Six years of iOS development experience was replaced by interns, and the so-called "experience" is worthless

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Recently, I have seen many iOS developers who need to re-apply for jobs due to company layoffs. They generally have 4 years or even longer work experience. But the job search results are often not ideal.

During my conversations with some iOS developers, I found that many of them had unclear work ideas, weak skills, and no habit of continuous learning, but they all had high expectations for the future.

Due to their long working years, they generally believe that their salary should increase with their working years. But the fact is: your salary is not proportional to your working years, but proportional to your irreplaceability.

01 In the company, are you irreplaceable or dispensable?

A friend of mine who is an iOS developer joined a company to do iOS development after graduating from university.

Six years ago, when he first joined the company, the company's performance was very good.

When he first joined the company, he was full of curiosity about the job. He himself was a graduate of a professional school, so in order to familiarize himself with the company's business as quickly as possible, he followed the Team Leader to learn the work flow during the day, and went home to read books desperately at night to make up for the underlying knowledge of iOS.

He is very smart and the seniors in the project team are willing to give him guidance, so he works quickly.

In his second year of work, he was already familiar with the business of his project team and could even make some suggestions for improvement. In an increasingly familiar environment, his skills were greatly improved.

In his third year of work, he switched to a large Internet company. His position changed from junior developer to team leader, and his salary also increased significantly.

Compared with the busy and stressful time when he first started working, he feels that his current job is much easier because he is more familiar with the business processes.

After finishing work every day, he still had some free time to surf the Internet. Three years passed in a flash.

In the past two years, the company's performance was not good, and he assisted the leadership in making several layoff plans. But he never thought that one day, the misfortune of layoffs would fall on him.

This fall, the company once again adjusted its organizational structure, and this time the scale of the "downsizing" was quite large. Several project departments were to be cut, so half of the people were facing layoffs, including him.

The boss talked to him personally and told him that the company's business structure would be adjusted, only one core business line would be retained, and the original business would be temporarily suspended.

There was no other way. He accepted the company's severance package. He felt that with six years of experience, it would not be difficult for him to find a job. Even if the company did not let him leave, after three years here, he was thinking about moving.

When he went out to look for a job, he found that many experienced developers like him had already achieved positions such as project leaders. However, in these years, apart from being familiar with the business processes of the original company, he did not make much progress in his professional field.

With his current ability, the only job he could get was a mid-level development engineer, but for this kind of job, many companies require candidates to be under 30 years old.

After repeated failures in interviews, he was demoted and took a pay cut to join a small company.

02 The best way to prove yourself is irreplaceability rather than experience

I can't help but sigh: To prove whether your experience is valuable, the best way to measure it is whether it can be replaced. In the ever-changing workplace, your core competitiveness depends on how high the cost of replacing you is.

So, if you regard "I have been doing development for 6 years" or "I have been in a certain industry for 6 years" as your professional capital, then anyone who has accumulated enough years can say that he or she has made great professional achievements.

But this is absolutely not the case. The number of years can only prove that you have this professional experience. It does not mean that you have the experience that the company needs, nor does it represent your success in a certain field.

What is important is what you have learned, accumulated, and specialized in during these six years of your career. Have you developed your own irreplaceable abilities or abilities that are very costly to replace through the tempering of this career? This ability is your core competitiveness.

03 Achievement event method to tap into your core competitiveness

Here, I will teach you a simple method - achievement events to tap into your core competitiveness (pay attention).

Prepare a blank sheet of paper and follow the steps below:

1. You can try to sort out the specific events in your past work that made you feel accomplished and then analyze them to see which skills (especially transferable skills) you used in them.

2. In past work, anything that met these two criteria could be considered an "achievement": you enjoyed the feeling you got from doing it; and you were proud of the results of completing it.

3. When writing about achievement events, each story should include the following elements:

• The situation at that time (Situation);
• Task/Target
• Action/Attitude taken;
• The results obtained (Results).

Try to analyze the personal skills reflected in these achievements. Ideally, you can write 5-10 achievements to see if there are any recurring skills in these events and prioritize them.

After that, you can try to ask yourself a question: What have I gained in my past career? What are the results of my work? What do I have to prove?

If you only have a fading career experience without any valuable experience, then you have no valuable ability, you can be easily replaced by others, and you have no bargaining power with your boss.

This is reality.

Therefore, when you are in the workplace, you need to constantly examine yourself: "Do I have 6 years of work experience, or do I have 6 years of experience?"

In his book Outliers, writer Gladwell points out: "The reason why geniuses are considered extraordinary in people's eyes is not because they are born with superior talents, but because they have made continuous efforts. 10,000 hours of practice is a necessary condition for anyone to go from ordinary to extraordinary."

If you set your goal on being irreplaceable, how many hours of practice do you think it will take from now until you become irreplaceable?

When I was helping him sort out his transferable skills, he asked me: "I'm already 30 years old. Is it too late to start over now?"

I looked at him and answered seriously: "The best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago, the second best time is now..."