I, graduated from the "sinkhole major" and got a new energy million annual salary
The wind created by the times.
After passing the most difficult autumn recruitment season in 2022, Li Wei, who is about to graduate, chose to go to a new energy company with the flow. The new energy industry is the choice of most of their doctoral students in the Department of Chemistry of Tsinghua.
There is no other reason: the salary given by the new energy industry is too much - only Li Wei got an offer with an annual salary of 500,000 yuan and a maximum of 950,000, and the annual salary of nearly one million was issued by a Zhejiang mining company upstream of new energy.
Employment is the "barometer" of the economy. The generosity of the new energy industry and the downsizing and layoffs of the Internet industry have become two sides of the job market.
The "platform economy" represented by the Internet has penetrated into all aspects of clothing, food, housing and transportation, and can no longer reproduce the development speed of the golden age. The scale expansion of the new energy market also provides opportunities for in-depth industry-university-research cooperation for high-tech talents, and also absorbs a large number of young fresh graduates who come across the industry.
01 "Sinkhole Professional" into fragrant gluttony
In three years, Li Wei witnessed the offer received by doctoral students in materials science, and the annual salary skyrocketed from the common 100,000 yuan to one million yuan.
"Although materials science is also a pit now, it may not be as difficult as before." Li Wei completed his undergraduate studies in chemistry, skipped the master's degree stage, and became a direct doctoral student in materials science.
After making the choice of direct Bo in 2018, Li Wei got a list of employment destinations for doctoral students in the same major. He found that the most mainstream place for senior brothers and sisters is high school teachers or civil servants, with an annual salary of 100,000 yuan, and the most suitable employment direction for materials majors is PetroChina and Sinopec, with an annual salary of 150,000 yuan.
Li Wei's heart sank, and this really entered the sinkhole, "What can a treatment of 100,000 do in Beijing?" ”。
At that time, it was also the peak period of the Internet's professional "verbal criticism" of sinkholes.
The "persuasion post" and "self-help career change post" of biocyclic materials on social media such as Zhihu and Weibo continue to brush the screen in the circle. In the entrance examination counseling institutions, "Don't choose a sinkhole major if you don't have money at home" has become a very infectious slogan. The poor working environment of chemical companies and the occasional accidents are silent dissuasion propaganda.
Materials science laboratory of a university, image source network
"If you choose to take the academic path, young professors will now face the high-pressure dilemma of 'either promotion or go', and it will be even more difficult to stay in universities." The aura of materials science gradually faded in Li Wei's eyes, and he began to stumble to find a way out: first to go to a securities institution in order to obtain a high salary to prepare for the CPA, and then to seek stability to obtain a transfer student, but because the work content was not what he wanted, he did not stick to it.
2020 is the beginning of upheaval. The rapid development of new energy and semiconductor industries has brought unprecedented attention to materials research.
Lithium batteries are the key to supporting the rapid growth of the new energy industry, and the outbreak of the domestic new energy vehicle and energy storage industry has made enterprises more and more motivated and funded to invest in the research and development of upstream core technologies.
"The expertise we have learned can also be applied to the study of lithium battery life and thermal stability, because the essence of lithium batteries is a combination of chemistry and materials." Li Wei, who often soaks in the laboratory, is no stranger to this kind of work, and some companies with battery research and development departments have thrown olive branches to them.
The senior brother who graduated three years earlier than Li Wei once entered the Ningde era with an annual salary of about 400,000 yuan, and this year jumped to a battery company in Zhuhai, responsible for battery research and development, with an annual salary of one million yuan.
Another popular destination for graduates of the same major is BYD, which offers an annual salary range of 520,000-600,000 for doctoral students, "If you go to Shenzhen, you can also apply for a doctoral subsidy, 180,000 a year." Li Wei said.
The popularity of photovoltaic plus energy storage can be seen in BYD's recruitment tube, "We can do photovoltaic power generation to BYD, this research and development is controlled by BYD's planning institute photovoltaic plate and new materials division, the planning institute photovoltaic plate is to do silicon-based solar cells, relatively profitable, and the new materials division is to do perovskite cells, only two people, is still in a large number of expansion." ”
In fact, Li Wei's initial target was the semiconductor industry. Because it is Huawei that has led a number of chip companies to offer them high salaries from the beginning of 2020.
