About Lao Manong's Novel *Coder Stories*

Synopsis

A story of a group of young people starting a business, of a small company gradually growing into a large company with stable operations. Like-minded people come together and drift apart, and in the end each finds their place.

Main Characters

A Few of the Main Highlights

• The small gathering of Zhao Chuan, Duan Qian, Mo Nan, and Pei Man

I feel this stage of the plot has the best atmosphere. At the time their company was still small, and the founders got along great, without any constraints.

• Zhao Chuan and Mo Nan taking turns writing code through all-nighters

This spirit of diving deep into technology is also very admirable, and they had friends they'd worked with for years. Although Mo Nan and Zhao Chuan were employee and boss, at the time there was no air of superiority, and that kind of relationship felt very comfortable.

• When the company decided to accept a 20 million investment

At this point the founders all said they were willing to put their savings in as equity. Mo Nan and Zhao Chuan both sold their houses and cars, and Duan Qian also put in all her savings (though it was only a little over 10,000 RMB). This kind of solidarity is rare in startups.

• When the cloud servers were put into deployment

That night several tech leads took turns on duty. Although Duan Qian was only a frontend developer, she also came and stayed overnight. Everyone's enthusiasm for the work was high; team cohesion at this point was overflowing.

• When Zhao Chuan successfully persuaded Pei Man, who was about to go abroad, to stay

At that time the two hadn't even defined their relationship—there wasn't even any ambiguity—but between a capable assistant sent by the investors and a veteran employee, Zhao Chuan still chose the veteran employee. Passion still matters.

And

After that the company grew, not particularly smoothly, and eventually succeeded in an IPO. Yet Mo Nan and Duan Qian also left the company one after another, and in the end the two of them sent Zhao Chuan a postcard from Stanford University in the United States. One novel brought about two couples: Zhao Chuan + Pei Man, and Duan Qian + Mo Nan. But the other characters didn't end well. Zhao Chuan's close buddy Ah Huang ended up in prison, and former employee Chen Yi and ex-girlfriend Meng He were also implicated in the case and went to prison. Capitalists Tony and Sun Xi fled abroad and continued to live freely. After putting in a great deal of effort, startup boss Zhao Chuan had both losses and gains. On the battlefield of business, the ultimate winners were still these big capitalists.