Today I saw the sharing of Huawei’s talented boy Li Bojie. He talked about his mental journey of choosing from junior high school, high school, university, MSRA, Huawei, etc., as well as the wonderful relationship between personal choices and the historical process. I believe that you will be confused. Very helpful.
Author: Li Bojie
Link: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/647970514Enter the NLP group—> Join the NLP exchange group
Recently, several friends came to me to talk about their choices. "A person's destiny, of course, depends on self-struggle, but the process of history must also be taken into consideration." My father also told me since I was a child that choice is greater than hard work. I have gone through one-third of my life, and I have experienced many choices: I chose computer competitions in junior high school, I chose mathematics and computer competitions in high school, I chose the University of Science and Technology of China in the college entrance examination, but regretted not getting into Tsinghua University, I switched from mathematics to computer science in my sophomore year, and gave up in my senior year. I chose MSRA in order to start a business, work and go abroad. I chose to work in a big factory after my PhD. I interviewed 12 companies and finally chose to work at Huawei...
I have always had difficulty choosing, especially because I tend to get caught up in sunk costs and struggle for a long time with things I can’t get. This leads me to prefer stability over risk when making choices. At the same time, I am still quite idealistic and hope to use my technology to change our lives. Looking back on my choices, I feel like Truman in "The Truman Show", living in a huge studio. Although these choices seem to be made of my own free will, they are actually the result of the environment and the environment at the time. A natural inference of personality preferences; many times I do some deviant things, only to be pulled back to the established track by an invisible hand. This is probably the process of history.
Ignorant era
obedient good boy
Before junior high school, I didn’t have the concept of choice. I just listened to my grandparents and did nothing except study every day. I didn’t hang out with my friends, play games, watch TV, or read novels. When I was in elementary school, my grandma supervised me to do 50 questions every night, and I was not allowed to sleep until I finished. In the third grade of elementary school, I started taking Mathematical Olympiad classes in the evenings and weekends. At that time, a large group of children crowded into Teacher Xiao’s room and sat on the floor. In the fifth grade, they were concentrated in the Mathematical Olympiad training team classroom in Qiaoxi District. Each person had a fixed desk. They no longer had to go to class and had to do papers every day.
Before I went to college, I almost never bought anything by myself, including clothes, which were all bought by my family. I would wear whatever clothes my parents took out from the closet every day. I basically only have one or two yuan in my pocket, which I use to take the bus to and from school. One morning, the snow was up to my knees, and it took a long time for the bus to come. Every time, it was packed with people like sardine cans. In desperation, I had to walk to school one step at a time. It's almost noon in school. In fact, my home is only 3 kilometers away from the school, which is very close in Beijing. Now the house I rent is also 3 kilometers away from the company, and it only takes 20 minutes to run.
This kind of high-intensity, distraction-free training helped me win the national gold medal in the Hua Luogeng Gold Cup Mathematics Competition, but I was basically unable to take care of myself, let alone have the awareness to make independent choices. When I was promoted from elementary school to junior high school, because of this gold medal, all junior high schools in the city were free for me, except for the most famous Shijiazhuang No. 2 Middle School. No. 2 Middle School said that there has never been a tuition fee exemption, and at most it would be half the price. But my grandparents, parents, and parents checked it out and found that No. 2 Middle School had the best academic style and the strongest teachers, so they finally chose No. 2 Middle School. Of course, my opinion was sought for this choice, and I think it is good, but I did not participate in the research in depth.
Junior high school students choose to participate in computer competitions
Not long after I entered junior high school, the school began to organize computer competition classes. My family didn't let me participate in it at first. When it comes to computers, isn't this just playing computer games? If I play games every day, what's the point? A month later, my good friend Meng Yang told me that the computer competition was about programming and involved a lot of mathematics, which was quite interesting. I went back and told my parents, and they said, go ahead and participate. Just like elementary school, junior high school students have to put on shoe covers in a serious manner when entering the computer room. Then I heard the teacher talking about printf statements. Looking around, some students were looking down at Tan Haoqiang's textbook, and some were taking notes seriously. The teacher didn't let us touch the computer, so we didn't dare to touch it. Our English was not very good at that time, and when we learned English in primary school, we used Chinese Pinyin as the wrong phonetic symbol, so I also used Chinese Pinyin to mark these keywords in C language. Because of this, I often write main as mian.
At that time, our method of learning programming was also very simple and crude. We relied on rote memorization of codes, and if we made mistakes, we would be punished by copying them. In a classroom without computers, I copied the program 50 times on paper because I missed a semicolon. During my interview, some candidates asked me why I could see grammatical errors in the program at a glance. That's the obsessive-compulsive disorder that comes from learning programming.
In addition to computer competitions, there are also mathematics competitions in junior high school, but I did not spend much time on the mathematics competitions and did not achieve very good results. This is probably because I think computers are more fun, so I spend more time on them. I also got full marks in the junior high school computer competition (NOIP popularization group), but this is of no use for the high school entrance examination, and it still depends on the high school entrance examination results. It is precisely because of this that our students who participated in the computer competition spent most of their time on the cultural classes required for the high school entrance examination. My high school entrance examination scores were also among the top dozen in the city, and I successfully entered Shijiazhuang No. 2 Middle School. By the way, Hengshui Middle School is probably the best high school in Hebei Province in terms of college entrance examination. It is famous throughout the country as a college entrance examination factory. But Hengzhong was not so strong at that time. Shijiazhuang No. 2 Middle School was the strongest in the province in both college entrance examination and competition. Therefore, there is nothing to worry about when it comes to choosing a high school.
high school
Participate in four competitions at the same time, and two will be left in the end
When I was in high school, anyone who won the provincial first prize in the mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and informatics (computer) competitions could be recommended. The competition classes were run by the school and there were no fees or thresholds. All students were eligible. Come to the class. In order to make it easier for students to find their own interests, the class times of these competitive classes are generally staggered. Therefore, I took part in math, physics, chemistry, and computer competition classes at the same time to see which one I was more interested in before making a choice. I didn’t choose biology because of class time conflicts.
Each competitive class starts in a large lecture hall with 200 people. It is just like a large lecture in a university. Those sitting in the back cannot see the words on the blackboard clearly. Within a few months, many students would have dropped out because they couldn't keep up or weren't interested, and a regular classroom could fit all the students. At this stage, teachers will also organize some exams regularly. Teachers with poor performance will persuade them to quit and suggest that they concentrate on other competitions or concentrate on preparing for the college entrance examination. Because there are only about 40 first prizes in the province for each competition, only a dozen or twenty people from the North Campus of No. 2 Middle School can win the prize. To win an award, you need to go through hard training, usually cultural classes are suspended for intensive training. Therefore, if you don't win the award and go back to take the college entrance examination, your results will definitely be affected. Therefore, at the end of each competition, there will be more than ten or twenty people left to rush for admission. Too many people will only lead to involution, and the future of some unlucky students may be affected.
