Why does the great god of industrial design earn an annual salary of one million? (3: Starting from the end)

In the last part, from a macro level, starting from the basic logic of job supply in the whole design market, we located the types of companies with deep pockets in the ecological map of design wealth. Next, we discuss how designers can improve their positioning in the map and get closer to the great god.

A friend was particularly sad after reading the previous article and asked me for help because he found that his company was not the best niche. Some people even found that his company was in the range of "no sales and low prices" and felt that he had no chance. I don't need to be so pessimistic now. In fact, this sense of hopelessness comes from the fact that you feel the gap between yourself and your goal. On the other hand, you don't know what to do to change the status quo. Let me briefly talk about these two points:

1, is your goal clear enough?

The quickest way to achieve your goal is to start from the finish line. Generally speaking, it is most effective to find the goal, then find the method and then take action. But correspondingly, if the goal is wrong, the loss will be great.

Everyone dreams of becoming a design god, and I fantasized about the future countless times when I was at school. I dreamed that my design was praised by the big Logo, and I dreamed of the glory of standing on the world design podium. I dreamed that in the new year, there were several cars, several houses and several beautiful women who reached the peak of my life. Although dreams are beautiful, important and the ultimate goal of your struggle, which can continuously create motivation for people, dreams can't directly turn college students into gods, let alone guide you what to do next. And the goal I'm talking about is a step-by-step ladder to realize my dream.

Without discipline, headless struggle will eventually turn your dream into a very small probability event. In order to change the status quo, we must decompose the ultimate goal of distant dreams into specific, executable and clear stage goals. Then a series of specific questions came: What is your ideal position? In which company? How much is the income? What kind of jump does it take to get close to the ideal state? How many jumps? Where are you going to jump next?

I suggest you take the time to think about these problems in combination with your own situation. The development of a person's career is inseparable from strength and luck. The more vague your answer to the above questions is, the luckier your career will be, and the less likely your dream will come true. On the contrary, if your answer is clear, the strength factor in your career development may play a more effective role, and the closer you are to your dream.

2. The career path can be planned and needs to be planned.

As mentioned above, in the design workplace, the company's niche determines the company's investment in design, and makes simple company portraits for different niche companies: Diaosi Company, Xiaokang Company and Tuhao Company. Although these different types of companies give people great sensory differences, designers with low niche often flinch from high-level companies and have no way to find a job, just as I didn't expect to jump ship to Nokia when designing a company. However, through years of work observation, it is found that although there is a threshold between companies in different niches, there is actually an internal connection and promotion ladder. After finding the rules, you can plan.

As China ID, we are actually lucky, because we have the scale bonus of China manufacturing industry. Our ancestors said, "If you don't stay here, you have to stay here." Job-hopping and promotion are the natural advantages of our career development. Compared with Singapore, the manufacturing industry has moved abroad for many years, and there are only a few manufacturing enterprises with strong competitiveness on the island, which can basically be counted with two hands. In addition, there may not be as many ID designers in the whole island as there are large domestic companies, and there are few job-hopping options. Therefore, the career development route here mainly depends on internal promotion, and many times a radish is a pit. If a designer wants to be promoted, even if the boss supports it, he has to wait for the front position to become vacant. Coupled with the occasional excellent foreign designers parachuting in to fill the gap (laughs: just like me), the career development of local designers is becoming more and more difficult. In fact, this phenomenon is not only in Singapore, but also in many European industrial countries, mainly because the manufacturing industry in these countries has been shuffled, only mature hardware companies can survive, and the ID has been solidified. The employment situation in China is much richer, and there are two most important advantages:

There are many companies, so it is easy to find a job. The problem is that finding a good job requires competition.

The company is rich in levels, and Diaosi Company has many opportunities to go to local companies. When a designer grows up, his ability can be realized quickly by job-hopping, and there is no need to wait for a position in the company.

Therefore, in China ID circle, there are a lot of choices and development paths ahead. It is precisely because there are too many choices, but I don't know how to choose, or even take a wrong step, which leads to a wrong step, so I must make a good plan before taking the next step. Of course, if your career line is particularly thick, there will always be good luck, and there will always be someone to help you at the critical moment, so you don't have to listen to me.

3. Ceiling

As mentioned above, there are many great opportunities in China market. In the few times when I was looking for a job, I was faced with many choices to make a balanced choice. Even experienced designers will inevitably have a phobia of choice. After all, the wrong choice is likely to involve the struggle in the next few years, and the cost of failure is quite high. Therefore, in order to make a suitable choice among different eco-companies, we must first understand the influence of different eco-companies on the professional development of designers. Is there no development if the company does not give strength? Is it possible to rise to the top with the thighs of local tyrants? What is the relationship between the company's contribution and the professional development of designers?

