This is a long, detailed, and brutally honest post in which I recount the failures that challenged me and the right choices I made that I am grateful for. It is written in self-reflection as well as self-meditation for a small circle of friends and acquaintances. Should you, a dear stranger, find any inspiration or consolation in my writing, I would feel a great sense of joy and achievement.

这是一篇冗长，详尽且野蛮的文章，在这篇文章中，我回顾了挑战自己的失败以及我为之感激的正确选择。 它以自我反思和自我冥想的形式写给一小部分朋友和熟人。 如果您(亲爱的陌生人)在我的写作中找到任何启​​发或安慰，我会感到极大的喜悦和成就感。

I am writing this not for the eyes of the many, but for yours alone: for each of us is audience enough for the other.

我写这篇文章不是为了众人的眼光，而是为了你们的眼光：对我们每个人来说，听众都足够了。

– Epicurus

–伊壁鸠鲁

TL; DR (TL;DR)

It is challenging to start a career in software engineering without a background in a related university degree. It is certainly a rewarding path but, like my story suggests, we must have the conviction to work extremely hard, learn every day, set the right expectations, and continue re-making ourselves so that we could capture an opportunity when luck befalls on us. No matter what kind of career pivots we want to make, the key to success is to find the sweet spot between our passion and market demands through continuous learning and a lot of trials and errors.

在没有相关大学学位背景的情况下，开始软件工程职业生涯具有挑战性。 这当然是一条有意义的道路，但是，正如我的故事所暗示的那样，我们必须坚信必须非常努力地工作，每天学习，设定正确的期望并继续进行自我改造，以便在运气降临时能抓住机会。 。 无论我们想从事哪种职业，成功的关键都在于通过不断学习和大量尝试和错误，在我们的热情和市场需求之间找到最佳平衡点。

Thanks to Silicon Valley, software engineering is one of the most (excessively) glorified lines of work in the 21st century. More and more people every day are curious about entering software from other fields.

多亏了硅谷，软件工程才是21世纪最辉煌的工作之一。 每天越来越多的人对从其他领域输入软件感到好奇。

I started programming in April, 2016. I began my software internship in April 2020. In July, 2020, I officially became a junior software engineer and joined the ranks of life-long learners who play and toil in one of the most dynamic, ever-changing fields.

我从2016年4月开始编程。从2020年4月开始我的软件实习。在2020年7月，我正式成为一名初级软件工程师，并加入了终身学习的行列，他们是有史以来最具活力的游戏和劳动者之一。改变领域。

This blog post is written mostly for myself. With feedback from my closest friends, I hope it represents a sincere, candid account of all the failures I faced, the right actions I took, as well as the personality I display in my pursuit to find career fulfillment.

这篇博客文章主要是为我自己写的。 希望得到我最亲密的朋友们的反馈，真诚地坦率地说明我所面临的所有失败，我所采取的正确行动以及我在寻求事业成就时所表现出的个性。

If there were any external motivations for this post, then it would be to share my conviction that, regardless of what career you are interested in, learning how to remake our self by acquiring knowledge in unfamiliar territory and picking up new skills on the fly is one of the most essential skills we should learn today.

如果这篇文章有任何外部动机，那么请分享我的信念，即不管您感兴趣什么职业，学习如何通过获取陌生领域的知识并即时掌握新技能来重塑自我 。我们今天应该学习的最基本的技能之一。

In another word, embrace knowledge that you are curious about, whether you studied it for your degree or not.

换句话说，拥抱您好奇的知识，无论您是否学过学位。

回到原点 (Back to the Origin)

My story began in the fall of 2006 when I entered one of the most prestigious high schools in Fujian, China with flying marks. In my city’s annual high school entrance exam, I ranked as the top student in my middle school and among the top 30 best students. My blood was pumped with confidence and I felt I was a smart cookie destined for greatness.

我的故事始于2006年秋天，当时我带着飞行痕迹进入中国福建最负盛名的中学之一。 在我所在城市的年度高中入学考试中，我被评为中学成绩最好的学生和30位最佳学生之一。 我的血液充满信心，我感到自己是注定要成为伟大的聪明饼干。

Around this time, I developed an admiration for hackers after reading the Chinese translation of Eric S. Raymond’s blog post, How to Become a Hacker and a few poorly translated chapters of Paul Graham’s Hackers and Painters. A hacker’s personality and character, as revealed by Raymond and Graham’s writings, as well as the meritocratic nature of hacker communities deeply resonated with the yet-to-be-developed values I had. (Note: Steven Levy’s Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution is a great book that I only encountered over a decade later.).