At that time, Li Wei learned from a casual chat in the laboratory that a senior brother went to Huawei, and "I was stunned after listening to it at that time", because in his cognition, materials science and high-tech industry are completely incompatible, and Huawei dare not think about it. Later, I learned that the process manufacturing of chips needs talents like them.
In 2021, not only Li Wei's senior brothers and sisters, but also students in the same group in the laboratory can get an annual salary of not less than 400,000 yuan in the semiconductor industry as long as they do not choose to enter the system, and Huawei basically gave each doctoral student an annual salary package price of 750,000.
However, with the slowdown in the development of the semiconductor industry in 2022, the new energy industry, as a rookie in the job market, took over the baton of absorbing "hard technology" talents, and Li Wei also got offers from more than ten new energy companies, and finally chose to step into it.
To some extent, Li Wei's experience corresponds to the classic saying, and personal struggle should also consider the historical process.
Although the status of a doctor lacks some universality, the proportion of high salaries in the new energy industry is indeed increasing sharply, and the time rhythm of this change is measured in months and days. According to Zhaopin's recruitment statistics, in 2022, the growth rate of new energy recruitment positions will reach 64.4%, much higher than the 10% of the entire industry.
02 "Twenty Mercedes Benzes were distributed at the annual meeting of Guriwatt"
"At the annual meeting six months after joining the company, I watched the chairman give each of the more than 20 employees a Mercedes-Benz."
After participating in the Shenzhen company Gurui-Watt's publicity meeting in the autumn of 2021, Chen Yu handed over his resume to the second side on the same day, and successfully got the offer a few days later, and has been working for Gurui-Watt for more than a year.
He graduated from a foreign Chinese university and studied Spanish. As a minor language graduate, the most lucrative career path in the past was to be sent abroad for a long time, or to enter a top-level state-owned enterprise. But recently, new energy companies have been attacking overseas markets, and the demand for small-language talents is rising rapidly.
Chen Yu's company's main business is outdoor energy storage inverter, which is responsible for converting alternating current emitted by light into direct current, which is used in various power equipment. Last year, with the outbreak of household savings, overseas sales rose all the way.
In 2022 alone, the number of employees in Guriwatt grew by more than 2,000 to 5,576. A few days ago, Guruiwatt submitted a prospectus on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with a target market value of 30 billion. "Most of the members of our sales team are language learners, and very few have technical backgrounds." The reason why Chen Yu stayed is also very direct, 9 to 6, monthly salary of more than 10,000, and weekends.
Household storage products from Gutvat
After technical training, he only needs basic knowledge of power electronics and product information to get started. During the sales process, engineers can also be asked to assist in answering technical questions at any time. Among the fresh graduates who came in with Chen Yu, many have begun to travel overseas to participate in various exhibitions.
Chen Yu's cross-line experience is not an isolated case. According to the "2023 College Graduate Employment Data Report" released by Liepin, among the new positions for the 2023 graduates, the new energy and new material tracks ranked second and third respectively, with a year-on-year increase of 93.90% and 30.05%, second only to the AI model.
The new energy industry occupies the forefront of new graduate positions in 2023
Wang Li's entry into the industry was a year later than Chen Yu. After graduation, he worked as an e-commerce in Hangzhou and earned more than 10,000 a month, but Wang Li still resolutely left, reduced his salary and taught himself industry knowledge to come to the new energy industry.
"I helped my brother run the Pinduoduo online store when I was in college, earned a lot of extra money, and successfully came to the e-commerce industry after graduation." Wang Li has entered two new consumer companies, from Tmall to JD.com, the latter of which is about to go public.
At that time, he pinned his hopes on the dividends in the field of e-commerce, hoping to cultivate deeply on each platform and each position, and finally come out and go it alone.
However, Wang Li did a month and found that the daily work of the new company's e-commerce operation is the trivial work of "registering for activities, changing the main picture, changing the homepage, and submitting work orders", which completely does not touch the work content of the core traders, and there are no weekends, because these jobs need feedback at any time.
"When you go out to travel and climb mountains, you must also carry a computer with you at all times." He described it to me. Due to the long-term sitting required by e-commerce operations, Wang Li had a herniated lumbar disc and was unable to sit and lie down.
