Top of the big era

The U.S. branch of Ziweixing has been established, located in Cupertino, Silicon Valley.

Rented a two-story office building.

More than 300 employees have been recruited successively, 260 of whom are senior engineers from large companies with rich work experience. No way, the newcomer can't find it.

Pink and tender college students are all the targets of the Silicon Valley giants. Ziweixing can only grab some very mature talents in their 30s and 40s who have been polished.

From the second half of 2008 to the first half of 2009, an unprecedented wave of unemployment broke out in Silicon Valley, and the unemployment rate was the highest in the United States. Cupertino is one of the core cities of Silicon Valley, where the bankruptcy rate of technology companies has exceeded 30%.

In some small cities in Silicon Valley, the bankruptcy rate exceeds 50%. In other words, more than half of the businesses are bankrupt.

In this environment, Sequoia Capital organized a large investment conference.

Pictures from the meeting have gone viral.

Above it is a huge tombstone inscribed "The Golden Age Has Rested".

It probably means that several leaders of Sequoia Capital believe that the golden age of Silicon Valley in the past two decades is gone forever, and the current crisis is more serious than everyone imagined. A "longer recession" than the 2000 bubble crisis.

There are bad voices in the market.

Very good!

The more bad they say, the smoother the development of Ziweixing's US business will be.

Lu Qi was originally a big shot at the top of Silicon Valley. The banner was unfurled, talents were recruited, and resumes were collected like snowflakes.

Of course, it's not easy to recruit such a talented person as Lu Qi.

Before that, he was at Yahoo with an annual salary of $15 million.

Working at Ziweixing, the annual salary is 1.2 million US dollars.

However, he got a 5-year option of 10 million shares. According to the last round of Ziweixing’s financing quotation, the value of 10 million shares is nearly 300 million US dollars.

If you want to get all the stocks, there are three main requirements.

First, to open up the situation for Ziweixing's business in the United States;

Second, Ziweixing Silicon Valley Research Institute should be established according to the plan;

Third, there must be sufficient competitiveness in the European and American markets.

From the current point of view, the first requirement has been carried out smoothly.

This time when he came to America, Zhou Buqi had to deal with a lot of things. In addition to Feng Muer and Sun Guanran, the two little secretaries, he also had Vice President Zhen Yu, Vice President Wang Haiyang, and Deputy Finance Director Zhu Zhuo. MSI No. 1 CFO Wang Haoyang and others.

Come to the North American branch first.

The office building is new.

The office environment is very good, the decoration is very new, trendy and warm.

However, the two floors upstairs and downstairs have completely different decoration styles. Lu Qi explained with a smile, saying that this place was originally the office of two companies, and they both went bankrupt, so he took over. The decoration and office equipment are all new, and the whole package is 2 million US dollars.

These computers and servers alone are worth more than 10 million US dollars.

Zhou Buqi couldn't help but sigh with emotion.

These old beauties are such a waste!

"The companies upstairs don't seem to be able to do it anymore, so I plan to take them in too." Lu Qi is very satisfied with the site selection here, "These two floors are used as business office areas, and the upper two floors can be used as research centers .”

Zhou Buqi looked at the thick stack of documents on his desk.

At least half a meter high.

Walking over to see, it turned out to be a resume.

I go!

This is thousands of copies, right?

In the early stage of starting a business, recruitment is the most important thing. Only by selecting the right people can the business plan be implemented. Therefore, in many cases, the most important job of an entrepreneur in the early stage is recruitment, and 80% of the time is spent in the process of reviewing resumes and interviews.

Zhou Buqi walked over, flipped through them casually, and said without raising his head, "You need to find some assistants, and at least check your resume for you first."

"I'm looking for it." Lu Qi smiled, "It's not easy to find a trustworthy personnel officer. Now is the time to lay the foundations, and no mistakes can be made. This is also very good, and there is enthusiasm for work."

"How many people can you recruit per month?"

"If it's technical, I can interview 20 people per day, leaving 5-8. I can recruit 150 people per month. Other directions will be more complicated, and you need to find out the situation from your peers. Try to recruit all within one year. 1000 people."

"Half a year!"

"Um?"

Lu Qi was slightly taken aback.

Zhou Buqi flipped through his resume and said without looking up: "In half a year, we need to recruit 1,000 people. The opportunity is rare, and we must start the business in Silicon Valley as soon as possible."

Lu Qi thought for a while, "That requires several important helpers, marketing, financial and human resources."

Zhou Buqi raised his head, "Hang Hai, can you stay and help?"

Wang Haiyang smiled and said, "No problem!"

In recruiting the vice president of Ziweixing's US branch, Lu Qi cannot be solely responsible for it. It will be monolithic, and there will be management risks. Let Wang Haiyang participate in it, it is only a matter of talent.

"Your resumes..."

Zhou Buqi looked at some casually, and almost threw them away after a quick glance. Looking directly at the age column, many people are in their 40s, 50s, and programmers in their 60s looking for work.

This is too exaggerated.

An old man over half a century old, still writing code?

It’s not that age discrimination does not discriminate. The technological change in the key computer field is too fast. Basically, 5 years is an era.

Programming languages ​​are also emerging in an endless stream and constantly changing.