大约在这段时间里，在阅读了Eric S. Raymond的博客文章“ 如何成为一名黑客”的中文翻译以及Paul Graham的Hackers and Painters几章翻译不佳后，我对黑客产生了钦佩。 雷蒙德(Raymond)和格雷厄姆(Graham)的著作揭示了黑客的个性和性格，以及黑客社区的精英特质与我所拥有的尚未发展的价值观产生了深刻的共鸣。 ( 注：史蒂文·利维的《黑客：计算机革命的英雄》是一本很棒的书，十年后我才遇到。 )

With encouragement from my high school best friend who knew programming already, I signed up for a weekend Pascal crash course offered by my high school. As I entered a room full of blue DOS screens on a fateful, humid Saturday morning, I was frightened.

在我的高中最好的朋友(已经知道编程)的鼓励下，我报名参加了我高中提供的周末Pascal速成课程。 当我进入一个充满命运的潮湿星期六星期六的房间时，我在一个充满蓝色DOS屏幕的房间里，我感到恐惧。

Having grown up in a family that did not allow much time to play on a computer, I could not even type properly with five fingers at that time, not to mention using a DOS and writing if-else statements or for-loops in a dreadful language called Turbo Pascal! What’s worse was that everyone except me seemed to be able to follow the pace of the crash course!

在一个没有足够时间在电脑上玩的家庭中长大，那时我什至不能用五个手指正确打字，更不用说使用DOS并在可怕的情况下编写if-else语句或for-loops了。语言叫Turbo Pascal ！ 更糟糕的是， 除了我之外 ， 每个人似乎都能跟上速成班的步伐！

For some reason, staring at that blue screen, I could not understand how a computer thinks. Nor could I write down any line of code to perform more than a standard:

由于某种原因，我凝视着那个蓝屏，我无法理解计算机的想法 。 我也不能写下任何代码来执行比标准更多的功能：

program Hello;begin  writeln ('Hello, world.');end.

I felt nervous, my head sweating. The teacher asked us to solve some more basic problems, but my brain felt like a overcooked pot of porridge. I sat there, stupified and petrified, while all the other students coded away, sharing their excitement with each other.

我感到紧张，头出汗。 老师要求我们解决一些更基本的问题，但是我的大脑感觉就像一锅煮熟的稀饭。 我坐在那里，被吓呆了，被吓呆了，而其他所有学生都离开了，彼此分享了兴奋。

By lunch break, I sneaked out of the classroom and went home. I felt awfully stupid among some of the best students in my city.

午休时，我偷偷溜出教室回到了家。 在我所在城市的一些最好的学生中，我感到非常愚蠢。

In the subsequent weeks, I tried Java, C, and C++, languages my cousin was learning for his CS program at a university. Yet each time I did not know even how to install the software for these languages on my father’s Windows PC. I tried writing code on paper, but even the simplest #include <stdio.h> seemed way too complicated for me, not to mention the verbose Java.

在随后的几周中，我尝试了堂兄正在大学学习CS程序的Java ， C和C++语言。 但是每次我什至都不知道如何在父亲的Windows PC上安装这些语言的软件。 我尝试在纸上编写代码，但是即使是最简单的#include <stdio.h>对我来说也太复杂了，更不用说冗长的Java 。

And then, sometime sooner or later, I gave up and concluded that I was not made for programming. From that moment on, programming became a painful reminder of that awkward, humiliating morning and my fragile ego could not allow the acknowledgement that I was not as smart as I thought.

然后，我迟早会放弃并得出结论，认为我不是为编程而设计的。 从那一刻起，编程就使人痛苦地提醒了那个尴尬，羞辱的早晨，而我那脆弱的自我使我无法承认我并不像我想象的那样聪明。

我如何开始学习Python (How I Started Learning Python)

Fast forward to a decade later in 2016, I had already completed a BA in history from Texas A&M, with the prestigious magna cum laude and the key to Phi Beta Kappa honor society under my belt. Having no idea what to do with my life and with an aversion of preparing for the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), I was pursuing bachelor’s studies in a prestigious business school in St. Gallen, Switzerland.

快进到十年后的2016年，我已经获得了得克萨斯州A＆M的历史学学士学位，并以优异的成绩和成为我的Phi Beta Kappa荣誉社会的钥匙。 我不知道该如何处理我的生活，并且不愿意为法学院入学考试(LSAT)做准备，所以我正在瑞士圣加仑一所享有盛誉的商学院攻读学士学位。

There, in that beautiful little Swiss town, I entered the most trying two years of my life. While my classmates were scoring interviews with the likes of UBS, Goldman Sachs, and McKinsey, I could not get a business internship either in Switzerland or Germany. In fact, from the numerous applications I sent out, I got only one interview and the company took the other candidate.

