Writing blogs now might be as unnoticed as writing diaries on Douban. Recently, I bought a domain for an independent product project, which sparked the idea to set up a blog again. Still using Hugo + GitHub, just like seven or eight years ago, though with many more convenient tools available now.
The Struggling Life of an Internet Product Manager
After struggling in China’s internet industry for 6 years, I finally gave up and became what they call a “grassroots soldier who will never be promoted to P8”. In 6 years, I worked in 4 different teams, had 6-7-8 different bosses, experienced the last glimmer of the internet boom, and increasingly found myself unable to adapt to this environment.
Over 6 years, the environment gradually deteriorated into a mess. Watching the last bit of internet prosperity disappear, every company internally promoted slogans like “don’t just follow orders blindly,” but demanded subordinates to quickly respond to cases reported by bosses and their friends after work hours. From initially emphasizing user experience and doing the right thing, hearing these words in the workplace later became laughable.
Over 6 years, I also discovered my own incompatibilities - not aggressive enough, unable to handle gray areas, unable to compete for work, unable to push others with deadlines. The result was internal conflict leading to emotional breakdown, while external collaborators and colleagues felt awkward too. Before my SSR, someone asked me: “Look at all the managers you’ve encountered in different companies - is there anyone with your personality?” I thought about it seriously for a long time and couldn’t find a single one. The only boss whose values I truly respected was also marginalized and didn’t have a good career path.
In such an environment with someone like me, relationships between people were tense, and the work was just polishing turds. Except for the salary, nothing could convince me to stay any longer. Initially, I thought I was unlucky to always encounter weird teams, but after talking to people from different companies, I found no one was happy. Perhaps they were stronger than me in their ability to endure, or maybe the generous income brought them worthwhile returns outside of work.
The Beginning of New Attempts
Last year’s first gap year attempt changed my mindset a lot, and I made many psychological mistakes, never fully relaxing from beginning to end. Due to mortgage pressure and not having figured out the path to emigrate, I decided to find another “retirement factory” job without seeking promotion or raises. But the environment wasn’t as expected - when they’re paying you money that depends on who can kneel better, how would they let you stand alone? So this time, actively seeking layoffs became much easier. During the turmoil, I started learning Next.js to build websites and projects, and actually managed to create and launch something online (once again amazed at how front-end technology has evolved to let beginners easily build websites).
The project itself started in February, was paused for a long time due to prompt adjustment issues, until I had plenty of unsupervised free time before leaving my job. Working with GPT teacher step by step, I kept comforting myself throughout the process - treat it as a practice project, don’t overthink the final results.
What will the path of independent products look like? I really don’t know. I remember when I decided to pursue product management in my second year of graduate school, I didn’t know what the future would hold either. Fortunately, I now have some savings to keep experimenting and create my next chapter of life.