Appearance
Three years of front-end experience at the age of 25 ｜ 2023 Year-End Summary
Foreword
As the curtain slowly falls on 2023, I sit in the tranquility of this winter day, reflecting on the journey of the past year. Each moment, whether it shone brightly or cast a shadow, has become an indispensable part of my life's story. In this summary, I hope to not only record achievements and challenges but also capture those subtle transformations, those instances of growth and insight that quietly took place amidst the hustle and bustle of daily life.
Of course, this is not just the end of a year but the beginning of a new journey.
Career
Since graduating with my bachelor's degree in 2020, I have spent three and a half years in the professional world. My career began at Inspur Group, where I spent a year and a half immersed in the essence of a state-owned enterprise. Seeking new challenges, I then joined Alibaba Group. Although my time at Alibaba was brief, only three months, and ended due to business restructuring, the experience had an indelible impact on my professional growth. Since then, I have been working at Citigroup, where I continue to develop my career.
WLB (Work-Life Balance)
Since graduating in 2020, I have witnessed various work cultures. From Inspur's 996 (9 am to 9 pm, six days a week), Alibaba's 995 (9 am to 9 pm, five days a week), to Citigroup's 965 (9 am to 6 pm, five days a week with two or three WFH days), I've experienced a shift from extreme work schedules to a more balanced approach.
I used to think the 996 work culture merely halved our wages and deprived us of time for rest and learning. Companies disguised this practice with free dinners and taxi subsidies, motivating us with the notion that "struggle is happiness," while internally fostering competition through a last-place elimination system. In reality, the efficiency of 996 is extremely low, as it's difficult for an average person to maintain high concentration for 12 continuous hours. In the long run, this is not only harmful to health but also severely dampens a positive work attitude.
In Citigroup's 965 schedule, I truly realized the deep-seated damage of 996 this year: it's not just about wages and health, but also the deprivation of precious time for personal development and social interaction, essentially stifling the diversification of career opportunities. After leaving work at six or seven, events like gatherings with classmates or childhood friends, offline group meetings, and interactions with people from different companies and roles could lead to new opportunities. For instance, your friend might be a designer, you might know how to code, and your classmate's uncle might need an app, presenting a new possibility. Just like in basketball training, if a player is only trained to pass but never gets the chance to shoot, their growth will be one-sided. The 996 culture does just that, limiting employees' comprehensive development, confining them to a single skill enhancement, and neglecting the broader professional landscape.
Hence, I am firmly against the 996 working regime. It's not just a matter of wages, health, and legality but also the comprehensiveness and diversity of personal development. Everyone should have the opportunity to explore and develop their multiple potentials, not be trapped in a narrow career path.
Front-end Team Lead
This year, due to a shift in the role of the front-end team leader, the position became vacant, and the role would be rotated within the team. I am grateful for the recognition from my leaders, giving me the chance to be the first to take on this role. It was both a surprise and a challenge. On one hand, it was recognition of my abilities; on the other, I thought it would take at least five more years of work to be competent for this role. Considering my relatively short work experience, lack of management experience, and a team composition of about ten, including two UX designers, this was undoubtedly a huge challenge.
Over the past three months, I have focused mainly on two tasks:
Research and selection of front-end component library architecture, details of which are not disclosed here.
Infrastructure construction of the front-end team, focusing on the implementation of team standardization. This includes code standards, document standards, and workflow standards. I promoted the implementation of code and workflow standards, not only through team discussions but also by developing a front-end standard configuration scaffolding. This scaffolding can unify configuration files for different projects, avoiding inconsistencies due to manual copying. We moved standard checks from the operational level to the code submission phase, significantly reducing the time cost for development and operations. With this project, I also won a prize of 3,000 yuan in the company's internal innovation talent competition. The purpose of document standards is to reduce team communication costs, record business processes, and leave knowledge deposits within the team, thereby improving the team's visibility and influence.
Nevertheless, I believe I still have much to improve, mainly reflected in two aspects:
In terms of front-end technology selection, I felt a back-and-forth and tug-of-war in the decision-making process, leading to clear issues taking too long to resolve and a plethora of problems emerging during the process.
In communication with leaders, I found that I was not proactive enough in following up with team members.
After thorough reflection, I found solutions to these two issues.