在那美丽的瑞士小镇上，我进入了生命中最艰难的两年。 当我的同学在接受瑞银，高盛和麦肯锡等公司的采访时，我无法在瑞士或德国进行商业实习。 实际上，从我发出的众多申请中，我只接受了一次面试，而公司接了另一位候选人。

Nowhere. Stuck. I knew I missed something, but I could not tell what it was. Having been a star at Texas A&M, I felt like a complete loser in Switzerland.

无处。 卡住。 我知道我错过了一些东西，但是我无法分辨那是什么。 曾经是德克萨斯A＆M的明星，我感觉自己像瑞士的彻底失败者。

Out of sheer luck, I got in touch with a Frankfurt-based value investor, an alumnus who was kind enough to offer me some time to chat. We had a pleasant conversation over coffee in St. Gallen’s Altstadt, during which, however, he quickly determined that I lacked all the necessary financial and accounting knowledge to work as an intern for his fund.

碰巧的是，我与一位法兰克福的价值投资者保持了联系，这位友好的校友足够好让我有时间聊天 。 我们在圣加仑(St. Gallen)的老城区(Altstadt)上喝咖啡时愉快地交谈，但是在那期间，他Swift确定我缺乏所有必要的财务和会计知识，无法担任他的基金实习生。

Sensing his acute yet accurate judgement, I asked out of desperation:

感觉到他敏锐而准确的判断，我绝望地问：

“What kind of skills should I learn that would be valuable to your fund?”

“ 我应该学习哪些对您的基金有价值的技能？”

He replied:

他回答：

“You could consider learning Python and programming for machine learning. Technology is coming into value investing as well now.”

“ 您可以考虑学习 Python 和 机器学习 编程 。 技术也正在进入价值投资。”

I felt a knot in my stomach tying up instantly. Words could not describe my frustration and disappointment as I walked home. I called my girlfriend at the time with tears in my eyes, whining to her that the last thing in the world I would want to do is learning how to program again and this investor literally just told me I should learn Python for programming. Beaten and defeated, I went to bed early that day but could not fall asleep.

我感觉到我的肚子在打结。 言语无法形容我回家时的沮丧和失望。 当时我打电话给我的女友，眼泪含泪，向她抱怨说，我想做的最后一件事是学习如何再次编程，这位投资人只是告诉我，我应该学习Python进行编程。 被殴打并被打败，那天那天我上床睡觉，但无法入睡。

The next morning, still with cloud in my mind, I bit my teeth and searched for online courses that would teach me Python. I found a few free resources, managed to install Python on my Windows laptop, and started programming.

第二天早上，我仍然脑海中积云，我咬牙切齿，寻找可以教我Python在线课程。 我找到了一些免费资源，设法在Windows笔记本电脑上安装Python ，然后开始编程。

Immediately, I realized that something was different: I did not feel dumbfounded like I felt with Pascal, C or C++. There was no mysterious, magical, scret code flying around the text editor. It was simple. My hello world program (in Python2 syntax) was 1 line:

立刻，我意识到有些不同：我没有像Pascal ， C或C++那样感到傻眼。 文本编辑器周围没有神秘，神奇，秘密的代码。 很简单。 我的hello world程序(使用Python2语法)为1行：

print "Hello, world."

With still a lot of uncertainty and fear in me, I told myself that this time, I might actually get somewhere with Python. And that was the true story to how I started programming.

我仍然充满不确定性和恐惧，我告诉自己，这次，我实际上可能会使用Python 。 这就是我开始编程的真实故事。

编写更多代码并遇到深度学习 (Coding More and Encountering Deep Learning)

I would like to sincerely thank Guido van Rossum and all the core Python developers because they created a beautiful language that is inviting to those of us who are frightened by C++.

我要衷心感谢Guido van Rossum和所有Python核心开发人员，因为他们创造了一种优美的语言，吸引了那些对C++感到恐惧的人。

After learning basic Python syntax and some programming concepts with the online book Learn Python the Hard Way and Coursera’s Python for Everybody, I gained some confidence in programming. I switched my operating system from Windows to Ubuntu, a popular distro of Linux, as a gesture of committing to coding as a lifestyle.

