The "Graduation" Confession of a 38-year-old Executive in a Large Factory

When the industry went downhill, the executives of large factories did not have "Midway Atoll". They either left on their own or were forced to leave

Wen | Chinese Entrepreneur Reporter Yan Junwen

Editor | Li Wei

ID:Iceo com cn

Wu Ke is 38 years old and currently unemployed at home.

Before October 2022, Wu was the head of the national fresh food industry for a domestic appliance giant. Although there is no P level within the company, if calculated based on the Alibaba level he previously worked for, Wu Ke can be considered a P9 with an annual salary of millions and reports directly to the Vice President.

In October 2022, Wu Ke left this e-commerce giant, and according to his words, "There is no high growth, I have to leave. At the end of May, he posted on the workplace platform Pulse: "I never expected a middle-aged crisis to happen to me. I lost my job and was forced to retire at home." He also posted his 4 and a half page resume: "I can't find a good project. Let's take a look at my resume and see if there are any opportunities for cooperation

Opening Wu Ke's resume, he had a "hanging" first half of his life.

After graduating from Anhui Agricultural University in 2005, Wu Ke has been working in the agricultural field. In 2011, he began to start a business in the fresh food industry, and the company achieved the goal of "Anhui's First Life Fresh Home Accessories". After years of turmoil, in 2016, he joined Alibaba Taoxianda. In December 2017, Wu Ke operated Tencent and Today Capital's Yipin Fresh, serving as the national general manager of New Retail. After the project failed, in October 2019, he returned to Alibaba and worked as a senior operations expert (P8), as well as the head of a half hour fresh vegetable market nationwide. However, he resigned one month later due to family reasons. In October 2020, Wu Ke joined another home appliance giant and resigned two years later.

It can be said that in the past decade or so, Wu Ke has taken every step to the right direction. The combination of the fresh food industry and the Internet has given him the opportunity to participate in new retail, instant delivery, and community group buying battles in China's commercial history. Wu Ke himself also admitted that he believes in the "high growth" theory, and once the business he takes over loses the possibility of high growth, he will jump out and seek new opportunities. Entering and leaving large factories such as Alibaba is basically for this reason.

But the wild era of rapid development of the internet has passed, and including Wu Ke, the middle and senior executives of Chinese internet companies also need to find new possibilities for themselves.

"When you first enter the workplace, you will feel that choice accounts for 50% and effort accounts for 50%; then one day, I found that choice accounts for 95% and effort accounts for 5%; finally one day, I found that all things are 100% survivorship bias, and timing and selection are very important." Wu Ke said.

No barrier is permanent. During an interview with Chinese Entrepreneur, Wu Ke used high-frequency words such as "growth", "degradation", "competition", "initiative", etc. during over two hours of expression. He recommended several books, such as "The Dilemma of Innovators" and "Evolution".

When the industry went downhill, the executives of large factories did not have "Midway Atoll". They either left on their own or were forced to leave

Here is Wu Ke's self statement:

Determined to leave

I stayed at a certain e-commerce giant for two years. I was leading a team of dozens of people, and my annual salary was in the tens of millions, except for me.

But for the company, growth is no longer there. But there were before. I have been doing it for one or two years, and it has probably increased by several billion yuan, which has had results, but gradually, the growth is decreasing.

The industry dividend is gone, and the team cannot achieve results. Simply put, there is no growth.

When an industry has no dividends, no matter how hard you work, it will have no money to earn. Without increment, it means that the team can only enter a state of maintenance, which is of no value to me.

Either go or transfer, it's just these two things.

I am looking for high growth at every stage, and I never do maintenance work, so you can see that my resume is very challenging. Many people are maintenance oriented and willing to work there, stable, but I feel unstable.

I believe that only the growth of abilities and continuous creation of value are the greatest stability, rather than staying there without growth. In fact, your abilities are deteriorating. The company has protected you, making you feel like you can still make money. In fact, your abilities are deteriorating, but your young competitors have already emerged.

