11.58 million young people "escape from virtual to real": flee from large factories and flock to manufacturing

Nowadays, more and more young people are fleeing large factories and pouring into the manufacturing industry. Let’s see what the author says~

"Last year it was Dizi, this year it's Didi."

"The undergraduate and graduate degrees are at least from a 211 university, and the recruitment fair was so exciting that you couldn't even squeeze in."

In this year's recruitment market, BYD became a hot topic with its popularity of "receiving 120,000 resumes in one day for campus recruitment".

In fact, BYD is not the only company that is extremely popular. In the posts on the social platform "Help me choose an offer", many new options have emerged in the fields of new energy, new energy vehicles, semiconductors, and high-end robot equipment manufacturing. The trend of entering "factories" is sweeping the job market.

Relevant reports show that the proportion of expected employment opportunities for the class of 2023 graduates in the manufacturing industry reached 8.1%, the largest increase among the 14 major industries.

This two-way rush seems to be conveying a signal: after the Internet giants fell from the altar, the down-to-earth emerging manufacturing industry has provided new dream-making space amid explosive growth, causing young people's employment outlook to quietly shift from "virtual to real".

Several professionals in this article have personally experienced this change in mindset. Some are eager to leave big companies and work in "factories", some have mistakenly entered the new energy track and turned the tide, and some are in "factories" but enjoy the atmosphere of big companies.

The trend of the times has changed, but young people are still keeping up with the trend.

1. Factory screws vs. Internet elites, we all have a bright future

"I don't know why the company recruits liberal arts students." "You don't understand this, this is the most basic." "I don't have time now, please ask someone else."...

When asking R&D engineers for advice on technical issues, Wei Jia, who was born in the humanities, always had to face other people's impatience. It was the summer of 2019, and she had just entered the industrial world and found that everything was different from what she had imagined.

When she was in school, she imagined her future as an office lady with a cup of coffee in her hand and high heels on her feet, going in and out of the CBD. But after entering the lithium battery factory, her daily routine became urging design freezes and procurement returns, and from time to time she wore workshop work clothes and blue shoe covers to squat on the production line, "a bit like a factory nanny."

What's even more difficult is that as a technical novice, Wei Jia has to communicate with customers in English and French mixed with a lot of professional terms, and she also has to be familiar with the work of many departments she is dealing with. As a result, she always seizes every minute of fragmented time on the subway and in the elevator to cram various technical knowledge.

Sometimes, when Wei Jia was on call at any time and working overtime until late at night, he would have deep self-doubt in his heart: Was the decision to "join the factory" a wrong one?

But for her at that time, there seemed to be no better choice.

After failing the postgraduate entrance examination, Wei Jia frantically sent out resumes and ran around at various job fairs, but received few responses. Anxious, she had to send out resumes to some unfamiliar tracks. It was at that time that the lithium battery factory where she currently works extended an olive branch to her.

At that time, the industries her classmates were most interested in were real estate, education and training, and the Internet. Wei Jia also dreamed of working in a large company, but she didn't even dare to submit her resume. "They were too popular, and it was not my turn at all."

After all, that was the golden age when Internet giants were developing rapidly. Looking back at the job applications of fresh graduates around 2018, the ranking of application popularity was almost dominated by big companies.

Take ByteDance as an example. In 2020, the number of global employees doubled compared to 2019, exceeding the 100,000 mark. ByteDance HR often describes their job as "changing the engine while flying a plane."

Li Xu, who graduated in the same year as Wei Jia, got a job as an operator in a large Internet company as he wished. The brave new world of the big company was just as wonderful as he had imagined.

When going out to eat with colleagues, Li Xu felt the attention of passers-by on the work badge around his neck. He smiled and deliberately puffed out his chest to show his work badge, almost writing "I work for a big factory" on his face.

He was proud of the status marked by his work badge, which meant that he would be able to earn several times more than other students as soon as he graduated, and would be equipped with a Mac computer upon joining the company, an expensive ergonomic chair that would not make him tired even if he sat on it all day, and a company gym with its own swimming pool.

