Chapter 1, Youth Crisis

"Why? In that case, there will be no secrets left for 360 regarding our matters, and we will only be able to keep paying them protection fees." This was Gu Mojie's final struggle

Zhou Hongyi of the grass mud horse! Can't stand the poor earning a meager living!

Before Gu Mojie had the chance to stop, the shattered remains of his phone seemed to emit a blinding flash of light. After the flash, both Gu Mojie and the remnants of the phone vanished from this world as if they had never existed.

Two days before the board was finalized, the stability issues with the PC data transmission regarding several MediaTek chip solutions under TCL's Alcatel brand had not been resolved. You spent countless nights working, sleeping on a folding bed in the office, and at such a young age, you developed fatty liver, yet you managed to resolve the issues on time.

Therefore, these issues need to be debugged and resolved by experienced programmers who can understand the true reasons behind each segment of exception logs; they must be familiar with the protocol data from various mobile chip manufacturers, from Qualcomm to Symbian to MediaTek; rather than being like some other programmers who only focus on writing their own code without concern for the broader context.

For app development, the general market rate for experienced professionals with three to five years of experience is between 7,000 and 9,000. You cannot be considered an experienced professional, but since you are a veteran of the company, we will start your salary at 8,000.

The demand for this position has indeed been unfavorable recently. Not only does his former employer no longer require personnel in this area, but other major mobile solution developers have also ceased their operations. Moreover, other companies began layoffs earlier than Mr. Feng, forcing many programmers who originally worked in this field to change careers by mid-year. Mr. Feng has retained him until the end of the year primarily out of consideration for Gu Mojie, who has been a loyal contributor since the inception of the startup, demonstrating his patience until now

After discussing Gu Mojie's "historical achievements," Feng Guorong naturally needed to follow with a "however," and then we would get to the main topic of today's conversation

Although there is a possibility that some individuals with connections to the bank might manipulate the auction return process to recover a bit more of their investment, how could Gu Mojie, a young man in his late twenties with a background in science and engineering, understand the intricate ways of these financial predators? Therefore, driven by impulsive emotions, he chose to resign

Boss Feng seemed reluctant, letting out a long sigh: "The era of Android and 360 Mobile Assistant dominating the market has arrived. The time when we relied on our accumulated experience across different platforms to thrive and enjoy the benefits is over. It is not just our company that has accepted this capitulation; all the notable technology solution providers for counterfeit phones across the country have accepted this capitulation. We have no choice but to comply"

At this moment, his mindset, when faced with an Android phone, is akin to that of an uneducated English weaver who has spent his entire life spinning yarn with a spindle, suddenly confronted by a Jenny spinning machine that has shattered his family's livelihood.

Zhou Hongyi of the grass mud horse! He just cannot stand the poor earning a meager living!

... ...

Five or six years ago, taking advantage of the popularity of concepts such as EDGE and 3G, along with the rampant distribution of MediaTek's clone chipsets, Feng Guorong, together with a good friend who could attract investment and understood operations, decided to leave Xiangxin Electronics and form his own team. Over the years, by providing technical outsourcing for major telecommunications companies that lacked research and development capabilities but wanted to enter the 3G clone market, he has indeed built a successful business, marking him as a perceptive and successful individual

Gu Mojie stood on the rooftop terrace of the Greenland Technology Island in Xinzhuang, Min Song District, Hu City, allowing the cold wind to brush against him, savoring the essence of calmness. The wind tunnel effect between the high-rise buildings caused his short hair to stand upright in the vertical airflow

For instance, according to the normal biological clock, he should have been hungry by this time, yet in reality, he feels no sense of hunger at all

The daily fourteen hours of programming work have early on bent the back of this young man. It has squeezed him from a once somewhat handsome and sunny youth into a middle-aged man with an unrestrained belly. Aside from earning money to pay for a house, he can only motivate himself to persist with the delusion that "having a house will bring women".

Certainly, in the entire field of mobile system development, the area that Zhou Hongyi has impacted is merely a small, obscure corner. Perhaps only a few hundred programmers across the country will be unemployed as a result, so it will not cause a significant uproar. Gu Mojie was simply unfortunate, finding himself in this highly specialized position.

The company where Gu Mojie is employed is an enterprise that provides research and development solutions for counterfeit mobile phones, employing dozens of programmers and hardware and electronics engineers

"Hey, have you had enough? Damn it, are you still kicking?" A faint electronic voice seemed very indignant, quietly shouting at Gu Mojie, "Be careful! If you kick again, it will explode!"

