"Even if the wages cannot be paid one day, some people will stay." ——Review of the second anniversary of Jiuzhang Zhijia's business (Part 1)...

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Author | Su Qingtao

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one. Be wise beforehand

 (1) "Investment in high-precision map tracks should be cautious"

 (2) "Those 'lack of halo' companies may need to be revalued"

 (3) "Horizon no longer regards XXXX as a competitor"

 (4) "IPO setbacks mean nothing"

two. Self-cultivation of "Being wise beforehand"

 (1) Long-term focus and enjoy the compound interest of time

 (2) Data hunger and data closed-loop capability

     1. Data Hunger

     2. Data closed-loop capability

 (3) Good humanistic quality and strong insight into human nature

 (4) Have entrepreneurial experience and be able to empathize with entrepreneurs

 (5) The underestimated "emotional element"

three. "Mission and Vision Driven Team"

 (1) "Most people who resumed diplomatic relations with the Northern Qing Dynasty did not meet this standard"

 (2) "Anyone who doesn't like me must not be worthy of me"

 (3) A few girls who believe that "development is the last word"

 (4) "You can go now"

 (5) "Everyone in our company is very similar"

 (6) "Colleagues with a sense of mission are my real angel investors"

 (7) "People with a sense of mission are the ruling class"

 (8) "The 'ruling class' cannot be punished"

 (9) "How to recruit idealistic people like you"

Four. "We have no competitors, nor will we have any in the future"

 (1) Arts students should have science and engineering thinking, and science and engineering students should have user thinking

 (2) "If the sense of mission is not on the same level, don't talk about benchmarking"

 (3) People who are better than me are not as poor as I am. This is the core barrier of Chapter Nine

Two years ago, on April 2, I published the article " Our personal destiny, three points depend on hard work, and seven points depend on industrial dividends - Jiuzhang Zhijia's founding words " on the WeChat public account, and Jiuzhang Zhijia was officially established .

On the fifth and sixth day of the first month of last year, I issued " When a candidate says "optimistic about the prospects of the autonomous driving industry", I will be vigilant - Jiuzhang Zhijia's first anniversary review (Part 1)" and " Data collected If there are not enough and the algorithm is not iterated fast enough, then "no one likes me"——Jiuzhang Zhijia First Anniversary Review (Part 2) .

These few articles summarizing personal and company mental journeys have aroused strong repercussions in the industry, and let Jiuzhang further understand "who am I", "where do I come from", and "where am I going".

I am a person who likes to make summaries very much, and I do summaries almost all the time. In the past year or so, I have synchronized the results of many fragmented thinking in the circle of friends; of course, there are still many thinking results that are not convenient. Write it that way.

On the occasion of Jiuzhang's second birthday, I suddenly realized that "fragmented pretense" in the circle of friends is far less valuable than "systematic pretense" by writing an article with tens of thousands of words . Therefore, I used a more systematic Make a replay in a standardized way. It is gratifying that although many fragments in this article were written almost a year ago, I still read it now without losing the "freshness".

one. Be wise beforehand

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In the inaugural article, I "showed" these two forward-looking judgments, but in fact, there will be many such cases in the next year or two.

(1) "Investment in high-precision map tracks should be cautious"

In July 2021, a boss said that he was looking at a high-precision map project, and he was not sure whether it was worth investing in, so he wanted to ask for my opinion. Afterwards, I chatted with her on the phone for more than ten minutes. The core point I put forward was: Be cautious about start-ups on the high-precision map track.

The reason is: on the one hand, powerful car companies can do what high-precision map companies can do; on the other hand, Tesla has gotten rid of its dependence on high-precision maps, and domestic car companies should follow suit.

In fact, as early as the beginning of 2020 (at that time, I was still making car reviews, 15 months before the establishment of Jiuzhang), I mentioned in my report on autonomous driving that "it is difficult for startups on the high-precision map track." As a result, in the first half of 2021, several major events occurred on the high-precision map track: Deepmap was acquired by Nvidia , Camera was acquired by Toyota, and Deep Motion  was acquired by Xiaomi.

Then, in June 2021, I learned about the idea of ​​"going to high-precision maps" during the process of communicating with an engineer from SAIC and the person in charge of high-precision maps of an autonomous driving company. This is also the key basis for my suggestion to the big guy "don't invest in high-precision map companies".

Of course, it has been almost a year since the hot discussion in the industry about "removing high-precision maps".

(2) "Those 'lack of halo' companies may need to be revalued"

Before 2022, few people publicly mentioned the engineering capabilities of self-driving companies in the media or industry research reports, but I mentioned it as early as the first half of 2021.

The following passage is excerpted from my last article "Some Thoughts on the Latest Round of Financing of XX Company" published on "Jianyue Car Review" on March 29, 2021 :

It is not the "dimensionality reduction blow" imagined by outsiders for L4 companies to do L2, but it is more difficult!

Because, when doing L4, due to the relatively small scale of the test fleet, it is also possible to "regardless of cost" when purchasing chips and sensors; however, when doing L2, the role of autonomous driving startups is suppliers. Considering product performance, cost and whether the supply can be sustained and stable is also a key point to consider.

Typically, self-driving startups have no bargaining power with suppliers. If your solution has good performance, but it has no cost advantage, and the delivery date cannot be guaranteed, will the car company be willing to use it?

Also, at the current stage, companies directly engaged in L4 do not require key components to pass the vehicle regulations. They only need to buy a few vehicles and refit them before testing on the road; while the L2 solution for front-mounted mass production needs to meet the standards of the automobile. For a series of industry standards, it may take 2-3 years from order to R&D and testing.

In addition, when doing L4, the autonomous driving company is usually Party A, who can define its own requirements; but when doing L2, the autonomous driving company becomes "Party B", and it is easy to be "led by the nose" by customers. The ADAS projects of three car companies have been approved. Since the vehicle platforms and hardware platforms of the three companies are different, and the requirements are also different, the autonomous driving company needs to arrange three different teams to serve the three car companies. In this way, The marginal cost of service is high.

After the Shanghai Auto Show in April 2021, I mentioned the following paragraphs in an essay:

Previously, autonomous driving was still in the testing stage, and everyone was striving for technical capabilities, but when it came to the pre-installation mass production stage, the importance of engineering capabilities became prominent. Simply put, technology companies with Internet and AI backgrounds have stronger technical capabilities, but when it comes to engineering capabilities, traditional Tier 1 and car companies may have a "crushing" advantage.

A few months ago, a friend whose CEO and CTO were both from a German Tier 1 domain controller company said: "Our boss feels wronged, we have already made a profit, why the valuation is not as good as some companies that have been losing money, and even life and death are uncertain." L4 self-driving start-up companies high?” The author joked: “Because, in the eyes of investors, your company does not have a ‘sense of technology’ and lacks aura.” 

Compared with the founders and even CTOs of many autonomous driving companies with Internet backgrounds who are usually eloquent "jokes" or even "self-contained Internet celebrity attributes", many founders with traditional Tier 1 backgrounds are often "honest engineers". , Not good at words, in extreme cases, the staff of the investment and financing department and marketing department of the company they founded are also not good at words, and they are "at a loss" when they see investors and the media. As a result, the value of these companies may be seriously undervalued .

But when autonomous driving transitions from the stage of storytelling to engineering capabilities, the value of these companies may be further tapped, and the valuation may even rise sharply.

I should be the first author to judge the competitiveness of an autonomous driving company based on engineering implementation capabilities in an article, and "decouple" engineering implementation capabilities from the company's aura. 

Looking back today, two years later, "The value of those companies that 'lack a halo' may need to be revalued", this view is very forward-looking. Next, we will see that the first autonomous driving solution companies to go public are those companies that were once considered "lack of technology sense" and "lack of halo".

However, things are not set in stone. In mid-January this year, I suddenly came up with a new and "different" thinking on the topic of "poor engineering capabilities":

In terms of engineering capabilities, there is no absolute sense of "who can do it and who can't". The key is to endure. In the early years, those halo companies were not "forced to that point", and of course they could not have the patience to delve into engineering details. Therefore, it is reasonable to have "weak engineering capabilities"; but now, since they have "Being forced to this point", "letting go of your figure" is no longer a problem. Then, as long as there are a few projects for them to practice, engineering ability can be developed.

It is a bit like ordinary people like to laugh at the "poor hands-on ability" of high school students who mock the team with a luxurious resume as "poor engineering ability" with stereotypes. In fact, the so-called "poor hands-on ability" is often due to lack of attention and experience, rather than saying that this person is really "not good".

I found that many dishes cooked by Xueba are much better than chefs in star-rated hotels; moreover, Xueba must be serious, and their ability to do housework will be much better than that of domestic workers. In these cases, the top students have demonstrated a strong "engineering ability".

Generally speaking, people who are particularly good or who think they are very good have weak engineering ability. That is because, for them, the opportunity cost of doing "partial engineering" things is too high, so they don't have enough motivation to do these things. Invest time in things - I can do things with a monthly salary of 200,000 yuan, so why should I have the ability to earn a monthly salary of 50,000 yuan? But if one day the high-level things do not work, for example, the business with a monthly salary of 200,000 yuan is unsustainable, and there is no choice but to do things with a monthly salary of 50,000 yuan. At this time, if you do more engineering-oriented things, the opportunity cost will be low. If so, they may all in.

As long as you are willing to all in, it is possible for engineering capabilities to catch up with time. In the early days, there was a big gap between one year of experience and three years of experience, but later on, the gap between five years of experience and seven years of experience was not so big. Therefore, the most important thing is whether there is a customer who is willing to trust them to accompany them to practice before they have the engineering ability.

What will happen after those teams with luxurious backgrounds make up for their shortcomings in engineering capabilities? It's what I said earlier, "Once the masters cook seriously, they can kill the chefs of many star hotels; once the masters do housework seriously, they will definitely do better than most hourly workers."

As for whether this judgment is accurate, we will wait and see. Cheer for companies like Wenyuan, Xiaoma, Yuanrong, and Qingzhou Zhihang!

(3) "Horizon no longer regards XXXX as a competitor"

In the second month after joining the industry at the end of 2017, I became the "Zhiqian Five" of the horizon. By the beginning of 2018, I can basically conclude that the most valuable and the first to emerge in this wave of domestic autonomous driving start-ups is Horizon. By 2019, when the capital is in the cold winter and the horizon is relatively difficult, I will still be the "self-made five" of the horizon.

In August 2020, the director of a celebrity investment institution (which once invested in Horizon) said that they had "exited" from Horizon because they felt that Horizon was "just fooling around". Then, this guy was blacklisted from the bottom of my heart--the level of cognition is really bad.

At the beginning of August 2021, after the Horizon J5 conference, I wrote an article "Horizon no longer regards XXXX as a competitor", and then, many people with very low-end values ​​and poor reading ability questioned my "receipt How much is the horizon." 

Why do you say that these people have "low-end values"? Because only people with low-end values ​​​​will think that "anything needs to be linked to money."

Why do you say that these people "failed to read"? Because they didn't understand the difference between "Horizon doesn't regard XXXX as a competitor" and "Horizon has surpassed XXXX" - the former is just an objective statement of the attitude of the "participant", rather than shouting like many self-media "Who kills who" ah.

