The Beginning of the Story#
Last year during the New Year, I received an outsourcing project, which basically involved data scraping, backend development, and webpage creation. At that time, I could only write a bit of Android, didn't know frontend development, and could only write a little Python or Java for the backend. Fortunately, there was no rush, so I learned while writing according to Deep Dive into Modern Web Programming and completed the task. Yes, I initially used React and mui as the component library.
Getting Started#
In March of last year, I happened to see Anthony Fu's first live stream on Bilibili. In the stream, I learned about atomic CSS and various plugins in the Vue and Vite ecosystem for the first time. After the live stream, I started learning frontend development based on his Vue starter template and the technologies mentioned in his blog. There was no specific order; I just learned things that interested me.
Getting in Touch with Open Source#
By June, I came across the open-source project memos and fixed my first issue there. Later, I regularly fixed some bugs and implemented small features. In October, I contacted the author, Steven who was very nice and welcomed everyone to participate in open source. He added me to the organization, and I learned a lot from his code. Unfortunately, as my part-time job and school commitments increased this year, the number of PR submissions has decreased.
Job Hunting#
Due to the pandemic, I was at home for the first half of the year, just continuously learning and doing other things. As summer vacation approached, I had been home for too long, and my family started urging me to find a job. Initially, I was recommended a position at a small company by someone I knew, but the salary was too low, and I couldn't save anything from it, and they didn't hire me later.
On the afternoon of July 10 last year, I happened to see a job post by Xiangyan on V2EX. From the tech stack and working conditions, this job seemed perfect for me, so I directly added him on WeChat. My resume was on my personal website, so I just sent him the link.
Interestingly, we only had a brief chat on WeChat, and that evening he sent me an offer, adding me to the GitHub organization and Feishu. Yes, there was no technical interview, no contract; I once thought it was a scam. Because I also saw another unreliable post of his, "Hello everyone, I have started a public entrepreneurship plan with the goal of obtaining 50 million yuan in investment in nine months." (As expected, this plan failed.)
However, soon, I dispelled this doubt because I started my job, writing web pages for data visualization tools. At the same time, I prepared myself that if I didn't receive my salary within a month, I would just leave, so I wouldn't lose anything.
Some Experiences at Work#
- Initially, I was very worried that my abilities were insufficient to complete the tasks, but later I got over it.
- I work completely remotely part-time, about five days a week, four hours a day. However, I can work at any time, and there are no time assessments; often, the time needed to complete tasks is less than this duration.
- The work content is not limited to frontend; I might write crawlers or handle automatic deployments. Most of the tasks are ones I enjoy completing, and there are no compromises in technical choices.
- Having a stable income while in school is really great; I earn five thousand yuan every month. I bought a new laptop, got my mom a phone, and I have saved nearly fifty thousand yuan so far.
- Through continuous learning and applying new technologies to my work, I feel my abilities are constantly improving.
Meeting the Interesting Li Shu#
When I first joined the team, besides Xiangyan, it was just me and Li Shu. Li Shu is responsible for backend development; he is quite peculiar, having a deep understanding of functional programming and type systems while insisting on using Chinese variable names and var in his code. He also understands mathematics and philosophical knowledge in psychology, and his library has many books that I don't want to read and can't understand. On his recommendation, I finished Adler's duology and benefited greatly.
Some common characteristics between us brought us together in this team, so we naturally became good friends. Even though we are not in the same city, it doesn't prevent us from chatting for hours. Below is a short essay Li Shu wrote when he left; I think many people would find him very cool.
From Vue.js to React#
As you can see, in the job post, the choice of frontend framework was Vue.js. However, after several projects, it switched to React, mainly for the following reasons.
- The experience with volar was not good; it often required reloading; compared to writing React's tsx, it doesn't require installing additional plugins and is more stable.
- You can see the specific experience with volar in this tweet.
- The React ecosystem is better, such as radix-ui and framer-motion.
Based on the same DX considerations, I also replaced the eslint configuration originally set by Xiangyan because it severely affected performance when saving code.
So, you can feel that the relationship among us is more of a partnership than an employer-employee relationship; each of us has the right to propose our ideas and make decisions.
A Side Story, Meeting Zeabur#
The remote part-time life has made me increasingly indifferent to the idea of working 996 at a company; I hope to continue this lifestyle after graduation, but I haven't solved my financial issues yet. In the first half of this year, I had an opportunity to see that zeabur was hiring frontend interns. I thought that 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 the two founders of zeabur, Yuanlin and Yuhang at a café in Beijing. After chatting for a while and writing some code together at the café, I joined.
Zeabur is also a very cool company, and the people on the team are all very capable. Unfortunately, just over a week after joining, I had to withdraw because I needed to devote more time to advancing my small thesis, and I simply didn't have enough time.
Current Situation#
Unlike last year when it was just me, Xiangyan, and Li Shu, our team now has seven people, and the business is continuously expanding. If you are interested in our work, you can check our Grow in Public documentation for more information.
During this summer vacation in my second year of graduate school, there were no school matters to handle, but there were only three weeks in total; the first week was at home, and the next two weeks were in Hubei. I experienced a bit of the digital nomad feeling; with my computer, I could go anywhere. I could sleep until I woke up naturally, casually go out to find something to eat, scroll through Twitter when bored, watch videos, and write a bit of code at any time.