When two people fight, if you hide from each other's fists, you will be hit even harder. If you face him, I'll see how you punch, but instead, you can block a few and organize the correct attack.

As you can see, I may be unemployed in middle age, but in fact, it's not as bad as everyone thinks because I was prepared early on.

Source: Visual China

202210

My attitude is, no matter what, jump out first. Getting paid every month is an addictive behavior. You need to come out and see what the real world is like, and the company cannot always protect you. One day when you are laid off, it's too late to come out again. You need to learn to put yourself in crisis every day in order to come up with more correct methods and logic, rather than hiding in one place.

I think this is the boundary between before and after the age of 40. Before the age of 40, we wouldn't turn back until we hit the south wall. We thought we were better than others, but in fact, from the tide of the entire era, all commercial companies in this era probably achieved something through luck rather than hard work.

Why are some bosses not as skilled as employees, but they are bosses? You must enter at the right time to secure this position, rather than relying on promotion.

If an industry starts to go downhill, even if it is a Megacorporation, you will not be promoted because it has been laying off staff. How can you promote it?

If it is a high growth industry that always needs people, even if your level is not enough, you can still enter because it lacks people. The high growth track will passively absorb a large amount of resources and take you from an ordinary person to the top.

So if you work hard, you shouldn't focus on how to strive for a detail. First, you need to look at the overall direction, and once the direction is studied clearly, you will decide 95%. In a large range of rapid growth, if you work hard, you may score 100 points, and if you don't work hard, you may score 80 points, surpassing the vast majority of people. So our real effort is not to compete with others for physical strength, overtime, or specific business expertise.

I'm not saying these are not important, it's because the trend of the wave is the user's value orientation. After the wind changes, your major becomes meaningless.

A group of people who enjoy the dividends of the times

I studied agriculture in college and have been deeply involved in it ever since, so this trend has also been my lucky appearance. Why choose agriculture? I have a relative who is very skilled. When I was taking college entrance exams and choosing a major, he said not to choose things that many people have signed up for, such as economic management, computer science, and accounting. You can't handle the smartest people. You choose a major that no one likes the most, but the main direction is very right. Agriculture is.

I have gained a lot from several experiences.

Alibaba actually provided me with a comprehensive set of data, allowing me to see user behavior and understand the overall framework of business; Yipin Fresh taught me all the business insights, business depth, and how to win a battle, even though the project failed.

In 2016, I joined Alibaba when they were expanding to Taoxianda. When I went to the interview, I was still wearing a suit, and at that time, Alibaba employees looked at me because they rarely wore suits.

Source: China Enterprise Library

Before going to Alibaba, I had been in Hefei and couldn't get used to it when I went to Hangzhou. After I went to Alibaba, I realized that I knew nothing. I was facing a completely new situation and began to relearn. The process was very painful, but cognition exploded during that year. I often tell people that when you go to Alibaba and do nothing, you just watch others work and listen to them speak, which increases your awareness several times.

Alibaba's business is a 360 degree perspective. For example, how many products does a small store sell every day, how to price it, whether to collaborate with a small store or a large store, how to plan the follow-up, how to allocate personnel, what kind of system to use, and whether to sell to a large pool or a small pool.

When I first went to Alibaba, a P10 level leader gave us the first class and I asked if we would be moving towards management or technology in a year's time. This leader wants to tell us that in a large factory, you need to understand both management and technology. Are you going to handle this matter from a technical perspective or a management approach? Just get it done, regardless of technology or management.

After working for more than a year, the people from Capital and the chairman of Yipin Fresh asked me to come over and help them take charge of the new retail business nationwide. In fact, it is the community group buying that big factories do now. This posed a great challenge to me. We thought we could make money at the time, but after doing it for a year or two, we found that we were losing money.

After the shutdown, the large factory started doing this business after two years. I thought I wasn't doing well at the time, with a negative gross profit of 10 points per day. For example, if I made 100 million yuan per year, I would lose over 30000 yuan per day. However, I think the large factory is currently engaged in this business, and it is basically at this level, with a relatively balanced mind. They also failed to complete this business.