在通过在线书籍《艰难地学习Python》和Coursera的《所有人的Python》学习了基本的Python语法和一些编程概念之后，我对编程有了一定的信心。 我将操作系统从Windows切换到Ubuntu (Linux的流行发行版)，以此作为致力于编码的一种生活方式。

I didn’t fall in love with programming yet. Sometimes, when I encountered a new concept that I could not understand, my fear of computer from 2006 would arise again and I had to give myself time to calm down and get back at the computer screen.

我还没有爱上编程。 有时，当我遇到一个我无法理解的新概念时，我对2006年以后的计算机的恐惧会再次出现，我必须给自己一些时间冷静下来，回到计算机屏幕上。

But for a student who felt stuck in his self-pity and stagnated career path, programming was weirdly liberating. And so, even making a useless, buggy text-based game in the terminal was a lovely distraction for me from the boring Economics exams that I had to memorize for.

但是对于一个觉得自己陷入自怜，职业道路停滞的学生来说，编程是一种奇怪的解放。 因此，即使在终端机上制作了无用的，基于错误的文本游戏，对我来说，我也不得不从无聊的经济学考试中分心，这让我难以忘怀。

Without any deliberate purpose, I learned more and more, such as how to dual boot Ubuntu and Windows, how to use the terminal and command line, and how to write a small script to scrap search results from YouTube and download YouTube videos. The more I wrote, the more fun programming became. I knew no one would use any of the programs I wrote, but I was proud of them anyways.

没有任何刻意的目的，我学到了越来越多的知识，例如如何双重引导Ubuntu和Windows，如何使用终端和命令行以及如何编写小脚本以从YouTube检索搜索结果并下载YouTube视频 。 我写的越多，编程就越有趣。 我知道没有人会使用我编写的任何程序，但是无论如何我都为它们感到骄傲。

By the fall of 2016, I made a calculated move of not completing my studies in St. Gallen but instead began my master’s studies in Stockholm School of Economics. On the one hand, I wanted to close a long-distance relationship, on the other, I hoped that Scandinavia might offer opportunities to my stagnated career development.

到2016年秋天，我做出了有计划的决定，没有完成在圣加仑的学业，而是在斯德哥尔摩经济学院开始了我的硕士学位。 一方面，我想结束长距离的关系，另一方面，我希望斯堪的纳维亚半岛可以为我停滞不前的职业发展提供机会。

Being the only student in my program who could script in a general-purpose programming language, I went deeper and deeper into it. While my classmates were studying consulting cases, I hacked in my text editor and terminal to render a Hangman Game while learning how to modularize my code. While my classmates were partying and socializing in the evenings, I sat in a basement and continued learning with online math and programming courses. It brought me pride to be the only person who knew something about the magic in a computer among a bunch of business students.

作为我程序中唯一可以使用通用编程语言编写脚本的学生，我对此进行了越来越深入的研究。 当我的同学们研究咨询案例时，我在学习如何模块化代码的同时，侵入了我的文本编辑器和终端以渲染一个Hangman游戏。 当我的同学晚上参加聚会和社交时，我坐在地下室，继续学习在线数学和编程课程。 这让我很自豪，成为一群商学院学生中唯一了解计算机魔术的人。

Around this time, I completed MIT’s 6.00.1x and 6.00.2x and started doing Harvard’s CS50 course, of which I eventually completed 70% of the homework. I love CS50 and its people. To this day, it is still the single best online course of any kind and I recommended it to all my close friends who wished to learn programming.

大约在这段时间里，我完成了MIT的6.00.1x和6.00.2x，并开始完成哈佛的CS50课程 ，最终我完成了70％的作业。 我爱CS50及其人民。 到目前为止，它仍然是任何形式的最佳在线课程，我向所有希望学习编程的密友推荐。

Soon after, I also discovered Udacity’s new program on Deep Learning. Having no clue what deep learning is, I signed up for the course because it sounded cool (nowadays you can learn with free resources like fast.ai). I learned about back propagation, convolutional neural networks, image classification, Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), and Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN). None of that was easy and I definitely did not manage to do everything on my own. And wow! I could train a “neural network” to recognize digits in images!

不久之后，我还发现了Udacity的深度学习新程序。 我不知道深度学习是什么，所以报名参加了这门课程，因为它听起来很酷(如今，您可以使用fast.ai这样的免费资源进行学习)。 我了解了反向传播，卷积神经网络，图像分类，长短期记忆(LSTM)和生成对抗网络(GAN)。 所有这些都不是一件容易的事，而且我绝对不能独自完成所有事情。 哇！ 我可以训练“神经网络”来识别图像中的数字！

Quite similar to my earliest experience with programming, I felt often dumbfounded with deep learning but I persisted because the subject was fascinating and because I thought I had no other competitive advantages.

