My 2024 Year-End Summary: Enlightenment at Longchang

In 2024, I left the internet company where I had worked for two years and joined a company focused on educational robots and laser cutting machines. Yes, a hardware company - a field I had never touched before. But this wasn't even my most important milestone event of the year.

In May, I formally submitted my resignation without having another job lined up - a complete naked resignation. For this gap period, I made a simple plan: travel first, then spend one and a half months preparing for IELTS, and look for a new job in September and October.

During the following two months, the company found a new colleague to replace me. I stood my last post well and said goodbye to my colleagues. On July 5th, with my resignation certificate in hand and my belongings packed, I left Xili. The next day, I attended the VueConf conference and met Evan You and Anthony Fu.

After being a spiritual shareholder for so many years, I finally came to support them. Hope React keeps getting better 👏

After VueConf ended, I went to exile myself in Lingnan. In Guilin, Guangxi, I experienced what "rivers like green silk ribbons, mountains like jade hairpins" truly meant.

The landscape here is truly beautiful, nurturing plump mosquitoes. I also felt how karst landforms hinder economic development - the towering cliff peaks divide transportation, housing, and economy.

On the narrow path to Nine Horses Fresco Hill, I saw pomelos, corn, and other crops planted along the way. This is the reward of the subtropical monsoon climate - abundant sunshine and rainfall. Fruit cultivation has become another livelihood for locals besides tourism.

This was a P-type (perceiving) personality trip - no special forces-style checkpoint hunting, but more about experiencing geography and culture. After slurping Guilin rice noodles for three days, I returned to Shenzhen to begin IELTS preparation.

About taking IELTS - I'm interested in English itself, and I've seen many senior professionals' experiences showing that learning English well is a long-term benefit for programmers' career development.

During this time, I also learned to cook. In my opinion, cooking is like programming - both are creative arts.

On a whim, I bought a Xiaomi air fryer. The first time I used it, I found it super magical - it could make popcorn chicken crispy just with air!

For the next month and a half, I treated myself like a college entrance exam student, studying step by step.

On the morning of August 30th, I entered the exam room - listening, reading, and writing in the morning, speaking in the afternoon. The results came quickly, arriving as expected three days later with a very low score. This hit me like a hammer.

Investing lots of time and energy doesn't mean beautiful rewards. I spent three days doing a painful yet profound review. Was it an ability foundation problem? A self-discipline problem? A preparation strategy problem? A mindset problem? The final conclusion was a major failure in preparation strategy - ignoring actual circumstances and reviewing according to my own naive ideas.

During these review days, I seemed to have my "Longchang enlightenment". I later summarized this "Dao" as a "growth mindset". The concrete manifestation of this growth mindset was that I didn't become depressed about failing the IELTS exam. This experience taught me my first lesson - being and doing things need to conform to physical, objective laws, or as Lei Jun says, "go with the flow".

The unemployed gap period wasn't pleasant - daily anxiety about no income and depleting savings. So in September, I needed to start job hunting again. I passed on self-media and independent development - neither could bring stable income at the moment.

Back to square one, but this time I was more confident. Fully absorbing the lessons, I needed a proper job search strategy. I collected interview materials from various sources, combined them with my actual situation, and with AI assistance, wrote a "Frontend Job Hunting Guide".

I listed all aspects involved in job hunting and used the PDCJ model: P = Plan, D = Do, C = Check, J = Just (adjust) - periodically planning and implementing, then continuously checking and adjusting to ensure my interviews proceed correctly and efficiently.

The job environment won't give you generous opportunities just because you carefully prepare your job search strategy and study hard. Instead, dozens of resumes sent daily sink without a trace, and you might not get an interview for a week. This must be the "copper nine iron ten" (tough job market).

With the cold job market, I had to seize every hard-won interview opportunity. For example, a college roommate's friend referred me to a frontend position at Zhuanzhuan. Two days before the interview, I finished all of Zhuanzhuan's frontend interview experiences, memorized the frontend interview bible repeatedly, and even studied questions on the mini-program while using the bathroom.

But Zhuanzhuan still rejected me - didn't even make it to the second round.

Being frustrated is useless. I quickly reviewed the entire Zhuanzhuan interview, re-listened to the recording, researched questions I couldn't answer, corrected my mistakes specifically, and prepared for the next interview.