There are 12 people in Li Xu's department, half of whom are returned overseas masters, and the rest all have 985 and 211 degrees. They deal with a group of "Internet elites" every day, and the atmosphere is particularly cheerful.

As expected, that was the company’s golden age, with multiple product lines in full swing. In addition to the core business, it also involved real estate, automobiles, and decoration, with a variety of new products emerging one after another.

Li Xu, who witnessed all this with his own eyes, naturally also got a share of the pie. "How lucky I am to be able to join here," he often thought.

However, while he was still looking forward to a bright future, the Internet was actually surging with undercurrents.

2. Will it become outdated along with the big companies?

After the department dinner, everyone went to KTV to sing and chat. Li Xu glanced at his phone and it was already 9:30 in the evening.

When we got to the private room, half of the people took out their computers to continue working, and those who were not working took the microphone. No one was surprised, as if everything was natural, because every time there was a team building, people would work while eating.

Li Xu always remembers the dim lights and scattered singing in the KTV, intertwined with the faces of his colleagues illuminated by computer screens. The scene was like a large-scale modernist absurd drama.

But such overdrafts made people feel uneasy. Especially shortly after returning to work after the Spring Festival in 2021, Li Xu heard about several rounds of layoffs in large factories. "Cost reduction and efficiency improvement" became the main theme of large factories, and "graduation", "optimization" and "exporting talents" became new terms for packaging layoffs.

Feeling the crisis, he was eager for change and took the initiative to resign, but he fell unexpectedly.

"Sorry, we feel that your past experience is not a good match for this position." The interviewer's polite smile is often accompanied by a sentence that chills him to the bone.

Over the past four months, Li Xu has received rejection letters one after another and found that his concerns about operating positions at large companies have all become a reality after he left: there is no technical support, but there are restrictions on niche areas, and it is highly replaceable. "After leaving, unless I find a job at a similar platform, all the experience I have accumulated before will be useless."

The lost Li Xu longs to get rid of the "big company sequelae", but the sense of security he has been pursuing is unexpectedly found by Chen Lu after he joins the company.

When she first joined this smart short-distance transportation and robotics company, Chen Lu was still surprised, "How can project management in the manufacturing industry even involve managing a single screw on the production line!" "People, machines, materials, methods, and environment" must be coordinated everywhere, and project management must be like opening a third eye to coordinate the overall situation. For a fresh graduate like her, "it's like having Guan Gong tattooed on my back at such a young age - I can't handle it."

But after learning more about the industry, she finally got it.

"There is a batch of reworked products that need to have screws replaced. Should new or old materials be used? If new screws are used, which departments will cooperate and who will change the material details? Can procurement and sales catch up and meet everyone's KPI in time..."

Before hosting the project meeting, Chen Lu had already started a brainstorming session. After having a clear understanding of the functions of each department, she connected all the departments with a screw.

Unlike when she was interning at a software company and was surrounded by virtual codes, when she walked through the workshop and saw how the products produced on the assembly line were made from parts to assembly, she felt an unprecedented sense of security.

"The manufacturing industry seeks stability because people who are more familiar with the production process can better guarantee production, and after a few years of accumulation, they are less likely to be eliminated." This makes her, a "grassroots worker", feel at ease.

Wei Jia, who works at a lithium battery factory, has taken off with the new energy trend.

Wei Jia smiled as she saw the 15% salary increase on the salary adjustment confirmation slip. This was the third time she had received a salary increase notice since she started working.

In this fast-paced industry, the number of customers of Wei Jia's company has tripled or quadrupled, the factories have expanded from two to six, the number of employees has almost doubled every year, and one year after she joined the company, the starting salary for new graduates was 20% higher than before.

Wei Jia is busy and works overtime every day, spinning like a top. She also has moments of fatigue, but her deeper experience is stimulation and excitement.