Professionalism is not the most important thing. The key is to find your own position and Ecological niche. Professionalism is just a relative word.

In a large factory, I am responsible for billions of dollars in business, and every member of my team is more professional than me. They are the elites in the industry, and the most professional person may be screws. My profession may be at another level, such as my speed of finding direction and positioning.

For example, when playing basketball, I like to get stuck and pass the ball to a professional shooter. Sometimes people say that he doesn't even know how to shoot, but I can get someone who can shoot to score.

Looking for high growth
After I posted that post, many former colleagues sent me messages. We are very anxious every day, worrying about where to go next.

Many people dare not leave the company because it provides protection and various resources. But if you treat the entire society as a big company and do things in different regions and companies, it is not equivalent to different departments within a company. I will find a new direction throughout China and then integrate resources to do it.

The resources in the company are very small. I might as well move my Ecological niche throughout China. My own underlying logic is that growth is what is necessary, and high growth is the direction.

Source: Visual China

Looking for high growth

How to define high growth?

High growth depends on increment rather than stock. For example, the entire market has already reached 400 to 50 billion yuan, and it is impossible for you to turn 50 billion yuan into 60 billion yuan in a small business. You can only turn 50 billion yuan into 50.11 billion yuan.

But for some good small tracks, such as doing 200 million a year but earning 10 million. Just because the plate is small doesn't mean I earn less money.

The Innovator's Dilemma can be read for a while, and the Theory of Evolution should also be well understood. In fact, the enterprise has made a set of products, which belongs to a Ecological niche; Everything follows the same direction as biological evolution, and by understanding these two concepts, commercial evolution can basically be mastered.

When internet companies have really high growth, there is no management. When companies start to engage in management, the increment is relatively small.

PUA is a management tool. When a leader wants to hire a PUA employee, it indicates that the leader cannot find the increment and does not know which direction the employee should go, and then blames the employee for not doing the details well. Therefore, this is a very foolish leader.

There is a characteristic of internet positions, which is that people are very important in the early stages, but gradually becoming more productized, people become less important. To figure out what you want.

There is a friend from an internet powerhouse who has a poor performance, and he is very distressed. I told him that you should not use your past achievements to decide what you will do in the future, but rather to think about what you were originally planning to do. Don't use the company's evaluation to evaluate yourself, because the company's evaluation is to shape the screws of a position, not to shape your own future.

Future plansIn October 2022, after leaving the factory, I initially had some discomfort, but it wasn't for a long time. I feel like I need more time to spend with my family. There is a passage circulating online that Steve Jobs said before his death: When I was about to die, I realized that the wealth I accumulated in my life was actually useless. When a person's wealth was sufficient, they should spend more time doing something valuable to the people around them. For example, if one's family, friends, or even goes to study some art, it may seem like there is no direct economic benefit, but in reality, it can truly enrich one's soul, which may not be a waste of one's life.

Why do many people earn more and more money, but ultimately cannot stop? This is an addictive behavior and a form of inertia.

I have been away from the company for a few months now, resting at home. I can also go to work, but I don't. I feel like I need to take care of my family.

Now I think my health is very important, spending time with family and socializing with friends is very important because life is short, and these two are the big shots. The rest of the time you spend earning some money, it doesn't matter if you can't make it. The most important thing is that if a child wants to be raised, they will not be treated as relatives.

I have been working in a large factory for two years, and there are very few opportunities to go home. Now that I am back, I feel very happy to go find my father to drink when I have nothing to do.

I won't choose to enter an internet powerhouse in the future. I think the first is to be with the people I like, and the second is to do small but valuable things, which is the direction I need to think about.

I haven't fully thought about it yet. In the past, I might have thought that I was very utilitarian because of the effects of the workplace. I pay more attention to things with higher efficiency, and I don't do things with lower efficiency.

Now the other way around, I have to do something that doesn't seem interesting and work with the people around me. I feel very happy. For example, going fishing with friends and riding bicycles with children makes me feel very happy.

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