Why I resigned

First, let me introduce some background. I'm an iOS programmer and have been working for almost 3 years now. At the end of July 2016, I quit without a new job lined up. After becoming unemployed, I spent half a month traveling to Daocheng, then around mid-September, I found a new job and started a new experience.

That's the simple background. If I told this as a nicer story, it might be what many people want to hear — life is not just about the present humdrum, but also poetry and the faraway places: a programmer quit his job, went far away, found a job he liked, and so on. But that's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the journey of an ordinary programmer through unemployment, confusion, and searching for direction.

First, let me talk about why I resigned. Actually, the companies I worked at before were all small startups, with about twenty to thirty people. To be honest, before I took this job, I wanted to join a big company. But I happened to get an interview from this company, and since the founders had technical backgrounds, I thought it would have a tech-startup atmosphere, so I joined without thinking much.

Following normal writing logic, you might think I'll start complaining about the company's various problems here. But after a month of being unemployed, I don't want to talk about those now. In fact, every company has more or fewer problems. The key is whether you fit that company. When you like it, you turn a blind eye to however many problems there are.

Take the startup I just left, for example. There was an employee who voluntarily worked overtime until 12 a.m. every day, came to work on Saturdays and Sundays, and took no days off all year. Earlier, the boss wanted to fire him due to ability issues, but he was willing to take a half salary cut just to stay. I guess this is the kind of "all in" employee that startups like.

But I don't think I'm that kind of "all in" person. I have my own family and my own life. I hope to have time to learn the technologies I love while completing company work on time or doing it excellently. But these are things a small startup can hardly offer. To be honest, small startups need to survive, and many times they really have to race against the clock. So if you choose a startup, you need to focus on its future prospects, not dwell on personal gains and losses, be willing to tolerate all kinds of problems, and treat yourself as a founder.

There's a saying: what's scary is using one year's experience for ten years, not having ten years of experience. In a startup, often you're using one year's experience to do years' worth of work, because the company is small and doesn't have time to let you research architecture and technology. It just wants you to deliver requirements as fast as possible.

Fortunately, I'm a person with a strong sense of insecurity; when my abilities aren't growing, I feel deeply uneasy. So even with the 996 schedule, I still made time to write a technical blog every week. But after a year, even though the project had stabilized, the overtime didn't decrease. In that one year, I gained more than ten jin, developed mild fatty liver, and got lots of pimples from staying up late. So after a year, I chose to quit without a job lined up — first, to give myself a break; second, to find a bigger company and grow together with a group of excellent people.

My state of mind after resigning

First, let me talk about the iOS job market then. Actually, 2015 was the peak period for iOS employment. A fresh graduate could earn a salary of over ten thousand. I remember when I was job hunting, one interviewer told me, "Don't you think iOS salaries are inflated right now?" And what he could offer was only half of what another company had offered me.

I admit the salaries were inflated then, but that was determined by market supply and demand. Like the cotton case: when the market needs a lot of cotton, the first people in the village who sell cotton make a fortune. Then a lot of people see the demand and start growing cotton, and the next year there's an oversupply, and they can't even sell it at a loss.

So in 2016, a large number of iOS programmers flooded the market, causing the iOS market to slump. I remember that before I left, I interviewed an iOS training instructor, and because iOS training classes were shrinking, he was also out looking for a job. He told me that his company alone trained 20,000 iOS developers during that period in 2015. So think about how many iOS developers the entire training market could produce in a year. Back then, I also saw many true stories about iOS employment — for example, a company receiving 1,000 iOS resumes in one day. Many people from other industries switched to iOS, including salespeople, truck drivers, music students, civil engineering students, mechanical and electrical engineering students, and all sorts of others.

To be honest, sometimes high salaries really can go to people's heads. A large part of the reason I chose that startup was the high salary. As a young person who had graduated not long ago and had little money, I think the following words fit the me of that time and many who switched to iOS.The most frightening thing about poverty itself is that excessive sensitivity to money leads to short-sightedness and narrow-mindedness, impatience in doing things, always chasing money, pursuing only short-term gains, and not making long-term investments in yourself.

I remember that when I resigned, I actually knew the iOS market was sluggish. But I still had confidence in my abilities and thought finding a job would be no problem. I even went to western Sichuan to play for half a month after resigning, planning to look for jobs seriously when I returned.

Now let me talk about the confused period when I started job hunting, because at that time I really didn't have a complete understanding of the job market. I remember the previous year, as soon as my resume was posted, I would receive countless interview calls in a day — I didn't need to apply at all. But this time was different. I suddenly found that after my resume was made public, I didn't get a single call. In the end, I had to send out resumes myself. There were some interview opportunities, but not many, and the salaries offered were lower than my previous salary.

Honestly, I went to many interviews and was rejected by many. I went from being confident to somewhat inferior. I began to feel uneasy, and my unease came from not being recognized. During that time, I was anxious, worried about not finding a good job, worried about unemployment, and I even considered switching careers.I found that the worse a person's current situation is, the stronger the desire to break free, and the greater the possibility of making unrealistic decisions. In the end, if you can't control this anxiety, you're very likely to fall into the so-called "abyss of no redemption."

I thought a lot then and reflected a lot on myself. Eventually, I slowly began to grow and understand many things. I started to calm down and carefully revise my resume. When there were no interviews, I studied technology, looked at my previous shortcomings, and organized my past experience and theoretical knowledge.

I thought perhaps this was a turning point in my life, giving me time to slow down and look at what I had been doing all these years — whether I was doing the work I truly wanted, rather than living a life of compromise. I found that I still love technology. When I self-studied iOS in college, I never thought about making money; I just thought it was cool to build an app. After working, I often just mechanically completed tasks. So as technical people, we should always stay alert and never forget our original intention.

Advice for everyone

Here, I'd like to give a small piece of advice to those who are still job hunting, or those preparing to switch into the hottest field now — front-end. To be honest, I've interviewed many iOS programmers, and you could tell that many of them didn't truly love technology; they were just after the high salary.

So my advice to friends still looking for a job: ask yourself honestly whether you really want to do technology and love it. If so, rest assured and work hard to improve yourself. Don't be afraid, and don't worry about not finding a job. With that time spent worrying, you might as well learn something to improve yourself! Worst case, you switch careers — anyway, it's not like society will let you starve to death.

If you don't truly love technology, even if you manage to find a job by luck, once the market cools down, companies go bankrupt, and so on, you'll likely regret the time you wasted. Even if you switch careers, you'll find it hard to accept going from a monthly salary of over ten thousand down to a few thousand, barely enough to live on.

And for those preparing to switch into front-end: if you're entering the front-end market because it's hot, first take a look at what happened to the iOS market. You have your time; you have your pace. I hope you can escape from the collective, frantic whirlwind of thoughts.

Finally, I wish everyone can find a job you like and truly love.

From: http://www.jianshu.com/p/265ed800edb6
Jianshu author: Qi Dian Dasheng