High-paid programmers can't hide from the 35-year-old.. When ability and age are out of touch, how do we save ourselves?

In the testing industry, and even the entire Internet industry, there is such a magical and secret legend: After 35
years old, you will not find a good job. No company made a statement (no company dared), and no employee over the age of 35 came out to refute.

It seems that this is the general knowledge of this industry: 35 years old has become a cold dividing line, and it is also an indisputable recruitment threshold.

This argument is also supported by many powerful analyses:

Why are so many young people in China looking for you?
Now it’s the age of AI, why use you to be able to use machines

Does this phenomenon really exist?

Sorry, it exists, and its scope is very wide.

Most industries have age curses!

I was not convinced, so I searched for the age status of various industries:

The result is this: the

more experienced the welder, the more popular it is? Can't hold a welding torch at the age of 35? As a 33-year-old, I was dissatisfied again. I searched all the industries I wanted to do before.

Design industry:

Real estate sales:

Advertising industry:

Even foreign countries seem to have this problem, but there is no specific number 35:

If you are old and don’t want to do testing, you want to move to other industries without age restrictions. Think about it.

These suggestions are listed below

1. Are you really hitting a professional bottleneck?

It looks pretty silly, but I believe most of the big guys who are doing the test are the same as me: they are not 35 years old at all.

The rapid development of China's Internet (especially mobile Internet) has only been in the past 10 years.

And the reason why we believe that the 35-year-old industry phenomenon is actually a worry about our own future:

Worried about not having enough skills in the market average
Worried that my energy is not as good as that of young people
Worry that the salary of AI is lower than oneself (the maintenance cost of AI is counted as salary)

There are also some friends who are typical of scaring themselves:

Because others are talking about it, I am worried.

If you are really worried about whether you have encountered a professional bottleneck, you first need to confirm whether you really have encountered a professional bottleneck. Take a day to make an objective assessment of yourself:

What is the level of my salary among the peers;
Did I really spend a lot of time in caring for the family and children, or did it actually have no big impact;
Have I mastered the necessary skills and some of the superior skills that my peers need to master (for example, I can perform performance testing? Security testing?)
The most important thing: can I be replaced at will

Here, it may take a little time to collect materials, such as the salary of the peers and the skills that need to be mastered.

To be more specific, you can go to the recruitment website or company review website to check salary; to collect interview questions from other companies, if you can’t collect it, you can go out for a few interviews by yourself.

Next, you need to make an evaluation of yourself:

If your energy, salary and skills are OK, you don't need to worry too much.
If you find that your skills> salary, you can go to a more challenging company to develop, because the company's salary system and the things you need to do may no longer satisfy my growth.
If I find that skills <salary, it means that I have been working in the company, and I will laugh at my salary in the short term, and cry for not being able to find a job in 2 years.

2. Job transformation? Prepare early

After 35 years of age, I believe that many people are reluctant to be ordinary employees anymore, mainly to develop in three major directions:

Management post
Technical expert post
Second career post
no matter which direction is selected, it is important to prepare in advance.
When will the company fancy me and ask me to do management, what should I do if I can’t manage 3 people?

-Which day does the company fancy me and ask me to take charge of the structure, what should I do if I am confused?

When the company goes bankrupt, I think it’s good to be an internet celebrity, but what should I do if I don’t know how to bring goods?

This is a relatively long process. After all, some big bosses started to worry about career development when they were only 28 years old, and they have 6-7 years to prepare.

Learning a little bit every day, there are so many things that can be learned, but those who can persevere are sure to be immortals.

After all, human inertia is not a good way to overcome it, and poor self-control is by nature.

If you can't restrain yourself, you need to invest in some online courses occasionally to complete self-improvement. It is best to find personal supervision. Such as girlfriend, wife, mother or best friend?

There are 2 matters needing attention:

Don't jump around for short-term salary
Don't be a model employee in a stagnant company.

3. Don't jump around for short-term salary

This appears more in the young 24-26. I have been working for 1-2 years. The ability to learn with confidence requires a bigger platform and more money (to get married?). In order to increase the salary of 1-2k per month, they frequently switch jobs, and some can jump 3-4 times a year.

This has 2 disadvantages:

Your resume will become more and more difficult to do in the future
It takes a while to change jobs to adapt to the new company's business and specifications. After one year, I didn't learn anything.

4 Don't be a model employee in a company with no vitality

[Example 1] : There are some big bosses who are born good and can't do bad things.

Her husband asked her to change her environment. She said: I can't. When I was 22, the company didn't dislike me and gave me insurance. Now the company is almost out of order, it is the time when I need to pay back.

I think: In the past 7 years, she has paid the same wages as others, doing more work than others, bonuses and benefits have been deducted in various names, she has to bring her baby, buy vegetables, learn to paint, and become herself Superman and fairy. Shouldn't the return be over long ago?

[Example 2] : Of course not everyone is naturally kind, but it is true that most people lose courage by the edge of their 30s.

Because he has not been in contact with other companies for 6 years, he has been stunned by development and team leader. He no longer knows how to lose his temper. I just test bugs in this company, adjust bugs, and occasionally work part-time as newcomer training for other project teams.

The newcomer is gone, he fills the hole. The automation framework couldn't recruit people, so he drove the ducks to the shelves, and now they are learning and selling, and it is also completed. The company has had a good year of performance and needs to increase performance testing. He temporarily set up a straw team and forgot how many times he had spent the night before going online. The company's performance was stable, and he returned to the previous group.