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In an industry WeChat group, several "front-line engineers" who lacked dynamic thinking attacked me in the group, but this did not shake my belief in the slightest.

A few days later, that article celebrated my fight with 6,666 views.

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By 2022, after chatting with major algorithm companies, we found that the horizon has become the "greatest common denominator" of the industry, and even the "hope of the whole village" and "all expectations". In the first half of the year, several algorithm companies "dismissed" Horizon, but by the end of the year, they all officially announced their cooperation with Horizon.

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Earlier, I was a little skeptical that someone like me who was easily "brainwashed by Yu Kai" might be too young, too naive . ", those doubts are actually "the sergeant hears the Tao, if he exists, he will die", and those dismissive, it is "the corporal hears the Tao, laughs out loud"?

(4) "IPO setbacks mean nothing"

In the first half of 2021, Hesai encountered some setbacks in its domestic IPO. Then, several investment institutions came to ask me what I thought.

I replied like this:

To be honest, I don't have the ability to judge other people's technology and products, because I don't understand technology, and I'm not a user, but after getting in touch with them, I think these people are very reliable. In my opinion, as long as people are reliable, even if they take some detours, even if the product encounters setbacks, this is not a problem, because reliable people have a strong ability to iterate.

At the end of 2022, a person in charge of the IPO of an investment bank asked me: Do you think the delivery data announced by Hesai is true?

I replied like this:

I can't verify it, but I can share a little bit of experience - I found that in the past few years, Hesai's new products usually do PR after they have been delivered to customers for a period of time; of course, for a long-term tracker of industry trends For a media person in the vertical field, Hesai’s approach often makes me feel incompetent, “How do I know?”.

At the beginning of 2021, Hillhouse Capital asked me to do due diligence before investing in Hesai. They asked me "Is Hesai's technical route chosen wrong?" On the 1st, they obtained the patent of "LiDAR based on rotating mirror" (patent number 2017213252620). It's just that they didn't do PR. Their style is not to brag about things they can't do.

Compared with many companies in the industry that make high-profile PRs when the product has not yet been written off, is this more reliable?

Some time ago, some media published an article on diss Hesai. An investor commented in Moments that “Hesai is a very impetuous company.” I explained to him, “That’s an article with a standpoint 'Ah, many basic facts are wrong regardless of your standpoint", but this investor couldn't listen to it, and continued to insist that "Hesai is impetuous", and then I blocked him without saying a word up.

Damn, how can such an IQ person deserve to be in my address book?

Later, everyone saw Hesai’s IPO progress and delivery results.

two. Self-cultivation of "Being wise beforehand"

Although I am still an "information porter" in essence, the quality of the transport is indeed much higher than others, and because of this, I am regarded as a "brain tank" by the CEOs of many self-driving companies. There must be many young friends who are curious about how I "made it".

In the second half of 2016, I said to my wife: "If I work and study in an industry for one year, I will gain more than others in three years." My wife deeply agreed. The reason why I dared to make this wild statement at that time was that when I observed the work performance of more than N former colleagues, I discovered a "shocking secret":

If the lunch break, lunch and paddling time are deducted, the effective working time of most people is less than 6 hours or even less than 5 hours a day, but my effective working time is 11-12 hours; and others work every week 5-5.5 days, mine is 6.5-7 days. Calculated, the effective working hours of others are 25-30 hours per week, but I am 70-84 hours, not to mention, my concentration is much higher than theirs.

Of course, I just spent more time than others, but my IQ cannot be compared with others. For the past many years, I have always felt that my reflexes were slower than others.

After I started working, I spent more than a year cooking with all my colleagues in the company. At that time, my direct leader often said: "Qingtao should eat more fish, so that he can be as flexible as a fish in the future and react faster." Said To be honest, this kind of concern once hurt my self-esteem extremely.

Later, when I played on social networks, I found that many of my friends had "Forrest Gump" in their "favorite movie". I had watched that movie when I was a freshman, "I didn't think there was anything good about this movie", why? Will so many people like it? In order to solve this mystery, I read it again in 2011 or 2012, but I still "didn't feel it".

It wasn't until 2016, after experiencing more things, that I realized why I "didn't feel" about Forrest Gump——

Because, I am the same person as Forrest Gump, equally stupid, and equally hardworking. Others will feel "inspirational" when watching Forrest Gump, but I don't think it is so inspirational, because "I am such a person myself" (the difference is only that He achieved amazing things and I didn't). Since the protagonist of the movie is like me, it does not provide me with "incremental information" and therefore does not excite me.

Although I am as stupid as Forrest Gump, I can do better than most information porters just by the most primitive stupid way of "investing more time than others". 

However, this stupid method is not worth spending too much ink. Here, I want to emphasize the following points——

(1) Long-term focus and enjoy the compound interest of time

Before entering the autonomous driving industry at the end of 2017, although I had been writing for many years, I had never focused on any one field, so my improvement was limited. As for the "painful understanding" of unfocusedness, I have mentioned a lot in the first anniversary review of Jiuzhang's business, so I won't repeat it here. In the past few years, I have really tasted the great sweetness of focusing on one industry.

Many readers who have just followed Chapter Nine often ask me: "Do you mainly focus on autonomous driving?" To this question, I usually say with some dissatisfaction: "Wrong! We are not 'mainly focusing' on autonomous driving, but 'only Focus on 'Autopilot."  

Why am I "dissatisfied" and why am I correcting it?  

Because, the detours I took in the early years and the "correct path" I took later made me realize that due to the limited energy of people, the degree of focus largely determines the professionalism of business capabilities. For example, when I "only When I focus on "autonomous driving", my professional degree is 90 points, and when I "mainly focus" on automatic driving, my professional degree may be reduced to 75 points.

To follow an industry for a long time to do research, we need to do a lot of communication with industry front-line experts, but the time of experts is very precious, and they are willing to communicate with you not because you want to communicate. In fact, if your own level is not enough, experts will feel that communicating with you is fruitless, so they will not talk to you; to put it bluntly, it is completely normal for experts to look down on you.

Because we have focused on this field for a long time, we have not only mastered a lot of information, but also have a considerable understanding of the industry. When communicating with experts, we can let experts know something they didn't know before; or, some of the questions we raised Instructive to experts, therefore, experts feel that communicating with us is rewarding.

I remember that in September 2021, when I was paying attention to the topic of FMCW lidar, I went to chat with the chief scientist of a lidar company. While chatting, he suddenly said excitedly: "I suddenly found out that I can apply for a patent. ..."

But if you don’t focus, and your energy is scattered in multiple directions such as autonomous driving, Internet of Vehicles, power batteries, and complete vehicles, then you are a layman in each direction, and experts may not want to talk to you.

At the end of February, I saw an article in the "Harvard Business Review". The core point is that every day's progress—even if it is only a small success—can greatly affect our feelings and performance. Combined with the point of view I have always insisted on "without enough concentration, it is impossible to make satisfactory progress", some new insights have emerged——

People who are focused and dedicated enough to do things, even if they are more Buddhist, can easily enjoy the compound interest of time, and their professionalism will improve quickly; with professionalism, the efficiency of doing things will definitely be higher, and the progress of things will be faster , and the faster the progress, the easier it is to get internal and external affirmation; the more affirmation you get, the stronger the sense of accomplishment, the more self-confidence, the more peaceful the mind, and the stronger the sense of happiness gained from work ; When the sense of happiness gained from work is strong, the self-driving force will naturally be no problem, thus entering the next positive cycle of reincarnation.

On the contrary, if you always lack sufficient focus and concentration in doing things, and often "multi-task", even if you "work hard", it will be difficult for you to achieve excellence, and you may even often feel "difficult to move forward" .

Because, unless you are as talented as Da Vinci or Musk, not focusing is equal to "unprofessional", and there are high "switching costs" between different tasks, unprofessional + switching costs lead to Low efficiency and slow progress; without progress, not only will you not be able to obtain internal and external affirmation, but you will encounter doubts. , You feel more and more that doing such a job is a kind of torment; after a long time of torment, you will no longer be able to have self-motivation, and then you will enter the next vicious circle of reincarnation.

The above points apply not only to individuals, but also to companies. In fact, in the company, the above point of view is more thoroughly reflected. For example, the company's focus and progress in business largely determine the "exploration depth" of employees, the learning resources they can obtain, and the iteration speed of personal algorithms. Therefore, it is also related to the ownership of key talents perception and retention.

(2) Data hunger and data closed-loop capability

1. Data Hunger 

At the end of February, after communicating with a client, I said excitedly:

"Every time I come to you to communicate, I don't feel that I am working, but studying. This state even makes me feel that it is a kind of welfare to come to you on a business trip. Then, I often bring Who doesn't bring who' feels entangled - since it is a benefit, if I bring colleague A but not colleague B, I will worry that B will be jealous." (Maybe others are not jealous, but because I have a small belly, I acquiesce Others are "like me")

Those who don’t understand will think it’s flattery, but those who understand will naturally understand. As long as the information density of exchange is relatively high, or the quality of data is high enough, “data collectors” will naturally have such a sense of excitement.

For a long time, I have been full of enthusiasm for things like "collecting data" and "iterating algorithms" based on communicating with others. As for what these data and algorithms are used to "do", I have no utilitarianism Target.

Usually, for a matter related to data and algorithms, if someone asks "what's the use of this", my "free and useless soul" will "sentence the death penalty" to the other party within a second: not a class People are not worth interacting with; however, when chatting with others, I must be utilitarian. This utilitarian mind is: can I get high-quality data, can I iterate the algorithm?

The fifth type (observer and thinker) in the "Enneagram" probably has "knowledge hunger", because there is a bottom-level thinking in their brains that "if I don't know enough, others won't." Like me / I won't like myself".

It can be said that for the fifth type, collecting data and iterating algorithms is a way for us to build a sense of security. If the data is not collected enough and the algorithm iterates too slowly, "others will not like me", which is equivalent to falling out of love or "being alone".

2. Data closed-loop capability 

When I was a student, I felt that my learning efficiency was much lower than others; in the first ten years after working, I felt that my work efficiency was much lower than others... However, in the past one or two years , I found that in the case of the same quality, my efficiency can be 1.5-2 times that of others!

Comparing the habits of different people, I gradually understood why my efficiency was lower than others in the early years.

Take the exam review in the student days as an example, most people go straight to the goal of "examination" (until college days, there are still many worthless people who ask the teacher to draw the "examination range"), and they are highly focused on this goal , Turning a blind eye to many knowledge points that are not helpful for me to get a high score, the result is of course that they can spend less time than me and get a higher score than me, making me mistakenly think that their learning efficiency is higher than me many.

In contrast, I have severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, which leads me to know that the goal of "examination" is very important, but I will not focus on it. As long as I find any knowledge point that is interesting, even if I know it has nothing to do with this exam. Without help, I will spend a lot of time looking at it, so I spend a lot of time on things that have nothing to do with this exam. The result is of course that I spent more time than others on the test Lower grades, which also led me to think I was "bad at school".

The same is true for writing manuscripts after work. Others only focus on the parts related to this topic when they read the materials, but I am not. As long as I think some materials are "very interesting", I will spend a lot of time watching them and will The best parts are extracted into a document, which obviously made me much less efficient than others at the time.