Soon after, I unexpectedly received a resume invitation from Makeblock's HR for a Node.js position. I declined, honestly saying I only accept frontend positions. But the HR asked for my resume anyway and forwarded it to their frontend department. Surprisingly, it passed the resume screening and I got a first-round interview opportunity.

The first round went very well. One difficult question was asked: "If not using eval, are there other ways to execute JS functions?" I happened to have studied laf's source code before and knew the vm module could do this. Then came the second round and HR interview, both passed smoothly, and I got the final offer.

Makeblock involves education, which was an important point for me. I participated in teaching support during college and have always been interested in education. Additionally, this company offered reasonable salary and benefits, so... I joined!

With job hunting concluded, I wrote a blog post as output. If interested, check out - "Practical Interview Preparation Guide for Frontend Developers (Including Materials + Referrals)".

This job hunting experience was overall successful - I found an ideal company and position. But one cannot rest on their laurels forever. New stages bring new challenges, requiring new changes and efforts.

After joining, I experienced the company's laser equipment and felt enormous creativity:

Metal cards engraved with F1 Ultra, wood boards cut and engraved with P2S:

Work uniforms made with M1 Ultra and heat press:

I joined the long-desired basketball club, starting weekly basketball activities. Unexpectedly, the boss is also a basketball fan and now plays with us weekly. Looking at him, you can clearly feel his youth and pragmatism. Colleagues also praise him highly, and I believe these compliments aren't just office politics.

The company hasn't established a title system, instead implementing flat management. This weakens hierarchical concepts. Additionally, the company promotes AMA (Ask Me Anything) activities where all employees can anonymously ask any questions, and the boss answers them one by one. You can see the company is working to create a more equal, transparent, and efficient workplace environment. This also prompted me to deeply reflect on my relationship with the company.

The result of my reflection: As an employee, behavior and goals should align with the company's development. Based on this thinking, I noticed some bad habits in myself - sometimes to maintain colleague relationships or consider hierarchical differences, I turned a blind eye to problems and compromised on work.

Unity of knowledge and action - slowly transforming thoughts into actions. For example, giving immediate feedback after collaborating with colleagues, immediately syncing bugs in internal platforms to responsible parties, trying to provide feedback on everything, demonstrating owner spirit, etc.

Makeblock is very open with many activities to participate in. For example, Factory Day - taking a bus to the Huizhou factory on Thursday, touring the entire production line, seeing the machine production process from zero to one.

There's also the MakeX Robotics Competition, an influential international robotics competition and education platform. This is its seventh year, and the MakeX finals returned to Shenzhen. I immediately signed up for technical support and participated in a day of on-site activities.

The venue had cultural booths from various countries. I was even fed chocolate snacks by Russian friends.

Watching big and little friends compete intensely:

And the Maker Marathon that made me sad for a day - a special company activity. I participated in the latest competition and lost in the finals roadshow. As team leader, I blamed myself. A week of hard work without good results prompted reflection. Was it a team leadership problem? Project advancement problem? Quality problem? Or roadshow problem?

Failure might not be bad - it's etched in my memory, pushing me to improve

Looking back, this year's biggest milestone was the enlightenment after failing IELTS - the growth mindset. This huge cognitive change subsequently influenced my work and life.

I seem no longer afraid to face problems I've never encountered. I know there must be methods and ways to solve them. Even if things don't go as planned, I can gain experience, wisdom, and courage in the process.

I no longer fall into perfectionism. Make garbage first, then slowly iterate and optimize. Don't fantasize about getting 100 points immediately. Get 60 points first, then improve bit by bit, making daily progress, waiting for that growth inflection point.

I've also become more positive. "There's only one kind of heroism in the world - to see life as it is and still love it." Maintain an open, optimistic mindset, refusing to be assimilated by pessimism and negativity.

Perhaps my so-called enlightenment and growth mindset are shallow, lacking more practice and experience. But that's okay - be friends with time. As age and experience grow, this growth mindset will also "grow".

The rambling year-end summary ends here. After writing, I'm still quite moved. Many things happened this year, but at the time, they just felt like calm days. Perhaps right now also feels like a calm late night. There's a saying from a forum: "Some people can't see the future, but actually they've seen the future." I didn't understand at first, but later realized - the future is dynamic and uncertain. This is the true face of the future. Thinking you can't see it is actually seeing it. So 2025, see you in the future.