My scores in math competitions were relatively the best at that time, and I was also pretty good at computers. I also learned most of the knowledge for the physics and chemistry competitions, but I didn't practice the questions seriously. But from these competition classes, I learned a lot of useful ways of thinking. For example, I like to ask a question during interviews. Three people stand at the three vertices of an equilateral triangle and start chasing the next person clockwise, asking for the time of meeting. This is a classic question in physics competitions. If you use calculus It will be very troublesome to hard solve this logarithmic spiral in polar coordinates, but using the relative speed thinking method, the result can be calculated verbally.
It is precisely because I think these competitions are quite interesting that I am reluctant to give up any of them. It wasn't until the frequency of classes for various competitions increased, the chemistry competition conflicted with other competitions' class schedules, and there was no time to complete so much homework that I gave up chemistry first. Giving up physics was a strategic decision on my part, because there were several great masters participating in mathematics and physics competitions at the same time, and the class times for these two competitions were deliberately arranged so as not to conflict. But my teachers and parents persuaded me that I don’t have time to do so many competitions at the same time, so I should try to concentrate on one subject. I finally signed up to participate in the physics competition, but in the experimental examination of the semi-finals, because I had not participated in training, I could not even figure out how to use the experimental equipment. In the end, I won a provincial second prize, which was not bad.
Getting involved with running websites and writing articles
When I first entered high school, I met my good friend Xiao Shikang. He had strong computer skills. He could not only create computer viruses and write anti-virus software, but also build websites. Although I could write some C programs when I first entered high school, I could only cope with the written test questions of Internet companies. I knew nothing about operating systems, computer networks, and website development. I only knew how to kill people with IceSword. If the system's key processes are blocked, the system will crash; in junior high school, I also learned to use FrontPage to make the simplest web pages, but I knew nothing about HTML and CSS. Therefore, I admire Xiao Shikang very much and learn computer systems and website development from him. At that time, he developed a "Taihang New Generation Anti-Virus Software". I helped him write a few forms, but I still didn't understand the principle of anti-virus.
Soon, I used FrontPage (later changed to Dreamweaver) to create a "Bojie Learning Network" composed entirely of static web pages. At that time, various JS special effects were particularly popular, so I glued a bunch of JS codes from the Internet, and the web page It was snowing heavily for a while, colorful flags were fluttering for a while, and a banner flew by for a while. During the May 12 earthquake in 2008, I even implemented a site-wide ashes. Because I was participating in four competitions at the time, I put the study materials for several competitions and various information about the class on Bojie Learning Network, which became an unofficial information portal. It was probably at that time that the seed of my love for making websites was planted.
Later, because it was too laborious to maintain these static web pages, especially when it was necessary to modify the overall style of the entire site, it was a disaster to modify page by page, so I registered a numerology forum on 5d6d (a free forum hosting website). This was the most popular Discuz! forum software at the time. Xiao Shikang also helped me register a free domain name http://boj.pp.ru. The forum made information release much more efficient. I invested more time in the forum, which took up a lot of time to do competition questions. I collected all the real questions and answers and other learning materials from previous competitions and put them up. Perhaps the most influential one is that I wrote a book called "Introduction to Fraudulent Scores" for math competitions, and I also expanded the book "Introduction to Fraudulent Scores" for computer contests written by another author "I am mentally retarded" into a second edition. The forum even attracted foreign students participating in mathematics competitions. I helped them translate domestic mathematics competition questions into English.
Unfortunately, I did not have the habit of backing up data at that time. The data on the Bojie Learning Network and the Numerology Forum have been lost. Except for the "Introduction to Cheating Points" written by myself, the competition information I accumulated on it can no longer be found. arrive.
When I was in high school, I often read various things on the Internet. At first, I was influenced by the relatively right-wing liberal ideological trend (in the domestic sense), and later by the relatively left-wing ideological trend. I often read posts on the Internet, and wrote about many current affairs under a pen name. Review articles. This also takes up a lot of time that should be used to do competition questions. I remember that when I went to Beijing to participate in the finals of the NOI National Computer Competition in 2009, our provincial team spent the evening doing questions, but I was doing the homework. My grandma who accompanied me to the competition said that I was always online and could not do the questions well. . However, being exposed to many different political viewpoints at an early stage in high school also made me realize the complexity of society and the diversity of viewpoints. It is not easy to just follow the wind and rain, but to conduct more independent research and thinking. .
I like writing, which was probably a hobby I developed through frequent writing in elementary school. Although I am not very good at writing, especially narrative essays according to the standards of high school and college entrance examinations, at least I am willing to write down my thoughts, unlike many young people nowadays who find it difficult to write long articles. , even forgetting to write when I picked up my pen.
Choose the University of Science and Technology of China for the College Entrance Examination
Recommended students had three ways out that year. Those who won national competitions could sign directly with specific schools, those who won first prize at the provincial level or above could participate in the "Five Schools Joint Entrance Examination" (or similar examinations organized by other schools), and those who could participate in the independent enrollment of colleges and universities with lower score admission conditions. College entrance examination.
Although I only won a bronze medal in the 2009 NOI National Computer Competition, I was still able to go to Fudan University. But I was only a sophomore in high school at that time, and I didn’t want to give up the opportunity to go to Tsinghua and Peking University just to save a year of high school. Compared with other subject competitions, computer competitions are indeed special. Most students won the first prize in provincial competitions in the first semester of their sophomore year, and then went through provincial team training and participated in the national computer competition during the winter vacation of their sophomore year. In other subjects, students usually only win the first prize in provincial competitions in the first semester of their senior year of high school, and then participate in national competitions. Therefore, when I won the national bronze medal in computer science in my second year of high school, I had not yet taken the math competition, so naturally I did not want to give up this opportunity. To be honest, I am better at mathematics competitions than computers. Being able to take second place in Hebei Province and enter the 6-member provincial team in computer science is purely an extraordinary performance (Hebei Province does not have provincial selections, and you can enter the provincial team directly based on the provincial competition results) , some computer experts in our competition class performed abnormally. However, he did not perform so well in the mathematics competition and missed out on the provincial team. I have never been very good in some areas of mathematics competition, such as plane geometry, and I suffered a big loss in the semi-finals.
