It’s time for the annual review again. Every year at this time, I seem to have a different state of mind. Last year at this time, I had just lost my job and was feeling anxious. When writing last year’s review, the words were all about work. But this year, as I prepare to write these words, things feel a bit different.
Work
At the beginning of this year, around January, I joined a startup company. The overall feeling can be summed up in one word — busy. I joined a week before the Chinese New Year, and since then, the demands have never stopped. The whole year seemed to pass by in busyness. Sometimes I even worked on weekends. Actually, today was supposed to be no exception. Why “supposed to be”? Because our company is moving to a new office, and the server room needs to be relocated. The ops team is probably still installing machines in the server room right now.
I’m still grateful for my current company. Although it’s busy, my colleagues are all great people, and everyone is very enthusiastic. When I encounter problems at work, they help and guide me. I have to mention my mentor and another senior colleague, let’s call him A. My mentor is from Northeast China, very warm and has excellent coding skills. When I ask him questions, I usually need to provide context, but often I only get halfway through explaining before he already knows where the problem is. Sometimes he tells me the solution directly, and sometimes he gives me keywords to search for myself. The other senior colleague A is really impressive. He’s been consistently practicing LeetCode every day — I learned this from my mentor. His code comprehension ability is also very strong. When reading code, I might just be looking at the first few lines while he’s already understood it and can quickly point out the issues.
I remember recently working on a feature with A. I did the frontend while he developed the Node backend. He finished quickly while my progress was slower. When I was writing functions to fetch data, he gave me many suggestions. For example, for repetitive UI rendering, recursion can be used, and writing data processing with recursion can simplify the thinking process. This is something I learned from him. Plus, he’s currently pursuing an MBA. He’s really impressive. I’ve seen his GitHub commit history — he updates almost every day. Looking at my own GitHub this year, updates have been very infrequent, with several months completely blank.
I remember in one weekly meeting, A shared that his joy is writing code. If someone else said this, I might be skeptical, but for him, I believe it completely.
I’ve genuinely learned a lot from them, like debugging techniques that make coding more comfortable. I also learned a lot about Docker from the backend colleagues. Now I can write Dockerfiles with the help of LLMs, and I’m comfortable with basic Docker commands.
This year at work, there are some points worth mentioning:
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When discussing requirements, make sure you have context first — like having read the complete requirements document or understanding any background from colleagues. This greatly improves communication efficiency with product managers and other team members.
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Don’t be shy. As our team lead says, the workplace is a serious environment. Working together and completing tasks is the priority.
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Approach every requirement with a learning attitude. Communication is important — time, labor costs, completion level, etc., are all negotiable.
As I write this, a message just popped up in the company chat that the servers have been installed. I tested it, and it’s working. The ops team is really amazing!
Life
Life has been pretty ordinary. Due to the busy work schedule, I basically just wash up, scroll through my phone for a bit, and go to sleep after getting home. Though there was a period when I was quite anxious and often stayed up late. Side note: in December, I’ve been working overtime for a whole month. It’s really exhausting.
When work wasn’t too busy this year, I met up with a few friends. Friend A is still in graduate school and will graduate next year. He’s currently preparing for civil service exams. Friend B is also graduating next year, but his girlfriend got a government position in Baoding, so he’s planning to find work there too. Everyone is moving at their own pace, step by step. There’s no such thing as fast or slow, right or wrong.
On weekends, I visit my girlfriend. We cook together at her place, and sometimes I can play games on her computer. Also, the LEGO set I ordered arrived in October — ordered in early June, it took four months. But I haven’t finished building it yet. I only worked on it in October, then November got really busy with work, leaving no time on weekends.
In November, I got sick with a high fever, reaching 39.3°C at its peak. I went straight to the emergency room. Walking downstairs, my brain felt like mush, and I was wobbling. My girlfriend caught it while taking care of me. After I recovered, she got sick. Fortunately, her case was milder and she recovered in about a week, though she kept coughing. She’s been taking traditional Chinese medicine for almost a month. The doctor said something about lung heat — I don’t really understand, just felt the coughing lasted too long. Although she went for checkups later, nothing specific was found. But as I write this, she’s barely coughing anymore.
I’m grateful for my girlfriend’s care, and grateful for us being there for each other.
Reading
I bought a Kindle this year, probably the best and most practical purchase of the year. Since I commute by subway every day and the ride is quite long, and sometimes I don’t want to look at my phone, I finally got a Kindle. Being able to read a bit during the commute is really nice.
The first thing I read was “Dragon Ball” — haha, I’m probably like many others who use it for both books and manga. Even after all these years, I still love Dragon Ball.
Then I read Yu Hua’s “The Seventh Day.” The story is about a man who loses his memory after death, and during these seven days, he meets different people every day, each with their own story. It has some satirical undertones. My favorite part is about the protagonist’s father. The protagonist was found by his father on the railway tracks. His father raised him, though he wasn’t very old himself at the time. He met a girl and would leave the protagonist with friends to go on dates. He hesitated, even sent the protagonist to an orphanage once, but ultimately chose to give up the girl and take the protagonist back. As the protagonist grew up and had his own story, the old father never married. In the end, when he was dying, he hid away, not wanting to burden his son.
I’ve always believed in cherishing the people around you, whoever they may be, whether the relationship is long or short.
Recently, I also read a novel called “The Last Dead Girl.” It’s a mystery story. No particular thoughts after reading, but the story is interesting. Recommended.
Also, “Young People Working with Cancer” — I discovered this book by chance. It was a while ago, probably mid-year. The story is short. As the title suggests, it’s about young people who have cancer but still keep working. Some are lucky enough to have medication for treatment and extended survival, while others…
Compared to them, we are really fortunate. Although I wasn’t seriously ill this year, that fever made me miserable for three days. During those three days, I could barely do anything. After COVID, it feels like my pain tolerance has decreased. Besides the severe headache, my whole body was in pain. I thought, if one day I really get sick or injured because of my own recklessness and miss something important, that would be truly regrettable.
Anyway, everyone, please take care of your health. Health is really, really important.
Finally
Writing this all down, I feel this year’s review is a bit rushed, probably because I’m tired. I originally planned to finish it last Saturday, but work has been so busy — almost three consecutive weeks of working until midnight. My body really can’t take it anymore.
So that’s it for this year. Wishing us all good health as we step into the new year.
Keep going next year!
