Please think about 2 questions:
- What is the average increase in your salary in the last 3 years?
- What was the reason for getting a raise?
Now, take your numbers and see if you are getting more and more valuable, or just keep depreciating.
You are getting worthless
Your income may go up every year, 8% the year before, 15% last year, and 10% this year. But in fact, you are not necessarily more and more valuable - on the contrary, you may earn more and more on the surface, but actually become less and less valuable!
This is because: the growth rate of your income is unlikely to outpace inflation !
There are many numerical indicators in the country (such as CPI, M2) that can reflect inflation, but a bunch of numbers are not vivid, and the big guys can't feel it, so I found a few reference objects from life for everyone to see.
Because I am in Xi'an, the examples given are based on Xi'an.
(1) house price
In September 2016, the average price per square meter of housing prices in Xi'an was less than 7,000 yuan.
In the first half of 2017, the average price of house prices in Xi'an was 8517 per square meter, an average increase of 26%, and some areas rose by more than 50%. Some real estate in Xixian New District, Qujiang, and Gaoxin doubled in price.
Is your income growth eclipsed in the face of housing prices?
(2) Sanqin Package
Xi'an has a "San Qin set meal": Roujiamo, Liangpi, and porridge.
In 2008, the Sanqin set meal cost about 8.5 yuan; in 2017, you have to spend about 20 yuan to eat it.
It rose nearly 2.4 times, with an average annual growth rate of 10.2%.
(3) Minimum wage
The state sets a minimum wage to protect the basic living of low-income workers.
The growth rate of the minimum wage, to a certain extent, represents the growth rate of our consumption level.
In 2017, the "Shaanxi Provincial Minimum Wage Regulations" adjusted the minimum wage standard for the first-class wage area to 1,680 yuan per month. In 2008, this standard was 600 yuan. It rose 2.8 times, with an average annual increase of 12.1%.
Has your income growth rate exceeded the minimum wage growth rate?
After reading the housing price, food, minimum wage, and comparing the growth rate of your salary, are you more and more valuable, or are you less and less valuable? Welcome to leave a comment after the article.
Now, another question must be haunting your mind: how can I make myself more and more valuable in the next 3 years ?
If you want to make yourself more and more valuable and your income to rise, you must first look at the three elements of personal value-added.
3 elements of personal appreciation
There are 3 key elements for an individual to gain grades and increase income in the workplace:
- ability
- Location
- trend
Let's briefly explain.
(1) Ability
The ability we are talking about here refers to the ability to solve problems quickly.
Every company needs people who can solve problems quickly, but many people find "quick problem solving" a general term.
Therefore, it may be better to understand it in a step-by-step way: the so-called problem-solving ability is the ability to use a combination of skills to solve a specific business problem.
For example, as a software development engineer, ta's ability is reflected by "using development tools, design tools, programming languages, technical frameworks, etc. to virtualize a certain business to bring convenience to others".
From the dismantling point of view, if you know the C++ language and the Qt application framework, it does not mean that you have the ability to develop software. Only if you can use C++ and Qt to write software that can meet the needs of users, can you say that you have the ability to develop software. .
Another example is a lawyer, whose ability is reflected in winning a lawsuit. No matter how much you understand the legal provisions, if you can't win a lawsuit, you are incompetent.
Now, we can understand the two-fold meaning of competence: you have some skills, and you need to be able to use those skills to solve real-world problems .
Only when you have the ability to solve problems and create value for others can you personally add value and make more and more money.
Many people have an illusion, they always feel that they are very valuable, and they always feel that the money they earn now does not reflect their worth. But the truth is: the money you earn now is the money you are worth .
Those who always feel that the company pays them too little will definitely not like to hear this. However, you must know that the labor market conforms to the laws of the market economy, and in the market economy environment, the price will definitely approach the value. .
In other words, if you really want as much money as you say, you should have earned it long ago.
(2) Location
Let's compare several positions in Internet software companies (imagine Tencent or Zhihu):
- Cleaners
- front desk
- Recruiter
- Test Engineer
- Operation and Maintenance Engineer
- Software Development Engineer
- architect
- R&D manager
Which jobs do you think pay more?
Architects and R&D Managers!
That's what position does: in a company, the closer you are to the core benefit chain (the product chain), the more important your position is, and the more money you get .
(3) Trend
18 years ago (around 2000), when you entered companies like Huawei, ZTE and Datang Telecom, you would have a very smooth life: the employees of the Beijing Railway Bureau's train depot get 500 a month, you can get 4000 ~ 6000, others A business trip is a hard seat, you are an airplane.