Like most competitive students, I took the "Five Schools Joint Entrance Examination", which included Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, University of Science and Technology of China, Xi'an Jiaotong University, and Nanjing University. The subjects of the examination included mathematics, Chinese, English, comprehensive science, and The subjects of the college entrance examination are similar, from 8:30 in the morning to 20:00 in the evening, 7.5 hours a day. Among them, many of the comprehensive questions in mathematics and science are difficult questions for the preliminary competition, which are slightly more difficult than the college entrance examination. The worst test was in comprehensive science, with only 40 points out of 100. In the end, I was about 10 points away from Tsinghua's score line, but exceeded the score lines of the other four schools. The five-school joint entrance examination allows two choices. At that time, I applied for Tsinghua University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Tsinghua University still allowed me to participate in the interview. It was a group interview. Several candidates had a leaderless group discussion. The topic was "How do you view Google's withdrawal from China?" Naturally, I knew more about this topic than other candidates, although I deliberately restrained myself. , but still clearly led the entire discussion. I went to Beijing for an interview with Tsinghua University, and found out that a classmate from our class was omitted from the interview list. I quickly informed him to go to Tsinghua University, and he finally got into Tsinghua University smoothly. Shanghai Jiao Tong University promised me to join the best science experimental class.
The University of Science and Technology of China is a little different. In addition to the "Five Schools Joint Entrance Examination", many admissions teachers are sent to the school to organize interviews, which are similar to company interviews. In several rounds of interviews, there are face-to-face questions, basic knowledge, and future plans. After the interview, the admissions teacher at the University of Science and Technology of China particularly hoped that I could go, saying that I was ranked first and second in the school's interview scores. However, the University of Science and Technology of China requires me to sign an agreement, just like when a company accepts an offer. The agreement requires me to promise not to go to other schools. However, this agreement is only binding on paper, and many students still left after receiving their studies at Tsinghua and Peking University.
What I was most confused about at that time was whether to go to Shanghai Jiao Tong University or University of Science and Technology of China. Shanghai Jiao Tong University is more famous, and the city of Shanghai is also bigger; USTC has a quieter desk, suitable for basic research. I planned to major in mathematics at the time, and computing was just a hobby. Therefore, I felt that the atmosphere at the University of Science and Technology of China with a solid foundation in mathematics was more suitable for studying mathematics. In the end, I chose to abide by the agreement signed with the University of Science and Technology of China and study in the science experimental class of the University of Science and Technology of China. It should be noted in particular that the Science Experimental Class belongs to the Junior Class Academy. When we talk about the Junior Class Academy to the outside world, most people will think of us as being in the Junior Class. However, in fact, in addition to the Junior Class, the Junior Class Academy also includes innovative students who passed the high school entrance examination. Pilot class and science experimental class for normal senior high school graduates.
There is another option, which is to give up the opportunity of direct recommendation, take advantage of Tsinghua's independent admissions reduction points and the bonus points for winning competitions, review for half a year, and then go to Tsinghua University. But I think this is too risky, because the cultural courses in our competition class are compressed into the first year of high school, and we do high-intensity competition training in the second year of high school. The unified examination score of the cultural courses in the whole school has dropped to more than 100. name. Although after receiving the provincial first prize, in order to prepare for the independent enrollment examination (the subjects are basically the same as the college entrance examination), I have made up a lot of knowledge in cultural courses, and my score has risen to the top 50, but if I don’t consider the extra points, I may not even be in the University of Science and Technology of China. Can go. Of course, through the training in the second semester of the third year of high school, the grades will be improved, but it is still too risky to apply for Tsinghua University by lowering the scores through independent enrollment.
After the results of the provincial competition came out and the qualifications for admission were finalized, our competition class entered the state of Buddhism. Compared with the students in the college entrance examination class, we were really carefree. In the past half year, I taught myself PHP, thinking about writing a forum system by imitating the Discuz! forum and WordPress. In the end, I wrote about 8,000 lines of code and built a demo, but I didn’t use it anymore. I also read a book called "In-depth Understanding of Computer Systems", which was the beginning of my interest in computer systems. In addition, I have read the blogs of masters such as Matrix67 and learned a lot of interesting knowledge. I dream that one day my own blog will have so much high-quality content.
University
I was quite unwilling to be admitted to Tsinghua University. When I first entered college, I played the Tsinghua school song "The West Mountain is Cangcang, the East China Sea is Vast" in my dormitory, and I asked my roommate, do you know what song this is? He said, no need to ask, it must be the school song of Tsinghua University. There are many talents in the science experimental class of HKUST, many of whom missed out on Tsinghua and Peking University. To this day, when I meet Tsinghua students or experts who graduated from Tsinghua University who come for interviews, internships or employment, they are sometimes quite humble, and I always say that I dreamed of becoming a Tsinghua student, but it never came true in my life. Being a student of Tsinghua University is a lifelong honor, and you should cherish this honor.
Sophomore year, switching from mathematics major to computer science
In my freshman year, even though I joined Hua Luogeng's class to study mathematics, and HKUST also had a strong academic atmosphere, I still couldn't fully concentrate on my studies like in high school, and always liked to join various clubs. Regarding this period of college experience, I once wrote a quite long blog, Graduation - I would like to pay tribute to my lost youth, so I won’t go into details. But there are two things that still need to be emphasized.
The first thing I did was to join LUG (Linux Users Association) in my freshman year. I was exposed to the spirit of hackers and free software, and discovered that I could use technology to change my life. When I was in high school, many people in our class believed that communism was difficult to achieve because the total amount of materials and energy was limited, while human desires may be unlimited; in addition, social status was also relative, and absolute equality was impossible. . During my Buddhist years after being recommended, I also read Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem (1951) in the multi-person voting and the economist Coase’s classic paper The Nature of the Firm (1937). I was a little desperate for a while, but it was absolutely fair. Both elections and one-person-one-vote corporations are unrealistic. However, computers store, transmit and process information, not physical objects. The cost of transmitting and copying information is very low, which makes it possible to share selflessly and everyone gets what they need. The freedom, sharing and cooperation of the hacker spirit attracted me, hoping to build an information utopia in a materialistic world. This is actually somewhat similar to the ideological core of today's Metaverse and Web3.