Lu Qi coughed lightly, and said helplessly, "There's no way. Many people can't eat without a job. Consumerism is prevalent here, and they have no savings. They can only continue to work."

Zhou Buqi waved his hand, "I don't mean this, I mean technology. At this age, can you still keep up with the times?"

In China, except for the employees of state-owned enterprises, there are basically no programmers who are still programming after the age of 40.

Either transform into management, or become a technical supervisor.

If you continue to take the technical route, you will also move closer to the architecture. It is to rely on experience and algorithmic thinking to design some "outlines", and then the young people perfect this outline and write a beautifully written article.

For example, Dr. Wang Jian of cloud computing.

At the beginning of the year, because many technical difficulties could not be broken through, there were many gossips in Ziwei Star. Said it was Boss Zhou, you were played by Wang Jian, right?

He knows shit about computer technology, and he wants to do the world's most cutting-edge cloud computing project, isn't that nonsense?

He is a psychology major!

If you are capable, let him write a piece of code, make a small program, and show it to everyone?

In order to appease the team, Dr. Wang Jian said that he would find time to write a program to prove his strength. It has been more than half a year, and his program has not been written yet.

Fortunately, following his technical thinking, many technical problems are gradually being solved, and doubts have gradually subsided.

Lu Qi smiled and said, "Yes, Silicon Valley is different from China."

"oh?"

"Here in Silicon Valley, no matter how old you are, as long as you do technology, you must maintain the ability to write code. Bill Gates and Zuckerberg must insist on writing code every day."

"What's good?"

"Well..." Lu Qi paused, "It helps to improve thinking from the level of details and logic. Architecture design focuses on the general direction and framework. But to transform the architecture into specific codes, it is necessary to analyze each This is a way to keep thinking young. In China, programmers who write code are called code farmers, and they will transform when they are old, which may not be a good thing.”

Zhou Buqi thought for a while and nodded, "Is it because of cultural reasons? Japan is even more exaggerated. Programming and writing code are directly reduced to blue-collar workers. White-collar workers are all writing documents, requirements, and product ideas. The specific implementation, outsourcing to the tech team."

"It is both a cultural reason and a technical reason. They don't pay attention to programming because the technology is too poor and they can't write any good code. Because they can't write world-class code, after a long time, they form a kind of old people who don't write code. long-term culture."

"Isn't it?"

Lu Qi said: "On the whole, young people are indeed better at programming, with more active thinking and higher efficiency. However, being older also has advantages, that is, more experience and maturity. Many of the world's top algorithms are not Made by young people. For example, Google’s papers on distributed algorithms were all made by scientists in their 50s and 60s. They have never disclosed the details of the code, and the whole world can’t make it up. This is the power of the old man place."

"Well……"

Zhou Buqi's expression froze slightly.

If this is the case, it will be too difficult to surpass Silicon Valley.

To change the culture of the entire environment!

The older scientists in China, the most powerful ones are personally leading the team, proposing technical ideas to build the structure, and handing over the details to their subordinates; almost can't even do the structure, they can only rely on their own connections, prestige and Influence, looking around for money to find projects for the scientific research team under him.

These two groups belong to the front-line technicians, often unknown.

The worst thing is that they don't even have a scientific research team, so they can only cooperate with the media to keep appearing in public. Because of his appearance, he was known by the public and became a highly praised scientist.

Young people are good at imitating, plagiarizing, and advancing quickly under the guidance of others.

However, technological innovation means that there is no template and lack of guidance. It requires a lot of experience accumulation and cross-knowledge of various industries, and the completed algorithm bursts out. Such as interdisciplinary mathematics, optics, mechanics, molecular biology.

It is difficult for young people to have such extensive knowledge, and they must have years of accumulation and persistent learning.

For example, engineering software such as Matlab can be applied in many fields such as electrical automation, financial quantification, image processing, particle collision, and chip design. Because the algorithm behind this is not only computer knowledge, but also covers professional knowledge in many related fields.

Young people simply can't do it.

Can only rely on middle-aged and elderly people.

But the middle-aged and elderly people in China are unwilling to write codes, and they don’t want to work hard on the front line of scientific research. They all want to lead apprentices, lead teams, become teachers and experts... Even Dr. Wang Jian, a person who works so hard, a I can't write a small program for more than half a year, let alone others.

There is only one possibility.

It is involution.

So many middle-aged and elderly scientists in the United States are willing to write code on the front line, except for a very small part out of love, most of them are forced to do so. Under consumerism, they have no savings in their hands. If you don't work, you have no money, you can't pay your mortgage, and you can't live.

However, to be a management team and lead a team... Sorry, no chance! There are too many scientific and technological talents in the United States, and there is no shortage of older managers with good skills.

These people have no choice but to have no money in hand. In order to survive, you can only continue to write code and continue to stick to the front line.

This is a technology industry phenomenon born under a free market economy.

However, consumerism and introversion are not advocated in China. Middle-aged and elderly technical talents are very rich, which is certainly a good thing. But at the same time, the house is full of children and grandchildren, and life is worry-free. How can they have the motivation to continue to fight on the front line?

Press the gourd and pick up the ladle.

Under the market economy, if there is a bad side, there must be a good side; intervention and regulation under the market economy can effectively curb the bad side, and may produce a new bad side due to the butterfly effect.

Under this roiling tide, Zhou Buqi felt powerless.