Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 560 The Golden Age
As February arrives and the Spring Festival begins, all things begin to revive, and a large number of migrant workers end their Spring Festival holidays and head to major cities to start the new year's work.

Zhao Xingsheng also drove his car, taking his wife Meng Lin and their one-year-old child from their hometown to the city!

Occasionally, when Zhao Xingsheng sees Menglin in the back seat and the child in the car seat in the rearview mirror, he can't help but smile slightly.

Since returning to his hometown from Shenzhen to work more than two years ago, Zhao Xingsheng has adapted to life in his hometown. Although his hometown is less developed and lacks the hustle and bustle of major international cities, the pace of life is slower and prices are relatively lower.

With his current salary, he can live quite well in his hometown, neither rich nor poor.

I have a house in the city center, and it's already renovated and I've moved in. I also have a wife and kids, and I can go back to my hometown to see my parents on weekdays, weekends, or holidays.

After the child was born last year, his mother said she didn't have much to do at home, so she came to the city to help them take care of the child. As for the old father, he was worried about the convenience store at home, saying that even if the store didn't earn much, it could still make several thousand yuan a month, so he stayed in the old house.

Zhao Xingsheng is quite satisfied with his current life. He has a good job, a decent income, and lives close to home. His wife is beautiful and gentle, and his child is cute and lovable. This kind of life may not be much for those wealthy and powerful people, but Zhao Xingsheng feels very content.

Especially before the Lunar New Year, his boss had already hinted to him that a team leader position might become available after the holiday, and told him to focus on his work and give it his best in the near future.

This made Zhao Xingsheng even more excited.

He has been with Hailan Auto for more than two years, and as one of the first engineers dispatched to work at this production base, he has participated in the construction and commissioning of this motor production base from beginning to end. His qualifications and experience make him one of the best among the current batch of engineers.

This promotion is reasonable... after all, he's been working hard for over two years, it's about time it was his turn.

There are people more capable than him; there are several engineers in his department who are even more capable than him.

But he's capable and ambitious, and he doesn't want to stay in this small base in a fourth-tier city for the rest of his life.

These people, like Zhao Xingsheng, joined the company directly from the headquarters of Hailan Automobile and were then dispatched here. Their three-year dispatch period is almost over.

These people are all just waiting for their assignments to end so they can be transferred back to the Shenzhen headquarters.

But Zhao Xingsheng is different. He is a local and has already bought a house in the city, settled down, gotten married and had children. Moreover, when his boss asked him about his future plans last year, he clearly stated that he was willing to stay in this branch company.

In such a situation, the boss would naturally be more willing to consider promoting him.

Stability... Unlike the other few people, although they are capable, they are all waiting to return to the Shenzhen headquarters. This small branch office base simply cannot retain those few people.

Zhao Xingsheng could imagine that his superior, the vice president, had probably talked himself hoarse, but still couldn't retain those few colleagues!

However, it's understandable. Those colleagues weren't locals; they were from other provinces. For them, the best solution was either to return to the Shenzhen headquarters or to be transferred back to the production base in their hometown province. If that didn't work, they would rather accept a new round of assignments to work at other bases and continue to receive extra high assignment subsidies.

If all else fails, they can go to other car companies. Senior mechanical engineers like them, who have worked at Hailan Auto for many years and have rich experience in intelligent electric vehicle manufacturing, have no trouble finding jobs.

Many domestic and even foreign car companies like to poach people from Hailan Auto... After all, Hailan Auto is a veteran in the global electric vehicle industry, with top-notch standards in both design and manufacturing. Poaching people from an industry leader can help build a strong technical team faster and better.

Therefore, for these people, including Zhao Xingsheng, it is very easy to switch jobs and find new employment... A large number of car companies are happy to pay them premium salaries.

Of course, there are risks involved in changing jobs... In the past two years, many car companies have laid off employees due to bankruptcy, restructuring and other reasons, and new energy vehicle companies are the hardest hit by bankruptcy and layoffs.