However, in a longer period of time, my learning style and work style with a "weak sense of purpose" is much more efficient (overall efficiency) than most people's "goal-oriented" style-others get selected After solving the problem, I spent a lot of time looking for materials. I waited until I had accumulated enough relevant materials by accident and decided that "this topic can be started".

From the perspective of "online and online", the essential difference between the two styles lies in the emphasis on "data return". You accidentally came across an interesting knowledge point or material, but you didn't read it or collect it. This is "lack of data thinking", and you didn't even do the most basic data return.

A former colleague once asked me inexplicably: Why can you spend so long accumulating materials for an article that you don’t know what to write? 

I said: It's very simple, I concluded that this is what I want to do in my life. If you don’t use these materials in the first half of the year, you can always use them in the second half of the year; if you don’t use them this year, you can always use them next year; This material is valuable to me at any time, unless I die.

Then, this former colleague was even more puzzled: But, besides you, how many other people can conclude that "this is what they want to do in this life"?

At that time, I said to this colleague:

In the two years from 2020 to 2021, when paying attention to the closed loop of autonomous driving data, I asked many people in the industry a question. In theory, those Tier 1s with the largest ADAS shipments should have the most data in their hands. But why not? The answer I got was: Unlike companies like Momenta, which have figured out how to do closed-loop data from the beginning of their establishment, traditional Tier 1 companies generally lack "data thinking". They never thought that they would need to do closed-loop data one day. There is no awareness of collecting data at all . Of course, the original plan does not support data collection.

For you, it doesn’t matter if you are not sure whether you will continue to do this in the future, but in a vertical field like ours, it is easy to accumulate more materials every day, and many of them can be done by copying and pasting. What burden? Even if you don't use it later, do you have any losses, right? If you can't even figure this out, or even if you figure it out, you are unwilling to put it into action, then in essence it is "being a monk hitting the clock for a day", then you deserve to be inefficient.

Human learning and work are the same as autonomous driving. If you don’t pay attention to the closed loop of data, although it seems that the goal will be achieved quickly in the short term, in the long run, it will become more and more tiring; It takes a lot of energy, but you can't see the benefits, but in the long run, the benefits must be huge.

(3) Good humanistic quality and strong insight into human nature

As mentioned earlier, I often cannot reach a consensus with people from investment institutions on the competitiveness of a start-up company, and from the results, my judgment is stronger than that of the institution.

A friend from an investment institution who has invested in many good projects said: Factors that investment institutions pay more attention to, such as team resumes, financial data, and customer resources, are just the past of a company, and only by "understanding people" can we understand the future of the company .

He also said to me: "If you do angel investment, you will do very well, because you are quite accurate." Before that, another investment director said: "I found that your analysis of the CEO ability model, Much better than most investors." I accepted this evaluation without humility.

Before I entered the field of autonomous driving to do industrial research, I had a history of writing chicken soup articles for 8 years. The process of writing chicken soup articles trained me to have a good humanistic quality.

With the improvement of humanistic literacy, I became more and more idealistic; and, in terms of objective results, as time went by, I became more and more able to taste the sweetness brought by idealism. This means that after experiencing the spiritual value of idealism immediately, I also experience the economic value of idealism with a delay, so I often naturally "point" for other people's idealism .

At the end of July last year, I went to visit a friend of ARM China with Liu Jiajun, the person in charge of consulting. During the period, when the other party asked me how I saw the horizon, I said, "Their core team has a strong idealistic temperament." At this time, that A friend seemed a little excited: "Yes, yes, that's the word, 'idealism'." Then, we talked a lot about "virtual things" related to idealism. Before saying goodbye, he said to me: "Pay attention, and if you find any chip company with a strong sense of idealism later, you must tell me."

However, if I talk to investors about so-and-so idealism, I will probably be laughed at. Because it is difficult for opportunists to "elevate and empathize" with people who are higher in rank than themselves.

The process of writing chicken soup essays also trained me to have insight into human nature and a strong ability to summarize.

For example, in a salon attended by several CEOs, someone mentioned the issue of "CEO's emotional management". At that time, I pointed out a problem:

There are many CEOs or managers who treat customers, leaders, and partners politely, but treat subordinates simply and rudely. That cannot be said to be "poor emotional management ability", but "snobbishness".

These egotistical managers think it's "ok" that they have poor emotional management skills, but they expect their subordinates to have strong emotional management skills. Those who like to abuse Jobs's "really good people don't care about self-esteem" are exactly such managers.

However, the truth is that according to Jobs’ definition, the vast majority of people are “not good people”. Then, how should ordinary managers who are unable to attract “good people” get along with these “not good people” ? Directly copy Jobs' simple, wrong and rude way of treating "really good people", without any scruples about the feelings of these "not good people"? Or even humiliate them regularly?

Many years ago, Zeng Yu and I said to a boss friend earnestly: "You have to accept the fact that most of your subordinates are far behind you, and some of them are even very far behind you - if they are all different from you If you are equally awesome, then they will all become their own bosses and will not follow you. For you, the most important thing is how to mobilize the enthusiasm of these people who are not 'good enough' in your eyes, rather than with Humiliate them with a sense of superiority!"

However, if the founder himself belongs to the type who is young and ambitious and holds a high position, then he cannot "reduce dimensionality" and empathize with people who are "much weaker" than himself.                   

For example, the following paragraphs:

For those with particularly dazzling auras and strong auras to serve as CEOs, the biggest challenge is "empathy", whether they are strong enough, whether they can unite people, and whether they can build a team's systematic competitiveness.

Why the special emphasis on "empathy"? 

Usually, it is easy for people to "empathize" with someone who is "like me", but it is more difficult to "empathize" if the gap/difference between the two parties is too large. People who are particularly awesome, or who think they are particularly awesome, naturally find it difficult to "empathize" with those who are far behind them. Even, when getting along with the latter, they often instinctively look down Those who even have the words "You are stupid X" written in their eyes; even if they deliberately lower their posture to get along with others, others can easily feel their "condescending".

On the other hand, facing someone stronger than themselves, or someone who is as strong as themselves, they can't help but want to "compete" with each other to see "who is the best". This kind of overt or covert rivalry also made him regard the great people in the team (including subordinates) as competitors... Of course, their real competitors are not others, but their own "self-esteem" ".

Only those "big CEOs" who can overcome the above two weaknesses at the same time can expand their personal awesomeness into "team awesomeness", otherwise, it can only be personal heroism, "suitable for being a chief scientist, but not Be a CEO".

Perhaps, some people will try to refute the above point of view with the case of "survivor bias" like Musk, but this is purely self-deception-in fact, the reason why Musk became it is because his long board is too long so that the negative effects of his short boards have been "hedged", but if a CEO whose long boards are far inferior to Musk's "total copy" of Musk's character, then he will be the best for the employees, the company, and the investors. a disaster.

In contrast, for those CEOs who "lack halo and aura are not strong enough", it is much easier to "empathize" with others and unite with others. I even think that Liu Bang is more able to unite good people than Xiang Yu, which cannot be attributed to "Liu Bang has a big structure, and Xiang Yu is narrow-minded"-in fact, Liu Bang thinks that he is "not strong enough", and he will look up to talents from the bottom of his heart. It is also a very important reason.

Because self-awareness is clear enough, and you think that you are "not awesome enough", it is easier to look up to others from the bottom of your heart. As a result, it is naturally easier to unite with awesome people.

For example, the following paragraphs:

I feel more and more that, similar to AI, personal growth also follows the law of "integration of software and hardware", and the height of the ceiling mainly depends on how strong the "software capability" is; this is especially true for entrepreneurs.

Simply put, IQ, family background, educational background, experience, and professional skills can be regarded as the "hardware" of a person, while feelings, humanistic qualities, empathy and emotional intelligence, mental strength, a decisive and persistent character, the ability to overcome greed, The ability to not care about face and self-reflection can be regarded as human "software". Then, in the process of starting a business, you will find that "hardware" ability can only let you stand on the starting line, and at most help you get out of the first 0.5 steps. In the future, the effect of these hardware resources will depend on how the "software" supports or limits it.

For example, feelings determine to a large extent how strong your sense of mission is and what your vision is, and good humanistic qualities allow you to systematically express such feelings; then, feelings + humanistic qualities It can help you attract like-minded partners - not only internal team members, but even customers, investors and other external partners. 

After comparing many self-driving companies founded by technical experts, I found that those founders/CEOs with strong humanistic qualities, good eloquence (to a large extent also depends on humanistic quality), and high emotional intelligence can often gather together For more technical experts, the "luxury" of the core team is much higher than that of the control group. Of course, the valuation of the company is also much higher than that of the control group.

For another example, a company with a CEO with compassion, good humanistic quality, and strong empathy has a stronger corporate culture.

Many years ago, I believed that whether a company’s corporate culture is strong or not depends to a large extent on the ability of the founder/CEO to pour chicken soup into the team, and I still firmly believe this. The problem is, if the CEO himself has no feelings, then he pours chicken soup on others, and instead of believing them, they will laugh at him; or affect others.

Since most of the founders of self-driving companies are from science and engineering, and under the background of domestic liberal arts and sciences, many science and engineering students do not read books on liberal arts. Therefore, humanistic literacy will be relatively lacking, and usually, The lack of humanistic literacy will lead to the lack of empathy. Therefore, when I observe the founders of technology companies, I pay close attention to their humanistic qualities and empathy.

Why focus on human qualities and empathy? Because humanistic quality and empathy determine the ceiling of the management ability of "men of science and engineering".

In fields where talents cannot flow freely, or even though talents can flow freely, subordinates have average abilities and do not have much freedom to choose. Even if the empathy of the leader is not strong, the subordinates are often upset, and the subordinates can only continue to endure humiliation. ; but in an industry with a relatively high talent density and free flow of talents, if managers do not have strong enough empathy, how can they retain talents?

Two or three years ago, I wondered why Satya Nadella spent almost 25% of his book "Refresh" on "empathy" instead of "management"; until the past year After comparing the internal organizational capabilities and external circle of friends of many start-up companies, which are "highly positively correlated" with the empathy of the founder/CEO, I suddenly realized. 

Generally speaking, founders/CEOs with poor empathy have a relationship with team members as "supervisors" and "subordinates". Vote with your feet. Over time, only mediocre talents who "can't find a better next home" will stay; on the contrary, founders and CEOs with strong empathy are often teachers and students, decision makers and think tanks with team members. Relationships, friendships, and communication are also particularly frank and transparent. Not only is the rate of decision-making mistakes greatly reduced, but also the sense of belonging and "ownership" of talents is also strong.

It can be said that in industries and companies with relatively high talent density, empathy is to a large extent the "first leadership".

To sum up, a CEO with "strong software capabilities" has the ability to raise the "utilization rate of hardware resources" to a very high level - not close to 100%, but can reach 1000% or 10000% (by integrating internal and external talents and resource implementation); if the software capability is not enough, no matter how powerful the hardware is, it is useless.

To put it more harshly, people with poor software capabilities but strong hardware tend to fall into the "resource curse" when doing things-not only may they not pay enough attention to software, but they may also be arrogant and powerful, and thus unable to handle all aspects of the relationship. The corporate culture is poor, and there are few external friends. Then, the competitiveness of the company will naturally become worse and worse.