The company's performance has declined, and the other team members have left.

He is old, 29 years old. I don't know if he can compete with others and dare not leave. Maybe the company will give me pension.

Example summary: Even if you want to work in your current company for a lifetime, you have to keep an eye on the industry. This has two advantages:

Don't let your skills fall behind, it's worthless overnight;
Don’t be too miserable by the current company, and feel that it’s kind to you like a mountain.

5 Accumulation of management experience

If you want to transfer to a management position around 35, you should buy a 5 yuan handbook now. A6 size and A7 size are both very good. Put it in your pocket, ready to record and summarize at any time.

Observe what the supervisor and director say and do, and carefully summarize how they deal with daily trivial and test work arrangements. Changed a company and continued to observe.

Management work is difficult to learn from books, and you must experience it in your own work. The people around you are the best textbooks.

It should be noted that the management post also needs to understand technology and business. Therefore, other aspects cannot be left behind. Many people think that management does not need to be learned, and sit in an independent office to give orders. Who can? If this is not clear, it is best not to move in this direction.

6 Technical Expert Post

The goal of going to the post of technical expert: is to give oneself a unique competitive advantage in the enterprise.

Every company will train its own technical experts, who are responsible for the technical architecture, and they will be ordered in danger when others cannot solve them. They are the last line of defense for the company's technical problems, and they are also the treasures of the company's technology construction. Everyone will take care of them.

Becoming a technical expert is not easy. A very in-depth understanding of project construction and technology is required.

If you want to develop in this area, roll up your sleeves and learn.

But there is a misunderstanding here:

If you want to become a great technologist, you must first learn the basic principles of computers.

Many friends have seen this sentence from a lot of technical tycoons on the Internet, so the 30-year-old cold leg, soaked in wolfberry gnawing "Compilation Principles" and "Introduction to Algorithms", completely ignored the company's system is about to hang up. The post-98 product manager next to him has been awarded 3 test positions in a month.

This is a very correct way of learning for newcomers who have just graduated or just entered the industry.

However, if it is an old bird who has entered middle age, it is not recommended to follow this bottom-up study.

Because your energy and memory can't keep up, if you don't use it for a long time, you will forget it, and your precious youth will be wasted.

The top-down approach is a smoother approach. If the company needs to use postman, I will learn postman; if the company needs to use java to build an automation framework, I will learn java.

Master the skills at the business level first, and then learn the TCP/IP protocol, linux task scheduling, kernel, database optimization, and algorithms. In this way, if you learn a little bit, you can apply it to your work through tools, making it easier for you to sum up, and it is both a sense of accomplishment and easier to master.

The second misunderstanding is:

You have to learn this, you have to learn that, but each is just a simple taste, and it's all ostentatious.

This practice is more popular in the testing field. Today, I saw what tools a certain official account recommended, and went to touch it. Tomorrow, what technology is mentioned in the video, let me touch it again. I run demos and processes all year round.

There are also some students who avoid problems as soon as they encounter problems and spend a lot of time searching:

This editor still looks good with this font, I want to change it;
Wow, the theme of your test tool is so beautiful, how to configure it;
Big guy, I have solved this problem for 3 days, can you help me? (Actually, when I report an error, I immediately come out and ask for help)
I found a new website where I can find answers to many questions.

Some problems are temporary and need to be resolved in the short term, otherwise the project cannot be launched. But these problems are not solved by ourselves, but solved by asking others for help. It belongs to the “technical debt” that we personally owe, and we will have to pay it back sooner or later.

The most important qualities of becoming a testing expert may be pragmatism and persistence. Love to learn, have a pursuit, you can try.

7 It's never too late to find out what you are good at

The third option looks more like a helpless choice: I quit, I go home and farm.

It sounds stiff, but it's kind of sad.

I don't want to really lose a foothold in the testing industry one day, and then suddenly feel that I am actually quite suitable to be an Internet celebrity. Or find that I am actually very good at painting, but I have been busy with work in the past few years and have been abandoned.

Any industry needs accumulation and precipitation. There are really popular stars, and there are many, but it's definitely not me.

I'm an ordinary middle-aged person with mediocre qualifications. Maybe I didn't wake up one day, and I had a daydream of being rich and surrounded by tens of thousands of fans. But more often, I would go to the lottery shop downstairs and buy 2 yuan. Two-color ball with one bet of money.

A more suitable way is to discover what you are good at from now on. For example, when I was in school, I liked hand-painting, and now I can pick it up and play with it first. Can I go in this direction? Not all business hobbies can be developed into a career.

You can only try and explore by yourself like you just graduated.

8 Summary

I'm sorry, this article doesn't make you feel refreshed, nor does it have a wonderful kit to make you a big boss one day.

The following is a collection of some software testing information, I hope it will be helpful to you.

This information is organized around [software testing]. For friends of software testing, it should be a very comprehensive and complete preparation warehouse. This warehouse has accompanied me through a lot of bumpy roads, and I hope it can help you too. Pay attention to WeChat public account: Programmer Erhei, you can get it directly

If 35 years old is the tipping point for the testing industry, I believe most bigwigs still have a few years to prepare in advance.

No matter what methods and measures you use, as long as you can persist, it is a good method. If some students don’t have their own methods and measures, you might as well try one or two of these suggestions. After all, if you are already confused, you don’t have many choices.

At last

What about the 35-year-old crisis? ——When people are 30 or 40 years old, they are not older than before, and they have no chance.

It is more daring to create hope than before.