Where do all those young people working in communications end up going?

The organizational structure of almost all industries is pyramid-shaped, and the communications industry is no exception.

Every year, many young people graduate from college and enter the industry, trying to work their way to the top of the pyramid. However, the higher you go, the smaller the space becomes and the more intense the competition becomes.

Generally speaking, it takes 3-5 years to defeat a dozen or even dozens of competitors to become a leader (section chief or manager) of a small team. It takes 5-10 years to defeat hundreds of competitors to become a middle-level manager of a company. It takes 10-30 years to defeat tens of thousands of competitors to eventually become a rare senior manager.

Few people can stick to the end on an unchanging track.

As the saying goes, "A tree that is moved will die, but a person who moves will live." More often than not, people will choose to switch lanes and "jump" appropriately in order to find a more effective upward trajectory.

This kind of jump can be divided into many situations, such as across departments, across products, across positions, and even across industries.

What I want to talk to you about today is the topic of how to "jump", the topic of the flow direction and career development of communications talents.

Let’s first talk about the internal talent flow of communications companies.

Internal talent mobility in the communications industry is very frequent. Transfers across teams, departments, and even business units are all normal.

From the perspective of job types, it is common for people to move from R&D to engineering services, and from engineering services to marketing and pre-sales. Or, R&D can move directly to marketing and pre-sales.

What is engineering service (work service)? Actually, it is after-sales and project delivery. Communication projects are relatively complex and equipment commissioning is difficult, so the communication after-sales position is not just about repairing mobile phones as everyone understands.

The reason for this flow is not because R&D positions are bad, but because R&D requires high professional skills, and it is not easy for workers and marketing personnel to enter. Even if there is a reverse flow, such as workers switching to R&D, they mainly enter the testing department, technical department, etc., and rarely do development or write code.

Moreover, work clothes and marketing positions are closer to customers. In the current communications industry, it is still mainly a relationship-based market, and customer resources and personal connections are more important for career development. Xiaozaojun has said before that in most cases, dealing with people is more promising.

Let’s take a look at the flow trends within workwear, pre-sales, and R&D:

• engineering service

The trend of transfers within the uniform industry is mainly in the direction of from " travel positions " to " less travel positions " or " no travel positions ", and from technical positions to project management positions or support positions.

This is not difficult to understand, right?

Generally speaking, workers start as product technical support engineers, working on projects and doing maintenance on the front line. This kind of position requires a lot of business trips and is very hard. As they get older, get married and have children, they are definitely not suitable for business trips all the time. Unless they simply stay permanently and take their family overseas, they will definitely return to their home country.

Therefore, for industrial service positions, it is an inevitable trend to transfer foreign projects to domestic projects, foreign offices to domestic offices, and other provinces to this province.

Otherwise, you can only find a way to transfer to another position.

If you are transferred, if you are still engaged in technology, you will generally be a "senior technical support" in the research institute, connecting with R&D and providing technical support to overseas engineers. If you are not engaged in technology, you will be a project manager or engineering manager, following up on project progress and coordinating project resources, including outsourcing, service charges, logistics, etc.

• Research and Development

Internal mobility within R&D positions is relatively simple.

Normal promotions for R&D positions are from junior engineer to mid-senior engineer, and then to R&D manager or project manager, either through administrative promotion or project promotion. Many senior R&D people no longer write code themselves, and will become architects, product managers, etc.

• Pre-sale

Internal mobility in marketing positions is even simpler, either transfer between regions, from East China to South China, or transfer to user direction, from operator business to government business, etc. Or, transfer from a front-line office back to the pre-sales department of the headquarters.

By the way, the proportion of people promoted to company executives from marketing positions is significantly higher than that from R&D and industrial services.

Here I would like to add a few words about the product line department in the equipment manufacturer . For the equipment manufacturer, R&D, work clothes, and marketing may all be transferred into the product line.

The so-called product line is the product planning department, which is mainly responsible for researching customer needs, participating in market bidding, planning product versions, and following up on the implementation of needs.

Product line and R&D are often referred to as the production and research system , but it does not belong to R&D. It is the overall leading department for R&D, after-sales and pre-sales.

In addition to transfers between different job types, transfers between different product divisions often occur within the same company .

Many people think that it is hard to understand why a company that has been engaged in broadband products for several years would start working on base station antennas. In fact, this is a very normal phenomenon in the communications industry.

A few days ago, there were rumors that 20,000 Huawei employees transferred from the carrier BG to the consumer BG. Although Huawei denied the rumor, I think it would not be surprising even if it was true.

For most people in the communications industry, your value lies in your professionalism, work habits and learning ability, rather than the accumulation of current knowledge. Communications knowledge is updated very quickly, and having many years of technical reserves on a product will not form your competitive advantage. Perhaps a newcomer will be able to copy your abilities quickly, or even surpass you.

After talking about the internal flow of the company, let’s talk about the flow of talent between companies in the communications industry.

The overall structure of the communications industry is operators, equipment manufacturers, and partners. The direction of talent flow is that employees of partners desperately want to join operators and equipment manufacturers. Operators and equipment manufacturers flow back and forth.

Talent Flow in the Communications Industry

Over a decade ago, many operators' employees would switch jobs to equipment vendors. Based on my personal observation, this phenomenon is becoming less and less common now.

