A 35-year-old programmer can’t go home

Xi'erqi is the place with the highest proportion of programmers in China.

Wang Wu is one of them, having graduated ten years ago, just in time for the rise of China's Internet.

I am now living a glamorous life and own a house in Beijing, but I am still single.

Wang Wu's clothes were not well-dressed, and because of his smoking, he looked older than his actual age.

"We have to work overtime again this year. Every year during the Spring Festival, others have holidays but we have to work overtime," Wang Wu complained.

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According to statistics, 80% of programmers in China often work overtime, 45% of them have mild symptoms of anxiety, and more than 54.3% have various chronic diseases.

This is Wang Wu’s second year on duty during the Spring Festival. Every time a festival comes around in an Internet company, we must seize the opportunity to achieve a potential surge in traffic.

After all, during holidays, people put aside their daily anxieties and start to have fun. All their needs for short videos, pictures, shopping, and social networking sites are released. This is a rare relaxation for Chinese people.

There are more than 5 million programmers in China, and many of them have experienced various scenarios of traffic surges.

Such scenes are common among the Chinese who love to gather in groups. From sports broadcasts to celebrity gossip, on the one hand, Internet companies hope for a sharp increase in traffic, while on the other hand, it puts great pressure on IT engineers.

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Wang Wu is an engineer of a video APP. This APP once ranked among the top three in the industry. Now, relying on new gameplay, it is continuing its glory in the live broadcast era.

In 2017, just after he turned 35, Wang Wu began to feel overwhelmed.

There are more and more young people, each of them is full of energy, but he can't stand the night any longer.

In this position, staying up late is a basic skill.

The position of operation and maintenance engineer requires 24-hour on-call. Although sometimes they have to take the blame, they must be on site on time.

As the company grew larger and its technical facilities became more complex, it seemed that our past accumulation was not enough to cope with such large-scale challenges.

"Running around in a hurry." Wang Wu used four words to describe his situation.

The company leaders had also considered this. After all, Wang Wu was a veteran in the department, so they were willing to give him a chance to transfer to the management line.

The good times didn’t last long. The two post-90s employees were obedient at first.

Within three months, the two men felt that Wang Wu's skills and abilities were inferior to theirs.

They forced Wang Wu to leave by threatening to resign collectively.

After all, the people he was in charge of in the past were all dumb machines.

Wang Wu got drunk alone for the first time in the pub in front of the company.

Life is far more exciting than movies. The low-quality liquor that Wang Wu drank in the tavern made him stay in the hospital for 3 full days.

The entire team knew this story, and from then on, Wang Wu was labeled as “unable to manage”.

During her time in the hospital, her mother in Wuhan called her for more than an hour every day.

Wang Wu said that there was only one topic, blind date.

As a person who was slow to realize things, Wang Wu bought his small house very late, and had little left after paying off the mortgage.

It is hard for Internet girls in Xi'erqi to be attracted by Wang Wu, who is mediocre in every aspect.

Wang Wu drives a Mercedes-Benz car. “Many girls think I’m a speedster,” he said self-deprecatingly.

“But there’s no lottery!”

"People in the city are like ants. If they want to survive, they have to squeeze into all kinds of cracks," said Wang Wu.

"Have you seen the recent story about a man who sold his house worth 5 million yuan and returned to his hometown to live with his friends? That's complete nonsense. My career, circle, and friends are all here. How can I go back?" said Wang Wu.

Wang Wu applied for the Spring Festival duty on his own initiative. Last year’s popular circle of friends about Huawei’s 35-year-old layoffs made him a “frightened bird”.

"The company is still developing at a high speed. You are here, so you are finally on the train. If you get off, everything will be over."

This year, Wang Wu's mother had already arranged a blind date for the Spring Festival as the top priority of the family.

From the second to the seventh day of the Chinese New Year, Wang Wu will meet about 10 girls. Wang Wu had met a group of them the year before last. Most of these girls are local teachers, nurses, and civil servants.

In China, there are probably no less than one million 35-year-old programmers like Wang Wu. Many of them have transformed themselves into entrepreneurs and unicorns, but more people need a new opportunity.

New technologies are emerging very quickly, Wang Wu said, and the changes can be clearly felt.

The pride of the past has long been trampled into worthlessness by the hardships of city life.

What is most worrying is that in the hearts of my family, I am expected to look up to them higher than reality.

"Is it true that I can't go home this year? Can you talk to your boss about it?"

(Wang Wu’s name in this article is a pseudonym)