26248d8306e7d973ff8cdf7835bd2e6b.png (The content in the screenshot was taken during the Shanghai epidemic in April 2022. I saw it from the WeChat Moments of Horizon employees.)

Among the founders of autonomous driving companies that I am familiar with, Yu Kai, CEO of Horizon, Li Yifan, CEO of Hesai, Wason, CEO of Yikong Zhijia, and Xie Chen, CEO of Qichen Guanglun, are all typical examples of "integration of software and hardware"; I have never met, but among the people I have come into contact with indirectly, WeRide CEO Han Xu should also belong to this category; in addition, according to some information I have read in the past, TSMC Zhang Zhongmou and Nvidia Huang Renxun should also belong to this category.

(4) Have entrepreneurial experience and be able to empathize with entrepreneurs

Compared with most media people and investors, I have another unique advantage in judging entrepreneurs: I am an "entrepreneur" myself. Although this kind of "entrepreneurship" may not be appreciated by others, it doesn't matter. For me, the most important thing is that this experience gave me the ability to "empathize" with the founders of technology companies.

Usually, I pay great attention to summarizing my own ability models, so it is natural to be sensitive to the ability models of other entrepreneurs.

Before I had entrepreneurial experience, I didn't have a thorough understanding of the essence of the role of entrepreneur/founder/CEO, but after having a period of entrepreneurial experience, the author began to realize that the essence of this role is "the essence of production factors". organizer".

Once, I chatted with Li Xingyu about the idea that "entrepreneurs are the organizers of factors of production". Xingyu said that this is the most accurate definition of "entrepreneur" he has ever seen.

Factors of production mainly include talent, capital, and land, but there is no doubt that in industries with relatively high knowledge density, the most important factor of production is talent. Among the roles played by entrepreneurs, the most irreplaceable point is precisely the "organizer of factors of production". (My sharing of the CEO capability model in the last section of this article mainly revolves around the positioning of "organizer of factors of production")  

Excellent founders are first of all excellent "organizers of factors of production".

At the beginning of September last year, I once talked with He Xiongsong, Li Xingyu and others about how to look at the founder's "ability model". At all times, he is very optimistic, and he can also give others psychological construction; moreover, he has very strong strategic insight, and can see things five or even ten years later through the fog.

Xingyu said that in 2015, when he was about to resign from his previous company to join Horizon, a senior friend in the semiconductor industry said to him: "Did you make this decision when you had a high fever? I don't see Yu Kai in There is any possibility of success in business." But Li Xingyu still did not waver.

Another middle-level employee of Horizon told me: "I was not that optimistic about Horizon, but I joined because of Yu Kai's personal charm."

Some time ago, I was talking to my friends about the intersection of the autonomous driving supply chain and the robot track. I gave an example:

Horizon has supplied to the sweeping robot market as early as two years ago. Among the top three players in the sweeping robot market, Horizon has at least established a close cooperative relationship with Stone Technology and Cobos.

The founder of Stone Technology, Chang Jing, and Yu Kai are former colleagues, and they have a good personal relationship. The company name of Stone Technology was given by Yu Kai (English to Chinese). The plan asked Chang Jing for opinions, and in the end, Chang Jing "decided" to choose the name "Horizon". (This statement comes from an article on Leifeng.com)

Some time ago, I opened an article about Cobos on "Boss Fan Tong Dai", and the first few words turned out to be "Horizon Yu Kai".

Over the past year or so, I have often heard from some friends that "If Huawei had not been sanctioned by the United States, Horizon would not have escaped." Is this point of view correct? It cannot be said that it is completely wrong, but it is certainly not completely right. Those who said this only saw that the reason for Horizon's rapid rise was "one less competitor", but did not see the entrepreneurial quality behind it. 

(5) The underestimated "emotional element"

A lot of people think I'm "good at marketing myself" and that's true, but it misses the point - the truth is that I understand and empathize with what I do so that I can distill my strengths It is in place, and it can be said to be more "infectious".

In fact, those so-called "marketing capable" people are all passionate about what they are doing. I have also seen a lot of people with poor marketing ability. It is boring to make a business introduction. The root cause is that he himself has no emotion for this matter.

With a strong marketing ability, you will naturally have more opportunities to learn and progress.

In addition, when I talk about cooperation with others, I am usually "emotionally driven". If I think the other party is credible, I won't spend too much time on risk assessment, and then I find that the benefits are "huge". I am not without risk awareness, but a mentality of "if you are my true love, even if you let me down, I will admit it" is manipulating me.

Judging from the results, I haven't really been tricked by anyone. Or whoever, even if I get tricked occasionally, I will "heal the scar and forget the pain" next time-this is "recognizing the truth of life, but still loving life". Of course, I also got a lot of learning opportunities because of this.

Of course, because of the "full of emotion" when speaking, and because the "emotional drive" is too obvious, I am also considered "partially emotional" by some friends. This understanding is not accurate-the "absolute value" of my rational thinking is already very strong. For example, I can often catch the logical errors in articles written by authors with a science and engineering background within a second or two; of course, My emotional mind is equally strong.

Rationality is of course very important, but I feel more and more that emotional elements are more important and scarcer qualities than rationality for a long-term career.

Rational value is often "obvious". To put it bluntly, the threshold for understanding is relatively low, and fools can understand it; but perceptual value (the most fundamental driving force behind many things we do) is often recessive, that is, the threshold for understanding is relatively high. , often only those with a certain experience and a relatively high level of cognition can understand it.

People who are only emotional are often very brainless, while people who are only rational are often boring and even utilitarian.

What is rationality? It is nothing more than a trade-off of pros and cons. What is sensibility? Devotion, sense of mission, values, and sense of belonging are all "emotional elements" that "touch the soul". Weighing the pros and cons is something everyone can do, but "true love" is not available to everyone.

I found that many people who are only rational or only think about problems based on "pros and cons" will have a high trust cost when cooperating with or even getting along with others, so they have very few opportunities to really seize them. With fewer opportunities to learn, the speed of iteration is affected.

Between people and between companies, the higher-dimensional competition is the competition between perceptual elements such as values ​​and sense of mission; it can rational elements determine whether a person or a team can cross a certain threshold , while the perceptual element determines how high the ceiling of a person or a team is.

three. "Mission and Vision Driven Team"

In the early days of the company's establishment, due to my lack of understanding of such things as "sense of mission" and "organizational culture", I did not pay enough attention to them. Therefore, the early recruitment seemed relatively casual. But after several months of practice, I gradually figured out what kind of people I need to recruit. In the past year or so, we have indeed recruited several outstanding people who are more in line with the company's business needs. colleague.

(1) "Most people who resumed diplomatic relations with the Northern Qing Dynasty did not meet this standard"

At the end of July 2021, when chatting with a classmate, I said: "I don't look at the educational background when recruiting, and I will also consider high school students." The result was a sentence: "But I think your recruitment criteria are completely Tailor-made for people who resumed diplomatic relations with the Northern Qing Dynasty." This time, my reaction was: "Actually, most people who resumed diplomatic relations with the Northern Qing Dynasty can't reach it either!"

At that time, my criteria for recruiting authors were as follows:


1. A value-driven person.

I firmly believe that people can be "together" for a long time, and ultimately values ​​must be higher than interests, or that values ​​​​are the core interests.


2. Interest-driven people.

Have a strong curiosity, thirst for knowledge, and insight into business and technology; and writing should be your highest belief, and outputting your observations on business and technology in the form of writing can bring you great benefits pleasure.


3. Have a strong concentration.

Maybe, you are interested in a lot of things, but if you do a lot of interesting things in the same time period, you may not be able to do everything well. Therefore, you need to give up some things in stages, be goal-oriented, and focus on energy. Focus on those two things.


4. Have a craftsman spirit.

When thinking about the direction of topic selection, unique perspectives, and frame building, the barriers are not that high. The real barrier lies in filling the frame with content and polishing it into a high-quality product. This requires strong "engineering capabilities."


5. Ability to control 4-character long texts, and can effectively balance breadth and depth.

Our most basic requirements for the quality of articles: the density of information is higher than that of most reports of most securities companies, and not lower than the average level of "Nine Chapters Zhijia"; the information must be highly scarce, and more than 80% of the information needs to be in other If you can't see it in the media, if it is based on public information, you need to have an exclusive point of view.


6. Strong ability to learn new things quickly.

When encountering content for the first time, you must be able to hand over high-quality manuscripts within two weeks.


7. Have "obsessive-compulsive disorder" for collecting materials.

The quality of an article basically depends on the ability to collect materials, or enthusiasm.


8. The spirit of smashing details.

When encountering questions that you have doubts about, you can break through the casserole and ask the bottom line, dare to constantly question the interviewees and customers, and cross-validate.


9. Be contractual.

When you promise to others, you must deliver on time. If you cannot deliver under special circumstances, you must explain the reasons in advance; you must keep secrets for customers and interviewees, and do not let others trust you.

10. Have closed-loop thinking. Everything is explained, everything is settled, and everything has an echo.


11. Can effectively balance "deliberate" and "quick action". When writing articles, there must be perfectionism and no procrastination.

12. Strong empathy, high emotional intelligence, good at considering others.

You may question, "Why don't you just write an article? Why do you require a high EQ?" If you don't have enough EQ and your words often make interviewees and clients uncomfortable, why should others open up and communicate with you? In addition, as the company continues to grow and grow, the early team members may lead the team at some point in the future. What if you are not empathetic enough and the rest of the team is forced out by you?

13. Soft and hard integration. If you're a boy, you'd better have a feminine mindset; if you're a girl, you'd better have a masculine mindset. If you are a liberal arts student, it is best to have a science and engineering thinking; if you are a science and engineering student, you must have a good humanistic quality and user thinking. Don't bother people with poor humanistic qualities.


14. Don't be too glass-hearted, have strong emotional control ability ;

15. Energetic, strong time management skills.

We do not check attendance, but we must do well, which may be more intense than the rhythm of HBAT.


16. Strong self-discipline ability, strong ability to be alone, and able to get used to working at home.

What I call "self-discipline" does not just require you to "work hard", eat and sleep on time, it is also a part of self-discipline. If it is not a cooperative manuscript from a client, I hope you would rather delay the manuscript than stay up late. Of course, it is your time management ability that needs to be considered at the same time as "delivery on time" and "not staying up late".


17. Be assertive, make mistakes, and iterate quickly.


18. Have a certain foundation in the knowledge of autonomous driving and smart cockpit, and are interested in participating in the great transformation of the Internet of Vehicles and driverless driving, which will change the industrial structure and reshape the human lifestyle.


19. Strong English reading ability, better if listening and speaking is good.


20. Absolute truth, clear self-awareness, honesty.

If you do not fully meet one or two of the above requirements, but you are particularly eager to become a member of us, please tell us truthfully, and we will evaluate how long it will take you to fully integrate. Otherwise, even if you come in, it will be very painful to run in.

When recruiting in January 2023, we added the following items:

If your humanistic literacy, empathy and user thinking are insufficient, even if other conditions other than these three can be met, please do not bother.

Those who have "a strong desire to succeed" are welcome. To do a good job in industry research, you have to really persist for a long time and keep improving. Usually, people with a little ability but "no ambition" can do it, but those who have a "strong desire for success" will feel that they have done it. The cost performance of this matter is too low, so it will be "more and more painful".

