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01
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A sense of superiority that once exploded
I remember when I first entered the automotive industry in 2011, I was living in a university student apartment of a joint venture car company on the outskirts of Shanghai. In that triple apartment, we came from three different departments: I was from the sales company, one from the quality assurance department, and one from the product engineering department.
Although we come from different departments and do very different jobs, everyone has the supreme belief in "X country exquisite craftsmanship", feels that "made in X country" is synonymous with the highest quality, and also agrees with its concept of "car building and educating people".
At that time, the colleagues around me had a good educational background: almost all of the 985 key university graduates, a large part of them came from the Automotive College of Tongji University, and many of them graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Fudan University, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, and they could also meet colleagues who graduated from Peking University and Tsinghua University sporadically. Although my university is not a university in Beijing or Shanghai, it is also one of the three 985 in Shandong.
At that time, it was the pride of every new colleague to join the company that ranked 7th in the world's top 500, the world's largest sales car company, China's largest joint venture car company, and China's most profitable car company. Because from the resume, written test, multiple rounds of interviews, to the final admission, the estimated admission rate is not more than 5%, which is much lower than the admission rate of civil servants and graduate school.
The graduates who can be admitted to this company are the pride in the eyes of their parents and the role models in the eyes of their classmates. Even in the shanghai blind date market, for a long time, whether it is the daughter of a suburban demolition household or a small widow in the French Concession, as long as she hears that the man works in xx car companies, basically does not need to meet will agree to the matchmaker.
The blind date corner in Shanghai People's Park
The reason why the people of our company were so proud among relatives and friends at that time and so popular in the blind date market was because the salary and treatment at that time were still good:
Old colleagues recalled that they were paid nearly 200,000 yuan a year in the 1990s;
By about 2010, fresh graduates were about 150,000 in the first year of employment, and about 300,000 in the fifth year;
Salaries are among the best in the automotive industry, so it is almost impossible to hear about leaving;
Before the rise of the Internet and the financial industry, except for top consulting companies and investment banks, few companies could pay fresh graduates such a high salary.
For a long time, to enter this large foreign company, it feels like entering a professional safe, cost-effective (the pace of work is soothing, never 996), the salary is competitive (at that time, the Internet, finance has not yet risen), there is a sense of professional belonging (never layoffs), and there is a certain social status (strong brands facing dealers and suppliers).
As an honorable member of our company, I have witnessed its industry status:
The first joint venture car factory in China;
The first Sino-X joint venture in China;
Shanghai was once the largest tax collector;
The first car company in China with annual sales of more than 1 million;
The first car company in China with annual sales of more than 2 million;
The first domestic car company with cumulative sales of more than 20 million.
However, while it continues to refresh production and marketing records, the industry is experiencing the biggest change in a hundred years, and various hidden worries are gradually emerging...
02
The industry is undergoing dramatic changes
The first major change is the decline in market capacity, and the car market that has been growing continuously for the past 30 years has come to an abrupt end. After peaking at 28.88 million units in 2017, China's auto sales have been declining for years, and sales are expected to fall around 25 million units in 2021. Car companies, suppliers, dealers have been accustomed to the growth of the automobile market for 30 years, and for the first time they have encountered negative growth in the industry, the mood at that time was generally pessimistic.
Since 2018, auto companies, including foreign-funded car companies, have begun to freeze recruitment, lay off employees, and cancel double salaries, while the development of Internet companies and financial institutions is in full swing, desperately paying bonuses and stocks to employees, and foreign auto people are beginning to feel that salaries are losing competitiveness, and their mentality has begun to lose their sense of superiority.
The second major change is the change in the national industrial policy, gradually relaxing the entry threshold for the industry. As early as 2018, the National Development and Reform Commission issued a document deciding to cancel the foreign ownership restrictions on special vehicles and new energy vehicles in 2018; cancel the foreign ownership restrictions on commercial vehicles in 2020; and cancel the foreign ownership restrictions on passenger cars in 2022, and at the same time cancel the restrictions on no more than two joint ventures.] Through a five-year transition period, the automotive industry will have all access restrictions removed. 】
The first beneficiary of this policy is Tesla, which actually paves the way for Tesla to set up a factory in China (some people understand that the state has tailored this policy specifically for Tesla in order to introduce Tesla's catfish). In the past, foreign-funded car companies and private car companies spent a lot of effort to obtain car-making qualifications, and now they can be easily realized through qualification acquisition, OEM and other means. The threshold for car building is no longer as high and unattainable as before, and car building is no longer mysterious.
Tesla is the first foreign-owned car company to build a factory in China
The third major change is the rise of independent brands, which began to erode the market share of mid-range foreign brands. The head independent brands represented by Geely, great wall and BYD, with the advantages of cost control, research and development speed, and accurate positioning that are difficult for foreign car companies to achieve, continue to capture the hearts of consumers, and consumers no longer blindly believe in foreign brands.
Independent brand explosive models, such as Geely Emgrand, Great Wall Haval H6, BYD Han, etc., have replaced the status of original foreign products in the hearts of consumers. About 2016, many foreign auto people found that their own products were suddenly not easy to sell, and they could no longer return to the previous era of launching what products were sought after by consumers.
The fourth major change is that foreign car companies are generally lagging behind in electrification. The new car-making forces (start-up car companies) represented by Tesla, Weilai, Ideal, Xiaopeng, Weima, Hezhong (Nezha) and Zero Run have left traditional foreign brands far behind in the electric vehicle track. In the field of electric vehicles, traditional foreign-funded car companies have been overtaken by new car-making forces in the fields of new product launch speed, application of new technologies, automatic driving, intelligent cockpits, or in the fields of cost-effectiveness, direct channel laying, and user operation.