The second thing was that in the first semester of my freshman year, I followed the friends from Gewu Zhizhishe and tried to start a business in a naive way. I modeled on the popular movie "The Social Network" and the "Chinese version of Facebook" Renren, and started a "Gewu.com" . At that time, we found that every class, every course, and every laboratory lacked communication and information release channels. Some used the most traditional methods of phone calls and group text messages, and some used QQ groups, but the messages were quickly submerged. Although the school has an online teaching platform to share course materials, there are only a few users. So we put forward the concept of "organizational social network", the core of which is the "organization" in society, which realizes data sharing, notifications and announcements, exchanges and discussions, project plans, election voting, etc. within the organization. Organizations can combine existing functional modules or create new ones programmatically. Simply put, an organization is like an independent multi-purpose forum. At the same time, we also imagined Web 3.0, hoping to use technical means to ensure that everyone can own their own data and authorize others to access the data independently, and through a set of benefit-sharing mechanisms, the use of data can be guaranteed. Data producers pay data producers, allowing producers to obtain real-world benefits. Looking back on this 2011 design, I still feel a little excited, because today Web3 is realizing a similar dream based on blockchain technology.
Unfortunately, my website technology lagged behind my ideas, and the web page was very ugly. Gewu.com was launched during the summer vacation between my freshman and sophomore years. As mentioned in the blog post Graduation - I Commemorate My Lost Youth, we are in He Yu Under the leadership of the president and Vice President Zhang Wei, curtains and projections were set up on the east and west campuses to promote the Gewu Network. The use of curtains and projections to promote websites on campus is probably unprecedented at HKUST.
Because of these experiences, I have become more and more obsessed with computers that can bring changes to our actual lives, rather than boring mathematics. My grades in mathematics in my freshman year were very poor, and I failed linear algebra in my second semester of my freshman year. A large part of the reason was that I spent all day in the computer room of the Junior College, tinkering with computers. My good friend Guo Jiahua and I are very destined. When I came to the University of Science and Technology of China to report on my first day, I took a train all night and waited at the entrance of Dormitory Building 221 of the Youth Academy early in the morning. After a while, Guo Jiahua came over with his luggage. He was also admitted to the computer competition, and he was very good at playing Linux in high school and knew how to configure the server's network. He was the first friend I made at HKUST. Although I often went to the computer room of the Junior College, senior Zhou Miaomiao, who was in charge of the technical management of the computer room, would not let me touch the server in the main control room because I did not know a single Linux command at the time. Later, I slowly learned some commands from Guo Jiahua, and like Senior Zhou Miaomiao and Guo Jiahua, I could go to the main control room to pull network cables, fix crystal heads, and configure switches and gateway servers. When I was in my first year of graduate school, I called my undergraduate friends from LUG to the computer room of the Junior College to play, see the actual Freeshell server cluster, and make crystal heads together. However, the Internet may not be difficult. Once you have done it, you will know. I told my girlfriend the story of teaching a few friends to make crystal heads in the computer room of the Youth Academy. She said how difficult it was. The network cable was broken at that time and she was reluctant to buy a new one. She just reinstalled the crystal heads and fixed it. .
During the summer of my freshman year, I seriously considered switching from mathematics to computer science, but I hadn't made up my mind yet. I still bought the mathematics textbook for the first semester of my sophomore year and found it to be more difficult than my freshman year. When my sophomore year started and I took classes for two weeks, I found that I couldn’t understand differential equations at all. Mathematical Analysis (3) also sounded very difficult because I had never learned the integrals well. I took advantage of the one-on-one opportunity with the professor of the mathematics department to express my concerns. The professor told me very openly that the courses I am learning now are the foundation of mathematics. If the foundation is not solid, it will be difficult to study in mathematics later. If you are more interested in computers, it is best to do things that interest you more. Don't wrong your heart and choose a path you don't like. So, I made up my mind and told my class teacher about changing my major, and the class teacher also supported my choice. Fortunately, the junior college offers free choice of majors. You only need to go to the teacher to fill out the course selection form, and you don't have to go through a lot of trouble to change departments.
Today, there are many big names in my research field who have transferred from mathematics and physics majors.
For example, my supervisor Dr. Zhang Lintao won the gold medal in the International Physics Competition in 1992. After completing physics at Peking University, he switched to EE and CS when he went to Princeton to study for his PhD. The instructor said that although he thought he was smarter and had a good foundation in physics, he still lacked some inspiration compared to some great masters. He believes that in the academic path of basic science, only the top 1% can make achievements that change the world. Although most other researchers can also become professors through qualifications, it is not that interesting. He feels that Not the top few. I feel that the instructor is a very smart person, and you can get the idea as soon as you briefly talk to him. Every time I listen to a report, whether it is a field he is familiar with or not, he can ask very good questions. Even a smart person like my mentor thinks that it is not suitable for basic research. I think I am lucky that I did not choose basic science, otherwise I might be lost in the public eye.
My good friend Lu Yuanwei during the joint training period at MSRA also studied physics as an undergraduate. When he came to MSRA, his computer foundation was not very good. Dr. Guo Chuanxiong gave him several computer science books. After he finished reading, he could also be like us "from a major" Also doing very good research on computer systems. It's never too late to choose something you like.
Senior year, starting a business, working, going abroad, or MSRA
No matter which one you choose, it seems to be good now? This was my first thought after writing this subtitle.
When I was a senior in college, the entrepreneurial team that was born out of Gewu Zhizhishe was no longer as wishful thinking as it was when working on "Gewu.com", thinking that social networks could be promoted as long as they had technology and ideas. The entrepreneurial team has tried more products that can bring real income, such as the physics tutorial system, which packages physics experiment videos, teaching videos, etc. into products; the classroom question answering system, which gives each student a handheld wireless terminal with buttons, and the teacher can The computer on the podium can implement functions such as roll call and question answering through near field communication. These products bring a lot of real income, but the market size is not easy to expand. After I left the entrepreneurial team to intern at MSRA, they found a field that was truly technological and promising—high-end scientific instruments. Today, Guoyi Quantum relies on the original innovation results of the University of Science and Technology of China to design and produce a variety of high-end quantum scientific instruments, solving many "stuck neck" problems in quantum precision measurement, and has become a one-man company with a cumulative financing amount of nearly 1 billion yuan. beast. If you had chosen to continue working in this entrepreneurial team, you would not only have been able to achieve financial freedom, but the innovations you had made would also have had strong practical value.
Although HKUST has a high rate of further study and not many people work directly after graduating from undergraduate programs, many of the great people I met in computer competitions got offers from top companies such as Google after graduating from undergraduate programs. In addition, some domestic Internet companies also extended an olive branch to me. For example, Alibaba invited me for an interview. I didn't seriously consider the option of working directly after my undergraduate degree, because I joined MSRA's joint doctoral program during the summer vacation of my junior year, and I thought Microsoft was pretty good. A PhD friend of mine told me that when the CTO of ByteDance invited him to join, he finally chose to come to MSRA to study for a PhD. In this way, he missed out on 100 million, maybe more.
