Involution (involution) is a term that has become popular in the past two years. It is used to refer to the phenomenon that has led human society to stagnate or fail to transform into another advanced model after reaching a certain stage of development. People use it to refer to irrational internal competition or "voluntary" competition.
Involution first appeared in the book "Involution of Agriculture: The Process of Ecological Change in Indonesia" by American anthropologist Geertz. The book describes a state: the rice fields in this area are limited. Your increasing labor force will not lead to an increase in output. In the end, the more manpower you increase, the worse the living conditions of everyone will become.
When it comes to internal scrolling, in fact, the IT industry is also an industry that is less prone to internal scrolling. A few years, more than ten years ago, when the IT industry was an emerging industry, it still belonged to the sunrise industry. However, as more and more people poured into the IT industry in recent years, some subdivided technology stacks appeared. Volume phenomenon, such as client development and background Java development.
Therefore, many programmers often laugh at themselves as tool people and IT workers. In fact, this is also true. In many cases, we do not know the origin of the project or the past process. We just follow the requirements of the boss and product manager to implement the product step by step. Moreover, the demand for the product is always in a state of change. Today the boss and the customer are the demand, and tomorrow it will become that demand. As a programmer, you have to research new technologies every day. In addition, the industry has been changing, the companies on the top of the wave have been changing, the popular technology has been changing, and the popular business model has also been changing. The consequence of this is the evaluation criteria for programmers and the requirements for the technology they master. It has also been changing, and will change in a few years. For example, I was required to be proficient in MFC before, and finally I was proficient, and I was asked to understand SpringCloud related technologies. Many of the questions and training I did before were wasted.
Then some people will say, can I focus on the technology itself and be a person who lowers my head to do technology? Perhaps, most people who do business development have such extravagant hopes, but such positions are few after all. Of course, if you are lucky enough to join a star startup company, and then the company goes public, it is not impossible to achieve wealth freedom.
Now that the programmer industry is so competitive, what can we do to avoid getting caught up? I think from the big point of view, we can avoid falling into involution from the following three aspects:
First: focus on new technologies . The IT Internet industry is very sensitive to new technologies, and mastering new technologies also means more development opportunities. For example, you can focus on related technologies in the fields of big data, blockchain, artificial intelligence, etc., and master these technologies. The industrial Internet era will have certain development advantages, and it will also help oneself escape from involution.
Second: Enhance its own research and development capabilities . For programmers, continuous improvement of their own R&D capabilities is a more realistic way to escape from inward scrolling. To improve their own R&D capabilities, in addition to accumulating in development positions, they can also choose to study for graduate school. Many programmers choose to improve themselves through graduate school. According to historical experience, most programmers have been upgraded after they graduated.
Third: Pay attention to the accumulation of industry knowledge . In addition to the improvement of development technology, programmers should also pay attention to the knowledge accumulation of development scenarios, which is the so-called industry knowledge accumulation. This is still very important in the industrial Internet era. More industry knowledge accumulation will significantly extend their own Career life cycle.
Just mentioned the tool man, in fact, we programmers will more or less go through the process of the tool man, because we originally mastered a technology and then made a living from it. There is nothing wrong with saying that I am a tool person, but what I want to say is that we must be a tool person with a career plan. Combined with my personal work experience, in the first stage of my career, I should be a good tool person, and then spend about 5 years to explore and clarify my career development direction, and then from my personal interests, inner voice and industry direction Set out to make a personal career plan of 10-20 years or even longer.
The following is a very popular career development path for programmers on the Internet, share it with you, let us encourage each other on the road of technology.