A small number of young people are willing to jump from operators to equipment manufacturers. Old employees who have worked for many years are more willing to jump from equipment manufacturers to operators. Everyone should know the reasons.

Many employees of partner companies are eager to join equipment manufacturers and operators, but this upward path is narrowing or even closing. Equipment manufacturers and operators have set many hard conditions for this, such as graduation schools, years of work experience, etc., and even simply closed social recruitment.

The reason is that equipment manufacturers and operators themselves are also facing the dilemma of redundant talent and difficulty in reducing costs.

Equipment vendors and operators are now very sensitive to the age structure of their employees. Young people who are cheap, obedient and easy to use are more popular. Employees over 30 years old are beginning to be disliked. ( Except for a small number of those with core competitiveness or resources. )

To be honest, the communications industry is not a big circle. There are only a few carrier equipment manufacturers. If you are already in Company H or Company Z, or in a carrier, then your choice is almost zero and you can only jump back and forth among these few companies.

Although there are many other companies that are running with you, the treatment and development are not satisfactory, and the pressure and risk of survival are also great. Unless you can enter the core interest circle of the company and become a backbone, your future is really bleak.

The communications industry is not a good place to work, so should I consider leaving? If I leave, where can I go?

According to Xiaozaojun's observation, the outflow of communication talents can be mainly divided into the following types. I will briefly introduce them.

• IT Enterprises

The trend of CT (communication technology) and IT (information technology) integration is so obvious that many IT companies are considering poaching CT talents. After all, the basic capabilities of both parties are almost the same, both of which deal with software and hardware.

From the perspective of subdivided professional fields, communications talents transferring to IT are more concentrated in data centers, network operation and maintenance, and information security.

It is worth pondering that top Internet companies, such as BATJM, are not very interested in talents in the communications industry. Even if they need people, they prefer young people.

Having said that, Internet companies are not having a good time these days. Layoffs are happening all the time, and recruiting is not as crazy as before.

• Civil servants

Many of the friends who started working with Xiaozaojun have returned to their hometowns to work as civil servants.

Indeed, civil servants' jobs are relatively stable and their welfare benefits are guaranteed. In addition, they generally work as civil servants in their hometowns, close to their parents, making it easier for them to take care of their families, accumulate social resources, and enter into personal networks, so they are very attractive.

Civil servants do have their drawbacks, and everyone knows it.

• Entrepreneurship

After working for a long time, when personal ability and social resources have accumulated to a certain extent, some people will consider starting a business. Sometimes they take the lead themselves, and sometimes they participate in friends' projects as partners. If they can find the right project, it is indeed a good way.

Many people in the communications industry have their own "side jobs." Especially those who have reached mid-level positions and have reached the ceiling of their career development and cannot find a way to move up, they will choose to open up a "second battlefield" and find some side jobs. When the side jobs reach a certain scale, they will start their own businesses full-time.

Of course, there are many people like Xiaozaojun who quit their jobs to start a business on impulse without any preparation.

• Fund Venture Capital

Communications practitioners have a thorough understanding of the industry. When fund venture capital was booming in recent years, some people joined related professions, such as researchers in securities fund companies in the communications industry and investment managers in technology venture capital companies. Those with a high starting point even became partners.

In recent years, 5G, the Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence have been quite popular, and fund securities and venture capital companies are also more favorable to people with technical backgrounds. However, as the investment boom recedes, this road is not expected to be as easy as before.

• College teacher

There are quite a lot of communication engineers who become teachers. After all, they have technical background in the industry and generally have good expressive skills.

However, the schools they go to are generally not very good. There is no way, now there are many highly educated talents on the street, and there are a lot of overseas returnees with PhDs. 985 or 211 often focus on academic background and study abroad background, and communication engineers are at a great disadvantage in this regard.

People in the communications field usually go to private universities and vocational schools, but it's helpless...

• Insurance companies

Yes, you read that right, I am switching careers to sell insurance.

Have you noticed that insurance companies are particularly fond of employees of telecommunications companies, especially those of Company H and Company Z?

If you think about it carefully, it makes sense. On the one hand, the employees of these companies generally have high education, strong professional qualities, and a good training foundation. On the other hand, these employees are at least middle- and high-income people in their social groups, with a decent economic foundation, and their network of connections also have a certain consumption capacity. They also have elderly parents and young children, and are concerned about family risk prevention awareness, so they are potential users of commercial insurance services.

The most important point is that insurance practitioners have flexible working hours and considerable income, which is very attractive.

I believe that there must be many colleagues around you who have changed careers and become insurance practitioners.

In addition to the above directions, some young people choose to study abroad after working for several years, some female colleagues choose to become full-time mothers to take care of the family and children, or some old employees have a certain financial strength and immigrate overseas. . .

In short, everyone has different family backgrounds and economic foundations, as well as different concerns and pursuits, so everyone's career path will be different. There is also a lot of luck involved, which is difficult to copy and imitate.

The overall decline of the communications industry is an inevitable trend. Even 5G cannot prevent the decline from happening, but can only slow down the pace of decline at most.

How to face recession, how to plan one's career direction, and how to adjust one's abilities and resources are issues that both old and new employees need to consider.

I hope this article can help you think about these issues better.

Well, that's all for today's article. Thank you for reading. If you agree with the views and content of this article, please forward it.