The back-and-forth and tug-of-war in the decision-making process of front-end technology selection:
Clarify decision-making criteria: Determine the standards and key factors for choosing technology, such as performance, compatibility, team familiarity, community support, etc.
Data-driven decision-making: Collect data and case studies on relevant technologies to make decisions based on actual effects rather than subjective preferences.
Leverage expert opinions: Seek advice from external experts or internal senior technical personnel on important technology choices.
Set a clear decision timeline: Establish a deadline for the decision-making process to prevent over-analysis and procrastination.
Improving follow-up with team members:
Regular one-on-one meetings: Conduct regular one-on-one meetings with team members to understand their work progress, challenges, and career development needs.
Establish clear communication channels: Ensure team members know how and when to report their work progress and issues to you.
Incentives and training: Provide training and development opportunities, encouraging team members to improve their skills and take on more responsibilities.
Set goals and expectations: Set clear short-term and long-term goals with team members, ensuring they understand their responsibilities and expected outcomes.
DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion)
Since the end of 2022, I have participated in Citigroup's DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) project and served as the leader of the Engineer Excellence (EE) group. During this time, we successfully organized the 1024 tech show and several technical sharing sessions, and I even hosted a few events myself. Each event attracted over 500 participants.
Therefore, at the beginning of this year, I was honored to be invited to join the organizing committee of the open tech club. In the first half of the year, I participated in organizing 11 Tech news sessions, attracting about 300 viewers on average for each event. I was also involved in planning events such as the Tech news mid-year carnival and the Raspberry Pi workshop.
In the second half of this year, the person in charge of the DEI project invited me to join the DEI organizing committee. Here, I participated in discussions on the direction and strategy of DEI for the next year. I also served as a judge for the Citigroup Cup competition held at universities. What excited me the most was facilitating the connection between DEI at the company and the nonprofit organization I previously joined—Outstanding Partners, looking forward to deeper cooperation in the future.
Participating in the DEI project has profoundly impacted me. It not only allowed me to deeply engage in building the company culture and activities but also introduced me to people from different teams, departments, and even companies. Sometimes, they even recognized me before I knew them. In this process, there were always surprises and sparks of inspiration quietly emerging.
Outlook for 2024
Expansion
For 2024, I plan to expand my technical domain and learn back-end development. I realize that mastering both front-end and back-end skills will not only enable me to independently develop complete products but also enhance my market competitiveness. This "full-stack" perspective will allow me to better understand and construct technological solutions.
Apart from my passion for technological innovation—loving to "reinvent the wheel," I also plan to delve into our business model. Understanding how our business generates profit is not just out of curiosity but a necessary career development strategy. This means not only focusing on the code itself but also understanding how it creates value in the larger business context.
I believe that this comprehensive technical and business dual perspective will inspire me to come up with more innovative ideas. For instance, I could explore how to use front-end and back-end technologies to optimize existing business processes or how to open up new revenue channels through technological innovation. Ultimately, I hope to transform my technical capabilities into substantial contributions to the business, not just writing code.
Front-end Infrastructure
In 2023, I focused on promoting the standardization process within the team, bringing significant efficiency improvements to our workflow. Looking ahead to the first half of 2024, I am confident that I can swiftly implement these standards, creating a more orderly and efficient working environment for the team.
Next, I plan to further advance the team's technological innovation. One important initiative is to establish our own npm repository domain. This will not only speed up our development process but also improve code quality and security. Through a private domain repository, we can better manage and share internally developed modules, reducing the risks associated with external dependencies.
Moreover, I plan to implement a front-end performance and user behavior tracking solution. This will not only help us monitor and optimize application performance in real-time but also provide us with valuable user behavior data. Using this data, we can gain deeper insights into user needs and provide them with more personalized experiences. This data-driven approach will open new innovative possibilities for our business and services.
English
English learning, an evergreen topic, remains highly important to me. This year, I continued to strengthen my English skills, aiming to take the IELTS test in 2024 and strive for a score of 7. However, I don't intend to improve my English proficiency through traditional learning methods alone.
In my plan, I want to learn English through more interactive and fun methods. For example, I intend to actively communicate with foreign friends on Discord, not only to improve my speaking ability but also to understand different cultural perspectives and ways of life. This socialized learning method will undoubtedly make language learning more vivid and interesting.
