One of the three hot spring resorts Guo Yu visited in Japan, which made him rethink his job and life. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Guo says that he likes coding because it does not require any communication with other people, only an interaction with the screen.

He explains that his major did not carry great prospects, but his computer skills helped him land his first job.

In 2011, the sophomore became an intern at Alibaba-backed Alipay in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

"Joining Alipay didn't mean that I saw the trend in the era, it was the only option that I had at that time," Guo says, adding that he was quite satisfied that the job proved to his parents that he could win recognition his own way.

From a self-taught programmer to a full-time developer, Guo decided to leave his comfortable job for one with a startup in Beijing in 2014.

Later that year, the company was purchased by ByteDance, operator of news portal Toutiao and short video app TikTok. Guo became an IT engineer at ByteDance, where he witnessed firsthand the company's rapid evolution into a global media conglomerate.

In the eyes of many, Guo is considered "lucky" by making the right career decisions just as China's internet industry went through the transformation from desktop to mobile in the 2010s, an era which gave rise to Chinese internet giants, such as Tencent, Baidu, NetEase along with, of course, Alibaba and ByteDance.