Studying abroad is the default choice for students with high grades at HKUST, because master's degrees generally require self-funding, and most choose to study for doctoral degrees. When I was a sophomore in college, I went to Beijing with several friends from Gewu Zhizhi Society and shared a short-term rental house for nearly a month to participate in New Oriental's GRE training class. Interestingly, most of us have never gone abroad. My math scores were not good in my freshman year, and I was addicted to playing around with various network services. I was not particularly interested in the courses, so my grade points were relatively low (3.4 when I applied for MSRA joint training in my junior year, and 3.3 when I graduated from my senior year). You probably won’t be able to go to a particularly good school if you study abroad for a Ph.D. Therefore, although I attended the GRE training class, I did not memorize the words and do the questions according to the teacher's requirements after I came back. So far, I have not signed up to take the GRE test. Furthermore, I was not very interested in academic research at the time. Many students with high grades will enter the laboratory to do scientific research during their undergraduate studies, but I have no scientific research experience. I feel that scientific research is as boring as the mathematics major I once abandoned, and doing engineering projects can really change my life. Therefore, during the application season, I did not get to know any schools or submit any applications.
MSRA originated from an unexpected encounter. Although I took classes with the School of Computer Science at that time, I would go to the LUG activity room or the computer room of the Junior College after class. I didn’t play much with my classmates from the School of Computer Science, and a lot of information was relatively unavailable. In the second semester of my junior year, my head teacher, Mr. Huang, told me that Microsoft has a "Microsoft Little Scholar" scholarship, and I can try to apply for it. During the interview process, I learned that Microsoft offers internships and joint PhD programs. At first, I heard that the "Microsoft Little Scholars" and the joint doctoral program only recruit students with high grades. I thought it was hopeless. But I didn't expect that the teacher who interviewed me appreciated the technical projects I had done during my undergraduate studies. In the end, he not only evaluated I got the scholarship and got the opportunity to jointly train for a doctoral degree.
Among these four choices, the ones I struggle with the most are entrepreneurship and MSRA. I was very enthusiastic about starting a business, but the risk might be relatively high, because at that time we had not yet found such a good direction as high-end scientific instruments. After two months of summer internship, I have a good impression of MSRA. The office environment is comfortable, with free drinks and fruits, the culture is very open, and the mentors are very knowledgeable and serious. The most important thing is that I changed my stereotype of research. It turns out that network system research is not about formulating formulas, but about writing codes to solve real-life problems. Although these problems originate from distant data centers, they are real. Because my risk appetite is still relatively stable, I chose to continue studying for a PhD and do research at MSRA. Although I have some concerns about studying for a Ph.D. in China, I no longer worry after seeing the achievements of jointly training senior brothers and sisters.
PhD
System or FPGA programming
The first project during my Ph.D. study, ClickNP, was a key project of my supervisor. My supervisor, Tan Bo, had already completed the system design and pooled the resources of the whole group to work on it. In the end, the first draft of my thesis was completely overturned and rewritten by my supervisor. After this paper was published, my instructor asked me in the tea room whether the next step would be to do FPGA programming or system development. I thought about it and decided to make a system. First of all, because I am not from EE background, FPGA programming is just a three-legged cat skill. If I go deep into it, I will not be able to play with digital circuits. Secondly, because the main research direction of the mentors in our network group is still system-oriented, they can get more guidance when working on systems. The instructor nodded and said that he also suggested that I take the system direction. This two- to three-minute conversation determined the path for my Ph.D.
After graduating with a Ph.D., academia or industry, starting a business or a large factory
When I graduated with a Ph.D., it came to job choices, which I roughly divided into five categories: academia, freelance work, entrepreneurship, large foreign companies, and large domestic companies.
The first is academia. Although I like scientific research very much, just like my concerns when I first started studying for a Ph.D., I don’t like theory and like practical research. I feel that research in academia, even in the field of network systems, is often divorced from actual needs. For example, during my Ph.D., the entire team spent several years researching. Although they published good papers, they only explored some possibilities and were not commercialized in any production system. Today, I still hope to summarize the successful practices in the industry and publish them in papers, just like I like to write blogs to share my life, but I don’t want to "force myself to express my sorrow for coming up with new words" and do some short-term work just to write papers. Something that cannot be commercially used.
Second is freelancing. Although the hacker spirit essentially encourages freelancing, the current knowledge-based benefit sharing mechanism is not yet complete. Except for a few big Vs, they only rely on consulting services, knowledge payment, and advertising revenue from personal websites to support themselves. Very difficult. For most freelancers, the money they can earn from freelancing is far less than working for a large factory. As a result, my idea of freelancing slowly faded away. I envy LUG’s friends who choose to work as freelancers and practice the spirit of idealism with their own lives. For now, you still need to ensure that you don’t starve to death before talking about the hacker spirit of freedom, sharing, and openness.
Then there is entrepreneurship. The advantage of startups is that they are highly efficient and can penetrate market segments like catfish. Analyzing the size of the target market and the current player situation, you will find that it is not easy for the company to make money. For a company the size of Microsoft, a market worth less than $1 billion is simply out of reach. Because if a large company wants to establish a project to do something, it requires complex processes and the support of a multi-functional team. What a small team of three or five people can handle, a large company may need a team of dozens of people. The development process of large companies is complex, with a code productivity of 300~500 lines/person-month, and the code produced has been rigorously inspected and tested; a small company may have a code productivity as high as 3000~5000 lines/person-month, but the code quality may not be that high. Therefore, large companies are more suitable for B-to-B markets with strict quality requirements, while startups are more suitable for markets with small steps and fast iterations.
It is more difficult to start a business in the data center network research field where I work, because data centers are only owned by large companies. Large companies either develop their own smart network cards or purchase smart network cards from other large companies. Who would buy an unknown one? What about network cards for small companies? Therefore, although there are many start-up companies in this typical to B field, they are all founded by successful bosses of large companies and are not suitable for young people to start their own businesses. If you want to start a business, you may have to work in relatively "emerging" fields such as blockchain, metaverse, privacy computing, and artificial intelligence. However, I have no experience in these fields, and I don't want to give up my experience in the data center field. .
I think the data center field is still more suitable for working in a large factory. Compared with freelancing or startups, large companies have more rules and regulations. These rules and regulations are reflected in rules and regulations, project management and development processes on the one hand, and in topic selection and project establishment on the other. In the words of my mentor, we must abide by the company’s business facts and choices, and respect the company’s position in the industry and the current status of its products; research problems must have a way to be implemented into products, rather than solving “human problems.” ".
