One Year After Graduation

I still remember how lost I felt when nearly twenty years of school came to an end, and my first sleepless night in the rented flat in Longze seems like only yesterday. Yet in the blink of an eye, a year has passed since graduation.

Work

It still gnaws at me that I missed the interview round of the graduate entrance exam in philosophy by a single point. In the end, right before graduation, I went back to the computer industry.

Looking back, I've never written a single word about that time preparing for the exam. Maybe my thoughts were buried under a year of busy work and I never found the time. From the summer after my junior year, I put all my energy into preparing for the philosophy of science exam. Those were probably the fullest days of my four years in college: every day in the library, going from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to ancient Greece, then Rome, the Islamic world and early modern Europe. I learned about the course of science, the development of philosophy, the rise of modern philosophy of science and philosophy of technology, and the differences between Eastern and Western civilizations. I still clearly remember the stomachache in the exam room and the slightly over-the-top post I put on WeChat Moments when the exam ended. But in the end I fell at the gates of Peking University. I made my compromise with reality and with my age, and that was the end of me and philosophy of science as a field. Still, the way of thinking that philosophy of technology gave me has become part of how I think, and it will keep benefiting me in daily life and at work.

Feeling uneasy, I started job hunting and went to a startup founded by an upperclassman from my school. I don't know whether it was my own ignorance or the company trusting me too much, but on my very first interview I was hired on the spot. Later this even led to some arguments with family and friends. Young and reckless indeed. I also had a doubt that, looking back now, sounds a bit like showing off: everyone says finding a job is hard, so what's going on here? But I didn't think much about it. Graduation was pressing, I joined the company and began life as a workplace rookie, and the graduation trip I had planned was canceled.

I think I was still lucky. Because I'd spent the summer after junior year and almost all of senior year preparing for the exam, I had nearly zero internship experience in computing, and when I ran into real projects I was badly stretched. But I got good guidance at the company and gradually came to be valued quite a bit, and things slowly improved. That was how I spent a hard but upbeat half year. During those six months I really had the fearlessness of a newborn calf: I dared to voice all kinds of opinions and ideas, and my efforts to help the company build its own wiki and proper engineering management did make a difference. Being recognized by a platform may be the rarest thing you get from a job.

After six months, the company's business focus gradually became clear. It dropped the original startup project and concentrated on crowdsourcing services. But that direction was too far from my own plans, work fell into a loop, it felt more and more boring, and I even had some very strange arguments with the tech lead. In the end I jumped to Toutiao and began my career at a second company, but that's another story.

In terms of skills, I went from half ops, half backend when I first started, to backend, and then to frontend. I've touched more or less the whole web stack, and in the end I chose frontend as my personal breakthrough point. I chose it because the frontend is close to users; it's the place in the computer industry closest to users, and perhaps also the most humanistic place. I've always believed that philosophy of technology can contribute something to the internet industry, and the easiest place to bring them together is the frontend.

Life

This year I moved from Zhichunlu to Longze, and then from Longze back to Zhichunlu, as if completing a full circle.

When you live in a city like Beijing, rent is always a topic, and it comes down to one word: expensive. But since I'd started living my own life, I didn't want to do what my parents' generation did when they worked away from home, renting any old run-down place and just making do. So I went to Longze to share a place with friends and tried to create the kind of atmosphere you see in Friends. That turned out to be not very realistic, but it felt pretty good.

When I first moved into the rented flat, to borrow a saying from my hometown, I "couldn't get a grip on anything." I had to call my mom for advice, and she said it was because I lacked the basic household things. Little by little I bought pots, pans and bowls, and thanks to a kind and capable girlfriend, the place slowly got sorted out and started to feel lived in.

Cooking for myself and having friends over for dinner happened now and then in the first half of the year after moving in, but in the second half I was swamped with all sorts of things and got much lazier in my spare time; everything was basically waiting to be picked up again. Moving back to Zhichunlu was a big turning point. No more squeezing onto the subway and buses every day, and I had a lot more time, so I found the feeling of living again.

Mind

Over a year, a lot changes inside you. Some of the shortcomings from my student days were gradually made up for, and at the same time many good qualities slowly faded away, such as spending time studying every day and the fearlessness of a newborn calf.

Afterword

I wrote this in June, during graduation season. Because I switched computers in the middle, my train of thought kept getting interrupted, and it's still incomplete even now. But as I've gained experience at the new company, I've slowly found my way back into a learning state, and that feeling of not yielding even to my teachers when it comes to what's right. I've also got a somewhat more mature plan for my career ahead. To be continued.