The core team of the company is full of idealism, and several major customers commented on us as "a company driven by mission and vision". We welcome students with idealism to join; of course, if you are a utilitarian person , We do not welcome and do not disturb.

When sending a message on a recruitment website some time ago, a colleague said: If you send out this recruitment standard, most potential candidates will have a kind of pressure of "I am not worthy".

We don't give as much money as others, but our requirements are much higher than others. Therefore, it is really not easy to recruit.

(2) "Anyone who doesn't like me must not be worthy of me"

"People who don't understand the value of Jiuzhang are definitely not suitable. Just like when I was single, I kept comforting myself: Anyone who doesn't like me must not be worthy of me." Once, a friend asked me about the recruiters. Progress, saying that she also tried to introduce a few people for us before, but then there was no more content, so I replied. My friend replied to me: "That's the truth. Without a common value perception, the relationship will not go far."

"Whatever.....must be..." There is an allusion behind this sentence.

A few years ago, when I just said goodbye to being single, a classmate came to gossip and asked: "What kind of person is your significant other?" I said: "Of course it is a 'free and useless' person like me." At that time, the classmate said: "It's not that I hate you, only those who are 'free and useless' can look up to you!" I said: "I fully admit that what you said is the truth, but the other side of the truth is that only those who are 'free and useless' can look up to you!" Useless' people are worthy of me!"

In Wang Chuan's previous article, he mentioned how to screen high-quality customers and mentioned the word "firewood". This concept can be applied to almost all relationships that require long-term relationships, and of course it can also be applied to recruitment. Usually, I will introduce myself to the candidate very systematically, and I will answer all the questions of the other party very frankly, but if TA's intention is not strong, I will not "actively fight for it" at all.

In addition, since girls usually prefer stability, they are more repulsive to start-up companies. Therefore, after receiving a girl's resume, my first question is usually: "We are a start-up company with less than 10 people, is it acceptable?" This question can eliminate all candidates who think "stability is everything", and then I only need to talk to those who firmly believe that "development is the last word", which saves a lot of time.

(3) A few girls who believe that "development is the last word"

In the "Review of the First Anniversary of Entrepreneurship" published last year, I mentioned that for a period of time, because I couldn't recruit people, I had the idea of ​​"buying the bottom to teach and train girls". The one and only "prey" is Lan Siqi.

Si Qi didn’t “dislike” us as a start-up company, so she quickly made an appointment for an interview——for the appointment of an interview time soon, Si Qi later interpreted it as “it’s hard to catch one, and hurry up and trick it.”

During the interview, I revealed for the first time the logic that "the first publication wording is not the result of conscious planning, but just to publish a chicken soup article" and "writing itself is the purpose". When hearing the idea that "writing is an end in itself", Si Qi resonated very much, and she said that she is also such a person. This was the first time I met someone "just like myself" in an interview.

In the one-year review article, I have already mentioned that when Lan Siqi said "agree to join" on WeChat, we didn't even have an office. In Hongqiao's office, I arranged for her to find her. Although I was also worried that the "unreliable" request of letting a girl who hadn't even gone through the entry procedures to rent an office would "scare her away", but at the time, I really had no choice.

The second girl who does not "dislike" us as a start-up company is Huang Lin.

When I met Huang Lin, I first "hacked" the many pitfalls in the consulting industry. Huang Lin especially resonated with him and said that he "can't bear it". Five minutes later, Huang Lin went out to answer a phone call. Another colleague who went with me asked me what I thought of this candidate. required".

However, at that time, "You are the one we want" was just my wishful thinking, and Huang Lin hesitated for a long time.

Summary of the first anniversary of Jiuzhang’s business. I originally planned to start writing it in the middle and late March of 2022, and post it on the first birthday on April 2. Two wrote it out. After the article was published, Jiajun sent it to Huang Lin immediately, and Huang Lin decisively decided to join after reading it.

Of all the people in our company, Lin Huang has the best work habits, especially in terms of time management. Last time I told Jiajun, "Huang Lin is someone I can safely entrust my child to as an intern."

The third girl to join us is Zhang Mengyu. The story behind this easily reminds me of my "young self".

On the afternoon of September 2, 2022, during the interval between meeting two clients, Jiajun and I took a break in a coffee shop in Pudong, Shanghai. During this period, I received a resume + cover letter + smart driving domain control in the mailbox device research report. The general idea of ​​a cover letter is as follows:

Originally investing, I felt that the original institution was not focused enough and not conducive to my own learning, so I hoped to focus on learning in one industry. After exploring for a while, I found that the track I was interested in was intelligent driving;

When writing the report on the domain controller of autonomous driving, I read the reports of many securities companies and investment institutions, and found that many sources of information in the report were "Jiuzhang Zhijia", so I followed it to Jiuzhang public account;

I have read all the original articles on Jiuzhang’s official account for a year and a half. In the process, I further realized that the understanding of autonomous driving in Jiuzhang’s articles crushed most of the reports of most brokerages, so , hoping to join Jiuzhang and study with us.

However, what attracted me the most in the cover letter was this sentence: Because in the process of tracking the progress of the industry and looking for information to understand the related technologies behind it, I didn't feel that I was working hard, but more of a natural and natural process. The words "I didn't feel like I was working hard" made me feel "very well matched".

Originally, I decided two months ago that "in the future, I will recruit people who have graduated from top 985 or prestigious universities in Europe and the United States"-usually, these people have high morale and are unwilling to do content for a long time. It is said that the opportunity cost of doing content is too high. Zhang Mengyu received his undergraduate degree from Peking University and his master's degree in the United States. From his educational background alone, he was already "unqualified for employment", but the sentence "I didn't feel like I was working hard" in the cover letter made me "break my guard" instantly. 

Because, I myself "didn't feel like I was working hard". The picture below is my view at the end of 2014.

2c797c3ee43a67da7401683bf7685f81.png 

I called her right away and learned that her expected salary was more than twice what we could pay. I also said frankly that we are a start-up company that is still losing money and does not have the conditions to raise wages through financing. If you really want to learn with us, you have to be mentally prepared to live in poverty.

I thought this sentence would make her "retire in spite of the difficulties", but Mengyu said that she was looking at the learning opportunity and didn't care so much about the salary. At that time, I concluded that this was a "long-termist." I originally planned to return to Suzhou that night after meeting the client in Zhangjiang, but in order to get to know this rare "long-termist", I changed my ticket and decided to stay in Shanghai that night.

The next morning, we chatted for two hours in a cafe in Pudong. When talking about "Our salary may not reach 1/2 of your expected salary", I mentioned a point that Boss Direct Employment CEO Zhao Peng mentioned two years ago:

In the past few years, the salary bubble of the Internet and investment institutions has been relatively serious. Many people have received salaries that exceed their actual ability at this stage, so that when they change jobs, they find that it is basically impossible for other companies to pay the same standard salaries, and even the decline is even lower. Not low; but many parties lack self-knowledge, so they always fail to achieve high and low, and because of this, they miss many valuable opportunities.

I reminded her: You must have a correct understanding of this issue. Another applicant would most likely think that I am in PUA, but Zhang Mengyu fully agrees with this point of view. This is very rare.

There was one problem, though: While she was ok with the low pay, we had no vacancies at the time. I had a hard time telling her the truth. To this, Zhang Mengyu's reaction was: I can wait. I don't plan to look for a job anymore, I'm going to study autonomous driving part-time with you, and I'll come in when you have a job vacancy.

This answer is perfect. But should I believe it, or should I not believe it? Then, I "surprised" a question involving personal privacy: How much deposit do you have now?  

She was surprised, and asked me why I raised this question. I explained: "I always think that it is difficult for children from poor families to have poetry and distant places. You have to think clearly. If you don't have enough savings, even if you are very determined now Resolute, you can only stay with us for a few months, and in that case, the harvest will not meet expectations."

After she dispelled my concerns, I believed that she really "can wait". Then, we agreed that she would write a part-time job first, and then I would take her to participate in interviews and study opportunities in Shanghai later.

In the following two months, I took Zhang Mengyu to participate in many interviews, and even met many clients—some of them are very familiar friends. Once, a friend asked Zhang Mengyu: "Are you a member of Jiuzhang now?" Zhang Mengyu said that this question is suitable for me to answer, but I said it was difficult: "Emotionally, but not in name." Forget it.” Then, my friend’s reaction was: Scumbag!

It was not until November 23 that Zhang Mengyu officially joined us.

Later, looking back on Mengyu ’s journey of joining Jiuzhang, the similarity of my mental journey to joining Jianyue Car Review in May-September 2017 was more than 90%—to focus on a specific industry, and to search all the media in the direction of autonomous driving. I found that the professionalism here is the strongest; I can accept a salary reduction in order to strive for better learning opportunities; when I first decided to join, the company had no vacancies, but "I can wait".

In 2020, twice in 2020, when my former boss, Mr. Yu Jianyue, sent the resumes of the candidates to the group, he said with emotion "the female version of Su Qingtao" and "another female version of Su Qingtao" (at that time, our team There has never been another person like me who has a strong sense of direction + high enough concentration + strong enough self-motivation, so the boss has strong expectations for the "next Su Qingtao"), however, after talking with the other two After comparing the "female version of Su Qingtao", I found that Zhang Mengyu is the most authentic "female version of Su Qingtao". Ha ha ha ha

Of course, Zhang Mengyu is much stronger than Su Qingtao at the same age.

(4) "You can go now"

Jiuzhang's real breakthrough in the business model began after Liu Jiajun, the head of consulting, joined.

Before joining Jiuzhang, Jiajun worked in procurement, project management, and strategy in OEMs, and later worked in a consulting company focusing on the automotive industry for three years in the direction of autonomous driving consulting, with strong professional capabilities. But for me, this is not the most important thing - if I pay most attention to these superficial things, it would be too superficial.

Jiajun's core competitiveness is value. On the morning of November 8, 2021, we should have reached a high degree of consensus on values ​​in less than 10 minutes. These values ​​are all centered around the key pain points of the consulting industry.

During the period from 2016 to 2017, I really wanted to join the consulting industry, but a mentor who had been in a consulting company for many years taught me a lesson earnestly:

You have misunderstood the consulting industry. You are most interested in doing research, but in fact, consulting companies often do not pay so much attention to research, but are more sales-oriented —many consulting companies with a dazzling halo are not based on creation. Value is the goal, but the goal is to make more money. In consulting companies, partners are often responsible for "taking projects", and many of the plans are made by fresh graduates or even interns. As a result, the quality cannot be guaranteed, and customers often complain about it.

Later, I read some self-driving reports made by "hugely influential" consulting companies, and I basically agreed with my previous views.

Once, I chatted with a friend who used to be a Tier 1 strategy in a German department about the pain points of the consulting industry. She said that she once dissed the global partner of the so-called "International TOP 2" consulting company face to face: "There are 150 pages of PPT as soon as I come up. Most of them are useless and seem like a waste of my time." "Only 40% of what you make is valuable to me, don't you even wonder what the other 60% I need looks like?"

A common problem among people in large consulting companies is that they like to emphasize their own "methodology" and hope to "rely on a set of algorithms to solve all scenarios" . Not much value.

A friend from the strategy department of an international autopilot chip manufacturer said: I have read many reports made by securities companies and consulting companies, and found that the people who made the reports "know Chinese very well" -the professional value is very low.

