patience to do some long-term things.
In fact, there are many students – especially those who have just graduated, will feel that the technology stack is a little fuller, the ability model is three-dimensional, and there will be more market, so everything will go to learn, rain and dew are wet. But the truth is just the opposite, the portrait of talents by excellent teams is basically the depth first, and the breadth will be considered on the basis of sufficient depth, which is why the interview now asks about the implementation principle.
Therefore, if you really don’t know that you should work hard in that direction, you really can’t hold back the so-called career planning, you can consider finding your best technical point first, and then spend enough time to learn deeply and thoroughly.
On this aspect, a student’s article has been summarized in more detail before: https://juejin.cn/post/7139158428785737758.
Blabla ~ ~, too much, do not write π€π€π€ down, interested in continuing to discuss with me, or students in the career confusion period can also “add me WeChat” to chat.
Finally, I would like to share some suggestions that I personally find useful: