A Senior Frontend Architect's Unfiltered Advice for Young Coders: Business Sense, Sales, and the Will to Win

Suggestions for Young Programmers - Part 2

Hello everyone, I am a Frontend Architect. Follow my WeChat public account [David's Career Talk] to get free premium frontend resources.

Now that the internet dividend has disappeared, I deeply understand the difficulties faced by young programmers. Below are a few humble suggestions.

Business and Life Direction

China has a large population base, so you need to cultivate your business acumen. If you can make a product go viral, you can amass huge wealth. Writing an article with tens of thousands of views on a public account can earn you hundreds of yuan. You might think it's hard, but there's actually a lot of know-how involved. That's why freelancing is common in China. I will never let my child work for someone else.

From a young age, we are taught at school to follow the rules and be "good kids." But in the business world, the key is to think about how to break rules, copy, take shortcuts, and speculate, as long as it's legal. How to cultivate this? First, read more business books to improve your awareness—awareness determines action. Second, look at everything through money-making eyes. For example, browse Douyin live streams to see how others sell products and courses; check out Xianyu to see what others are selling and how they make money.

I only gradually developed "business awareness" in my 30s, while wealthy children might start cultivating it in their teens.

Young people can try different careers. Sales can actually be a good direction.

My sister used to work as a data operations specialist at an internet company, under high pressure and with low pay. Later, she accidentally joined Ping An as a telemarketer for financial products. Unexpectedly, she was very suited for the job and even enjoyed it. She no longer has to deal with complex interpersonal conflicts. With commissions, she earns over 30,000 yuan per month and is the company's top salesperson.

Try making short videos. As "bottom-tier" coders in society, we have no face or pride to lose. If it can increase wealth and let our families live better lives, why not give it a shot? You might not know that many official media, like Xinhua News Agency, are live-streaming sales of daily necessities on Douyin. Everyone's life story is "worth a million yuan".

Actually, making short videos isn't as simple as it seems—things like how to appear natural in front of the camera and how to choose a niche. I've already made dozens of videos and am still learning.

The book Antifragile mentions: When you can use a small cost (time spent filming and editing) to leverage something with potentially unlimited returns (like becoming a million-follower influencer), then it's worth doing.

If your family has no background and you studied computer science, you have no choice but to charge forward recklessly and become a technical expert. You might feel lost at first, but once you reach a certain level, you'll find that writing code is actually quite interesting.
Get married first. Life is a long line. Finding a boyfriend/girlfriend is more important than writing code! After wandering alone for a long time, you'll inevitably feel lonely and empty. Being together with someone means you can discuss things and support each other.
Save money. When your salary arrives each month, develop the habit of saving before spending. Save 20%–30% (check out the book The Latte Factor). You can set up a separate dream fund, like using it to fulfill a childhood "painting dream" or "dancing dream." You might even discover your talent and escape the grind of office life. I've never used a credit card or Huabei.

Frontend Direction

Be very familiar with the company's overall business, such as how frontend code is deployed, how CDN works, how monitoring is done, and roughly what PV and UV are.

Because after you turn 35, if you're interviewing for a Leader role, technical ability might only account for a small part, while business understanding and familiarity will weigh more. I missed a great opportunity two years ago because of this.

After a few years of work, if you feel your skills are average, don't know what to say in interviews, and lack impressive project experience, consider taking courses to systematically organize your knowledge system, since articles on Juejin are mostly fragmented.

You might think this is just being scammed. Let me give you a real example. I have a friend who studied Java and had worked for many years. He lost his job due to the poor economy two years ago. Later, he signed up for a course by Teacher Ma Shibing and quickly found a new job. I asked him how he handled the interview. He said that often, as long as you can steer the conversation toward areas you're familiar with and deep in, letting the interviewer follow your train of thought, time flies by. Before the other party can ask comprehensive questions, the interview ends, and you get the offer.

If young people feel unhappy at a company and uncomfortable for a long time, that's definitely not okay. You need to adjust quickly or leave. Staying in a negative energy environment for too long is very harmful, so always pay attention to your physical and mental state.
Find ways to fill yourself with energy. Willpower is actually very important.

Over a decade ago, one of my college classmates was a backend PHP developer with average frontend skills. He actually had a blood disease and needed to take medication year-round. But he always had a strong desire—to get into Tencent. After several attempts, he surprisingly joined Tencent's frontend team in Shenzhen. Later, he left Tencent and had some rough patches at small companies. When a good opportunity came up at Ping An, I introduced him there, and his year-end bonus was over ten months' salary. He's been very lucky. Although his frontend skills are worse than mine, he's made a lot of money over the years, bought a house in Shenzhen, and still has several hundred thousand yuan saved. But he never bought a car, considering it a consumable. I think that awareness is impressive.

Another thing: a friend once recommended me for a Tencent frontend interview, but I felt I wasn't good enough and didn't dare go. Meanwhile, a backend developer who was even worse than me at the time went for the interview and later thrived, now working as a backend developer at ByteDance.

Sometimes I sigh and have to believe in fate.

You should still practice simple algorithms, not just for interviews but also to train your programmer's mindset.
When you're studying an article and can't understand it, there are usually two possibilities: either your current level isn't high enough, or the author's ability and writing skills are poor. If you've been working for years and still can't understand it, it's probably the author's fault, and there's no need to waste time reading further.

I once bought a "Juejin Mini-Book." The author had high technical skills, but most of the content was copied from his own Juejin articles. The overall learning experience was confusing and hard to follow. At the time, I kept doubting my own ability. Years later, when I looked back, I realized it wasn't my problem—it was that his depth of technical understanding and writing skills were mediocre.

Promise is a very important concept because HTTP requests and various asynchronous operations all use it. It's best to implement it yourself to understand its principles. I've seen many junior programmers' code where async wraps promise, and promise wraps async.

Finally, Do your best and leave the rest to fate. Doing your best means effort; leaving the rest to fate means letting go—don't blame yourself excessively for outcomes beyond your control.