At the same time, I also plan to participate more deeply in international projects in the open-source community. By actually participating in cross-border collaborations, I can not only enhance my technical skills but also use English in real work scenarios, providing dual training. Through this practice, I hope to confidently demonstrate my abilities in the global tech community.
Money and Assets
This year, I began to rethink my future wealth goals, gradually understanding that the real goal of wealth is not just earning money, but accumulating assets. In my view, money is a direct income that depends on the time and skills I invest. Assets, or "income after sleep," are passive income generated by meeting the needs of others.
I believe the key to having assets is creating continuous value. This could mean developing an app that serves users while I sleep or creating an online course that continuously brings me profits through knowledge. Or even starting to write a book, turning my experience and knowledge into long-term wealth.
I am eager to explore various ways to create assets, even if it starts with earning just a few dollars. This is not just a financial transition but a shift in mindset. I want to move from the traditional "time for money" model to "creating continuous value." I believe that through continuous learning and trying, I can find ways that suit me and gradually build my own asset portfolio.
Open source
freeCodeCamp
freeCodeCamp is the world's largest open-source nonprofit coding community and the project with the highest number of stars on Github. This year, I had the honor of translating Quincy Larson's booklet "How to Learn to Code and Get a Developer Job in 2023," making me a 2023 freeCodeCamp Top Contributor.
This achievement brought me a memorable experience: being invited to the freeCodeCamp Top Contributors Party in Guangzhou. There, I not only met founder Quincy Larson but also had in-depth exchanges with other community members. Our discussions lasted from noon until dawn the next day, continuing with enthusiasm. This deep interaction was both exciting and fulfilling.
Back in Shanghai, I continued this passion offline, organizing two salon events. These events not only deepened my programming knowledge but also let me experience the joy of face-to-face interaction with like-minded individuals, offering a new and unforgettable experience.
Google-translate-select
Earlier this year, I had the honor of collaborating with the great i7eo to refactor the Google-translate-select project. My main task was to develop the React version and write the official documentation. This component's core function is to localize Google Translate by pulling Google Translate's JavaScript SDK to translate website content.
Although the project has progressed, we still face some challenges yet to be resolved:
The issue of domestic users being unable to pull Google's SDK: Considering that domestic users may not be able to directly pull Google's SDK due to network issues, we are considering using a Node script to download the SDK to the project regularly to solve the access restriction problem.
The issue of the page initially displaying the original content and then showing the translated content: As the current component performs content translation at runtime, the page initially displays the original language content, and only after some time does it show the translated content. We plan to develop a plugin for packaging tools, mainly supporting webpack/vite, to generate corresponding language packages. Combined with i18n use, we can maintain two sets of language files simultaneously, optimizing the user experience.
The issue of default UI styles that cannot be customized: To offer better customizability, we plan to separate UI and business logic, adopting the headless component design concept, and encapsulating it into a Hook. This way, users can customize UI styles according to their needs.
OKU
Another open-source project I participated in is OKU, a name derived from Turkish, meaning "to read." Unlike traditional component libraries, OKU is a headless component library. This concept, inspired by the Headless computer without display, keyboard, and mouse, emphasizes that while the component library does not provide default styles, it offers a high level of flexibility and customizability, free from predefined logic constraints.
Mid-year, I collaborated with two Turkish developers and a Nigerian developer to develop this component library from scratch. Currently, OKU has garnered over 800 stars on GitHub and has even been mentioned multiple times by Vue.js founder Evan You, which has been a huge surprise for me. However, during this process, we encountered some challenges:
Lack of minimal development principles: We excessively pursued code quality and did not quickly develop a complete product for launch, losing market first-mover advantage.
Community communication and interaction issues: We fell short in community communication and interaction, affecting the project's external collaboration and feedback.
Premature exposure of ideas: We shared some creative ideas too early, leading to them being adopted by others.
Incomplete documentation and delayed updates: Our documentation was not comprehensive and was not updated in a timely manner, affecting users' understanding and usage.