They were poached at a premium, but how long they can keep that premium salary is anyone's guess... Who knows when they might be laid off or even go bankrupt.

If you're lucky, you might get laid off and leave with severance pay; if you're unlucky, you won't even get your salary...

After all, not all car companies are like Hailan Auto!
Not all companies are Xu Shenxue's companies!
There is still a significant gap in salary levels, benefits, and most importantly, job stability.

Xu Shenxue's company, not all companies, and not all employees are highly paid... Generally speaking, those with salaries significantly higher than their peers are usually in technical research and development positions!
Xu Shenxue is truly willing to invest heavily in research and development!

In non-R&D fields such as manufacturing, administration, and marketing, although the salaries are better than those of peers, they are not exorbitantly high.

Well, Zhiyun Group is an exception... Even ordinary clerical positions at Zhiyun Group offer significantly higher salaries than their peers... Several years ago, the median annual salary had already exceeded 700,000.

The median annual salary is now even higher, reaching the million level.

Back in January, a blogger even analyzed and compiled statistics on the income levels of employees at Zhiyun Group!
New employees recruited from universities at Zhiyun Group can basically earn an annual salary of around 500,000 to 600,000 yuan as soon as they join... This starting salary will gradually increase over time.

Some outstanding fresh graduates can even earn an annual salary of around one million yuan, especially outstanding fresh graduates in advanced technology fields such as artificial intelligence, who often receive higher starting salaries... This is because the R&D employees at Zhiyun Group already have very high salaries.

The R&D staff at Zhiyun Group earn significantly higher salaries than clerical staff, with a median annual salary of around 1.2 million yuan. In some of the more advantageous business departments, such as artificial intelligence, robotics, virtual equipment, and quantum computing, the median annual salary is even higher, exceeding 1.5 million yuan.

Median income is essentially a good indicator of a company's earning power and overall salary and benefits.

In these aspects, Zhiyun Group is far ahead of other companies.

However, getting a high salary from Zhiyun is not easy... Technical staff are a bit better off. If you graduate from a 211 university with a good major, study hard during your school years, and have a good resume, you may be able to join Zhiyun through campus recruitment.

However, for clerical positions, a bachelor's degree from a 985 university is the starting point, and only those with a master's or doctoral degree from a prestigious university can be considered to have an advantage... It's even more difficult to get into some of the more important departments.

As for liberal arts students from ordinary universities, they don't even qualify to participate in Zhiyun's campus recruitment... These days, many liberal arts undergraduates from 211 universities don't even know where Zhiyun's campus recruitment is held... because Zhiyun doesn't conduct campus recruitment at their schools.

For liberal arts students, getting a high salary from Zhiyun is not easy; it requires tremendous effort and surpassing many competitors in their academic journey.

Another characteristic of Xu Shenxue's various companies is that it is not easy to get in, but once you get in, they are relatively stable.

Xu Shenxue rarely lays off technical staff... It's not that Xu Shenxue is kind-hearted and would keep these employees for no reason, but rather that most of the companies under his management are large enterprises with a lot of scale and projects!

Even if a business fails and can no longer accommodate a large number of employees, it still has a large number of other businesses that can absorb the relevant employees.

Instead of laying off all employees in the project team because of the failure of a certain business, the employees of the failed project team will be reassigned to other project teams.

Unlike other small and medium-sized enterprises, which have fewer projects and can only lay off employees to save costs when a research and development project fails or a business fails, this company is different.

Unlike some high-tech companies represented by the Internet, which simply pursue the control of labor costs and improve so-called work efficiency, and then relentlessly exploit their employees, and consider people over 35 to be no longer good enough and lay them off to bring in younger, better workers... because the high-paying positions in large Internet companies are all for ordinary programmers, who are too easily replaceable!
Xu Shenxue doesn't do it that way... His reason isn't simply to support people, but because it's difficult to recruit and train high-tech employees involved in research and development.