I have discussed the above problems with many designers, and most people think that the most important influence of the company's minority on the development of designers is the height of the ceiling. What is a ceiling?

Many people simply understand career development as a cycle of "going to a good company-doing a good job-making a lot of money", which is God's perspective in the game and logically there is no problem. But in fact, career development is a process that can only be completed by personal interaction between the company and the designer. There is a premise that you can enter the rising cycle of the company again and again, that is, you must also match the corresponding ability level. Therefore, the underlying logic of career development is that the designer's ability is constantly improving to promote this cycle again and again. Under this logic, there is a problem. What if the designer is promoted and the company doesn't have a corresponding position? In this case, we say that designers have met the ceiling of development in the company. This ceiling has three different dimensions:

Position: It is easy to understand that several designers of Diaosi Company have been promoted two or three times, either changing jobs or changing careers; Tuhao Company has a huge design team with different division of labor, and needs a large number of designers and design management talents in strategy, front-end, back-end and different categories. Designers have many levels, such as manager, director, VP, CDO, etc., which is enough for you to work hard for many years.

Salary: Take Diaosi Company as an example, employee salary is a considerable expense for the company. Designers and companies are zero-sum games. You take more, the company takes less, and the company is desperate. Tuhao company, design is more like investment for the company, the investment is reasonable, and the income may be enlarged in proportion, so it has the ability to pay the salary that the design team is relatively satisfied, and there is plenty of room for newcomers to grow.

Ability: It also corresponds to the position. The higher the niche, the more diversified and forward-looking the ability of the whole team, and the higher the space for designers to learn and improve. This topic is very big, and we will focus on it later.

Although the ceiling of every company will limit the development of designers working here to some extent. But from the perspective of the whole industry, the height of the ceiling is still very high (even in China), and for most designers, the development space is sufficient. In fact, what ultimately prevents most designers from continuing to rise is far from the ceiling of the enterprise, but the fierce competition among peers.

4. ID ladder

The concept of ceiling is easy to understand, and it is common sense that companies of different sizes have different ceiling heights. However, the ceiling is the goal pursued by designers who have a firm foothold in the design circle. The company's "floor" is more meaningful than the designers who are still struggling to climb the slope. The floor here refers to the position with the lowest ID. The reason why the floor is also very important is because every one of us enters any company, no matter how high the ceiling of this company is, we all climb up from the position and meet the minimum requirements of the floor before entering a company, and then it is meaningful to talk about whether we can become the CDO of this company.

Different companies have different ceilings, and correspondingly, different floors. The local tyrants in the head give priority to talents, so the floor is higher. Select the remaining talents to flow to the next company, and so on until the professional gap is filled. So each company occupies a scale from floor to ceiling in the ID ecology, and the designers of this company climb on this short scale until they jump to the scale of other companies.

If you want to plan your future, it is particularly important to understand the relative relationship between different companies. Otherwise, you may waste a lot of energy fighting for what you can never get in the wrong company and miss the best period of career promotion.

If the scales of different companies in the ID industry are strung together, the ladder of the ID industry will be formed, and then you can clearly plan your future development direction, opportunities and ways. In order to facilitate your understanding, I drew a macro ladder diagram according to my own experience:

(emphasize that it is based on work experience and amateur conscience, only a little more reliable than guessing. If you want accurate data, you are welcome to sponsor professional research and statistics company data. )

ID career ladder sign

What do you think of this picture?

Industry structure: Like all industries, there are always a few people with high positions and high incomes, so the ladder structure is pyramid-shaped, with high incomes near the top and relatively few people.

Number of jobs: Top companies are one of the few companies that can be named at the top of the industry. Every company has many design jobs, but because there are few companies, there are fewer jobs. Middle-class companies are enterprises that provide a large number of middle-class ID positions, and their total number is higher than the former. Lower-level companies are a large number of design companies and companies with design positions as the core periphery, which can absorb a large number of fresh graduates. The color block area reflects the number of employed people (see the previous article for company classification)

Ceiling: The top of each color block represents the ceiling of this kind of company. The company's business scale is flat, the design requirements are usually short, flat and fast, and the ceiling is low. Well-off company is recognized as a profitable enterprise in the industry. Design expertise can be well played, and the corresponding ceiling has also been greatly improved. Tuhao company is the industry leader, and the design department is thinking about how to become the world's number one or keep the world's number one every day. Design is one of the powerful driving forces of the company, and the ceiling is almost the ceiling of the entire ID industry.