A Few Little Things
Domain setup and personal blog reconstruction
Running record page Link
DEI roadshow promotional page Link
Multi-window communication demo
Join the party 🤲 pic.twitter.com/5iVmTIm8QE
— Suxiong (@YeSuX1998) November 29, 2023
Outlook for 2024
OKU Motion
Previously, I mainly participated in various open-source projects as a contributor, accumulating rich experience. Now, I am ready to take a big step forward and start my own open-source project as the maintainer. This project will be an animation library based on Vue 3 and Nuxt 3.
My vision is to create an animation library that is both powerful and easy to use, allowing developers to easily implement complex animation effects and make page interactions smoother and more engaging.
I hope this project will not only become a favorite tool for developers but also promote the development of the Vue ecosystem. By mid-2024, I plan to complete the main development work and start focusing on community building and promotional activities to increase the project's visibility and influence.
Blog
In the past year, I invested a lot of time and effort in blog writing, producing over a dozen articles. These blogs covered a variety of topics, including technical shares like programming skills and best practices in software development, as well as my personal reflections, such as insights on technological trends or my career experiences.
In 2024, I plan to continue my writing journey and have set higher goals. Firstly, I aim to increase the number and quality of articles, continuously improving my writing skills. I plan to delve into more technical topics and share more interesting cases and solutions encountered in actual work.
Additionally, I especially want to enhance my English writing skills. I plan to start writing some blogs in English, not only to improve my English level but also to share my thoughts and experiences with a wider international audience. This will be a challenge, but I believe it will contribute to my personal growth and expand my influence.
Charity
Running in the Dark
Since October last year, I joined the "Running in the Dark," a charity organization focused on helping the visually impaired to run. To date, I have accompanied visually impaired runners for over 100 kilometers, supporting nearly ten individuals.
Participating in the "Running in the Dark" has been incredibly meaningful for me. Through this activity, I not only improved my physical fitness and running skills but also had the opportunity to interact with and support the visually impaired community. Each accompanying run was a new challenge and learning opportunity. I learned how to communicate effectively, guide, and support visually impaired runners, ensuring their safety and enjoyment while running.
Moreover, these experiences greatly enriched my perspective on life. They made me more appreciative and cherish every opportunity and experience in life. Each time I ran with visually impaired runners, I felt their passion and optimism for life, which deeply inspired me. At the same time, I also recognized the importance of society's support and care for the visually impaired community.
Sunshine Community & Stepping Stones
In my charity journey, I also participated in Sunshine Community and Stepping Stones, two organizations dedicated to educating migrant children. In these organizations, I mainly provided English and computer programming teaching, accumulating over 30 hours of teaching to date.
Through these activities, I not only imparted knowledge but also learned a lot. Teaching English and programming to migrant children made me realize the equality and importance of education. These children have a desire to learn but often lack opportunities due to limited resources. I feel extremely honored to be able to open the door to a new world for them, igniting their passion for learning and aspirations for the future.
Life
Travel
This year, I had the opportunity to travel to Guangzhou and Thailand, with the trip to Thailand leaving a particularly deep impression on me.
The beautiful scenery, warm and friendly people, and unique culture deeply attracted me. Whether strolling through the bustling streets of Bangkok or getting lost in the night markets, every moment was filled with curiosity and surprise. The beaches of Phuket were unforgettable, with crystal-clear waters and pristine white sand, immersing me in this tropical paradise.
Especially Thai cuisine, from street snacks to exquisite dishes in high-end restaurants, every meal was delightful. The laid-back lifestyle and distinctive cultural atmosphere of Thailand completely captivated me.
After returning to China, I couldn't help feeling a bit mundane. Although life in China is fast-paced and vibrant, compared to the leisure and natural beauty of Thailand, it seems to lack a bit of relaxation and freedom. The trip to Thailand not only made me fall in love with the country but also made me start thinking about how different lifestyles and cultural backgrounds can affect our life experiences and happiness.
In the future, I look forward to the opportunity to visit Thailand again, and perhaps explore other countries and cultures, continuing to expand my horizons and experience more diverse ways of life.
Cat
This year, we welcomed a new member, an active and adorable Abyssinian cat named "Watermelon." Abyssinian cats are known for their elegant appearance and friendly nature, and Watermelon has been unimaginably cute and affectionate.
Conclusion
As 2023 comes to a close, I look back on a year filled with growth and change.
From my career to personal life, each step has shaped a more mature and diverse me, looking forward to continuing my journey of growth and exploration in 2024.