No news, just good news. This statement seems very appropriate in the current circle of friends. Recently I received calls from two friends. One was a complaint call from a friend. This friend was a senior executive of a large factory and was unemployed for nearly a year after being laid off. Although he was compensated N+1, he could not stand up to this friend. " The mortgage loan is nearly 10 million yuan, the spouse does not work, and the children are sent abroad." That is, the legendary "three-piece package for middle-class people to commit suicide" has taken full advantage. The compensation is almost the same as what the old people had to deal with long ago. It has made my current mood and life worse. It's all a mess.
Another call was from a boss friend who asked me to help find a job. This friend has been in business for 6 years and owns a consulting company. He also had some stable high-quality customers in the past. In the past few years, when the business was good, he also made a lot of money. Later, he invested in several so-called "trendy" projects with others, including one All were in vain. My wife was deceived by her best friend and spent a lot of money on financial management, but she was cut off. In the past two years, the economy has been extremely sluggish, and corporate customers have either tightened their contracts or terminated cooperation. Not only have they had to make money, but they have lost money every year. In addition, they have the same "three-piece death suit" hanging around their necks. , my friend really couldn't hold on anymore, so he had to close the company and prepare to return to the workplace and find a job.
These two friends are typical representatives of the "middle class" in my circle of friends. They were both successful in their careers and heroic in their early years. They are considered "winners in life" in the eyes of many people. But despite their glamorous appearance, the fragility of these middle-class people is beyond many people’s imagination. Excessive debts and overly optimistic expectations for the future have made them very undignified and even embarrassed when the tide receded. Of course, the return of the middle class to poverty does not happen overnight. If you look closely, there are traces to follow.
01
Virtue does not match
We often hear a saying called "Houde carries things", and these four words often appear in the most eye-catching places in some bosses' offices. The "things" among them can be understood as the wealth, talent, achievements, etc. possessed by a person. "Virtue" refers to a series of beautiful virtues possessed by a person, such as kindness, generosity, temperance, introspection, etc., as well as an insight into the trends in the world and the laws of all things. In other words, only by continuously accumulating these virtues can you "carry" these "things", put your talents to real use, and preserve your achievements and wealth. Without these "virtues", it may lead to the opposite of the word, "virtue does not match." We might as well review, which category do most of the middle class around you belong to?
Let me tell you a story first. I had a college friend who came from a rural area and whose family conditions were not very good. After graduating from college, he stayed in Beijing to find a job. He lived in a basement without windows for more than a year. Later, he had the opportunity to join a large factory, and later became a middle-level leader with an annual income of one to two million. His life also changed dramatically. The small house was suddenly replaced by a large house worth more than 20 million yuan, and the mobility scooter was replaced by a BMW X5. Once I went to Beijing on a business trip, he invited me to dinner, and he brought his beautiful "mistress" with him in a grand manner. The three of us ate nearly 5,000 yuan for that meal. During the dinner, he also told me that I was going to buy a new car, saying that the current model was too expensive. Old man, I'm a little bit at a loss what to do.
His series of operations surprised me, who had not seen him for several years. We are all children from ordinary families. We have just had enough to eat and clothe ourselves, and it has only been a few days since we settled down in a big city, and yet we are already starting to "frustrate" like this? As a friend, I advised him privately that now that the conditions are better, we can enjoy life, but we must have a sense of moderation, and don't think that we must have everything and only the best to be worthy of ourselves. In fact, everything we get is not just due to our efforts, but also has a lot of luck in it. We still need to maintain enough humility and awe towards life and wealth in order to live a more secure life. But my friends didn’t quite accept my statement and thought my ideas were too conservative and too fatalistic. And he is very confident that he can fully control his current wealth, and remains fully optimistic about his career and continued ability to make money.
However, things did not develop according to the trajectory he imagined. As he got older, his room for advancement in the company became less and less. He had no choice but to jump from a large factory to an ordinary enterprise as a vice president, but the aura of a large factory only lasted for 3 years. After only a few months of success, the new owner fired him because he was not pragmatic and down-to-earth. From then on, his career path went from bad to worse, and he changed jobs frequently. During this period, his "mistress" cheated him of a sum of money and then disappeared. After my wife found out everything, she made a big fuss and went abroad to accompany her children to study after getting divorced. Basically, all the expenses had to be borne by this friend.
He also lost his job in October last year and has never found a job. He relies on driving an online taxi to maintain his basic life, but this income is simply not enough to repay the loan and provide for his children. Although his house has been listed by an agent for a long time, it is a type of house that "poor people cannot afford and rich people despise" and has never been able to close a deal. Regardless of whether his friend's house can be sold or not, unless a miracle occurs, his fragile middle-class life is completely over.