It makes no difference to me whether I work at home or abroad, but my girlfriend just graduated with a doctorate this year. If I go abroad in 2019, it will change from a foreign place to a foreign country. When we are in different places, we can still see each other once a month, but when we are in another country, we can't meet so frequently, and there will even be jet lag, which is even more troublesome. So I quickly ruled out the option of working abroad. At the beginning of 2018, I had a sudden idea and signed up to take the TOEFL test naked, and scored 103 points. Speaking and writing were the worst, with scores of 22 and 24 respectively. With certain preparations, I might be able to improve. But then I didn’t plan to work abroad, so I didn’t deliberately learn English.
Interviews at large companies mainly consist of answering questions, talking about research results, and chatting.
From a comprehensive perspective, only large domestic companies or unicorns are left. Large companies generally recruit through several channels, including invitations from big bosses, internal referrals, or overseas submission of resumes. Because we are in the MSRA circle, many big guys from MSRA have naturally become our important choices, and they will also take the initiative to contact us. This method of invitation from big guys has the highest probability of getting top offers; internal referrals are Recommended by friends, my friend Cong, who is a doctor in Lianpei, helped me recommend several companies; overseas investment resumes are generally not recommended. Firstly, the probability of the resume being "picked up" is not high, and secondly, it is matched. The department may not be suitable either. The method of invitation or internal recommendation by a boss is equivalent to using the endorsement of the recommender, which gives the interviewer a good first impression before the interview. However, you must find reliable friends when making internal recommendations. Someone once recommended a candidate to me and said bad things about them, so I said, don’t recommend them. It’s never a good thing to say bad things about others because of personal grudges.
I interviewed a total of 12 companies, divided into three categories:
Major domestic manufacturers, including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, Meituan, and Huawei
Domestic unicorns, including Pony.ai, 4Paradigm, Cambrian, and Horizon
Foreign companies, including MSRA, Xilinx, VMWare
The interview formats of most companies are similar. The first two rounds are technical. Most companies will ask you to talk about the research you have done and do some algorithm questions. Later there are interviews with supervisors, more senior CEOs, and sometimes HR interviews. These high-level interviews are mainly chat-based, mainly looking at the influence of research results, future career plans, and the degree of compatibility with the company's values. Senior leaders will also take this opportunity to promote the company and attract candidates. Some senior leaders will also ask to write code during interviews.
For example, Alistar includes two rounds of technical interviews, a supervisor interview, a cross-over interview, and a final round of Alistar interviews. The final interview at Alibaba Star was with the P11 president of the department, two big guys from other departments, and the senior HR director. They were asked to give an academic report for 30 minutes first, and then the big guys asked questions for 30 minutes. At that time, I was talking about the batch-stream integrated processing database project I was working on. I didn't realize that the P11 boss was a senior expert in databases, so I was scolded. However, many of my immature projects used the opportunity of reporting to the boss to receive feedback. When I was interning at MSRA, one time (not for an interview) Turing Award winner Butler Lampson came to MSRA for a visit. I told him about the idea of total order message transmission, and he gave very valuable feedback. This job was rejected after After 4 times, it was finally published on SIGCOMM '21.
I was also impressed by Ali’s cross-interview. The interviewer for the cross-interview was from another department. He was an expert who had switched jobs from Intel. He asked me a lot about CPU architecture. He said that I knew more calculations among my peers, but I still knew less about the details. . I said that it is difficult to understand the details of the CPU microarchitecture through public channels. He said quite profoundly that this is the value of work experience. This remark made me realize that I must join a team with core technologies and have as broad a technical vision as possible in order to learn as much know-how as possible in my short youth.
When interviewing Mr. Guo Chuanxiong from ByteDance, Dr. Guo gave me a math question. That question was to find the upper and lower bounds given a recursive formula, which was derived from his DCell paper (the number of servers increases exponentially with the DCell level), but I did not read this paper carefully. In fact, it is not difficult to find the upper and lower bounds in mathematics, but I did not work it out at the time. It suddenly became clear to me after Dr. Guo explained it to me. Dr. Guo said that the kind of research he likes is the type of research that has elegant mathematical theory and practical value at the same time, but such research is hard to come by. When interviewing Byte CTO Yang Zhenyuan, he asked me to write code on the spot and talked about a lot of details about my research work. He said that he hadn't talked about such low-level things for a long time. He was doing this kind of low-level optimization when he was at Baidu. It felt like he had been a general for several years and returned to the knights to learn swordsmanship.
When I was interviewing with Pony.ai, I met the legendary leader Lou as I wished. Before meeting Master Lou, there were two rounds of coding interviews. Each interview had two or three not difficult algorithm questions, which were very similar to interviews at Google. Master Lou gave me a few puzzles, none of which I had ever seen before:
Use a coin that has a probability of landing heads every time it is thrown, allowing multiple tosses to achieve an equal-probability 01 random variable, requiring the expectation of reducing the number of tosses as much as possible. This is indeed a very beautiful question. I figured out the optimal strategy on the spot but failed to calculate the expectation. Later I found that the expectation is 1/H(p), where H is the entropy function.
The number of vertices and faces of an n-dimensional cube.
Given any starting point and end point on the six faces of a three-dimensional cube, find the shortest distance that the insect can crawl along the face.
Cut one side of a rectangular piece of paper into thirds and fifths. The leader gave me a piece of A4 paper to fold. I struggled for a long time and came up with a method. The leader thought it was right, but I found out that I was wrong. Then I changed it and found a third-class method that he had never seen before. The dividing method is relatively complicated. In fact, the leader's method is very simple and can be easily extended to any equal division.
At that time, I also asked the leader Lou what he thought of the end-to-end autonomous driving pipeline. He said that life-critical things were completely left to black boxes like neural networks, and he was worried; the interpretability and debuggability of deep learning are not strong. Even if the effect is good, it will be difficult to explain to the public if something goes wrong, and it may not meet the requirements of regulations.
MSRA may have the largest number of interview rounds, including two rounds of code interviews, collective interviews with researchers and supervisors, cross-sectional interviews, deputy director interviews, HR interviews, etc. Each round of code interviews consists of two algorithm questions and one system design question. It is known as the "one-vote veto system" because those who fail to pass the coding test will not be hired no matter how much the supervisor intercedes. MSRA's group interview of researchers and supervisors is similar to Huawei's group interview of researchers and supervisors, and the final interview on Alistar. They both give academic reports first, and then ask questions and exchanges. Intersection mainly tests the breadth of knowledge and openness of thinking. There was once a candidate who aggressively attacked the interviewer's research field during the interview, which was not appropriate.
