My 2023
In 2023, I had a baby, failed to build muscle, wrote less code, read several books, lost a bit of money in funds, started writing for a WeChat official account, and became a contracted author in the robot field.
As usual, I’ll write a year - end summary.
It is mainly divided into four parts: life, work, reading, and spare time. The spare time includes investment, WeChat official account, blog, and robot development.
I. Life
1. The Baby
The biggest change this year was that our two - person world became a three - person world as my wife gave birth to a baby.
Since my wife got pregnant, I’ve heard many friends and colleagues talk about life after having a child. But no one talked about the childbirth process. Maybe it’s a topic only among women and not something to share with male colleagues and friends.
I accompanied my wife through all the processes that men were allowed to be present in at the hospital, and I had three main feelings.
No matter how much you hear others describe it, you can’t truly understand the hardship of childbirth without experiencing it yourself. I say this because the doctor told me, “If your wife can still talk and her face isn’t pale, it means she’s not in extreme pain yet.” You can imagine the hardship from this sentence.
Obstetricians show relatively little, or even no, emotional care for parturients. I guess there are two reasons for this. First, they’ve seen so many cases that they don’t think much of those situations. But for parturients and their families who may only experience childbirth once or twice in their lives, it’s really hard to accept their seemingly “cold” attitude. Second, they’re too busy. Both in terms of energy and emotions, it’s difficult for them to take care of the emotions of parturients and their families comprehensively.
The director of the obstetrics and gynecology department has too much power. My wife had a long labor process. She had contractions for more than 20 hours but didn’t dilate at all. Later, we told the deputy director on duty that day that we wanted a cesarean section, and she agreed. I also signed the surgical consent form. But later, when the director of the obstetrics and gynecology department learned that we wanted a cesarean section, she disagreed and insisted that we have a natural birth. There was even a situation where my wife was already on the operating table, but there was only an anesthesiologist in the operating room, no obstetrician, just because the director of the obstetrics and gynecology department didn’t agree to the cesarean section, and no one dared to perform the surgery. At that time, the director wasn’t in the hospital and didn’t know the latest situation. If it weren’t for some reasons, I really wanted to expose this matter, even if I had to buy traffic.
Although I know that relevant departments now limit the cesarean section rate, the situation my wife experienced still makes me feel that the director of the obstetrics and gynecology department has too much power, almost like a one - person decision - making.
2. The Maternity Center
We originally planned to hire a maternity matron to take care of my wife at home. But our neighbor started renovating, and the noise was too loud. So, a week before the delivery, we booked a relatively good maternity center in our area. There are only two days left until my wife leaves the maternity center, and looking back, it was a wise decision.
The maternity center has not only maternity matrons but also nurses, doctors, and postpartum rehabilitation staff. They all come from local top - tier hospitals, and their professional capabilities are relatively reliable. There are also special maternity meals and some recreational activities arranged for parturients.
Overall, the maternity center is a team, and their care for parturients and babies is relatively professional, which saves us worry and makes us feel at ease.
3. Muscle - building
Since I’m quite thin and want to build muscle, I started going to the gym at the end of last year and even bought personal training courses. But each time, I stopped exercising for various reasons after a while.
This year, I started working out at home after the National Day holiday, hoping to reach 60 kg by the Spring Festival. I persisted for nearly two months and gained 2 kg, reaching 56 kg. But at the end of November, I had to stop because my baby was about to be born.
I still want to exercise and build muscle, but now that I have a baby, my time is more fragmented and tight, so I need to re - plan this.
II. Work
1. Layoffs
The IT industry has been really sluggish this year (it seems other industries are too). Our company has been established for more than 30 years, and its R & D center in mainland China has been around for over 20 years. It has never laid off employees before, but this year it did. Counting those transferred to Canada, the mainland R & D center will reduce by about 140 people, and all of them are from the R & D department. None of the support departments have been affected.
Of course, apart from the impact of the economic downturn, our company’s layoffs are also largely related to geopolitical factors.
2. Reduced Code - writing
I roughly estimated on Friday that I wrote about 10,000 lines of code at work this year, which is significantly less than in the previous two years.
Among these 10,000 lines of code, about 2,500 lines are Python scripts, 5,000 lines are for the Django + DRF backend, and 2,500 lines are for the Vue3 frontend.
The reason for writing less code is that the focus of my work has changed this year. Since this year, I’ve been fully responsible for the company’s product management system, from infrastructure to application stability, from operation to promotion. In the second half of the year, I was also in charge of global service support for a while (our company has R & D centers in many countries and regions around the world, and we need to ensure that the DevOps toolchain system is available in all time zones and regions). Time and energy are limited, so I can’t do everything at once.
3. Product Thinking
The biggest gain at work this year is learning about product thinking: one can only be recognized and remembered by others by creating an excellent product.
Since I started working, I’ve been obsessed with technology for a long time, thinking that only technology is reliable and real, and everything else is illusory.
