A few days ago, while eating xiaolongbao with my wife at Xiao Yang’s, we talked about how crab roe xiaolongbao doesn’t taste as good as it used to. This made me think about myself and the programmer community.

March to May each year is when crabs are most active. During Qingming Festival when I went home, I ate so many I got heatiness. Gradually, you can barely see crabs in supermarkets now, and even when they’re there, they’re tiny and don’t inspire any desire to buy them. Poor crabs - their highlight moment of the year is just these few months, and it comes at the cost of their lives.

As for the programmer community, when the internet industry was booming, some people came to so-called big tech companies for the supposedly good environment or prestige. Upon joining, they got a top-spec Mac and 4K monitor - just like those large-scale farms where crabs are fed daily and don’t need to worry about predators. The pond surroundings are lush and green, looking prosperous. But the result of these crabs being fattened up is ending up on people’s dinner tables. The fate of big tech employees is mostly the same - they output their light and heat during their youngest and most capable years, write tons of code, create many products, but in the end, only the boss is remembered.

Some programmers, who might also be very capable, choose to start their own businesses. This is like crabs that are self-sufficient - they might encounter predators and get eaten directly, or they might live well with comprehensive abilities.

But most people can’t get into big tech companies and don’t have the ability to start businesses, so they go to small companies. This is like small farms that can barely survive themselves - how can you expect them to raise you well?

I’m talking about the programmer community, but can this be extended to larger groups? I think it can.