与我最初的编程经验非常相似，我常常对深度学习感到傻眼，但我坚持不懈，因为该课程很有趣，并且因为我认为自己没有其他竞争优势。

失败后失败，直到运气好 (Failures After Failures, Until Luck Struck)

To digest my learnings better, I started to write blogs. I was honored that the two pieces I wrote on the basics of deep learning (post #1 and post #2) invited over 240K views in total. (Note: I never found the time nor energy to complete the third blog on backpropagation. Here’s an amazing post on backpropagation from Christoph Olah).

为了更好地消化我的知识，我开始写博客。 我很荣幸能以深度学习的基础撰写的两篇文章( 第1和第2部分 )总共吸引了超过240K的观看次数 。 ( 注：我从来没有时间和精力来完成关于反向传播的第三篇博客。这是 Christoph Olah撰写的 关于反向传播 的精彩 文章 )。

These little successes boosted my confidence and I decided to look for interesting AI startups to apply for a product, marketing, or bizdev internship in Berlin. I thought about applying for engineering positions after reading Lynn Root’s story of her transition into engineering, but I chickened out. Anyways, I reached out to all the startups I could find at the time.

这些小小的成功激发了我的信心，我决定寻找有趣的AI初创公司来柏林申请产品，市场营销或bizdev实习机会。 在读完Lynn Root关于她过渡到工程学的故事后，我曾考虑过申请工程学职位，但是我避而不谈。 无论如何，我接触了当时可以找到的所有创业公司。

The cycle repeated itself. I was either rejected or ignored.

循环重复了一次。 我要么被拒绝要么被忽略。

I remember one startup that I applied to wrote back saying that they did not have a position suitable for me, yet I found out a month later that they hired another person from St. Gallen for a role that I was interested in. That hurt my pride in that moment but, in hindsight, never take these decisions personally. Startups tend to lack a large HR team to digest all the applications and sometimes, not being hired by the wrong employer is a good thing.

我记得我申请的一家初创公司回信说他们没有适合我的职位，但是一个月后，我发现他们聘请了圣加仑市的另一个人担任我感兴趣的职位。这伤害了我在那一刻感到自豪，但是事后看来，决不要亲自做出这些决定。 初创企业往往缺乏庞大的人力资源团队来消化所有申请，有时，不被错误的雇主雇用是一件好事。

In my moments of frustration, Lady Fortuna befell on me. I reached out to Moritz, a complete stranger who at the time was the product owner of a deep learning startup, TwentyBN. By then, I had almost given up on finding an internship in Berlin and reached out only because Moritz’s profile resembled mine and I thought I could seek some advice to my career path. I clicked the button on his LinkedIn profile and sent a short message.

在我沮丧的时刻，福图纳夫人向我敬佩。 我与完全陌生的Moritz接触，当时他是深度学习创业公司TwentyBN的产品负责人。 那时，我几乎已经放弃了在柏林找到实习职位的机会，而仅仅因为莫里茨的形象与我相似，所以我想我可以为自己的职业道路寻求一些建议。 我单击了他的LinkedIn个人资料上的按钮，并发送了一条短消息。

Little did I know that this message landed me an internship and a full-time job that eventually allowed and encouraged me to transit into software development. (Note: In October 2017, before my internship with TwentyBN started, I briefly contributed to an open source project OpenMined in an attempt to gain more experience in software. That experience also scared me because I did not understand Git, Github, unit testing, and CI/CD. I paused it in the excuse of work until April, 2020 when I became a software intern at TwentyBN.)

我几乎不知道这条信息使我获得了实习和全职工作，最终使我受到鼓舞并转向了软件开发。 ( 注意：2017年10月，在我开始在TwentyBN实习之前，我曾短暂地为一个开源项目 OpenMined 做出了贡献， 试图获得更多的软件经验。这种经历也让我感到害怕，因为我不了解Git，Github，单元测试，和CI / CD。我以工作为借口将其暂停，直到2020年4月，我成为TwentyBN的软件实习生。 )

对职业道路的不满 (Dissatisfaction with Career Path)

I worked for 2 years as a product marketer and not for even a day did I feel it was my mission call. I took the job because I fully believed in TwentyBN’s people and our technology, but I dislike social media. I wanted to contribute to my company’s success but never managed to change my mind about social media marketing. I did not grow much in this position and never felt fulfilled.