Management guru Stephen Covey once said: "If a person's family is not happy, his job is not smooth, and his future is not bright, it must be because his character is not good enough, just like there is not enough savings in his bank account to pay for a happy life." I don’t want to use words like “bad character” or “virtuous but not virtuous” to describe the middle class who have returned to poverty. This would be too arbitrary, but can we think about it from another angle? If those middle class people suddenly became rich in the first place At this time, you can look at yourself more rationally, face life more clearly, and plan the future more prudently and far-sightedly, instead of losing your cool and losing yourself in the face of wealth. Then, can you "carry" better and longer? "thing"?
02
refuse to change
There is a theory in economics called path dependence. It means that under given conditions, people's decision-making choices are subject to their past decisions, even if the past situation may be outdated. In other words, once people make a certain choice, they will habitually continue on this path and will not easily look back. And this "stubborn" mentality will, to some extent, limit a person's ability to accept new things, making people conservative, narrow-minded, and resistant to change.
Many people may still remember the scene when a certain city abolished road and bridge toll stations in 2018. A 36-year-old sister cried and complained that she was old and "can't do anything except this toll collection job." In fact, this is a typical example of path dependence. I believe that as long as I can master these two actions of "charging and lifting the pole" in my life, I will have an iron job, and I will be able to live smoothly and have no worries about food and clothing. This illusion caused him to ignore changes in industry and social trends, as well as his own advancement with the times and improvements in his ability cognition. As a result, we were unknowingly left behind by the times and found ourselves in a passive and helpless weak position.
In fact, the middle class's return to poverty is essentially the same as the toll station's path dependence and refusal to change. my country's current so-called middle class, regardless of the system, is composed mostly of employees of large and medium-sized Internet companies and various small and medium-sized business owners. For internet people from big factories, after receiving offers of hundreds of thousands or millions from big factories, many people start to upgrade their consumption consciously or unconsciously. The previous cars were not high-end, so they have to replace them with luxury cars; 7. The 80-square-meter house is not enough for living, so we need to upgrade to a larger flat floor. Many people around me are like this. When I asked them, "If I have to bear tens of thousands of car and house loans every month, can I afford it?" Many people would answer me like this: "The pressure is indeed greater now, but in a few years, I estimate that my If the income can be doubled again, then this loan will not be too much.”
It is obvious that these people not only believe that their jobs will always be smooth and their income will continue to be stable, but they also have more good expectations of promotion and salary increase. It seems that they have never thought that they may face a workplace crisis at the age of 35 and the cycle of the industry. Sexual changes, the influence of the external economic environment; or even if they think of these, they think of themselves as the "exceptions" among them. In short, layoffs, salary cuts, unemployment, and industry downturns will not affect you. Otherwise, how to explain that so many glamorous and respectable middle-class people from the Internet quickly "reduced" after losing their jobs and became defaulters who could not afford the high mortgage loans of large flats, or even became dishonest people who were blacklisted?
Do you think these talents who have been carefully selected to enter large factories are stupid? Certainly not. Think about the earlier middle class in the past. Didn’t they buy big houses early? While waiting for the appreciation of real estate, their personal income also increased. Then they waited a few years to find the right time to buy a second home... .Isn’t this the classic and tried-and-tested path to wealth for the middle class?
The middle class understands the theoretical "closed loop" of the above path to wealth, but ignores more variable factors in reality. They also forget to equip themselves with more skills and cognition that can help them get through the cycle. How to type code in the past is still not the same now. How do you knock it? What is the difference between this and the toll station lady who thinks that as long as you know how to "collect tolls and lift the pole", you can be safe for the rest of your life?
A person being abandoned by the times starts from refusing to change. The reason why some middle-class people suffer from the dilemma of returning to poverty is closely related to subjective factors such as their low social awareness, subconscious path dependence, rejection of change and do not believe that there will be change. They forgot two very clichéd sayings: the only constant is change; stability is the greatest instability.
03
Stop adding value
Emma Watson, who played Hermione in the movie "Harry Potter", became famous at a young age and reached the peak of her career. In an interview, she once said, "The better I do, the more others praise me, the clearer the feeling of lack of confidence in my heart. I am so afraid that one day, others will find that I am not worthy of the achievements I have now." Therefore, she later picked up books again and insisted on studying and going to college, in order to give herself more confidence to enjoy her current life and be a better controller of her own life.
I'm not sure whether our middle class has the same understanding as Emma Watson. At least many of the IT middle-class upstarts around me don't have this sense of crisis and self-improvement.
After a unicorn company I worked for was acquired by a giant, I cashed in my options and received a considerable amount of income. Then I fell into confusion and didn't know where to go next. I thought of another executive colleague who, like me, left the company after exercising his power, and wanted to exchange ideas with him. But every time I contacted him, he was either in Paris or Bali; he was either on vacation or in On the way to vacation. I also traveled and relaxed for two months, but I really wasn’t as free and confident as he was.
