The domestic autonomous driving talent scramble has entered a white-hot stage.
Author | Tetsu Ta
Edit | Wen Liang
In the past year's intelligent driving circle, the interweaving of two phenomena has spawned an interesting topic:
Over the past period of time, self-driving players have begun to take root in the scene, explore the landing, and initially bear fruit
On the one hand, Robotaxi's open operation of multi-point blossoming, Robotruck began to take goods on the road, the autonomous driving project in the closed scenario gradually withdrew the safety officer, and even carried out a fully unmanned 24-hour transportation operation.
On the other hand, under the tide of autonomous driving, the automotive industry has also ushered in a new stage, and domestic brands have begun to compete with overseas players.
These new developments have all promoted the continuous rise of industry enthusiasm, catalyzed the introduction of relevant policies, and the number and amount of investment and financing also reached a peak last year.
There are technological advances, there is market demand, there is government support, there is capital optimism, and there is no shortage of cheers in this context - the second half of autonomous driving has come.
The arrival of the second half also means that the industry pattern is becoming more and more solidified, and it is difficult for new entrants to set off a big storm
Interestingly, in the past few months, a number of senior executives of head autonomous driving companies have left one after another, and officially announced that they will continue to cultivate this track.
At the same time, these executives who have gone to the sea to start a business are highly popular with VCs. For example, on the day that Wang Gang, the former head of autonomous driving at Ali Damo Academy, announced his resignation, at least three investors hoped to get in touch with Wang Gang through the new smart driving.
In response to this phenomenon, a head VC leader told the new intelligent driving:
First, the industry judges that the industry of autonomous driving is still in the development period, and latecomers still have more opportunities to show their fists. (New Intelligent Driving has written: "Autonomous driving, may not enter the "second half", please click for details.) ）
Second, although the automatic driving industry is hot, it is also difficult to find high-quality targets, and the main problem is the shortage of talents. Entrepreneurship of well-known figures in the circle is more conducive to both experience maturity and the attraction of talents.
Talent grabs are fierce
"At present, the entire industry is in the stage of monopolistic competition in the market, and almost all domestic autonomous driving companies have a large number of talent gaps in basic positions, especially the lack of management talents with relevant work experience."
Tong Kai, who is in the headhunting industry, has recently clearly felt that the domestic autonomous driving talent grab war has entered a white-hot stage.
The salary of intelligent driving talents has risen in recent years as the industry has become a new outlet.
According to a number of job search platforms, the average monthly salary of autonomous driving algorithm engineer positions starts at 25K (15 salaries), while Zhaopin's "China Enterprise Recruitment Salary Report" for the third quarter of 2021 shows that the average monthly salary of IT management/project management, which topped the top of the high-paying industry, is 25k.
"The salary bubble is too big, Zhang Wenming, CEO of an autonomous driving startup, is a little helpless, "but everyone can't do it, the trick still has to be done."
Despite the olive branch of high salaries thrown by self-driving companies, the current talent pool is still difficult to meet market demand.
According to the "Intelligent Connected Vehicle Industry Talent Demand Forecast Report", the stock of R&D personnel in the mainland intelligent and connected vehicle industry in 2025 is only 72,000, but the net talent gap will reach 13,000 to 37,000.
Rising labor costs are forcing companies to take different measures to improve the efficiency of project operations.
According to a person close to the top management of meituan, due to the high cost of domestic autonomous driving talents, Meituan may set up an autonomous driving research center in Silicon Valley to recruit autonomous driving research and development talents in the United States at a relatively lower cost.
Some autonomous driving start-ups with relatively tight budgets control the R&D rhythm of projects by formulating detailed R&D plans for R&D personnel, reducing labor costs and improving development efficiency.
Zhang Wenming explained to Xinzhi Driving that the autonomous driving industry chain is very long, and it may still be difficult to see significant results after a year of technology research and development, so the company needs to determine the appropriate number of teams for the research and development project and drive the research and development team to work towards the same goal. As a result, although there is no guarantee of 100% meeting the target, you can still get a high conversion rate.
In order to catch up with the new forces of head car manufacturing as soon as possible in terms of intelligence, some traditional OEMs have had to promote the transfer of employees from other departments to the intelligent driving development department in the case that it is difficult for relevant talents to quickly make up.
In the view of an industry insider, the competition for autonomous driving talents by various manufacturers has actually appeared at the beginning of 2021.