In three years, she jumped three levels, from assistant project engineer to senior project engineer. She is no longer the liberal arts student who knew nothing about professional knowledge at the beginning, but has grown into a workplace expert who can lead three projects independently and answer technical questions with customers fluently.

"Now I often think that it's a good thing that I finally got into this track," Wei Jia said with emotion.

However, with more and more young people rushing in, the temperature of the manufacturing industry is quietly changing.

3. Fight for a ticket to the gold manufacturing industry

Holding a thick stack of resumes in her hand, Wei Jia felt mixed emotions - there was not a single applicant who was a liberal arts student like her.

"In the past two years, the company has been more inclined to recruit project managers with an engineering background, and the requirements are getting higher and higher." She knows that this is a good thing for the company, but it also means that the company is cruelly closing its doors to some people whose abilities do not match.

Song Wen, who is studying for a master's degree in materials at a 985 university, feels deeply about this.

"Who said BYD 985 is a one-click gift?" "Dizi is so disrespectful that I failed to accept my resume. I am not worthy of it."

Hearing his roommate's complaints about being assigned to the "talent pool," Song Wen also became nervous: "I heard that people from Tsinghua and Peking University are all competing this year."

But even though he knew there were tigers in the mountains, he still had to move forward. After all, as a student of a "pit major", he could only "look up" to programmers who entered the Internet industry in the past. Now, with the outbreak of new energy, they also have their own "big factories" in the industry.

What's more, amid a wave of layoffs in industries such as Internet giants, the stability and even warming of the manufacturing industry is commendable.

It can be seen that the number of pure Internet jobs in 2022 has shrunk by half year-on-year. However, the manufacturing industry has made good news. According to relevant data statistics, the number of job postings in 2022 maintained an 8% growth.

And once the fight is successful, it is equivalent to winning a ticket to the golden manufacturing industry.

With this belief in mind, Song Wen went on interviews in wind and rain during this autumn recruitment season, and eventually received eight offers, including one from CATL, with each offering an annual salary of more than 200,000 yuan.

Leo, who graduated this year and joined a company specializing in driverless delivery vehicles, has felt the speed of the rise firsthand.

"We apply for financial subsidies, and it can be approved in as little as a week." Leo was excited to hear the master's popular science.

He majored in supply chain management and decided to enter the industry because he saw the broad prospects of the industry driven by the manufacturing industry. According to him, the number of employees in the company has doubled from the beginning of the year to now.

And as his working hours get longer, his feelings about the company are constantly being refreshed.

Before joining the company, he heard that some car factories required employees to punch in twice a day, in the morning and afternoon. Apart from computers, water cups, keyboards, mice, and documents, nothing else was allowed on the office desk. Management was as rigid as managing machines.

Therefore, when Leo heard his supervisor say "We are a company with an Internet spirit" during the on-the-job training, he was somewhat disdainful: "What Internet talk? It's nothing more than using some new words to show that we are different."

But his perception soon changed. Within three months, a product category he followed had been launched twice, with an iteration speed comparable to that of Internet companies.

The company's flagship products are also constantly being updated. Often, while one project is still in the implementation stage, another change has already been issued. The overall pace is very fast.

"Who could have imagined that this would be the manufacturing industry in 2023? Traditional manufacturing industries will be more cautious in iterations after their product performance and quality are recognized by the market, but here, technology and innovation are more important than production," said Leo.

Moreover, this smart manufacturing company is also trying to catch up with large companies in more aspects. For example, although there are masters to "pass on knowledge and help others", the company internally calls everyone "classmates" just like the Internet giants, the management is relatively flat, and sometimes there are afternoon tea and other high welfare standard features of large companies.

All these make Leo feel very satisfied. He hopes that such a good era can last a little longer. (All the characters in the article are pseudonyms)

Author: Wang Xiyuan, Editor: Cao Binling; WeChat public account: Table and Inside (ID: excel-ers)