After being bullied by elementary school students in CF for too long, I finally succeeded in a counter-kill. Isn't it only right to unload an entire magazine on the enemy I finally managed to kill

However, under a low eave, how can one not bow their head? Gu Mojie, not wanting to give up until the very last moment, still asked with a glimmer of hope: "Then, regarding the salary..."

Therefore, a few years ago, we did not keep you busy; you were allowed to take leave from Christmas until New Year's Day, and the quarterly bonus of over 10,000 was also paid in advance. Now, we are discussing this matter with you— the company has reached an agreement with Zhou Hongyi from 360, and starting next year, all mobile phone plans of the company will incorporate the 360 Mobile Assistant's driver library. We will disclose all relevant code and technical interfaces related to the mobile phones we have to 360.

Gu Mojie threw the empty RIO cocktail bottle he had in his hand against the aluminum railing of the rooftop. Unfortunately, the sound of the bottle shattering seemed insufficient to vent his inner resentment, so he directed his anger towards his newly purchased Android phone.

Since it is already ruined, it makes no difference whether I step on it a few more times or a few less; stepping on it more can release more air. For something that costs over 2,000 yuan, to only let out one breath and then discard it would be too wasteful, wouldn't it? At the very least, I should kick it for a full five minutes.

Three hours ago, at 3 PM that afternoon, in Boss Feng's office. The last conversation between Gu Mojie and Boss Feng before his departure took place at this moment

Gu Mojie’s boss is Feng Guorong, a middle-aged man in his forties. He is from Sichuan, comes from a humble background, and has a penchant for spicy food. In the late 1990s, he fought his way out of the mountains to take the college entrance examination and attended Shanghai Jiaotong University. After graduating, he worked hard in Shanghai for over a decade, rising from the software department manager at SIMCOM to the technical director at Xiaxin Electronics

Those who have used mobile phones before the era of Android are aware that in that time, in order to connect a phone to a computer using a USB data cable, whether to use the phone as a USB flash drive or as a wireless network card to dial up the 3G network, it was necessary to first automatically install the driver (commonly referred to as 'driver-free'). ... Furthermore, the phone would automatically load a plethora of interfaces and components that ordinary users would not recognize ...

I raised my wrist to glance at the originally ostentatious fake watch, and it was now 6 PM on December 21, 2012

Although it has been two hours since Boss Feng summoned him to the office, the intense mental shock has caused 27-year-old Gu Mojie’s biological clock to become somewhat disordered, leaving him with little sense of the passage of time

However, now, at six o'clock in the evening, he feels somewhat regretful

All these factors make it possible for the initial normal communication between the mobile phone and the computer to be intercepted by various anomalies, and the data exchange between the 3G internet card and the computer is also prone to various unexpected interruptions

Such occurrences happen every day in this era of rapid internet development. Otherwise, how could industry insiders jokingly refer to traditional industry practitioners as experiencing knowledge structure obsolescence and entering a midlife crisis only in their forties, while programmers, if they cannot continuously learn and adapt, may face a midlife crisis before reaching thirty

Not long ago, Gu Mojie was still a programmer in Hujiang City earning a monthly salary of 15,000, responsible for developing firmware programs (embedded systems) for mobile phones, and was also paying off a 9,000 monthly mortgage for a 90 square meter modest apartment in the city.

Zhou Hongyi from 360 intends to develop a software solution to address the compatibility issues of driver connections and communication anomalies with data cards for all legitimate and counterfeit devices available in the Chinese market. Alternatively, this could merely be a minor supplementary feature of the 360 Mobile Assistant. I have observed that Zhou Hongyi indeed possesses the capability to accomplish this. Therefore, we do not need to arrange for our own engineers to tackle the driver compatibility issues.

In 2012, although Android had already surged in popularity for a year or two, many mobile phone users were still bound by the user habits of iPhone, Symbian, BREW, and BlackBerry. Since their old phones were still functional, they were not in a hurry to switch to Android. Gu Mojie was neither a trendsetter nor a spendthrift; he simply needed to keep up with technological trends as a mobile application developer. This compelled him to purchase a new mainstream phone for testing whenever a new generation was released, while also drawing inspiration from it. Gu Mojie was neither a trendsetter nor a spendthrift; he simply needed to keep up with technological trends as a mobile application developer. This compelled him to purchase a new mainstream phone for testing whenever a new generation was released, while also drawing inspiration from it.