Floor: the lower limit of color block is the minimum employee standard of the company. All three types of companies will accept fresh graduates as junior staff, but upper-level companies give priority to graduates because of their advantages in development and income, while lower-level companies can absorb a large number of graduates because of their low labor costs. The advantages of a good school are generally reflected here. In addition to the knowledge and ability that a good school can teach you, a prestigious school education and alumni connections are also powerful advantages when you have no work experience.

Income: The dark gold font on the far left side of the icon represents income. Basically, the income of middle and junior technical posts of local tyrants is close to the social average wage (for example, the monthly income of Beijing and Shanghai is about 1W), while the minimum income of the industry is definitely far below the social average wage. High-income people are mainly concentrated in the blue-red enterprise zone (one dollar probably represents the average wage of a society, and the diagram is definitely inaccurate, but it is not exaggerated, for reference only).

Professional depth: rightmost, elementary, intermediate, advanced, advanced. Some friends may think this is unreasonable, because companies have senior designers regardless of size, but obviously small companies are different from Apple's senior designers. So my classification is divided from the perspective of the whole industry. You can simply understand this classification as ranking designers according to income assessment like the college entrance examination, and forcibly separating the high and low. Although rude, in today's market economy, a person's income also represents the value he can produce to some extent (otherwise, high income will not produce benefits, and it is strange that the company will not fire you). On the other hand, from the commercial scale of the company, top companies usually release hundreds of new products every year, all of which are successful designs in the industry. The management resources designed should be able to support and cover all products, and more are also suitable for senior positions.

Others: This is a professional ladder, which mainly discusses the employment of ID professional posts. Last year (20 19), Apple's J.Ive topped the list. The bosses of various design companies may be out of this ladder, which may not be suitable for comparison.

With this ladder as the framework, ID can observe its position more intuitively. Although I have classified all companies into three categories, according to this model, it is theoretically possible to put all companies with ID together and arrange a real ladder, but I have no ability or energy to do these things. I did this to facilitate the elaboration of the following points. But as a reader, you can apply this model to several companies you know, and you may get new gains.

4, a good goal can touch the height of happiness in one jump.

Macroscopically, the ceiling of the industry is not low, but there are only a few dozen people in the head position, which accounts for a very small proportion of the ID employees. For friends who have just entered the business, it is a small probability event to want to be a head designer in the ID circle. Just like your mother asked you to go to Tsinghua in the first grade of primary school.

So it is more feasible to focus on the shoulders and breasts of the industry. If you can be a team leader in a well-off design company or a design expert in a giant, your annual salary can be about three times that of a general company in a first-tier city, reaching 40W+(20 19 Beijing-Shanghai standard). I think you can take good care of your life, and it is not impossible to work hard for 60W+. After all, it is unrealistic for everyone to want to do CDO, and only a few companies in the world really deserve CDO (small companies can also call themselves CDO, so we won't play word games).

So, with the same annual salary of 60W, do you want to be the boss's command team in Xiaokang company, or do you want to be an expert in top-level design in Tuhao company, or go somewhere else? Which one to choose depends on your own interests and abilities, which is also a question that you should spend time thinking about. My humble opinion is that interest is not necessarily ability, and putting your ability in the right position is the most beneficial way for your own development. I have seen the great god who is exhausted in management and actively chooses to be a designer, and I have also seen the young and promising Daniel who ascended the throne of design manager. Everyone has found his own way to success in different forms. These experiences let me know that success is far more than just being a single-plank bridge of CDO (although I don't mind being a CDO, laugh).

Writing here, I remembered what an elder told me when I was in Nokia. Do you want to keep working? You have to ask yourself three questions: Does the income of 1 satisfy you? Do you feel happy and satisfied at work? Does the balance between life and work satisfy you? These three questions also apply to help us outline the goal of "success" more clearly.

When you were 40? What kind of company do you want to work for? What's your position? What kind of income do you get? What kind of daily design work are you doing? Creativity? Research and development? Mass production? Strategy? Project management? Team management? Business management? At the same time, don't forget to consider whether you want to go home every day at the age of 40, whether someone cares about you, whether you want someone to rely on you, and whether you are happy.

5. The best time for the next step

Many times we have a goal, but we find ourselves wasting some time and even falling behind in the beginning. What should we do?