In January 2021, Alibaba announced the joint launch of Zhiji Automobile with SAIC and Zhangjiang Hi-Tech, sounding a new clarion call for cross-border participation in the intelligent automotive industry.
Since then, including ZTE, Baidu, Huawei, Xiaomi, 360 and other Internet communication companies, as well as Midea, Xiaoniu, Konka hard technology companies, and even individuals began to show their ambitions to enter the intelligent automotive industry, recruiting car-making talents.
In addition, the recruitment needs of superimposed autonomous driving companies and OEMs have made executives and talents with autonomous driving backgrounds the most sought-after resources at present.
In order to obtain as many talents as possible to meet the company's development needs in a market environment with more monks and fewer porridges, the executives of many companies personally organized recruitment:
Lei Jun announced that Xiaomi Auto's autonomous driving department will recruit the first batch of 500 people;
After entering the intelligent automotive industry, Zhou Hongyi, CEO of 360 Group, opened recruitment on Weibo;
Xia Yiping, CEO of Jidu Automobile, has personally interviewed hundreds of candidates in the "996" style for several months, and formed a core team for Jidu Automobile, which is positioned as an L4 self-driving car;
Even in the offline industry summit, many companies CXO will directly leave a recruitment QR code at the end of the PPT.
Because professional talents are too scarce, the entry of large factories has accelerated the internal volume, and the annual salary of a CTO can reach more than 10 million yuan. Even fresh graduates can enjoy very good treatment, and the annual salary of some outstanding graduates can be as high as 400,000-500,000 or even more than one million yuan.
According to Tucson Future Prospectus, between 2018 and 2019, Tucson's future R&D expenses increased by $31.3 million, of which personnel-related costs increased by $17.2 million, accounting for 55% of the new R&D expenses. As R&D personnel pay more, autonomous driving companies will face greater pressure on labor costs.
The scarcity of intelligent driving talents is becoming one of the obstacles to the development of the autonomous driving industry. If the enthusiasm of new car builders for talents is taken as a mirror, China's intelligent automotive industry is emerging a contradiction that is difficult to eliminate in a short period of time - new car builders enter the game in an attempt to push the industry heat wave up, eat the market cake at the same time but are constrained by the lack of talent, and the overall development of the industry is therefore constrained to a certain extent.
What is the cause of the talent shortage?
In April 2021, the LinkedIn released the "Global Talent Insights in the Field of Intelligent Mobility", showing that among the global members of the LinkedIn, there are only 29,000 technical talents in China with the labels of "Internet of Vehicles", "Autonomous Driving" and "New Energy Vehicles", while the United States has 167,000 related talents. What is the same in China and the United States is that the academic backgrounds of relevant talents are mostly bachelor's and master's degrees.
This is similar to Tong Kai's observation, he believes that one of the reasons for the shortage of intelligent driving talents in China is that domestic universities lack a perfect training plan for autonomous driving talents, and most students begin to contact project research related to automatic driving at the master's and doctoral stages.
Only from the appearance point of view, the current talent supply and demand contradiction directly points to the fact that the cultivation of talents in colleges and universities cannot be closely integrated with social needs, but a question worth exploring is that the concept and product application of intelligent driving/autonomous driving have appeared several years ago, why is 2021 the flashpoint of the contradiction between supply and demand of intelligent driving talents?
To a certain extent, this is related to the fact that most traditional car companies have made every effort to open up intelligent transformation in the past two years and accelerate the rush for talents.
According to public statistics, most of the traditional car companies are concentrated on the establishment of intelligent driving subsidiaries from 2019 to 2021. For example, Great Wall Motor's autonomous driving subsidiary, Zhixing, was established in 2019, and FAW Jiefang initiated the establishment of autonomous driving company Zhitu Technology in 2019.
However, looking at the past, traditional car companies such as BAIC, Geely, GAC, and Dongfeng have issued autonomous driving research and development strategies between 2014 and 2018, and plan to achieve high-level autonomous driving by 2025. After years of research and development, although traditional car companies have made certain achievements, there is still a large room for improvement, so in 2021, when assisted driving tends to be the standard of intelligent cars, traditional car companies will increase the recruitment of intelligent driving talents.
In addition, non-compete agreements also restrict the free flow of talent in the market.