Xiao Gu, the company has come this far in the past two years, and I owe much of it to your efforts

Or like the cobblers in Paris during the Great French Revolution, suddenly seeing a first-generation leather perforating sewing machine, which rendered the craftsmanship of hand-stitching leather soles that he had taken pride in for half his life into a worthless and laughable repetitive task

I am unemployed

During these three hours, he made phone calls to several colleagues in the industry, such as the communication compatibility programmers at LONGCHEER and SIMCOM, to gather information

Indeed, it is precisely because this position requires a substantial amount of "clinical diagnostic experience" that Gu Mojie, with a mere five years since graduating from a certain 211 university and only three years of experience as a programmer, is able to earn a monthly salary of 15,000. In the same company, those programmers who have been writing JAVA for five years generally earn only around 7,000 to 8,000.

From 15,000 to 8,000 - which is even slightly less than the monthly payment for his house. Moreover, although he is paying the monthly installments himself, the initial payment of 500,000 was actually raised by his parents from his hometown in Qiantang. If he defaults on the payments, his parents' life savings would be wasted.

Last year, LG's secondary plan was not resolved by SIMCOM in our city of Shanghai and the studio under Sanwei Communications in Qiantang City; those Koreans who were temporarily transferred to us, you also put in considerable effort, and did not tarnish our reputation. All of this, the elder brother remembers

Android! Once Android emerged, the compatibility experience of other systems lost all economic value! It's all because of Android! Gu Mojie stared blankly at his phone worth over 2,000 yuan, the difficulty of making money made him reluctant to smash it down.

Of course, you have also been with the company through its three years of entrepreneurial phase, and I, as an elder brother, cannot neglect the contributions of a meritocrat. How about changing your career to write JAVA, learning to develop J2ME or APP? Personally, I lean more towards J2ME, as it has some continuity with your current knowledge structure. Young people have good adaptability; switching to a different language and platform should not be too difficult for you to master quickly

And now, he is unemployed. Whether he can still afford the house remains to be seen

Thirty years ago, Apple attempted to conceal the interfaces of its desktop computers, yet ultimately, it was still defeated by assembled machines. Android and 360 are today's equivalent of that 'assembled machine' disrupting the mobile phone industry. You are well aware of how Zhou Hongyi has leveraged free branding to undermine the cost thresholds of various industries, Xiao Gu.

He does not believe that with the emergence of Zhou Hongyi, this world no longer needs those programmers who understand so many mobile interface communication protocols

... ...

Humiliation, unwillingness, pain, the knowledge acquired over several years has lost its economic value, all the anger led him to ultimately raise his phone and smash it violently against the concrete ground, then stomp on it twice with his size 43 leather shoes, as if the phone's screen were the foul face of Zhou Hongyi.

The aggressive entry of 360's Zhou Hongyi, leveraging the intelligent connectivity feature of the 360 Mobile Assistant, has suddenly disrupted the livelihoods of a small group of programmers engaged in driver communication compatibility among all mobile phone manufacturers in the world.

Gu Mojie's specific responsibilities include developing the interface drivers for mobile phones and addressing the compatibility issues of the AT command set for communication between mobile phones and PCs

For Gu Mojie, writing a mobile app in JAVA is equivalent to starting from scratch, and the capital accumulated over the past three years of hard work and overtime is essentially wasted

By the way, according to the Mayan calendar, isn't today supposed to be the end of the world? How come the world hasn't had a chance to face any disasters, yet he personally seems to be at a dead end?

These are the specific responsibilities of Gu Mojie: ensuring the normal connection between mobile phones and devices such as 3G internet cards with computers, resolving various system compatibility issues and communication anomalies, and being responsible for adjusting drivers and the BOOT area CODE

Compared to other programmers, this position requires software developers to possess a quality of being "broad but not specialized". This is because, on Earth, there are a total of N scenarios ranging from WINDOWS to MAC and even LINUX; further, there are various detailed versions such as SP1, SP2, SP3, etc. Additionally, the security software, firewall settings, and user permission settings on all computers can vary widely. At the same time, Qualcomm, the chip supplier from the United States, continuously updates its instruction sets. In total, there are N scenarios; furthermore, the security software, firewall settings, and user permission settings on all computers can vary widely. Concurrently, Qualcomm, as a chip supplier, also continuously updates its instruction sets.

Gu Mojie originally worked on FIRMWARE, naturally using C/C++ languages. As for JAVA, he only used it in a few internship projects during university