We once sorted out all the existing reports on autonomous driving in the energy market, and the conclusion is consistent with my intuition: the content is too macroscopic and too empty, and it is only suitable for laymen to read.

From the perspective of professional users, whether it is a report made by a securities firm or a consulting company, most of them have a common problem: they are very long and have a lot of words, but most of them are made up of public information that others already know. There are not many scarce values; as for the knowledge of the industry, I dare not expect extravagantly.

I can confidently say that in terms of effective information density, Jiuzhang’s free articles are much higher than the paid reports made by many consulting companies . In fact, one of the core values ​​in the nine chapters is "non-essential, no nonsense".

However, the real problem of big consulting firms is not the lack of professionalism, but the lack of sense of mission.

Usually, large consulting companies do not focus on any specific industry from the boss level, which not only leads to their inability to guarantee their professionalism in a specific field, but also leads to their lack of affection for a specific industry, so they have no sense of mission and insufficient motivation to get things done. Therefore, we should be able to see that at the practical level, the value displayed by the big consulting companies is "delivery to customers".

In the consulting industry, a very common phenomenon is that project managers who have more contact with customers and have a certain affection for customers hope to achieve more than 80 points within their own capabilities, and work hard towards 90 points, while partners, bosses, etc. Saying "60" points is enough. In fact, those consultants with a sense of mission generally look down on their bosses.

Interestingly, generally speaking, even in the same consulting organization, those who do organizational management consulting are more motivated than those who do market research to improve the quality of the solutions. Why? Institutions that organize management consulting usually need to "stay in the factory" for a period of time. They have more contact with customers and have a deeper relationship with them, so they are embarrassed to do too badly.

The above paragraphs were originally purely my "subjective conjecture". As a result, after sharing this conjecture with a group of consulting candidates, it actually won a strong resonance.

Before the Spring Festival, I heard from a friend of an investment institution that his first job after graduating from university was in a leading international consulting company. Since the company earned 3 million yuan in consulting fees from a state-owned enterprise with poor results, he Leave the consulting industry. Since then, he has never worked with a consulting firm again.

I am a person with "super insight" into human nature. Many times, I did not do special research, but relied on my intuition to "speech" a few words, and I was able to win the hearts of people who are more familiar with these things. resonance. On this point, others "don't accept it".

"Intuition" is actually my "deep learning algorithm". The so-called "intuitive accuracy" is not a talent, but behind it is the accumulated information and the cognition formed on this basis. Similar to big data analysis, there is a correlation between conclusions and information, but there is no causal relationship, or the causal relationship is not direct and obvious enough, it is difficult for people to explain clearly with logic, so it is called "intuition".

This kind of deep learning algorithm ability is in the same line as the "building data closed-loop ability" mentioned in Chapter 2 of this article.

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The picture above is an excerpt from an article by Liu Run - I first had this prejudice against big consulting companies, and then read this article, not the other way around.

During the preparation of Jiuzhang, I approached a friend who had done consulting work in the autonomous driving industry in a large consulting company, and hoped that the other party would join me as a partner and form a consulting team. Thinking about how to "make money"? Within half an hour, I wanted to withdraw.

Of course, this has nothing to do with personal conduct, but is caused by "not focusing". As long as there is no focus, even a person with good character may have no affection for the industry and thus lack a sense of mission.

On the other hand, there are quite a few consulting companies with a strong sense of professionalism and mission, but they are basically "small and beautiful" teams that are highly concentrated in a certain segment.

The above two paragraphs seem to be a bit like "out of focus is the root of all evil". That's right, if you don't believe me, you can replace the words "consulting company" in the above paragraphs with "public relations company" and find that the same is true. Yes, out of focus is indeed the "root of all evil".

("Not focusing is the root of all evil", this is a golden sentence, please take out your small notebook and write it down)

In addition, in consulting companies, the people who pay the most are often those who do business (many partners focus on business), and the people who do products get very little. How can they recruit high-level consultants? Even if recruited, how to keep it? Therefore, it is very inevitable that the consulting company's products are not well-made and the resulting "look down" by customers is easy.

Consulting companies that easily win the respect of clients are often those with small and beautiful teams. In addition to "professional because of focus", there is another characteristic of the small and beautiful team: the focus of the boss/partner is on making products, not on sales. For these companies, the source of projects is often the repurchase of old customers and "person-to-person transmission".

That day, when I casually expressed the above views, Jiajun especially resonated with him, and I quickly concluded that he was the one who agreed with my three views.

Then, I shared a detailed experience. "I found that many people went out for interviews and got a lot of material, but they basically didn't write the essential part, because the granularity of those things is too fine, and it is too trivial and boring to do." In this regard, Jia Jun said that when they sorted out the interview minutes, they generally required "verbatim drafts." It can be seen that he is a very down-to-earth person.

Down-to-earth, it seems that there is no threshold, but in fact, this quality is too rare. In an article in July 2021, I joked: Our core barrier is that I am almost 40 years old and still "personally" organize the recordings. Because, generally speaking, very young people don't have the patience to organize the recordings carefully.

As mentioned earlier, we have one item (4) in the author's recruitment conditions that is "strong engineering ability". Most people probably don't understand what this requirement means, but Jiajun does. He said that the interview records need to be "verbatim drafted", which is actually part of the engineering ability. Later, once, when I compiled the minutes, Jia Jun was still worried and wanted to check it himself.

What other things were discussed that day, I have no memory.

Jiajun later said that I only chatted with him for less than 20 minutes before I said , "You can go now." He was so scared that he went back and told his family, "Teacher Su probably doesn't want me." 

I don't remember ever saying something like that, but even if I did, it wouldn't be outrageous. "A consensus has been reached on the core concept, and it can already be determined. There is no need to talk further."

(5) "Everyone in our company is very similar"

In the inaugural article, I once quoted a sentence from a senior, "After setting off, you can find like-minded people." Judging from the results of recruitment, this statement has been fulfilled.

In the third week after Si Qi joined the company, I took her to communicate with friends in the industry. During this period, Si Qi said, "Everyone in our company is very similar." This was originally just one of my goals, but I didn't expect it to be realized so soon?

About 12 years ago, I had a point of view: I basically don't believe in the saying "find someone who complements you". If two people are too different, there will be many conflicts in communication, and it will be difficult to complement each other; in fact, the higher the similarity, the stronger the trust between them, and the easier it is to complement each other.

This statement was originally aimed at the issue of choosing a love and marriage partner, but I later discovered that it is also applicable to the workplace.

So, what are the specific aspects of "people in our company are all alike"?

Among the 10 people in our team , at least half have "social fear " - social fear, which is more common among people who prefer to think deeply.

All of us have a high level of focus. In the past many years, I especially dislike staying in the office, mainly because many people in the office are doing nothing, chatting too much, and the noise pollution is serious; but our office is very quiet, and there is almost no chatting at other times except eating takeaway at noon. If people who don't know the truth come in, they may mistakenly think that we "have a bad relationship with each other and don't want to say a word".

Some time ago, my dad sent a few boxes of apples from my hometown to Suzhou, and my mom reminded me to "take it for my colleagues to taste", but I didn't bring it: those guys are too focused on their work, the fruits that need to be washed, They never eat it. I once put apples on the desks of three colleagues and found that three weeks had passed and they hadn't washed them. Also, a customer gave us nuts before the Spring Festival, but no one has opened them yet.

We all have strong engineering capabilities. As mentioned earlier, the verbatim draft of the interview recordings we require is the most basic content of engineering capabilities.

As mentioned earlier, I once proposed that "in principle, no graduates from top 985 universities and prestigious universities in Europe and America should be recruited" because I was worried about their ability to implement projects. But in practice, many people in our team from the top 985 or famous schools in Europe and America are very patient when dealing with trivial details. This again confirms what I mentioned in the second chapter of this article, "Once the status of L4 companies is adjusted, they can also have strong engineering capabilities."

Most of us are compulsive about collecting material. Many of my article materials have been collected for more than one year, and some have been for more than four years; although Jiajun is doing reports, his study habits are not much different from mine - obviously the report can be delivered, but as long as he encounters Some new material, he will iterate again.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is one of the core components of self-drive. For a "patient" with obsessive-compulsive disorder, as long as the quality of what he makes does not meet his own standards, he will be very painful, so he will force himself to change.

This kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder can ensure that we can squeeze out the value of limited materials, which is also part of the engineering ability. 

Some time ago, after revising an article by Zhang Mengyu, I planned to read all the interview minutes again to see if some valuable content was missed. As a result, after reading the original material of 50,000 words, I found that , The value of these materials has been "eaten and squeezed" by her.

People who write articles are more or less obsessive-compulsive, but everyone's focus will be different. Some time ago, I was arguing with Si Qi about how to change a certain detail in the article. When I "can't tell her", I threw out the sentence "I have obsessive-compulsive disorder" (thinking that this sentence can "overwhelm the enemy from the momentum" ) , and then, after a while, she responded with "Who the hell has OCD" after discovering one of my loopholes.  The implication seems to be "my OCD is more advanced than your OCD".

Not only internal colleagues, but several of our part-time authors also have obvious obsessive-compulsive disorder.

When Zuo Chenggang added me on WeChat in February last year to submit an article, he said: "I am similar to you in some ways. I have a hobby of collecting materials and have a hunger for new knowledge." At that time, I thought I had encountered a "big fool" "Are.

Data closed-loop capability. The second chapter of this article mentions my understanding of how to build a "data closed-loop system". Although Liu Jiajun does consulting and does not write articles, his habit and thinking of building data closed-loop capabilities are exactly the same as mine. In addition, according to my observations in the past few months, Zhang Mengyu and Lan Siqi's habits in this area are also good.

(6) "Colleagues with a sense of mission are my real angel investors"

Concentration, engineering capabilities, and data closed-loop capabilities are important, but they are not the most irreplaceable value of the core team of Jiuzhang. Our most irreplaceable value is the sense of mission.

In October last year , I posted a chicken soup article about moving to Suzhou High-speed Railway New City, and unexpectedly got a "super big client". When they come to us, they don't "come to suppliers with clear business needs", but "I think you are reliable, let's see what you do specifically, and whether it can match our needs. According to the logic of "up", first lock in people, and then look for cooperation opportunities.

Because I write a lot of chicken soup articles and my circle of friends is relatively active, "I have done too much self-marketing", so friends in the industry know more about my sense of mission, but in fact, Jiajun's sense of mission is also very strong.

Although Jiajun joined the company almost 8 months after its establishment, not only did he contribute as much to the team building and business as the founder, but also his sense of mission was at the founder level —these , are all reflected when the salary is not high and the options are not many.

Jiajun, like me, is also the kind of person who regards seeking knowledge as the highest interest . Therefore, when doing things, he is less utilitarian and pays more attention to value creation.

According to my conclusion, the most important criterion for judging whether a person has a sense of mission and the degree of mission he or she is engaged in/is about to engage in is to make the following assumptions: If you are really financially free, do you still have a sense of mission? Are you still willing to continue doing this? If you were tempted by a job opportunity with a much higher salary than this, or if the company encountered difficulties and your income dropped, would you not hesitate to stay? If an outside force threatened your mission, vision, or values, would you die or surrender? 