我曾担任产品营销员2年，甚至没有一天我觉得这是我的使命召唤。 我之所以接受这份工作，是因为我完全相信TwentyBN的员工和我们的技术，但是我不喜欢社交媒体。 我想为公司的成功做出贡献，但从未设法改变对社交媒体营销的看法。 我在这个职位上没有成长很多，也从未感到满足。

During this period of time, I went through an amicable breakup that nevertheless broke my heart. Moreover, I secretly felt my position was being marginalized in the company. My salary rose but deep in my mind, I was frustrated that I could not play a more meaningful role. That depressing feeling I experienced in Switzerland seemed to be rising again.

在这段时间里，我经历了友好的分手，但仍然伤透了我的心。 此外，我暗中感到我的职位在公司中被边缘化了。 我的薪水上涨了，但我心中深深地感到沮丧，因为我无法扮演更有意义的角色。 我在瑞士经历的那种令人沮丧的感觉似乎又在上升。

While a part of me continued to indulge myself in some ocassional evening coding sessions and nerdy programming languages activities, I did not consider software a possibility for me. And I felt I was already too old to go back to a junior position and start over again.

虽然我的一部分继续沉迷于偶尔的夜间编码会议和讨厌的编程语言活动中，但我认为软件对我而言不是一种可能性。 而且我觉得我已经年纪太大了，无法回到初级职位重新开始。

At work, I started writing and editing our company newsletter Embodied AI. In private, I started turning my reading list into book reviews and analysis on leadership in a newsletter called Plutarch.

在工作中，我开始编写和编辑我们的公司通讯《 Embodied AI》 。 私下里，我开始在一份名为Plutarch的新闻通讯中将阅读清单变成书评和领导力分析。

With a desire to build a reputation of my writing, I started experimenting and trying to attract people to sign up for both newsletters. I tried all kinds of marketing channels, got banned by multiple Reddit subreddits, and eventually managed around 500 subscribers for Embodied AI and 100 subscribers for my personal newsletter.

为了建立自己的声誉，我开始尝试并试图吸引人们注册这两个新闻通讯。 我尝试了各种营销渠道，被多个Reddit子实体禁止，最终管理了约500个 Embeded AI订阅者和100个我的个人通讯订阅者。

With myself, I took a friend Chris’s suggestion, overcame my gym-fear and started trying to weightlift and doing calisthenics, which was completely outside my comfort zone.

在我自己的陪伴下，我接受了克里斯(Chris)的建议，克服了对健身房的恐惧，开始尝试举重和健美操，而这完全超出了我的舒适范围。

Fitness gave me dopamine and testosterone. But my newsletter attempts brought me no gratification. I continued and performed a variety of mini-experiments throughout a span of almost a year. Yet my career dissatisfaction continued.

健身给了我多巴胺和睾丸激素。 但是我的通讯尝试并没有使我满意。 我继续并在近一年的时间里进行了各种小型实验。 但是我的职业不满仍然持续。

永不过时，无法改变职业 (Never Too Old to Change Career)

Towards the end of 2019, my long dissatisfaction with work manifested into an existential crisis (the coronavirus in 2020 intensified this crisis).

到2019年底，我对工作的长期不满表现为生存危机(2020年的冠状病毒加剧了这场危机)。

I came to one grim conclusion: If I were to continue doing product marketing for another 10 years, I would end up hating myself for not taking any action.

我得出一个严峻的结论： 如果我再继续进行产品营销10年，我最终会因为不采取任何行动而讨厌自己。

Again, this voice in my mind suggested software.

同样，在我看来，这种声音建议使用软件。

Already in 2018, I had wanted to ask TwentyBN for an internship as a deep learning engineering intern but I lacked the confidence to make the cut. And by the end of 2019, I heard enough success stories from acquaintances who landed software jobs after bootcamps that my desire to explore software engineering as a career re-kindled.

早在2018年，我就想向TwentyBN申请作为深度学习工程实习生的实习机会，但我缺乏晋升的信心。 到2019年底，我听到了熟人在新兵训练营后找到软件工作的成功故事，这使我探索软件工程作为一种职业的愿望重新燃起。

During my Christmas vacation back in China, I spent all the 3 weeks learning web development with Harvard’s CS50W, coding from 8AM in the morning until 1 or 2AM in the night. I wanted to test myself with this intensive experience to see if I had it in me to be a programmer or if it were just a phase. The learning curve was steep and the great firewall prevented me from easy access to Google and StackOverflow. But I managed 2 buggy projects and learned some Flask, Django, Javascript and WebSocket.