Now, when you do development work in cloud computing, big data or artificial intelligence, your salary is 2 or 3 times higher than that of traditional software companies doing ERP and informatization software engineers.
Why is there such a big difference?
This is caused by trends.
Sometimes, which boat to ride on is far more important than the skill of rowing .
how to make more money
After analyzing the 3 elements of personal value-added, the direction of making more money is clear:
- Improve personal ability
- Choose the right location
- into a good trend
Let's look at them one by one.
(1) Improve personal ability
General rule: The stronger the ability, the higher the income.
Within your organization, can you easily handle existing tasks?
If not, then look at how to improve so that you can easily get your job done. When you can get the job done easily, you can do more important things, the location can change, and the salary can change.
If you can easily get the job done, then see if there are colleagues in the company who are better at solving problems than you and who are paid a lot more than you.
If so, see where they are, what they do, what skills they use, and figure out how to become them.
(2) Choose a suitable location
The three-dimensional cone model of employee career development proposed by the famous career management scientist EHSchein divides the career development of employees in the organization into three lines: vertical, inward and horizontal.
The vertical direction refers to job titles and job promotions. For example, you are promoted from a junior engineer to a senior engineer, and you are promoted from a first-line manager to a second-line manager.
The horizontal direction refers to job rotation, such as switching from a software testing position to a software development position, and then switching from a human resources position to a sales position.
The inward direction refers to the change of core. For example, you have changed from a test tool development position to an e-commerce back-end development position, or you were originally responsible for the sales of fixed-line program-controlled switches and then switched to the sales of cloud computing services.
As an individual, if you want to increase revenue within a company, you need to consider two major directions:
- vertical job promotion
- Core degree improvement in the horizontal direction (rotation or product line conversion)
(3) Enter a good trend
People with similar education and ability will show huge income differences in different trends.
For example, in the campus recruitment in 2017, Tencent offered 30k+ offers to graduate students in the direction of artificial intelligence, while the salary of graduate students recruited by P&G was around 12k, while Datang Mobile offered an offer of around 8k.
There are two types of trends: technology trends and industry trends. Like big data, cloud computing, AI, this is a technology-driven trend, there are technology dividends, and it is easy to get a high salary. Like e-commerce, smart cities, medical care, smart manufacturing, autonomous driving, new energy vehicles, etc., this is an industry trend.
As long as you get into any one trend, there may be a salary boost. If you catch up with the two trends in one, there is a high probability that the salary will rise by more than 50%.
So, how do you spot trends? The following aspects can be considered:
- national planning
- Strategic planning and investment and financing layout of leading companies in the industry
- Entrepreneurial trends and financing trends
- Research report
- Recruitment Data Mining
Still, it's hard stuff...so, here's a simpler strategy: follow the visionary .
Your next 3 years value-added plan
We have done a lot of discussion before, and now it is time to land. Think big: How much do I want my income to increase over the next 3 years?
This will be your goal! Based on this goal, you should develop a value-added plan for the next 3 years.
If you don't have income goals, you can work backwards from near-term life goals and living expenses. For example, if you plan to travel abroad twice a year, each time you spend 40,000 yuan. If travel expenses account for 30% of your household income, your annual net income will reach 270,000 yuan.
In this way, you can find the annual increase according to the gap between the status quo and the target. (See the article " What goals did we miss in 2017? " for examples.)
Setting goals is step 1 of a value-add plan.
The second step is to find an implementation strategy. You can start from the three aspects of ability, location and trend mentioned above to find a value-added strategy that suits you.
For example, transforming big data development, such as learning project management skills, such as jumping to a leading company in the industry... These are all implementation strategies.
Once you have a strategy, it's time to go to Step 3: Find your next move that you can start right away. Many people's goals and plans cannot be achieved because they can't take the first step and don't know how to start now. So finding the next move is very important.
The so-called next action is the next step in something that can be done directly. Its characteristic is: you don't have to think about it, you can start doing it right away. For example, "calling Wang Ermazi at 15 o'clock" is a "next action".
For information on how to find your next move, please refer to my previous article: Find the next move you can start right away .
With the next move, you're not necessarily going to do it yet, because you probably have a lot of concerns. At this point, you can evaluate the possibility of your action and give a score, 100 points will definitely be implemented, 0 points will definitely not be implemented.
If you give yourself a score of less than 80, then you're basically not going to perform.
At this point, it's time to analyze what you're worrying about and see what changes can improve the likelihood of your next move.
I have designed a simple tool that people can use to document your growth plan for the next three years.
Wow, you kept reading this far and must give you 32 likes!
However, if you really want change to happen, there is still a very important test: make your own value-added plan for the next three years!
Come on, challenge yourself, take action for your future!