When interviewing with Huawei, Tan Bo asked me what I thought about the application of FPGA in data centers. If you just talk about the advantages of FPGA from the perspective of defending your own research results, this answer will be narrow. Different companies have different choices, including technical path dependence and commercial considerations. The company also hopes that candidates can objectively analyze the advantages and disadvantages of various smart network card architectures. When I am an interviewer myself, I also hope that candidates can break away from their own research work and have new independent thinking. It is best to sublimate it to a higher level, instead of reciting reports made a few years ago like a repeater. Say it again.
In fact, I didn’t prepare much for these interviews, because I think the algorithm questions from big companies are not difficult (unless they are math or brain teasers); the research results have been talked about many times, and there is no need for PPT materials. You can tell it; there is no need to prepare for chatting. My career plan is to become a system architect. I also like to struggle and match the values of major domestic companies. At the same time, I also maintain a strong interest in computers and hope to continue to explore Frontiers of Pasteur's Quadrant. Some interviewers will still ask some questions related to basic computer knowledge, and I just know what I know and what I don’t know. For example, I have never used C++ and Java, so I said no. Although I have done some kernel development, they are the simplest kernel modules and I have never studied the network protocol stack. When I am an interviewer myself, I also like to examine the candidate’s basic computer knowledge, such as operating systems, networks, distributed systems, databases, etc., as well as the syntax and semantics of the candidate’s usual programming language and knowledge of compilation and link runtime (such as garbage collection). ), it is often found that many candidates can answer theoretical questions very clearly, but they cannot answer the next level of questions because they have not really used these systems and only memorized some interview experience. Some candidates even try to deceive the interviewer, which is easily discovered if the interviewer is an expert in this field.
It wasn't until I became an interviewer myself today that I discovered that, just like when I was a candidate, the closer the candidate's level and experience are to the interviewer, the more comfortable the interview will be. Meeting experts is like chatting with friends. For example, if you meet someone who is doing ACM, let’s talk about what data structures and algorithms you are good at, which questions are pitfalls, and how to cooperate during the competition; if you meet someone who is struggling with the website, let’s talk about what frameworks are used. , how many pitfalls are there in CSS and JS, and what is the history of blood and tears in the operation and maintenance process; when I meet Mr. Zhihui, who is tossing about embedded systems, let’s talk about which microcontrollers have been played (burned out), and how to adjust the parameters of PID control; When I meet someone who is engaged in blockchain, I will talk about the consensus mechanism and smart contracts, and ask him to give me popular science about currency prices that I have not seen for many years; when I meet someone who has played with information security, I will ask him to tell me which websites have been hacked and found. Even if you encounter an area that you don’t understand, you can still humbly ask for advice and listen to the candidate tell his story, and you can learn a lot.
The choice of offers from major manufacturers
Thanks to the love of all interviewers and leaders, I got good offers from these companies. Offers from major domestic manufacturers will match each other. For example, after I got the offer from Alibaba Star, several other major manufacturers will refer to this package. Therefore, if juniors and juniors want to find a job in a big factory, they must not just work for one company, otherwise they will wait to be ripped off.
In order to select an offer, I wrote a summary for each company just like reviewing a paper, listing the Strengths and Weaknesses, and put the information collected during the interview process and various aspects into Comments to inside the Author (comment). At the same time, I will also record the bosses, direct supervisors, new outstanding employees and interns in the company. Just like the review comments for each paper at the top conference were very substantial, I also wrote thousands of words of reviews for each company. Based on this, I created a spreadsheet to score each company on multiple aspects, including:
Entry salary
long term expected salary
Offer's relative rank among peers
Business fit
growing space
Industrial influence
academic influence
Work-life balance (work ease)
Leadership familiarity
job stability
Company Culture
Company brand
Department Outlook
Field prospects
Technology accumulation
Boss Daniel
Daniel
Work place/residence
Each item is scored from 1 to 5 like a paper review, and then statistical indicators such as arithmetic mean, geometric mean, and variance are calculated. Based on these statistical indicators, the companies are then sorted. Just like reviewing a paper, the failure of the paper does not depend solely on the score, but in the first round of screening, those with low scores can be filtered first. There are 7 companies with an average score of 3 or above, which means 5 companies were filtered out in the first round. Because only one company can be selected in the end, and the "acceptance rate" is only 8%. This is indeed a very cruel selection. For companies that were screened out in the first round, in order to avoid hiring HR and wasting the sincerity of the supervisor, I spoke up earlier. Just like telling the author early after the paper is rejected in the first round, the author can switch to other conferences earlier. I am not good at rejection. I have to think carefully for a long time before rejecting every company.
The average score of these 7 companies is as low as 3.78 points and as high as 4.11 points. Among them, the average score of the top 6 companies is at least 3.94 points, so it is really difficult to distinguish them. I also have trouble weighting these above metrics. When submitting a paper, the final acceptance is not determined based on the score, but after discussion at the PC (Program Committee) meeting. If there is a champion (support) and no one objects, the article will most likely be successful. The same is true in the context of choosing a company. If there are obvious advantages and no obvious disadvantages, it is a better choice.
In the end, because my doctoral supervisor was at Huawei, and Huawei has the advantage of combining software and hardware design, I made a difficult choice. It is even harder to reject the other 6 of these 7 companies, because each company has broad prospects, generous remuneration, ample room for growth, and a large number of talented bosses and classmates. At that time, maybe it didn't make a big difference which company you chose.
Not long before graduation, I encountered the "516" US sanctions incident. People were panicked for a while. Many people said that Huawei was dying and advised me not to go to Huawei. A teacher said to me that the most precious thing for people is time. If you want to support Huawei, you can spend money. If you buy a mobile phone, you will support Huawei. But if you choose to join a company and invest most of your time, it's different. Qian Xuesen and other great scientists can give up their generous salary and return to China to do unknown work, but they can no longer do world-leading research and win Nobel Prizes like Yang Zhenning, and their living conditions will not be very good throughout their lives. However, after on-site research and interviews, I confirmed that Huawei is not as vulnerable as outside rumors. The entire company is still running normally. What projects should be done are still being done. While eating in the cafeteria, the TV series "Sanctions and Sanctions" are being broadcast. Relevant news, and everyone has become accustomed to it. Therefore, I insisted against all opinions and insisted that joining Huawei and Qian Xuesen returning to China were completely different in nature, and I maintained my choice. It was also the major choice I faced the most opposition in my life.