These three are actually "wealth and honor cannot be promiscuous, poverty and lowliness cannot be moved, and might cannot be subdued." As long as you can achieve one, you will have a sense of mission. ). 

In August last year, I communicated with a major client of the consulting business. During this period, it happened that their department had a team building dinner. The team leader invited me in to say hello to his colleagues. After I entered, the person in charge greeted his colleagues When introducing Jiuzhang, he said: This is a mission- and vision-driven team.

At the end of the year, I was listening to Yi Zhongtian's "Three Kingdoms" while running for a while. There was a point in it that "Liu Bei is Zhuge Liang's angel investor", but from my point of view, Zhuge Liang is Liu Bei's angel investor.

That day, I posted the following paragraph in the circle of friends:

In the early stage of starting a business, the most irreplaceable angel investor may not be an investment institution, but the first partners and colleagues who choose to trust you and have the same mission and vision as you, and those who bring the team/old department/friends to join Partners/colleagues, especially. The "only" money that the investment institution puts out, even if the investment is wrong, the risk is relatively controllable, while the partners and colleagues invest their own (and old department/friend's) life, which is a bigger bet.

Indeed, Jiajun is my angel investor.

Another colleague with a strong sense of mission is Lan Siqi.

In terms of professional knowledge reserve, Siqi is still relatively weak (after all, she is young and enters the industry late), and it will take a long time to make up for it, but the "boss thinking" she usually shows when thinking about problems , but it often surprises me.

When Si Qi joined the last company, there were only 5 employees in total, but when she left, the total number of employees reached 80. She witnessed what issues the founders need to pay attention to and how to adjust the organizational structure during the company's expansion process. This experience is invaluable.

In October last year, I went with Siqi to participate in the CEO-centered salon organized by Haoshu Capital and Chentao Capital. At the end, when talking about the company's management style, Siqi suddenly said: "Like Jiuzhang This kind of recruitment pays special attention to the team with the same three views, and one day even if the salary cannot be paid, some people will be willing to stay."

I found out before that many senior and older colleagues do not have a good understanding of organizational culture. It is not easy for Si Qi to understand this level at such a young age.

I used to say before that if you stay in a big company for too long, people tend to lack overall thinking and think about problems from the standpoint of a screw. This result; Correspondingly, people who have stayed in small start-up companies for a long time are more likely to have global thinking and "empathize" with the founders.

When I was 24-25 years old, I was doing project management in a company with nearly 3,000 employees. In that year, I, a low-level employee, had constant conflicts with middle-level and low-level managers in many departments of the company-the specific manifestation was that I kept despising them ( Because the focus of their consideration is how to get rid of their own responsibilities, while I am paying more attention to the overall interests of the company), they kept suppressing me.

Later, I felt that I was "thinking from the perspective of the chairman", while they were thinking from the perspective of a screw. It wasn't until recently that I realized that the essence of this contradiction is actually the conflict between those who have a sense of mission and those who don't.

Si Qi is such a person who can "think from the perspective of the chairman", just like when I was young.

In this sense, Si Qi is my other angel investor.

(7) "People with a sense of mission are the ruling class"

"A person's greatest happiness is to find his mission in this life in the middle of his life, when he is a creative man." I especially resonate with Zweig's words.

Last year, Li Xingyu said in an article that the management model of the technology industry is "mission- and vision-driven", which I deeply agree with. And, from my own experience and my observations over the past few years, when things are driven by mission and vision, people's adolescence will be very long.

In fact, since I discovered my "mission", I actually started to "reverse growth".

I lived a heavy life in high school. On the one hand, I found that I was "too ignorant" and had too much inferiority complex after I entered the city from the countryside. On the eve of graduating from high school, my deskmate at the time gave me the appraisal in the message book that "I am not open enough to live". Looking back now, I feel like a "middle-aged man over forty years old" in high school.

During college, my mentality was much better than in high school, mainly because I discovered some really interesting things, such as philosophy. But the confusion and anxiety about the future have always troubled me, so I have always looked "old-fashioned".

My real reverse growth began at the age of 26, because I found the direction that gave me a real "sense of mission" - codewords (in essence, what I am really interested in is not words, but thoughts and wisdom , but text is the best carrier). In the next few years, I typed many words on toilets and buses, and some of them became classics. A series of unintentional moves later played a big role in my many career transitions.

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Here I wish every colleague with a sense of mission to be able to reverse growth; if you have not found your mission yet, I also wish you can find it as soon as possible.

One day in the second half of last year, my three-year-old son put forward a point of view that "people who are not good at work are pitiful at work, but those who are good at work are not pitiful at work", which clearly stated the truth about the workplace.

However, I think that this "greatness" cannot be limited to the ability, but also includes the condition of "a strong sense of mission". The weight of authority is much higher than ability-a person with great ability but no sense of mission is pitiful, while a person with average ability but strong sense of mission is not pitiful.

Therefore, it is more accurate to say that "it is pitiful for people who have no sense of mission to go to work , but it is not pitiful for people with a sense of mission to go to work ."

In the second half of last year, a CEO of a start-up company talked to me about some employees' "fear of leadership" mentality. She said that she grew up under the straight-forward management style overseas, and it was difficult for her to understand the feelings of domestic employees who were "fearful of leadership".

In this regard, my explanation is:

From my own long-term observation, when the "leader" is not the kind of guy with a bad temper, those who have the mentality of "fear of leadership" are usually those with a strong "worker mentality" (even if he is at a very high level). High), on the contrary, those who "think from the perspective of the chairman" will not be "afraid of the leader" (even if his level is very low).

One day, I suddenly thought of a question: a "executive" who has no sense of mission and has a serious migrant mentality, and an "ordinary employee" who has a strong sense of mission and can "think from the perspective of the chairman", which one is better? Is it a "core member" of a team? It should be the latter.

Those with a sense of mission govern others, and those without a sense of mission govern others.

I slowly discovered that in the workplace, those who work for their love and have a sense of mission are the real "ruling class", while those who only work for the "rice bowl" (whether it is a clay rice bowl, an iron rice bowl or a golden rice bowl) lack a mission Those who are affected are the "ruled class".

Under my definition, in many large companies, there may be a funny situation in which excellent ordinary employees belong to the "ruling class", while the middle and even high-level employees who are only struggling for money belong to the "ruled class".

For the founder/CEO of the company, if most of the recruited team members belong to the "ruling class" who are particularly passionate about this cause and have a strong sense of mission, it is considered to have entered "communism".

For individuals, the only way to avoid becoming a "ruled class" is to find what they really love, find a sense of mission, and build core capabilities on this basis, and finally realize the unity of material life and spiritual life.

(8) "The 'ruling class' cannot be punished"

After finding team members with a sense of mission, your management style needs to match the needs of these people with a sense of mission.

Before Jiuzhang was established, I didn't even have the experience of managing a single person, so basically I didn't have any management ability. But I understand one thing: the most important thing in management is to recruit people with strong enough self-motivation, and then to clearly define the responsibilities of each person, and then to empower each other among colleagues. In addition, the best management is that there is no manage.

Because a truly self-disciplined person doesn’t need management; in fact, once you manage, he feels insulted —self-disciplined people often look down on those who are not self-disciplined and need to be managed. Isn't it "suspected of insult" to be managed by "non-self-disciplined" people? 

Don't insult others casually, which is the most basic bottom line when getting along with colleagues. Unfortunately, many managers with "too strong desire for power" can't do it. In fact, feeling "insulted" is the core reason why many outstanding talents leave, but because this reason is too hidden, many managers do not realize it.

People with a sense of mission and self-motivation should not be managed by rules and regulations, but should be "managed" by corporate culture.

One day, I suddenly realized that the difference in the role of process system/blunt KPI and corporate culture/mission and vision in company management is roughly equivalent to the difference between "rule of law/rule of law" and "rule of etiquette".

The process system/blunt KPI has an assumed premise that "it is not self-driven, it is human nature", so it often treats "mission and vision-driven" employees in the same way as "external pressure-driven" employees , so that the latter category of employees feel suffocated, and even feel "insulted". Therefore, if the process system and KPI are too rigid, the latter type of employees will be forced to leave.

The corporate culture/mission and vision has an assumed premise that "everyone drives themselves", but this premise does not exist. Therefore, if management relies too much on corporate culture, it may also cause those who do not drive themselves to fish in troubled waters and hitchhike, and thus it is unfair to those who have a sense of mission and truly drive themselves in terms of benefit distribution.

A more ideal approach is to learn from the ancient state governance that "the etiquette is not for the common people, and the criminal law is not for the doctor", use the process system/rigid KPI to manage those "common people" (people without a sense of mission), and use the enterprise Culture/Mission and Vision Manage and serve those "ruling class" (those with a sense of purpose).

For individuals, it is to strive to be a "ruling class" and not a "common people".

(9) "How to recruit idealistic people like you"

A few years ago, a younger brother asked me : "When recruiting, how to select idealistic people like you?" I understand that the "idealism" in his mouth means that he has enough love for this career and has enough self-motivation. Those who are willing to go all out, will answer: "The money given is as small as it is."

At the end of February, I once talked about this point of view with a classmate, and the other party "unexpectedly" resonated particularly.

The reason is actually very simple. If you give a lot of money, all kinds of people who fish in troubled waters will be willing to do it; but if you give enough money, only those who really love this thing will be willing to do it.

Half a year after Jiajun joined the job, seeing his actual contribution and sense of mission, I suddenly thought of a point of view written by Han Feizi in "Reward and Punishment", which roughly said: For the best people, rewards are useless; For inferior people, punishment doesn't work. 

The second half of the sentence refers to those "lawless" people, and the first half of the sentence actually means that "people who truly have a sense of mission do not need incentives" (incentives are more accurate than "rewards").

At a certain point in my career, I was the lowest paid team, but I showed the highest sense of purpose, so I understand this very well. Later I found out that Jiajun is also such a person.

For this kind of people with a real sense of mission, even if there is little or no material incentive, they will still put in a lot of enthusiasm and strive to achieve 100 points within their ability; if the money is in place, but the work is not done OK/done, they can't rest easy. Therefore, to be precise, such people do not need incentives, and the material rewards given to them should be characterized as "rewards" rather than "incentives."

In view of the above qualities, people with a sense of mission are also the most suitable for being prostituted by leaders/bosses/suppliers. In fact, I realized a long time ago that one of the mainstream values ​​in our society is that "people with sentiments/sense of mission/idealism deserve to be poor and deserve to be prostituted. We must take advantage of them." ", although no one has ever explicitly said this sentence, but this concept really exists.

Comparing my heart to my heart, the most important principle when I dealt with the issue of benefit distribution is "don't let people with feelings suffer/chill their hearts", otherwise, what fairness is there?

Corresponding to the "price discrimination" for people with a sense of mission, large companies are used to using benefits (mainly options/equity) to lure some people without a sense of mission to join, and I completely disagree with this.

On the one hand, people without a sense of mission are less likely to pursue work goals than to pursue interests. Even if the work is not done well, they still hope that "money can't be less". In order to prevent these people who have no sense of mission from "just taking money and not working", the company needs to set up a complex management mechanism, which will lead to extremely high management costs.

On the other hand, the tool of equity/option incentive, if not used correctly, will become a kind of harm to the career of employees. 