After all, for someone like Xu Shenxue who works in the manufacturing industry, the requirements for the technical skills and experience of his employees are very high.

This also means that Xu Shenxue's company rarely conducts large-scale layoffs, especially for middle-aged employees... Of course, this is also the case in many manufacturing industries.

If you can just fire key technical personnel like that, the company will go bankrupt!
Xu Shenxue's numerous companies are actually very typical manufacturing companies... except that the products they manufacture have a higher technological content and more cutting-edge technology.

Hailan Auto is also an important company under Xu Shenxue, and its corporate culture, especially in its attitude towards technology, is very consistent.

It is also a company that places extreme emphasis on technology. This has led to a situation where, barring any major unforeseen circumstances and provided the technical staff who join Hailan Auto are not incompetent, they are rarely laid off. Of course, some employees do leave for various reasons, but these are a minority.

These days, it's actually quite difficult to find a high-paying, stable job with good benefits and a decent working environment.

Neither Zhao Xingsheng nor his colleagues really wanted to resign.

Those colleagues didn't want to work at the production base in this small city, but that didn't mean they wanted to quit. They wanted to go back to the company headquarters, or at the very least, work at one of the larger production bases!
They can't just stay in this small city like Zhao Xingsheng, since they're not locals like him.

This actually gave Zhao Xingsheng a better chance for promotion!
Several of his colleagues in the same department who are more capable and more experienced than him have already decided to end their temporary assignments in May of this year and return to the headquarters.

Among the same group of people with similar qualifications and levels, only Zhao Xingsheng was ultimately chosen to stay... so his promotion was relatively secure.

Back in the city and after he officially started working, his wife Meng Lin was also concerned about the matter: "How's your transfer going? Didn't they say they'd give you a definite answer after the New Year?"

Meng Lin was actually really looking forward to her husband getting a promotion, which meant higher income... Their family's current decent life mainly depended on Zhao Xingsheng's high income.

As a mechanical engineer, Zhao Xingsheng earns around 300,000 yuan a year, including his regular salary, performance bonus, and year-end bonus. This income is considered quite high in their small city.

Although Meng Lin also works as an interior designer at her uncle's decoration company, her income is relatively average.

The advantages are that it's family, so there's no need to worry about unemployment, the work is relatively easy, the working hours are more flexible, and if anything happens, you can just say a word.

However, her income is relatively average, less than 100,000 yuan a year... After all, her uncle's decoration company, though called a decoration company, is actually just a large contractor, mainly taking on decoration work for ordinary residential houses.

Her uncle's entire renovation company actually only had five full-time employees.

My uncle started out as a contractor, with a wide network of connections and many acquaintances. He has been in the construction industry for many years, and his work is of high quality and he has a good attitude. Over the years, he has built a good reputation. Later, he started his own decoration company and built a slightly larger team.

Meng Lin's cousin, who is also her uncle's daughter, works as an accountant and does odd jobs, including telemarketing and a whole host of other chores.

Then, Meng Lin, the designer, was responsible for all design plans and client liaison.

The other two are sales positions, the kind where you call customers all day long...

As for the renovation workers, they are all temporary workers, the kind who are called in temporarily when there is a project, and are not considered formal employees of the company.

This run-down renovation company is a typical family-run micro-enterprise. They don't make much money, so they can't offer Meng Lin a high salary.

However, a monthly salary of seven or eight thousand is enough to help cover household expenses.

However, her uncle's renovation company is gradually losing business. In the month before the Lunar New Year, they only closed one deal, and even that was only secured with a significant discount.

After deducting all costs, her uncle didn't make much money at all... He's just not making any money now, but who knows, he might lose money in the future.

In the past two years, the real estate market has gradually cooled down. Although they are just ordinary people, they know that housing prices will not rise in the past two years, and fewer people are buying and decorating houses.

