2021 was a year of upheaval for me personally. A job I had planned to pursue long-term — one with excellent comfort and promising prospects — suddenly collapsed due to certain reasons. Consequently, I faced a critical crossroads regarding my future direction. At least so far, I feel I’ve made some correct choices. I’ve also made good progress on the personal growth goals I set at the beginning of the year. So I’m approaching this year-end review with a reasonably positive mindset.

The biggest change in 2021 came from work. Since the industry I was in disappeared from the spotlight overnight, my plans to develop at one company for the long haul fell through, and I was forced to restart my career planning. A key consideration was whether to join a big company or a small company. The reason I mentioned reaching a critical crossroads is that at this age, whichever path I choose, there’s essentially no turning back. The capability requirements for a senior employee at big companies versus small companies are vastly different. At this stage, you no longer have the freedom to jump between big and small companies like you could in your early career after graduation.

To make this decision, I asked myself several questions:

Would I grow faster personally at a big company compared to a small one?

Would life at a big company be more comfortable than at a small one?

Will I need another big company experience as credentials in the future?

Could I earn more income at a big company?

After careful consideration, the answer to all these questions was actually no. Personal growth depends on the individual — I’m fundamentally not someone easily influenced by my environment. Regarding work-life balance, in theory it shouldn’t have much to do with company size, it just happens that several big companies in China aren’t great at this. On the credentials front, since I already have big tech experience, plus my educational background and other prior experience, I don’t think I’d lose out in that regard. Also, based on this job search and my experience interviewing candidates over the past two years, I’ve come to believe that the substance of your projects matters more than which company you were at. As for income, it depends on the macro environment, the company’s trajectory, the boss’s style, and luck — it generally doesn’t correlate much with company size.

After all this deliberation, I realized that the only advantage of joining a big tech company was that it would look good on paper. So I made my decision: completely abandon the big company idea and instead seek out promising startup companies with good culture and outlooks. Speaking of which, I’m sometimes deeply grateful for what seems like fate’s grace — it’s as if the universe always presents me with suitable options at key moments. In reality, though, I mainly have to thank the headhunter who provided information and support throughout the process, leading me to a new company that satisfied me on every front. I’ve been at the new company for almost four months now, and during this period, the room for doing meaningful work, personal growth, WLB, and financial returns have all exceeded expectations.

With the new work schedule, I also have more time with my daughter. The little girl has recently entered a language explosion phase, saying new words almost every day, and my sense of life happiness has reached a very high level.

Additionally, I set some personal growth goals at the beginning of each year. At the start of 2021, my key goals were to expand and solidify my capability circle — striving to master new skills and reinforce existing ones. Specifically, this included improving technical and management skills related to my day job, enhancing business acumen and investment ability, and building some foundational skills.

On the professional front, I read Zhou Zhiming’s “Phoenix Architecture,” which played a key role in helping me build a more complete knowledge system and fill in some knowledge gaps. I studied Wang Zheng’s design patterns column on Geek Time, gained deeper understanding of design patterns, and gave a design patterns talk within my company. I also did a concentrated study of Elasticsearch, a technology I’d been using for a long time without seriously understanding.

On management, I learned some theoretical knowledge this year and have been working on applying it to practical work, with decent results.

On investments, I actually made some very mistaken attempts this year. Starting from early in the year, I tried to analyze company fundamentals myself to find suitable investment targets, reading many books and studying the experiences of notable investors. My current conclusion is that the barrier to this is extremely high — it’s unrealistic to achieve professional-level investment results through self-study alone. Based on this experience, my investment returns turned negative for the first time this year. Going forward, I’ll abandon individual stock investing and shift entirely to fund and index dollar-cost averaging. However, I won’t stop learning about business and investment knowledge, because I’ve realized that this knowledge can meaningfully transform one’s way of thinking, and the gains are well worth it.

Regarding foundational capabilities, I focused this year on cultivating what I call “clarity power.” This concept comes from the book “Cognitive Awakening” — the idea being that our fears are often rooted in “ambiguity,” meaning we haven’t clearly figured out what we’re actually facing. Once we have a clear understanding of a situation, we realize it’s not that difficult. The first time I encountered this concept, I immediately recognized that I’d always had a significant problem in this area, so I began deliberate practice. The results have been quite good — whether in work or life matters, I feel much more capable of handling things smoothly.

In summary, this year has been a year of critical decisions for me, and I’m steadily moving toward my life goals. I’m grateful to everyone who has helped me along the way. Here’s to continuing to give it my all in 2022.

Source: https://lichuanyang.top/en/posts/2345/