在回国的圣诞节期间，我花了整整3周的时间使用哈佛大学的CS50W学习网络开发，从早上8点开始编码，直到晚上1点或2点。 我想用这种丰富的经验来测试自己，看看自己是否适合成为一名程序员，或者仅仅是一个阶段。 学习曲线非常陡峭，强大的防火墙使我无法轻松访问Google和StackOverflow。 但是我管理了两个越野车项目，并学到了一些Flask ， Django ， Javascript和WebSocket 。

What was most transformational during these 3 weeks was that, for the first time in almost 14 years, I felt again I was in the zone. I was absorbed in programming. Throughout the day I was contemplating on solving the projects and problems. I even had 2–3 dreams during which I was finding solutions to my code.

在这三个星期中，最具变革性的是，这是近14年来的第一次，我再次感到自己在该地区 。 我沉迷于编程。 我整天都在考虑解决项目和问题。 在寻找代码解决方案的过程中，我甚至做过2-3个梦。

And programming suited me way more than product marketing. By nature, marketing is a highly difficult line of work. Viral marketing and growth marketing are well-studied topics, but no one could say with 100% confidence if any single strategy or action was responsible for a product or a company’s success.

编程比产品营销更适合我。 从本质上讲，营销是一项非常困难的工作。 病毒式营销和增长式营销是经过充分研究的主题，但是如果有人对产品或公司的成功负责的是单一策略或行动，没有人会100％自信地说。

Programming, however, is deadly logical. I was hooked into it because I enjoyed the instant gratification because, sometimes, even a single line of code change could result in a big visual difference. Bug-hunting, while sometimes tedious and frustrating, also gave me huge feelings of reward when I eventually debugged my code and consolidated my learning. This is way better than what I did in the past 2 years!

但是，编程是致命的逻辑。 我之所以迷上它是因为我享受即时满足感，因为有时甚至单行代码更改也可能导致巨大的视觉差异。 当我最终调试代码并巩固我的学习知识时，尽管有时会感到乏味而令人沮丧，但仍然使我倍感欣慰。 这比我过去两年的表现要好得多！

In the end, I worked so hard during those weeks that I did not hear about the COVID19 until I returned from China to Berlin.

最后，我在那几周里非常努力，直到我从中国回到柏林之前才听说过COVID19。

Back at work, I decided that I was not too old to give software engineering a try. I managed to convince my boss Moritz, my Python teamleads, as well as my CTO Ingo to give me a three-month internship with pay reduction. Again, there were sleepless nights and numerous moments of head-banging. The paycut was manageable, but my nervousness of not making the cut and my imposter syndrome added a lot of pressure on my mind.

回到工作中，我决定我还不算老，可以尝试一下软件工程。 我设法说服我的老板莫里茨，我的Python团队负责人以及我的CTO Ingo给我三个月的减薪实习期。 再次，有不眠之夜和无数次敲打头的瞬间。 减薪是可以控制的，但是我不去减薪的紧张情绪和冒名顶替综合症给我的思想带来很大压力。

By now, however, my programming experience has taught me what my learning patterns are and I have become more patient with myself. I learned steadily, solved tickets, asked for help, and eventually, the internship turned into a new, full-time position.

但是，到目前为止，我的编程经验已经告诉我我的学习模式是什么，并且我对自己越来越耐心。 我稳定地学习，解决了票，寻求帮助，最终，实习变成了一个新的全职职位。

重制我们的“自我” (Remake Our “Self”)

Having a family and good friends that unconditionally supported me helped. Having parents who value education and generously supported me in my worst moments helped. Having received a stranger’s advice helped. Having learned programming and deep learning helped. Having been a history major with good writing skills helped. And having been on the same wavelength with my company’s management and colleagues helped. All of that help was necessary.

有一个无条件支持我的家人和好朋友帮助了我。 在我最糟糕的时刻让父母重视教育并慷慨地支持我。 收到一个陌生人的建议是有帮助的。 学习编程和深度学习会有所帮助。 拥有良好的写作能力的历史专业帮助。 与我公司的管理层和同事们保持一致的态度帮助了他们。 所有这些帮助都是必要的。

But equally important, I also must thank Lady Fortuna for making me into a person who has the drive to learn new, seemingly daunting skills to re-make oneself with discipline and tenacity. Without this habit of continuous learning, I could not have achieved what I want.

但同样重要的是，我也必须感谢福图纳夫人(Lady Fortuna)使我成为一个有能力去学习新的，看似令人生畏的技能，使自己有纪律和坚韧地自我改造的人 。 没有这种不断学习的习惯，我就无法实现自己想要的。

As you might tell, my learning journey as a software Padawan has only just begun. Software engineering is a dynamic and energetic field with many talented people and brilliant ideas. I am still learning how to write good software and how to work across multiple teams.