With fewer people doing renovations, their family-run renovation company is naturally finding it harder to survive. In her uncle's words, they might not be able to keep going any day.

So it's hard to say how long Meng Lin can continue working, or how long she can keep her current monthly salary of seven or eight thousand.

As a real estate professional, Meng Lin is now feeling the ups and downs of the real estate market, and at the capital level, she had already felt it two years ago.

In the past two years, a large amount of capital has gradually withdrawn from real estate and chosen other investment channels.

The reason why the economy can continue to grow at a high speed is because a large number of high-tech industries have emerged and gradually replaced the huge impact of real estate on the economy.

A significant portion of the funds flowing out of the real estate market has gone into various high-tech industries... A large number of domestic high-tech companies, such as VK Electronics, VK Industry, and even Zhiyun Group, have gone public in China, absorbing a large amount of market liquidity.

At the same time, a large amount of financing for high-tech enterprises has also absorbed a significant amount of capital.

The influx of massive amounts of capital into these high-tech industries has spurred huge investments and job creation!
Imagine that Zhiyun Microelectronics alone has spent over $70 billion this year on building various semiconductor factories. Such a massive investment will flow into various domestic industrial chains, creating strong demand.

A series of companies, represented by Fairy Mountain Holdings, will receive a large number of equipment and consumable orders from Zhiyun Microelectronics. Fairy Mountain Holdings will then need to order various spare parts from thousands of suppliers. Ultimately, these investments will be transformed layer by layer, gradually flowing into various industries and eventually becoming jobs and tax revenue.

The final effect will be enormous... Such investments by giants in the economic field often have a multiplier effect, with a $70 billion investment capable of leveraging a massive industrial chain worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

This is just Zhiyun Microelectronics.

Then there's the rapid development of the domestic electric vehicle industry, represented by Hailan Auto, which creates enormous industrial value and a huge number of jobs... Zhao Xingsheng's work is a reflection of this environment.

Furthermore, the new developments of Zhuyun Group in robotics and virtual industries... the overall industrial chain development they drive is also quite large.

Finally, there's the ever-present smart terminal business, including companies like Zhiyun, Weiku Electronics, Huawei, OV, and Dami, among many others. The market size is in the hundreds of billions of US dollars!

Such a massive market generates an unimaginably large industrial chain...

Ultimately, this effect extends to the employment sector, creating tens of millions of jobs.

Because the current smart terminal industry chain in China operates on a complete industry chain model, from various chips to batteries, screens and other components, all of which are domestically produced!
The smart terminal industry has a huge driving effect on the entire economic system.

China's high-tech industry is not limited to companies like Zhiyun, Hailan Auto, and Fairy Mountain Holdings. Besides companies like Xu Shenxue's, there are many other high-tech companies in China, such as DaMi, Huawei, and BYD, which are also quite good.

The rapid development of numerous high-tech industries in China ultimately offset the negative impact of the real estate market downturn.

Therefore, people don't feel the downturn in the real estate market very strongly... Although housing prices have stopped rising, people don't feel it too obviously.

Even if the real estate sector is struggling, other emerging industries can fill the gap. There hasn't been widespread unemployment; in fact, wages are generally rising.

For most ordinary people, as long as they don't lose their jobs, there's not much of a problem... Similarly, the same applies to the entire economic system. As long as the overall unemployment rate can be controlled, other so-called economic fluctuations are insignificant.

Driven by the continuous surge of high-tech industries in China, which has profoundly impacted the global market, the domestic advanced semiconductor, artificial intelligence, intelligent robot, intelligent electric vehicle, and virtual industry sectors continue to experience rapid growth and possess enormous potential, despite some stagnation in the smart terminal market.

This leads many economic experts and scholars to believe that the present era is still a golden age for economic development.

The past decade has been the best of the past thirty years, and the next decade will be an even better one!

The explosion of a series of cutting-edge high-tech technologies laid the foundation for the golden age!

(End of this chapter)