Last week, I went to Shanghai to set up a stall at the school.
A student who came to apply for the job told me that he had previously interviewed with a large local company in Shanghai, and the first question the interviewer asked was.
Can your family come up with $2 million down payment?
At first baffling, what does the availability of money at home have to do with an employee’s ability to do their job?
That student asked the same question back at the site.
The answer from HR is that the freshers who have been trained up by the company in the past few years have resigned to go home and look for a job because they can’t see the hope of buying a house in Shanghai, and the loss of personnel in the company is very serious.
From the company’s point of view, the instability of the technical staff is really a problem, so HR came up with such a bad idea.
Since the reason for leaving is that they can’t afford to buy a house, then only those who can afford to buy a house will talk about it to save the cost of follow-up communication.
It’s also because it’s so hard to find a job in the past two years, even if you can do it this way, you can still find people.
I listened to a bit confused, asked that student, other companies in Shanghai is not so bad, right?
Students said that HR at other companies would ask euphemistic questions like, “Can your family’s financial situation support you to establish yourself in Shanghai?”
We then looked at each other, neither of us knowing what to say.
I’ve been working as a school recruiter at the same school for eight years, since I first arrived in Shanghai in the fall of 2012.
I have a vivid memory of my first stall, I was very nervous at that time, but I didn’t want my nervousness to be seen by the students interviewing me, so I sat up straight.
There was no business at the stall that day, it was quiet and lonely. A student finally came over and asked about the salary of the position.
I said the annual salary was around 100,000 early.
The student laughed, pointed to the stall of the company next door and said, “People in Shanghai pay 150,000 yuan, then I still prefer to stay in Shanghai.
I said, “The salary of our small place can’t be compared with the big city, Shanghai salary is high, but the house price is also expensive.
The students said, but stay in Shanghai platform is bigger, better development, sooner or later can buy on.
The person said frankly, and the person listening did not find it wrong.
Then the student got up and left, and continued to look for local companies in Shanghai resume.
Now, eight years later, the same company from our small town was recruiting at the same school, and for more than two hours it was a packed house.
I asked each student if they had considered staying in Shanghai, and many said they had, but eventually decided to return home.
All of them had the same answer as to the reason for their choice -…
Regardless of your career, it’s impossible to buy a home on your own, and home prices aren’t staying put waiting for you to catch up with it.
Just like eight years ago when the boys calmly said they could buy it sooner or later, today’s students say it’s impossible to afford it is also frankly just stating a well-known fact without much emotional turmoil.
Just a bit of emotion from me as an observer of the eight years.
In the eight years that I’ve seen it, the hopes of the young people of this top-notch school for the big city, for a better future, for a future life with a family, have indeed faded out over time.
In the process, crop after crop of young people are told that they are struggling, encouraged that there is hope in life, and then a few years pass and they run out of steam like a dry battery and are replaced by a new one.
Even then, the company has to complain that the battery’s output isn’t long enough or stable enough, and then draws a two-million-RMB induction criteria.
As you can imagine, the selected batteries will be saddled with a lifetime of debt and a monthly mortgage that is higher than most people’s salaries. And then there’s 996, playing hard to get, actively draining themselves of their last drop of blood.
But even this life would be called lucky, because there are more people who want to be drained and can’t get it.
All of this is watched by the new batteries in the campus factories. These elite students, who had beaten thousands on the gauntlet, the consistent winners in the competition of their peers, found for the first time that their hard work and talent could not make any difference to their future.
So some of them decided not to do the dry cell, and let all those past efforts to get up early and be greedy in the dark to go down the drain, give up the dream of the big city and go home.
But the orange in Huainan is always a bit uncomfortable in Huabei.
The platform is poor, the salary is less, the network is more, and the unbelievable confusion and stupidity are even commonplace.
When you convince yourself to put up with everything, but found that the office building every weekend and night as brightly lit, midnight work group as the same message, the same have to give hard-earned money to demolition …… nothing has changed.
It turns out that people have to turn into batteries, fleeing the big city as well.
This is the end.
The end point is like this, but does not delay people in the starting point is still a fight to the death.
Probably because I’m getting older, I’m surrounded by more and more anxious parents.
Just recently, I watched a mother who was so anxious about a phone call from a teacher that she spoke to people much faster, like a machine gun.
In fact her child’s test scores were already in the upper-middle range of a major elementary school, and yes, that’s just an upper elementary school kid.
I say this is not the test is quite good, do not put too much pressure on the child, or happy is most important. A depressing upbringing will affect a person’s whole life.
The mother was unmoved and still looked anxious. She said how can this work, how can I get into a good university, now the competition is so fierce, how to find a job after that ……
I look at such an anxious mother and suddenly many people come to mind.
The child who pulled open the car door and jumped off the bridge.
Downstairs in the neighborhood idle day after day playing cards of the demolition of the tenants.
The company building where the lights are always on late at night and where people are always working late into the night.
The graduate who was asked by the interviewer if he had two million dollars at home.
Parents often mention a child of someone else’s family, fifteen years ago, studied hard to get into a prestigious school, graduated to stay in Shanghai, and has a successful career – he and the classmate before him graduated from the same school, just as hard, just as good.
In fact, I would like to ask the anxious parents.
Forcing a child that young to play with someone to win or lose, but then what? What can you do?
Maybe that’s some kind of black comfort.
In this new era, there is no need to be so concerned about winning because the winner’s seat is full.
We fight to the death, but no one is going to be the winner.
There is only one battery after another, the beginning and the end being wired up, standing side by side at the end of this you-are-dead, one-horse race.
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