Based on the above four reasons, the salary and treatment of foreign-funded car companies are no longer so competitive, and the mentality of practitioners has undergone great changes, which is also reflected in the competitiveness of the workplace.
03
Foreign automakers are no longer sought after
With the decline in salary and treatment, as well as the rise of new car-making forces, many colleagues around them began to look at opportunities outside. However, the supply and demand relationship in the talent market of foreign car companies has undergone subtle changes in the past few years.
The first wave of new forces to dig up people occurred around 2015, when Weilai, Ideal, Xiaopeng, Weima, Hezhong (Nezha), Zero Run, Aichi, Electric Cafe (Sky), Xinte, LeTV, Sailin, Byton, Future, Ranger, Singularity, Iconick and other new car-making forces have just been founded, foreign auto people are still very popular, at that time the salary increase of new forces that jump to car-making is often as high as 30% to 50%. First, because the people with the highest education, the best technology and the broadest vision at that time were all in foreign-funded OEMs; the second was because the new car-making forces had not yet come out of the car at that time, and no one could say whether any company could survive, the risk of job hopping was extremely high, and it was necessary to use high salaries to hedge the risk of unemployment.
Most of the new car-making forces have been shut down
Even if there was a salary increase of 30% to 50% at that time, most foreign auto people would not look at the outside opportunities, and the phone calls for headhunters were listened to and then politely rejected (such as myself). Because the risk of failure of the new car-making forces is very large, there is no sense of professional security after job-hopping; moreover, from the world's 500-strong foreign companies to hundreds of small companies with hundreds of thousands of people, many people can't pass the hurdle in their hearts, because when we graduate from college, the bigger the company, the more popular it is, only students who can't find a job will consider entering small and medium-sized companies; In addition, the employees in the new car-making forces come from various companies (Ashkenazi brands, American brands, Japanese brands, independent brands, suppliers, dealers), previous work templates, Technical standards, work styles are not the same, even communication tools are not the same (foreign companies are accustomed to sending emails, do not disturb colleagues after work; private enterprises are accustomed to using micro/DingTalk, after work also crazy phone calls), running into it is very difficult, communication costs are too high.
However, at the end of 2019, the first wave of closures of new car-making forces arrived, LeTV, Sailin, Byton, The Future, Ranger, Singularity, Andconnick have been shut down, a large number of employees have been dismissed, the new force brother Weilai also laid off 1200 people, the talent market suddenly more job seekers, but the demand for talents did not increase but declined. Foreign auto people who were highly sought after in previous years found that they could not receive headhunting calls overnight.
All staff letters issued by Li Bin, chairman of WEILAI in 2019
Another reason why foreign automakers are no longer sought after is that the demand for talents by new car-making forces is very different from that of traditional foreign-funded car companies.
First, the powertrain of electric vehicles is a three-electric system - battery, motor, and electronic control, while the powertrain of fuel vehicles is the engine and gearbox, and the technology of the two is completely different. The powertrain engineers of traditional foreign-funded car companies study either internal combustion engines or vehicle engineering in college, and they basically need to learn from scratch about the powertrain of batteries, motors, and electronic controls. The new car-making forces are not as willing to recruit fresh graduates as traditional foreign-funded car companies are willing to recruit fresh graduates to slowly cultivate from scratch, preferring to recruit people who can be independent on the day of entry. Therefore, the current new car-making forces would rather recruit people from battery, motor, and electronic control suppliers than give foreign auto people the opportunity to change careers.
The powertrain of electric vehicles is completely different from that of fuel vehicles
Second, a major selling point of electric vehicles is automatic driving and intelligent cockpit (voice interaction, central control of the big screen), most of the new car-making forces have chosen the self-developed technical route, and traditional foreign-funded car companies (except Tesla) due to the path dependence of outsourcing to suppliers, traditional foreign-funded car companies basically do not really understand the automatic driving, intelligent cockpit talent, so now when the new car-making forces in these two fields to dig people, talents are either from other new forces, or from suppliers.
Autopilot of the Tesla Model 3
Xiaopeng P7 sci-fi smart cockpit
Third, in the field of marketing, the new car-making forces generally choose the strategy of offline direct store channels + online social media marketing + online user operation. Traditional foreign-funded car companies used to rely on dealers to complete processes such as site selection, store building, invitation, test drive, delivery, and after-sales service in the channel; in marketing, they focused on offline activities and online hard advertising, and did not understand social media marketing and public relations topic speculation; and had zero experience in user operation. Therefore, traditional foreign-funded car companies can hardly find the marketing talents needed by the new car-making forces.
There are 5 direct car stores in the picture, how many can you recognize?
04
Go?
Many of my old colleagues in foreign-funded car companies have left their old owners like me, and now they have everything to do:
Some went to the new forces of car manufacturing, some went to other traditional foreign-funded car companies, some went to independent brands that were not looked at before, some went to automatic driving suppliers, some went to dealer groups, some went to VC/PE/investment banks to invest in the automobile industry, some went to consulting companies' automobile business, some started luxury micro-businesses, some started businesses to do blind date platforms, and a few friends chose to enter the life insurance industry and did insurance consulting and wealth inheritance.
Former colleagues who left the company went to various walks of life
Most of the old colleagues who stayed in the original unit have an anxious mentality, not only anxious about how many years of brand dividends foreign brands can eat in China, but also anxious about whether they can find suitable positions for salary, work location and job responsibilities if they jump ship. Many people take annual leave for interviews while working.
"If you have the right opportunity, you'll definitely leave," a roommate who lived in a college apartment ten years ago told me.
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This article was first published on December 10, 2021 @ Shanghai, China
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