For example, at a certain stage, he feels that this platform is no longer suitable for him, and it is very painful to do it. Although there are opportunities for transformation, he compared the equity and options provided by the current company and found that the opportunity cost of transformation is too high. , So, continue to suffer in the current position of the current company . After a long time, skills will degenerate, mid-life crisis, or depression, and there will be no suitable opportunities for transformation in the future. 

In the most ideal situation, equity/option incentives should be given to those who "want to work here" from the bottom of their hearts, as a reward for those who really love this career, rather than being used to tie down "I don't want to work here". Someone who loves you, but for the sake of money, I can't bear to leave you" person. In practice, the latter approach is often a lose-lose. 

When recruiting, you should talk more about your feelings and examine the three views. When the three views are clear enough, talk about benefits. Only in this way can people with "insufficient sense of mission" be prevented from mixing in.

Last summer, we encountered such a thing in recruitment: a candidate has participated in our project in the form of a part-time job for more than two months. At the critical moment, he wrote us a job application letter, which was very rational and full of pros and cons. After reading the letter full of pros and cons, I rejected him decisively.

why? A cover letter with only pros and cons is like when you propose to a person, you first list the "ten disadvantages of marrying someone else", and then list the "ten advantages of marrying you", but there is no sentence "I love you". you". He probably doesn't have much emotion for this matter, so he won't be very passionate about it.

Only the pros and cons are weighed, and it is no different from "exquisite egoists" or even "rough egoists", so it is easy to "betray" when the industry encounters setbacks. I prefer candidates driven by "irrational" factors such as a sense of mission, sense of value, and sense of belonging.

People with enthusiasm and a strong sense of mission, even if their abilities are average at present, can become core members of the company in all likelihood over time; but those without enthusiasm and a sense of mission, no matter how capable they are, are only suitable for A "ordinary employee".

In the early days of the company's establishment, the core team/key members should all be "true love faction". As the scale expands, "pros and cons balance faction" can be allowed to come in, but "pros and cons balance faction" is usually not worth the company to invest a lot of energy in cultivating. Instead, it needs to be plug-and-play, and you can get started right away. For this kind of people, our reward is mainly to provide them with opportunities to learn in the scene and industry resources. 

Four. "We have no real competition"

In September 2021, on the day of the interview, Lan Siqi asked a question: Who are your competitors?

My answer is this: It seems that many platforms do the same or similar business as us, but in fact, we have no real competitors.

(1) Arts students should have science and engineering thinking, and science and engineering students should have user thinking

Our content positioning is "to help those who do technology understand the market, and to help people who do market understand technology." The content of this style requires the author to be able to "combine both arts and science", that is, liberal arts students must have science and engineering thinking, and science and engineering students must have humanistic qualities.

However, the reality is that most of the people who grew up in the educational environment of liberal arts and science in China do not have the thinking of science and engineering, and most of the students of science and engineering do not have humanistic literacy.

Most of the media are pure liberal arts students, and their thinking in science and engineering is not strong enough. Therefore, it is difficult to guarantee professionalism and depth when writing technical articles.

I am an exception among liberal arts students, probably because I have read more philosophy and law, and I have written articles in the past ten years, and I especially hope to play logical reasoning games. I have a strong science and engineering thinking, and I usually change some science and engineering backgrounds Professional articles written by the author, it is easy to find out the logical errors in them very keenly.

On the other hand, for science and engineering students to write scientific and technological articles, of course there is no major obstacle in terms of professionalism and depth, but if the humanistic quality is not enough, they often lack empathy, and then "lack user thinking" , and only they can write things Understand, others can not understand .

Before, the CEO of a lidar company told me that he had sent several professional articles I wrote to his employees as teaching materials. However, such things may not be able to be written by industry front-line experts. Because people in the industry write articles, the default is that 1+1 must be equal to 2, so they have no motivation to explain some basic concepts, which also leads to the lack of the concept of "mind map" in what they write, so it is difficult for others to understand.

When I wrote the chicken soup article in 2015, I had a requirement for myself: high school students would not find it profound when reading it, and doctoral supervisors would not find it superficial after reading it. Doctoral supervisor, and high school students. Now, I have similar standards for my colleagues to write technical articles: people who are in the market don’t think it’s profound, and people who do technology don’t think it’s superficial.

Once, Mr. Bai Junbo, the CTO of Yika Zhiche, talked with me after reading a series of middleware articles I wrote. I raised the above point of view. At that time, Mr. Bai said:

You are also equivalent to the middleware between professional technology and audience. Managers, collaborators in non-professional fields, and industry researchers can directly invoke the issues they need to care about through your middleware, without having to go through the specific details themselves. This is also an important significance of the existence of think tanks.

Is there anyone who can make such a "middleware" with both arts and science? In fact, there are many, but people with these abilities usually disdain to be a "self-media".

(2) "If the sense of mission is not on the same level, don't talk about benchmarking"

In August last year, when I was having dinner with a friend from the marketing department of an autonomous driving company and chatting about Jiuzhang’s consulting business, the other party asked: “Who are you targeting?” I said: “I have never thought about who , we just do it according to our own preferences. In addition, I don’t think any type of company is worthy of benchmarking against us.”

My friend was taken aback for a moment, and then couldn't help giving me a thumbs up for my "defiant". Because he admitted that he had been charged IQ tax by the so-called "international leading consulting company" with millions of consulting reports.

At the beginning of January, I said to a colleague who had just joined the company:

In the lifetime of Jiajun and me, in the think tank of the autonomous driving track, Jiuzhang will not have a real competitor-I don’t mean revenue, but the value of continuous creation and the degree of respect (yes "respect", not "respect"). Why?

Let me talk about the media business first. For us, the most beneficial point is that not only can the media not make much money, but even if you want to maintain its character and not degrade, you may have to "use love to generate electricity" and accept long-term losses. People can't survive, and neither can people who only love but don't have another business to transfuse the media. Of course, we will use the profits from consulting and other businesses to transfuse the media business, so that this model can continue to work forever.

There are also many companies that use the money earned from other businesses to support a self-media team. However, the essential difference here is: for them, media/articles are just a means to attract traffic and obtain resources for other businesses, while for me It is said that the article is the purpose itself, and this is my life.

Many people write articles to do industry research, the purpose is to accumulate industry knowledge and contacts, and make investment, but the purpose of my plan to invest in 2017 is to "accumulate writing materials and write higher-quality articles". My purpose "causes" me to ignore many temptations, so I can focus more than others.

Sometimes, some enthusiastic people will tirelessly suggest to me how to design a business model and use the "connections" accumulated in articles to realize it. I usually don't have the patience to listen to such suggestions. Why should I spend my "life" to work for those non-think tank businesses? The non-think tank business that does not match our positioning may be able to earn a lot of money, but the price paid for earning this money, to me, not only means mental loss, but also means "short life". Possibility, I'm in a bit of pain.

I regard the media as my life. How can those who regard the media as a "traffic portal" have the ability to compete with us?

Let's talk about consulting business. As I said earlier, I cannot accept articles as a means of attracting traffic for "non-think tank business". The implication is that if it serves think tank business (such as consulting), I am happy to see it succeed. Because, to me, the consulting business is also an "end in itself".

In the second half of 2017, before officially joining the autonomous driving industry as a media outlet, I just got an offer from a consulting company, but later I considered that although I was interested in consulting, I was not interested in the downstream services of the consulting company, so I decided to Did not go. During the preparation period of Jiuzhang, I also talked with a friend who has consulting experience in the autonomous driving industry, hoping that the other party will join as a partner, but when I realized that in his eyes, consulting is just a means, and making money is the goal. Then resolutely give up.

For Jiajun, consultation is of course the purpose, there is no suspense about this.

Since, for us, media and consulting are ends in themselves, and the two ends can empower each other, then those who use at least one of them as a means, or even both as means, and making money is the ultimate goal How does the team qualify to compete with us?

In the past two years, I have become more and more aware that the competition between companies is, to a large extent, the competition between the core team's sense of mission. And one thing, only when you regard it as "the purpose itself", can you have a real sense of mission.

The "leverage ratio" of the core team's sense of mission is largely positively related to the size of the company's team - managers with a sense of mission tend to recruit people who have the same sense of mission as themselves, while Managers without a sense of mission are completely unaware of the value of a sense of mission. Therefore, they are more inclined to use benefits to attract and retain people, even if the sense of mission will be "reduced layer by layer" in a company composed of the former type of people. However, the company's overall sense of mission is still much stronger than the latter.

(3) People who are better than me are not as poor as I am. This is the core barrier of Chapter Nine

In November last year, a friend who invested in the hydrogen energy track said: "Why doesn't the hydrogen energy track have an information service platform like Jiuzhang? I have to waste a lot of time on information screening every time." I said : "It's almost impossible. Nine chapters cannot be copied. People who are not as good as me, of course they can't do it; and people who are higher than me probably don't bother to be a 'self-media'."

The superficial reason is that there are too few people who meet the two conditions of "better than me" and "feeling" at the same time, but the deep reason is that people who are better than me are "not as poor as me " , and they have the opportunity to do this. The cost is too high - as far as I know, those who can do well what Jiajun and I are doing now are basically doing things with an annual salary of more than 600,000. If he is asked to do the same thing as us , the annual salary may be 300,000, is he willing?

But for me, because I was very poor when I was young anyway, even if my annual salary is less than 300,000 yuan, I am still "going uphill", and I have no psychological gap.

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In fact, a career that doesn’t make much money, for those who really love it and decide to make it a long-term or even lifelong career, there is a huge benefit: as long as they follow their heart foolishly, they will It is enough to "burn to death" all "competitors" who are much more capable than themselves but only have three minutes of enthusiasm.

After all, for the latter, it is "too low cost performance" to do things that do not make money, so they do not have enough motivation to persevere.

When the good people quit one after another because the opportunity cost is too high, the remaining people, even if they are not good, will become kings. Then, when the high-end market in a segment is monopolized by the remaining small team, they can have "pricing power".

Next issue preview : "Your budget is too much, so we can't cooperate" - Jiuzhang Zhijia 2nd Anniversary Review (Part 2)

After reading "Next", you will further understand why "even if one day the wages cannot be paid, some people will stay".

Talents who are idealistic like us and meet our recruitment criteria are welcome to send their resumes to [email protected].

recommended reading

Three percent of our personal destiny depends on hard work, and seven percent depends on industrial dividends——The inaugural speech of "Nine Chapters Zhijia"

The best standard of "good job": Adhere to ideals and make money by the way - the mental journey of a media professional

The most critical indicators of "good work": the scene is complex enough, the amount of data is large enough, and the leverage ratio is high enough

When a candidate says “I am optimistic about the prospects of the autonomous driving industry”, I will be wary——Review of the first anniversary of Jiuzhang Zhijia’s entrepreneurship (Part 1)

If the data is not collected enough and the algorithm is not iterated fast enough, then "no one likes me"———Jiuzhang Zhijia's first anniversary review (Part 2)

Dedicated to "the first city of autonomous driving" - a "moving the capital"

It is "poor" for people without a sense of mission to go to work, and production relations determine productivity——a little fragmented thinking in the second year of entrepreneurship


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Origin blog.csdn.net/jiuzhang_0402/article/details/129920480