The Beginning of the Story#
Last year during the Chinese New Year, I received an outsourcing project which mainly involved data crawling, backend development, and web development. At that time, I only knew a little about Android development and had limited knowledge of frontend development. As for backend development, I only knew a bit of Python and Java. Fortunately, I had enough time, so I followed the book "深入浅出现代 Web 编程" (Deep Dive into Modern Web Programming) while learning and working, and successfully completed the task. Yes, I started with React and used mui as the component library.
Getting Started#
In March last year, I accidentally came across Anthony Fu's first live stream on Bilibili. During the live stream, I first learned about atomic CSS and various plugins in the Vue and Vite ecosystems. After the live stream, I followed his Vue starter template and the technologies mentioned in his blog to learn frontend development. There was no specific order, I just learned things that interested me.
Getting Involved in Open Source#
In June, I came across an open-source project called memos and fixed my [first issue][] in the project. Afterwards, I fixed some bugs and implemented some small features on a daily basis. In October, I contacted the author, Steven, who was very friendly and welcomed everyone to contribute to the project. He invited me to join the organization, and I learned a lot from his code. Unfortunately, as I took on more part-time jobs and had more school-related matters this year, the number of PRs I submitted decreased.
Job Hunting#
Due to the impact of the pandemic, I stayed at home for the first half of the year, constantly learning and doing other things. When it was close to summer vacation, I had been at home for too long, and my family started urging me to find a job. At first, someone I knew recommended a position at a small company, but the salary was too low, and it was difficult to save anything, so they didn't hire me in the end.
On July 10th last year, at noon, I happened to see a job posting by 祥岩 on V2EX. Based on the technology stack and working conditions, this job was very suitable for me, so I added him on WeChat directly. My resume was posted on my personal website, so I just sent him the link.
It was magical. We only had a brief conversation on WeChat, and in the evening, he sent me an offer and invited me to join GitHub organization and Feishu. Yes, there was no technical interview, no contract. I even thought it might be a scam because I saw another unreliable post by him, "[Hello everyone, I have started a publicly open entrepreneurial plan with a goal of obtaining 50 million yuan investment in nine months][]." (As expected, this plan failed)
However, my doubts were quickly dispelled because I started my job and worked on developing data visualization tools for the web. At the same time, I was prepared to leave if I didn't receive my salary within a month, so I wouldn't lose anything.
Some Experiences at Work#
- At first, I was worried that my abilities would not be enough to complete the tasks, but later I became more confident.
- I work completely remotely, about five days a week, four hours a day. However, I can work at any time, and there is no time assessment. Most of the time, the tasks can be completed in less than the specified time.
- The work is not limited to frontend development. Sometimes I have to write crawlers or handle automated deployments. Most of the tasks are enjoyable, and there is no compromise on technical choices.
- Having a stable income while studying at school is really great. I earn 5,000 yuan per month. I bought a new laptop and a phone for my mom, and I have saved nearly 50,000 yuan so far.
- By continuously learning and applying new technologies to my work, I feel that my skills are constantly improving.
Meeting the Interesting Li Shu#
When I first joined the team, besides 祥岩，there was only me and [李书][Li Shu]. Li Shu was responsible for backend development. He is a unique person who has a deep understanding of functional programming and type systems, but he insists on using Chinese variables and var in his code. He also has knowledge in mathematics, psychology, and philosophy. His library contains many books that I don't want to read or can't understand. Under his recommendation, I read Adler's two books and gained a lot from them.
Our shared characteristics brought us together as good friends in the team. Even though we are not in the same city, we often chat for hours. Below is a short essay that Li Shu wrote when he left, and I think many people would find him cool and great.
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From Vue.js to React#
As you can see, in the job posting, Vue.js was the chosen frontend framework. However, after working on several projects, we switched to React for the following reasons:
- The experience with volar was not good, as it often required reloading. Writing React with tsx doesn't require installing additional plugins and is more stable.
- You can see the specific experience with volar in this tweet.
- React has a better ecosystem, such as radix-ui and framer-motion.
Based on the same DX considerations, we also changed the eslint configuration provided by 祥岩 because it significantly affected the performance when saving code.
As you can see, our relationship is more like partners rather than an employer-employee relationship. Each of us has the right to propose our own ideas and make decisions.
An Episode: Meeting Zeabur#
The experience of working remotely part-time made me less interested in working 996 (9 a.m. to 9 p.m., 6 days a week) in a company just to earn money. I hope to continue this kind of lifestyle after graduation, but I haven't solved the financial problem yet. In the first half of this year, I had a chance encounter with a frontend internship opportunity at zeabur. I thought if I could find this job, I wouldn't have to worry anymore.
Just like this job, after contacting them on WeChat and sending my resume, I met with zeabur's two founders, [沅霖][Yuanlin] and [宇航][Yuhang], at a café in Beijing. We chatted for a while and wrote some code together at the café, and I joined the team.
Zeabur is also a cool company, and everyone on the team is very talented. Unfortunately, after more than a week of joining, I realized that I didn't have enough time due to the need to focus on my own research paper, so I had to quit.
Current Situation#
Unlike last year when there were only three of us, 祥岩，李书，and me, our [team][] now has seven members, and our business is constantly expanding. If you are interested in our work, you can check out our Grow in Public documentation for more information.
During the summer vacation of my second year of graduate school, I didn't have any school-related matters to handle, but I only had three weeks in total. The first week was spent at home, and the following two weeks were spent in Hubei. I experienced a bit of the digital nomad lifestyle, bringing my laptop with me and being able to go anywhere. I slept until I woke up naturally, went out to find something to eat whenever I wanted, and when I was bored, I would browse Twitter and watch videos. I could write some code at any time.