Rather than burying his head in work, Wang Li began to understand the importance of choosing an industry. "Traditional e-commerce operators such as Tmall, JD.com and Pinduoduo are saturated, and new platforms such as Douyin cannot escape the end of lower and lower wages, and the sales ceiling is much higher than that of operation." Therefore, when he was about to turn to the regular report, Wang Li submitted his resignation to the leader and chose to cross the bank of new energy.
Wang Li's company's products
After a three-month gap period, Wang Li got a job selling a large customer in a BMS listed company in Hangzhou, including docking factory production and participating in various industry exhibitions. Recently, he regained his confidence, "They are still starting slowly, and if they are optimistic about the industry, let's rush." ”
03 "The annual salary of 300,000 yuan for the core position of energy storage is the starting price"
In the past, the Internet industry's recruitment demand for tens of thousands of jobs has fed a large number of headhunting companies. In the past two years, the leading role in the job market has been replaced by the new energy industry.
Zhou Linjuan, founder of Max Consulting, has a strong sense of this, because her work rhythm has been in a full state recently. At the end of May, she participated in two consecutive industry exhibitions in Hangzhou and Shanghai, and met more than 20 executives in three days. "Because of the decline in Internet recruitment demand, many headhunting companies have turned to serve new energy companies, and photovoltaic and energy storage positions are the most."
Shanghai SNEC photovoltaic exhibition with more than 500,000 visitors
At the end of 2021, Zhou Linjuan led the headhunting service team to shift from real estate and new retail to the new energy industry.
At that time, the demand was not strong, but because Zhou Linjuan served the UPS power supply industry in the early days of entrepreneurship, this industry was basically dominated by foreign giants at the earliest. She found that the startups coming out of these foreign companies are growing step by step, and the scale is on the rise.
"Huawei's Emerson, TBEA, and other industrial giants have cultivated talents who are pouring into the new energy industry and taking up important positions." The rapid expansion of the scale of an industry will inevitably be accompanied by the rise of the headhunting industry. She judged that mid- and high-end talent would soon flow, so the team stepped into new energy earlier than other companies.
The heating up of industry demand began in the second quarter of last year, and the energy storage track became lively and crowded.
In the energy storage market, some early start-ups have already earned their first pot of gold, and more listed companies or quasi-listed companies hope to find skilled hands to build a team to enter the market after seeing the opportunity. The demand for recruitment began to hit Zhou Linjuan's team, "there is no shortage of funds, business, only people."
She once received a job offer with a limited time of two days, and the team worked overtime to dock for this. In the months when recruitment demand was hottest, Zhou Linjuan witnessed the number of energy storage business teams of many companies from a dozen to a hundred, and companies with only a few dozen people were completely because they couldn't grab it.
The most important core component in energy storage products is the inverter. An inverter R&D engineer with three or four years of experience can hold seven or eight offers, and an annual salary of 300,000-500,000 is the basis. If it is a technical leader of a small team, with seven or eight years of experience, the annual salary can jump to 1.2 million. This salary level has far exceeded that of the middle level of the Internet.
The core position of energy storage has reached an annual salary of millions, and the data source: BOSS direct employment
According to the statistics of new energy talent service in April, in the major recruitment platforms, the salary level of all positions in energy storage is in the first echelon, and the salary of overseas sales positions of wind and solar storage is generally more than 40% higher than that of the same position in China, and the director of energy storage sales can open 50-1 million.
04 Conclusion
On energy, author Daniel Yergin has written a book on oil with a clear title: Rewards: The Global Game of Oil, Money and Power
For 20th-century humanity, he writes, oil contributed to the real development of capitalism and modern industry. Looking back at history, it is not difficult to understand that oil has gradually supported the operation of modern society from kerosene lamps, oil-burning ships, automobiles and other industrial products, and more directly and indirectly provided a large number of jobs.
Therefore, mastering energy is a "reward" in itself.
In the process of replacing the global energy structure with new energy, similar stories will inevitably be repeated. Looking at the outbreak of application scenarios such as new energy vehicles and user-side energy storage, it is the continuous release of application value in the downstream market, making new energy a reservoir for large-scale employment.
It is foreseeable that for a long time, the role of new energy will not change.
(Note: The interviewees in the article are pseudonyms)