But I position myself as an engineer, not a researcher. This means that it’s unlikely for me to be far ahead of most people in technology (but I’m not worse than others either). So, it’s hard to stand out in the workplace relying solely on technology.
Coincidentally, I started to be in charge of the company’s product management system this year. Plus, our company is a multinational company with complex scenarios and architectures, giving me the opportunity to create an excellent product. I hope to create an outstanding product that will be recognized and remembered by others in 2024.
III. Reading
1. Books Read
Listed below are the books I finished reading this year in the order of completion.
- Low - Risk Entrepreneurship
- Management and Law
- Learn Some Law to Avoid Pitfalls
- Xiaoqiang’s Promotion Story
- The Almanack of Naval Ravikant —- Recommended
- I Delivered Parcels in Beijing —- Recommended
- Python Craftsman
- Inside China’s Political Economy: How the Government Works in China’s Development
- Chip War
- The Psychology of Money
- Kubernetes: Up and Running
- Soft Skills 2: The Software Developer’s Life Beyond Code —- Recommended
- How to Open a Small and Wonderful Store
- I Was on the Brink of Collapse
- Chinese History That You Can’t Bear to Finish Reading
- Reversals of Life: Notes from an Acute and Critical Care Doctor —- Recommended
- Red Book of Fund Investment
I think all these books are quite good because I stopped reading those I thought were bad before finishing them.
But I highly recommend four of them:
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Strictly speaking, this isn’t a book but a collection of Naval’s tweets. Most of the content is very reasonable and practical, especially for people in the IT industry.I Delivered Parcels in Beijing
This is my favorite book this year, no doubt about it. The author was once an ordinary worker who had done various jobs. He used the most plain and unadorned words to record the details of nearly 20 jobs he had in over a decade. The more you read, the more you’ll be touched by the author’s words and experiences.Soft Skills 2: The Software Developer’s Life Beyond Code
This book is written specifically for programmers and has received rave reviews. After reading it, I started trying out some of the suggestions in the book. I strongly recommend it to my fellow programmers.Reversals of Life: Notes from an Acute and Critical Care Doctor
This was recommended by a high - school学妹 (female schoolmate). She is now pursuing a medical - related doctorate. This book records the work content of the acute and critical care department from the doctor’s perspective, which is completely different from the perspective of us laypeople. If everyone reads this book, the doctor - patient conflict should be alleviated a lot.
2. The Disadvantage of Listening to Books During Commute
As I mentioned in [Increased Commuting Time](https://panzhixiang.cn/2023/07/04/commuting - time - increased/), I like to listen to books during my commute because my commute is long, and this way, I can make the most of my time.
But recently, I’ve found a drawback to this.
Since I’ve formed this habit, I often put on my headphones and start listening to books as soon as I come out of the company elevator, without doing anything else. But in fact, there are always some trivial things to deal with at home or at work. These things are very simple, such as buying a small tool, sending an email, making a phone call, etc. Because I habitually put on my headphones to listen to books as soon as I go out, I don’t want to deal with these things, which leads to procrastination.
This problem needs to be solved because although these are just small things, they can affect the rhythm of work and life.
IV. Investment
This year, I still suffered losses. In total, I lost 16.7% in the past two years (last year and this year). In fact, compared with the market, it’s not a large amount. But the continuous losses in these two years have had a greater impact on my emotions than the amount of money itself.
I came across the investment concepts of Bank Screw and Meng Yan the year before last and have been insisting on investing only with spare money. This is also an important reason why I can still invest firmly despite two years of losses. Because even if all this money is lost, it won’t have any impact on my life (except for the heartache… I’ve been doing regular investment for almost four years, and it’s quite a sum of money).
I hope to at least break even in 2024.
V. WeChat Official Account
I started writing for my WeChat official account this year. Including this article, I’ve written a total of 30 articles.
As mentioned above about product thinking, I plan to operate my WeChat official account as a product in 2024.
VI. Blog
I wrote a total of 30 blog posts this year. I originally planned to write one per week, but actually, I didn’t achieve that.
Moreover, my mindset towards writing blogs has changed a lot this year. My blogs were initially mainly about technology. But after the popularity of large language models (LLMs) this year, I hesitated about writing technical blogs. First, my blogs might be used to train LLMs instead of being seen by people. Second, with the emergence of LLMs, people’s need to read these technical blogs has decreased a lot, and I’m the same way.
I also need to carefully plan what to do next regarding blog - writing.
VII. Robot Development
At the end of last year, I got in touch with Guyuehome‘s OriginBot and became a contracted author of Guyuehome. In this year, I published 12 blog posts on Guyuehome. I guess I can barely be considered as having entered the field of robot development.
Coincidentally, my baby was just born recently. I plan to develop an intelligent camera function based on OriginBot, which is a bit similar to the Haimababi camera. In fact, I bought the Haimababi camera first, but the product was really bad, so I returned it. That’s why I had to plan to make one myself based on OriginBot.
I hope to make further progress in robot development in 2024, have further cooperation with Guyuehome and Horizon Robotics, and conduct more in - depth research on skills.