Later, I decided to study for an EMBA to expand my horizons and prepare myself to better take the M route. In the meantime, I also discussed with my senior executive colleague whether we should read it together. But the other person told me that in the past year I have been focusing on relaxing my body and mind. If I want to read together, I can wait until next year. I didn't wait, I studied EMBA by myself, and because of this relationship, I later became a senior executive in a listed company by chance. As for my colleague, he did not study it the second year after he came back to relax. Instead, he and a few friends started a new energy project, which did not succeed. Instead, he suffered a huge loss. Later, I returned to the workplace through a previous relationship. However, due to being disconnected from the workplace for too long, many of my cognitions and skills were severely out of date, and I left shortly after I started working.
Some of our colleagues who received stock options together had similar experiences to the colleague above. Having money does not turn it into an advantage, allowing for more leisurely and better self-improvement and investment. Instead, it makes all kinds of random investments that one does not understand and is not familiar with. It is impossible for a person to make money beyond his own knowledge. They The results are of course not very good. In the end, I lost my advantage when I returned to the workplace and had no capital to start a business. I had no choice but to do something high or low, struggling to survive in various cracks.
I’m not sure if the people around me can represent the middle class, but I agree with what Brian Tracy said in the book “Make Yourself More Valuable”: “If you don’t continue to update and improve your skills, Then your ability will automatically depreciate." No matter which class you are in, when a person starts to slack off and does not want to make progress, the value of his life will gradually be consumed until it dries up. I believe many people will agree with this.
04
Exquisite self-interest
Professor Qian Liqun of Peking University once said a famous saying: The most terrifying thing in the world is not the barbarians, but the refined egoists. They have high IQs, worldly sophistication, are good at performing, know how to cooperate, and are better at using the system to achieve their own goals. "In fact, for this portrait, it seems easier to find matching silhouettes in the middle class. Why do you say this? This reminds me of a question I saw on Zhihu: "Why is the middle class the group with the most refined self-interests? The answer below is "Compared to the average person, only the middle class cares about refinement; everyone has egoism, but people with more wealth tend to value wealth more. People who regard money as dirt will probably not become middle class." This statement Although it may not be entirely correct, it does seem reasonable.
Tell a story about a former neighbor. The neighbor couple are both business executives, and their home is in pretty good condition. Soon after my child entered elementary school, he started looking for a house in a school district. Later, he found a house in a key middle school in a school district. Although it was an old and shabby house, the price per square meter was as high as over 100,000 yuan. More importantly, this house has just been spotted by another client and the contract will be signed soon. The neighbor couple found the leader of the agency company through their connections, and promised to pay an extra 50,000 in agency fees, so that the salesperson could find excuses to make up lies about how bad the house was, so as to scare away the original intended customers. In the end, the trick worked, and they successfully bought this high-priced "old and broken".
But what they didn't expect was that Shanghai introduced a school district reform policy in 2021, and housing prices in school districts plummeted. At first, their neighbors insisted on the concept of "investing in children's education, not just economic accounts." Later, they found that their children's grades were very poor. It’s hard to live up to expectations, even if you have the advantage of a school district house, it’s difficult to get into the exam. In order to avoid buying a high-priced school district house for nothing, you try your best to give your children various tutoring classes. As a result, your children’s grades not only failed to improve, but they were also forced to suffer from depression. Unable to attend school.
The neighbor couple realized the seriousness of the matter and slowly gave up the idea of letting their children attend the key points. In addition, affected by the external economic environment, their income is not as stable as before, and the high monthly mortgage loan makes them more and more panicked, so they want to quickly sell the school district house they have obtained through all their means. But even though the house price has dropped by nearly 40%, no one is interested in it. The apartment is still in the hands of the neighbors, which has become a worry for them, and the mortgage pressure has visibly affected their quality of life. It can be said that the mechanism is exhausted, but there are losses but no gains, and the cleverness is mistaken for the cleverness.
Mr. Yu Minhong said something about "refined egoism" in his "Lao Yu Xiahua": "Everyone is more or less an egoist, but there are short-sighted and far-sighted egoists. Short-sighted egoists" , will care about an immediate benefit, and conflict with people around them for a small profit; a far-sighted egoist will put the acquisition of his own personal interests in the longer-term future." Brother K agrees with Mr. Yu's point of view, Self-interest is not guilty, but it must be reasonable, moderate, far-sighted, and make choices, so that we can have a broader life and realize "self-interest" in the true sense. What do you think?
About the Author
About the author: Mr.K, Huang Zhekeng, an expert in enterprise digital transformation, founder of "Sudden Enlightenment Hill", technology blogger, former technical executive of Haier, Zhongtong, and Yiyao.com, author of "The Way of Cultivation of Technicians" and " "The Peak of Technology Management". Share: growth tips, technology trends, and business insights.
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