You can't eat hot tofu if you are impatient, and your career development can't be achieved overnight. The gap cannot be opened overnight. Different types of companies have different ceilings, which can be said to be worlds apart, but joining a local company can't directly make you a CDO and reach the peak of your life. In fact, even if you join a local company, you are not a direct boss, but you still have to start from a relatively junior designer. After all, CDO also graduated from college and got there a little bit, so in fact, for most designers who just entered the industry, although everyone's startup company has good and bad, the gap is not as big as expected. For example, just like the junior designer of Dell (2-3 years experience), the comprehensive design strength is not worse than that of the designers of domestic design companies (true story, excluding English factors). Therefore, at the beginning of work (about five years), it is the best window for a designer to improve his niche, because everyone has not been able to open the huge gap in ability at the beginning of work, and there is still a great opportunity to improve his development direction through rapid study and hard work. Specifically, this window period is when their ability has not been thrown out by competitors of higher platforms.

However, with the passage of time and the growth of designers' experience, the designers of Diaosi Company began to approach the ceiling gradually, and the improvement of their abilities became slow. At this time, local designers will open the gap with junior designers at a speed visible to the naked eye. This led many designers to feel weak during this period and began to change careers. Therefore, for designers who still want to do ID, the key is to grasp the window period before the gap is opened and strive to move to a better platform before the ceiling arrives.

Of course, in reality, there are not only diaosi companies and local companies, but also a large number of companies in the middle. It is of course the most ideal situation to jump ship directly from diaosi company to local company. More often, everyone goes up bit by bit, from Diaosi Company to Xiaokang Company, which can effectively raise the ceiling of career, learn new abilities and extend the window of job-hopping to a better platform. For example, a friend of mine joined a design company after graduation, honed his basic skills for several years, and then went to a well-known foundry to hone his process experience and knowledge for a while, during which he was promoted and raised. Later, he successfully moved to Dell and became a senior ID.

Here, I also suggest that you consider how far you are from your goal according to your current situation and the ladder model above. How many times do you need to jump? How much time do you have?

If you don't have a better platform to jump ship at the window, it doesn't mean that you won't have a chance, but the resistance to jump ship is higher. The resistance comes from two aspects: on the one hand, you may have to overcome your own pressure and lower your inner expectations for your career, just as the director of a small design company is not completely compatible with the abilities required by the local company, and you may have to re-learn other basic skills in the new company. On the other hand, from the design manager's point of view, two designers with the same level will tend to be young designers, because young designers are better trained and managed.

Finally, it should be emphasized that the above-mentioned concept of window period is only applicable to job hopping, not to career change, because career change often means starting from scratch, so there is no so-called window period. Just like changing from ID to accounting, the sooner the better, because the experience of doing ID is basically not helpful to accounting. Even in industries with close phase transition, such as architecture or UX, the earlier the better.

6, step by step or even thousands of miles.

If you have a career goal in five years and an idea of what to do next, it's time for us to discuss how to act.

What should we do now? Of course, I am staring at the target and trying to improve my ability. The goal is clear, but the ability is the stepping stone. But now is the time when everyone works hard. If you work hard, there will always be people who work harder, so it is not enough to make people stand out by hard work. Anyone who has made achievements in his career must have made the right efforts in the right direction. The previous content mainly describes the "right direction", but what is the "right effort"? By hard work, I mean everyone's efforts to improve their skills through conscious learning. The correct effort is to "improve the right ability at the right time." This sentence sounds like nonsense, but it is not easy to do. Let's do a thinking experiment together.

Everyone knows that the Great God is very powerful and has many abilities that novices don't have. Assuming that these abilities are listed at 10 level, it is obvious that if you master this level of ability, you can become a great god. Assuming that a kind of ability requires 1 year of study,1year of study can become a great god. So the question is, which to learn first and which to learn later? In an ideal world, we would shut the door on 10 without eating or drinking. But in the real world, we must learn in life. If a person leaves the basic skills of the first level to the tenth year, basically you may starve to death because you didn't find a job in the first nine years. In addition, the career development in the real world is also gradual, and the ability of CDO is also accumulated from the efforts of graduates. It is unrealistic to skip basic training to learn CDO. Therefore, career development has its own rhythm. If you want to grow rapidly, your ability must conform to this rhythm. If you can always use the limited time at present to improve your ability for the next step or two, and make your "next step" improve at the fastest speed every time, you can accelerate your overall career development.

Thus, a deeper problem arises. What is the career development rhythm of ID from junior to senior? What kind of different abilities? It will be discussed in the next article, which is also the focus of this series.

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