According to many sources, when employees of the intelligent driving department of many companies leave their jobs, they are required to sign a non-compete agreement with the company, prohibiting the departing employees from going to dozens of companies with intelligent driving business within a certain period of time, otherwise they will not go through the procedures for leaving.
As a result, the concentrated outbreak of market demand, the insufficient supply of reserve talents in colleges and universities, and the flow restrictions of non-compete agreements have collectively led to a sharp contradiction between supply and demand of intelligent driving talents.
Open source talent supply
To some extent, another reason for the shortage of intelligent driving talents lies in the high demand of intelligent driving technology for R & D personnel.
According to the survey results of the Society of Automotive Engineers of China on 91 upstream and downstream enterprises of intelligent and connected vehicles, the R&D personnel of intelligent connected vehicles are specialized in computer, vehicle engineering, electronic information, automation, machinery and other majors. At present, the number of R&D personnel who are proficient in the field of automotive and artificial intelligence is sparse.
Although the contradiction between supply and demand of intelligent driving talents cannot be solved immediately, after the efforts of many parties, the future may usher in a turnaround.
With the inclusion of intelligent connected vehicles in the "14th Five-Year Plan" development plan, the Ministry of Education has added a new "intelligent vehicle engineering" major in the "Catalogue of Undergraduate Majors in Ordinary Colleges and Universities", and many universities, including Harbin Institute of Technology and Chongqing University of Technology, have opened this major.
In addition, many institutions and enterprises will set their sights on the joint training model of industry, education and research.
In October 2020, the Society of Automotive Engineers of China signed a talent training strategy with 6 OEMs including Geely, BYD, Chery, and SAIC-GM-Wuling, as well as 26 domestic universities; The China Automobile Research Institute, together with Tsinghua University and Chongqing University, launched the "i-VISTA Intelligent Driving Talent Training Program"; Baidu Apollo released the "Apollo Intelligent NetworkIng Education Solution" in June last year, and has now cooperated with Beijing Electronics Science and Technology Vocational College and Shanghai Vocational College of Science and Technology , Wisers Group and other universities and enterprises to carry out cooperation.
After the rise of the intelligent driving industry, some online training institutions have also incorporated intelligent driving into their courses. While it remains doubtful whether the knowledge taught in such courses can be applied to real work, it opens up a more accessible channel for the public to access intelligent driving knowledge.
Sebastian Thrun, the former founder of Google X Labs and the founder of the American online education platform Youda Academy, once said in an interview with Pin play that traditional education is difficult to keep up with the development speed of technology, resulting in the teaching materials provided by colleges and universities for students do not match the needs of the industry, which in turn prompted him to leave Google.
"I can continue to stay at Google and do driverless cars, or teach thousands of people to make their own driverless cars." I believe that education is the best way to promote technological development, because it is better to teach people to fish than to teach people to fish. ”
In fact, the United States, which has a larger number of intelligent driving research and development talents, is also facing the problem of insufficient supply of talents.
Scott McCormick, president of the American Intelligent Connected Vehicle Association, once told China Automotive News: "At present, we are facing the same dilemma as China. Researchers engaged in artificial intelligence (AI) do not have the knowledge of automobiles themselves, and there is a shortage of talents who understand AI and cars. ”
However, the United States has a large number of well-known universities with strong strength, as well as research institutes that actively cooperate closely with enterprises to carry out projects, and have trained a large number of R&D personnel. In addition, the acquisition of autonomous driving companies or departments by US OEMs has also alleviated the shortage of intelligent driving talents to a certain extent.
Eliminating the gulf between university education and industry needs may be the main means for China to cultivate intelligent driving talents.
The industry is "dehumanized", and talent is the key
With the development of artificial intelligence technology and the rise in labor costs year by year, the "dehumanization" of various industries has become more and more obvious, and the application of technologies such as unmanned driving and intelligent customer service reflects this trend. The key to promoting the development of the "dehumanization" process is talent.
According to a report released by consulting firm Korn Ferry International, 93% of business leaders in China believe that retraining and hiring the workforce from outside is the key to success. At the same time, the report points out that the shortage of skilled talent is a global problem, and hiring talent from a labor-rich market cannot be done once and for all.
At present, the Chinese government, some universities and enterprises have taken corresponding actions to cultivate intelligent driving talents, but the number of participants still needs to be improved.
With the announcement of more relevant plans and the active participation of enterprises in the future, the source of intelligent driving talents in China may be abundant, and the development of the industry will be further improved.
END
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