The Way To Go--Independent survival

After being laid off in March, job hunting hasn’t been very smooth. This gave me time to stop and think about the way forward. When I was working before, my idea was to first expand my technical influence, thinking that my skills were good enough to survive on, while also thinking about how to be independent during work. After months of doing coding exercises, memorizing technical theories, and sending out resumes, I’ve realized that continuing to survive by working for others isn’t feasible. I need to consider other paths.

A long time ago, a former colleague of mine told me to learn to be independent. It wasn’t until the end of 2020 that I truly began to think about how to live independently. My first step was to write blogs to promote myself. Now, I’m starting the next step: practice and exploration.

0.1 What I’ve been doing during this time

0.1.1 Improving data structures and algorithms

After being laid off in March, I didn’t immediately start sending out resumes. Instead, I focused on improving my weak points—algorithms and data structures. I went through the “Beauty of Data Structures and Algorithms” course on Geek Time again and completed the classic 150 problems on LeetCode.

These two tasks took me about three months. Sometimes, the intense thinking during the coding exercises (overheating the brain’s “CPU”) caused me sleepless nights, as many LeetCode problems are quite tricky.

I believe understanding certain algorithm concepts is necessary, especially in high-concurrency scenarios. In actual work, however, you’re rarely required to implement algorithms. More often, it’s about understanding and abstracting requirements, coordinating communication, and engineering skills. But as a means of filtering candidates, I understand its purpose.

0.1.2 Preparing for technical interviews and project experience

I spent about two weeks preparing for Go-related technical interview questions (slices, maps, channels, context, garbage collection, GMP, goroutines), and only two days preparing my project experience.

0.1.3 Sending resumes and interviewing

I started seeking referrals at the end of May. The result was that major companies were either not hiring or didn’t respond. Later, I had interviews with three medium-sized companies, but didn’t pass the first round. The reasons included personal performance during the interview and a lack of overlap in the knowledge areas with the interviewers.

0.1.4 Studying open-source project source codes

With more free time, I revisited the source codes of open-source projects (which I had paused while preparing for interviews). The previous articles I wrote were outputs of my research on these source codes.

I participated in Karmada community meetings and reported issues I found in the code to the community.

The goal of this was to maintain technical sensitivity and proficiency.

0.2 On mindset

Was I anxious during this time? My answer is that I wasn’t anxious at all.

Job hunting and interviewing are like blind dating; it depends on fate and luck. It’s about mutual examination to see if both parties are suitable. Moreover, companies still hiring seem to prefer younger candidates who can work overtime at a lower cost. Rather than joining another company with serious overtime issues, it’s better to take care of my health.

I think this job interruption is a good thing for me. It allows me to slowly think about the future path. Relying solely on a company’s platform for survival leads to a narrower path, like a flower in a greenhouse that may not survive in the wild.

So, I need to break out of the working mindset. Working for others is just a temporary fix and eventually, one has to face being abandoned by the company. Since I have to live independently, it’s better to start early while I’m young, energetic, and less burdened, as a smaller ship turns more easily.

I gave myself a long time to find a new direction while lowering my expectations. Only with a positive mindset can I find a new direction and do new things.

0.3 Current reflections

0.3.1 Why can’t I find a job?

First, my technical skills aren’t top-notch, nor am I a well-known figure in the industry. Second, my age. Third, the market demand for people like me (in the cloud-native infrastructure direction) is low; the market needs people with experience in scheduling algorithms, GPU, and AI training. Given the poor economy, there are many job seekers, and it’s a buyer’s market. Fourth, I don’t want to trade my health for money. In the current environment, you have to work harder for just a little bit of money, and that’s unsustainable.

0.3.2 How to change

My personal thinking style is to think things through before acting, then continuously adjust in practice (rather than acting first and then finding direction). I try a direction (for a period), and if it doesn’t work, I switch directions.

Clarify these three things:

• What do you want to do?
• What can you do?
• What are valuable things (helping people save money, making money for people)?

What can I do?

1. Operations and development (cloud-native development—products that reduce enterprise cloud usage costs, AI-related app and website development, etc.)
2. Writing blog articles (continuously outputting my own content)
3. Self-media (e.g., interests like fishing, outdoor activities, etc.)
4. Doing business using resources (e.g., selling dried seafood, etc.)

Technical

Relying on technology to make a living means being an independent developer. Going international is a must for independent developers, and one must consider which direction to take—ToB or ToC. ToB requires developing enterprise software or SaaS or PaaS, which heavily relies on sales and marketing. Both software development and operations have high barriers. ToC requires finding user needs, market size, developing a minimum viable product (MVP), and verifying product-market fit (PMF). For low-level developers, product design and UI design are weak points, but AI can now solve some of these problems.

Writing articles

Although it’s hard to make money from it, it can serve as an auxiliary means for personal and product promotion.

Self-media

Making serious videos on Bilibili, without considering sensationalism, product promotion, or monetization, is hard to sustain. To continue doing it, one must think about how to make money from it.

For example, in the fishing niche:

1. The places you go to must have good fishing resources, so you don’t always come back empty-handed.
2. You need to have your own unique features (funny, technical, scenic).
3. Investing in equipment and realizing returns is hard to guarantee. Before you become successful, there’s no clear positive feedback loop.

Doing business using resources

Currently, I don’t have many resources, so it doesn’t matter. I’ll do it while observing, and maybe something will come up later.

The above routes can be combined; you don’t necessarily have to follow just one path. For example, combining self-media with writing articles and doing business, or combining technology with writing articles.

I used to think that only those who aren’t good at technology change direction. Now I know it’s not necessarily about technology; other factors are more important. There are things more difficult than technology and things easier to make money from than technology.

Don’t forget why you started; changing direction isn’t shameful. Wish me luck.