During the onboarding training for new employees, we had a discussion with a president of the human resources department, and I proposed whether we could follow the example of "Alibaba Star" and launch a systematic project to attract outstanding talents. In August 2019, the company happened to launch the "Genius Youth" program, and I was honored to be a member of it. The company-level "genius boy" program certainly has nothing to do with my casual suggestions, but I can predict that companies are paying more and more attention to the recruitment of outstanding talents such as Ph.D.s, rather than being punished as some people imagine. Recruiting outstanding talents. Three years have passed, and with the care of my leaders and colleagues, I have assumed increasingly important project responsibilities and exerted greater and greater value, which also proves that the choice I made back then was not wrong.
Although I only have very limited work experience, what I want to tell my fellow students is that among the above-mentioned "scoring items", leadership and departments are more important than the overall situation of the company and research field. Whether a person lives comfortably and whether he or she can be taken seriously at work largely depends on the leader, especially the direct supervisor. If you are consistent with the leader's vision, cooperation will be smoother. It's like in the process of studying for a Ph.D., the mentor is far more important than the reputation of the school and college. Secondly, the importance of the department depends on the business and atmosphere of the department, that is, whether the fundamentals of the business are stable, whether there is room for imagination, and whether the team atmosphere is harmonious. In large companies, a decline in the company's stock price may affect income, but the short-term impact on individual work is not significant. The popularity of a research field is a slow process of change. If one day your research field becomes obsolete, it is not too late to change it. Many big names have experienced switching research fields.
If we could go back many years ago, would our choices be different?
There is a documentary series "The Up Series", which began in 1964 to record the lives of 10 boys and 4 girls from different walks of life in the UK. One episode is released every 7 years, and they are now 63 years old. What this documentary wants to verify is the old Chinese saying "you will see your age at the age of seven". What I saw from this documentary is that although class crossing is difficult, everyone can choose a different life. "I am me, a firework of different colors." From the age of 7, 14 or even 28, it is difficult to predict the trajectory of life at the age of 63.
I think the same is true in my life. Although many choices are not suspenseful, there are too many unknowns in the trajectory of life. I tend to make choices based on my own interests rather than utilitarian gains and losses, so-called follow my heart.
21 years ago, 2001, third grade of elementary school
I didn't go to the first grade, but skipped directly to the second grade. At first, the principal did not agree to skipping a grade. My grandma said that I had learned all the first-grade knowledge. The principal said that he would be asked to do the first-grade exam questions. If he could answer the questions, he would be allowed to skip a grade. As a result, I got full marks on the first-grade questions, and the principal asked me to do the second-grade exam. In the second-grade exam, I only got one question wrong. The principal said, otherwise I would go directly to the third grade. My grandma said, forget it, the child is not mentally mature yet, and he is afraid of being bullied by his classmates in the third grade, so he should go to the second grade.
In 2001, I just started learning Mathematical Olympiad. Although it was relatively early to learn to read and do arithmetic problems when I was young, there are so-called prodigies everywhere in the Mathematical Olympiad class. Some prodigies are even better than me, and some prodigies are not only great at learning, but also versatile. I only learned the accordion and painting when I was very young, but later they gave way to the Mathematical Olympiad, and the accordion I bought for more than 3,000 yuan became a decoration. There are so many prodigies and no one knows who will learn best. This is the most uncertain time.
14 years ago, 2008, freshman year of high school
If I had made a choice between mathematics competitions and computer competitions earlier and concentrated on one competition, I might have won a national gold medal and gone to Tsinghua University and Peking University. But I don’t just learn competitions utilitarianally to win prizes, because mathematics and computers are my true love, and I can’t bear to give up either. This is not a relationship. Many people must be as white as snow on the mountain, as bright as the moon in the clouds. . As mentioned earlier, during the competition, I also created a website and wrote articles. I did regard the competition as a hobby.
In 2010, my senior year of high school, if I had known that my future interests would shift from mathematics to computers, I might have chosen Shanghai Jiao Tong University instead of USTC. If I had studied computer science from the beginning, would I have continued to participate in ACM competitions, started a business with my classmates at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, or would I have studied abroad for a Ph.D. These are unknown.
7 years ago, 2015, Kenichi
In Hefei, we are intensively developing the USTC course evaluation community in the dormitory, LUG activity room and junior college computer room, and it will be launched soon. This is also the side project that I have devoted the most effort to. I have probably spent a total of close to 1,000 hours on development and maintenance so far. I have 552 personal commits and tens of thousands of lines of code. For comparison, each of my conference papers took about 2,000 hours from research, topic selection, design, implementation to writing and submission. Of course, this does not take into account the time of other members of the research team, but other members of the course evaluation community team also spent a lot of time. I also spent hundreds of hours on other side projects in LUG, such as Freeshell, Blog, and VPN, but I stopped maintaining them after I left school, so each project may not take as much time as the course evaluation community. At that time, I really didn’t expect that today, 7 years later, the course evaluation community would have such a great influence. This is also the driving force for us to insist on maintaining it. If it had been promoted to major universities across the country, it would have been possible for us to become freelancers and use the course evaluation community as a side project to support ourselves, or even become our main business.
In Beijing, Tan Bo's ClickNP project has been conceived and will be officially launched when I come to MSRA in July. This project focused the entire team’s efforts, with Microsoft FPGA as the background blessing. According to Tan Bo, if this paper fails to win, he doesn’t know what kind of paper can win. Therefore, even though I had not yet started studying for a Ph.D. at that time, it was already highly probable that I would succeed in studying for a Ph.D.
How many black swans will there be in the future?
In the past few decades, the international and domestic environment has been calm, and the Internet industry has been advancing rapidly. Almost every leading company and unicorn has expected exponential growth. But many people overlook that the Peaceful Age only occupies a very small part of history. In recent years, the domestic political environment and Sino-US relations have gradually changed, resulting in far-reaching impacts. The decline in Chinese concept stocks is only the part of the iceberg that has emerged from the water. The epidemic that started in 2020 is a black swan event. With the non-directional mutation of the virus, it may even become a "big filter". Therefore, the stability of “Plan A” and the feasibility of “Plan B” are particularly important now.
I have always had a strong sense of crisis. Even before the epidemic started, my family had enough military rations for a month, including compressed biscuits, self-heating foods, canned food, etc. Even in extreme situations like the Shanghai lockdown, I would not be able to eat at most. Get fresh vegetables, but won’t run out of food. In addition, in addition to traditional cloud disk backup, I also perform CD backup of key data and store it in my own home and my hometown. Although the update frequency is not high (when I return to my hometown) and the storage period is limited, it can provide certain disaster recovery. Effect.
The chaotic and unknown world is like the sky hanging over Truman. When Truman tries to challenge the rules of this illusory world, the whole world is against him. However, the birds in the forest cannot be contained after all, and Truman bravely chose truth.
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