您可能会说，我作为软件Padawan的学习之旅才刚刚开始。 软件工程是一个充满活力和朝气的领域，拥有许多才华横溢的人才和出色的想法。 我仍在学习如何编写优秀的软件以及如何在多个团队中工作。

In April, I have reconnected with the founder of the open source project OpenMined. I began contributing in my limited capacity again so that to give myself more exposure to other programming languages to hone my overall skillset as a developer. It has not been easy but the OpenMined community is an amazing bunch.

4月，我与开源项目OpenMined的创始人重新建立了联系 。 我又开始以有限的能力做出贡献，以便使自己更多地接触其他编程语言，以磨练我作为开发人员的整体技能。 这并非易事，但OpenMined社区是一个了不起的团队。

Additionally, there are knowledge gaps that I have to make up for, such as architecture design, pattern design, as well as well-known algorithms and data structures. I am well aware of these gaps and will continue working on them. After all, I signed up for a career that only works if I continue to learn.

此外，我还需要弥补一些知识空白，例如体系结构设计，模式设计以及众所周知的算法和数据结构。 我很清楚这些差距，并将继续努力解决这些差距。 毕竟，我报名参加了一个只有继续学习才能工作的职业。

拉芬 (La Fin)

Most of us will not have a straightforward career that soars like the rocket. Most of us are destined to encounter career deadlocks at one or another point in our lives. And most of us have the power to do something about it.

我们大多数人都不会拥有像火箭一样飙升的直截了当的职业。 我们大多数人注定会在生活中的某一时刻遇到职业僵局。 而且我们大多数人都有能力对此做些事情。

For me, that included almost a decade of switching majors and wondering what line of work I would be passionate about.

对我而言，这包括将近十年的专业切换以及想知道我会热衷于哪种工作。

It involved facing setbacks and rejections every stop of my journey across United States and Europe. It involved failing a major in business administrations and flunked two exams for the first time in my life. It involved being unhappy about my career path for 2 years.

它涉及我在美国和欧洲旅行的每一站都面临的挫折和拒绝。 这涉及到我的业务管理专业不及格，这是我一生中第一次考试不及格。 这涉及对我两年的职业生涯感到不满。

But like Dickens wrote, it was the worst of times, but it was also the best of times. Thanks to all the people who are or had been in my life, I survived. Failures challenged my understanding of my strengths and weaknesses, but none of them destroyed me.

但是就像狄更斯所写的那样， 那是最糟糕的时期，但也是最好的时期 。 多亏有我一生或曾经生活过的所有人，我得以幸存。 失败挑战了我对自己的长处和短处的理解，但没有一个摧毁了我。

Each time I was struck down, I cried a bit, rose up, and found consolation in learning new knowledge and acquiring new skills. There was no giving up.

每次被打倒时，我都会哭泣，站起来，并在学习新知识和获得新技能方面感到安慰。 没有放弃。

Here I am today. A new journey just began and I am excited about all the exciting things I will learn along the journey. I am very confident that failures and rejections of all kinds will continue coming my way. I am sure I will have moments of weaknesses and feel defeated. But I have gone through plenty to know that I am strong enough to withstand all of them and continue remaking myself and my life.

我今天在这里。 一个新的旅程才刚刚开始，我对旅途中将学到的所有令人兴奋的事情感到兴奋。 我非常有信心，各种失败和拒绝都会继续。 我确信我会有些虚弱的时刻并感到失败。 但是我经历了很多事情，才知道我足够强大，可以承受所有这些挑战，并继续重塑自我和生活。

I hid most of these failures from others in the past years. A part of me is still ashamed of them. But I decided to write them down as a form of self-reflection. Moreover, I know someone out there is going through similar experiences. Perhaps these words will help.

在过去的几年中，我将大多数失败都隐藏在别人面前。 我的一部分仍然为他们感到羞耻。 但是我决定把它们写下来是一种自我反省的形式。 而且，我知道外面有人正在经历类似的经历。 也许这些话会有所帮助。

So here you go. This story is for you and I hope, despite its length, my history resonate with or inspire you so that you can eventually also remake your life. Good luck and never give up.

所以，你去。 这个故事适合您，我希望尽管故事长久，但我的历史能引起您的共鸣或启发，使您最终也可以重塑自己的生活。 祝你好运，永不放弃。

Feel free to reach out to me or follow me on Twitter!

欢迎与我联系或在Twitter上关注我！