Chapter 31 Malice from the 3G Communications Industry

If we can poach R&D personnel from Zhiyun Technology at a reasonable price, then it won’t be a big problem and we can make a lot of money... after all, we can save on training costs.

But if you want to poach people at a premium, you have to be prepared for serious losses... The senior engineer you poached for $200,000 may only be able to do the work of an ordinary engineer. No matter how rich a company is, it cannot waste money like this.

In addition, there is a serious mismatch between the capabilities and salary levels of the newly recruited employees, which not only causes the company to lose money on salary, but also causes an imbalance in the R&D salary structure within the company...

An engineer with decent skills only gets an annual salary of 100,000 yuan, but a new employee who is even worse than him gets a salary of 200,000 yuan.

Not in such an insulting way.

Do you believe that the old employee will resign that night and switch to Zhiyun Technology the next day? Well, when you are poaching people, the people from Zhiyun Technology are also keeping an eye on your engineers, ready to swing their hoes at any time.

In fact, the so-called talent poaching war in the past one or two months is actually concentrated in a small number of ten or so mobile phone companies in the industry, poaching each other...

As a result, Zhiyun Technology has started to sign non-compete agreements with some ordinary R&D personnel.

This is not something you can sign casually, it has a cost...Everyone is very clear about the current employment situation in the smartphone industry, and employees there don't worry about not finding a job at all. In this case, if you want employees to sign this willingly, you will need to pay a certain amount of extra cost.

In addition to the regular monthly compensation after leaving the company, Zhiyun Technology also pays an additional bonus as a bonus for signing a non-compete agreement. In this case, most employees will not protest and will sign the contract readily to receive the bonus.

A small number of people are unwilling, but it doesn’t matter if they are unwilling…

In fact, this is just a gentleman's preventive measure. If employees really want to get around it, there are many ways to do it, such as finding a job in an outsourcing company, or finding a job in a company that is not related to the industry, or simply taking private jobs at a high price. It is not necessary to go to work in a competitor's company in a swaggering manner!
Faced with this situation, companies generally don't have any good solutions. After all, it's hard to get evidence, and it costs money to find evidence to sue. It's not worth it for ordinary employees, so if ordinary employees violate the non-compete agreement after resigning, the company will simply stop paying the non-compete compensation.

It’s hard to get around some real technology giants, because the original companies will really keep an eye on you...

Therefore, non-compete agreements are definitely useful for technical backbones, but they are not that restrictive for ordinary employees.

After Weiku Electronics started to require ordinary R&D personnel to sign non-compete agreements, several other mobile phone manufacturers followed suit. As a result, it became more difficult to poach talent from the same industry... All slightly promising talents had to sign non-compete agreements.

Unless you want those low-level programmers who do odd jobs and hard labor, you can poach them at will. But these people are not irreplaceable. You can just hire fresh graduates. There is no need to pay a premium to poach them!
It’s difficult to poach people from the same industry. What should I do?
After all, the talent gap is real. If we can’t find enough talents, how can the project be advanced?

Not to mention other companies, Zhiyun Technology's R&D team, according to internal estimates, will need at least 200 people to barely maintain the R&D progress and produce a prototype in time around May or June.

Without this person, the R&D progress will naturally be slower, and the R&D work in some subdivided industries also requires specialized R&D engineers. It cannot be done by simply transferring people from other subdivided project teams!

For example, the power management system is related to charging and battery life. If the power management is not done well, the battery will not last long and will easily swell, shortening the battery life. At the same time, if the power management is not done well, the battery will consume power faster and the battery life cannot be guaranteed. You can't ask someone who specializes in system optimization and customization to solve these technical problems, right? You can't ask two engineers who specialize in camera modules to solve them, either.

You need to find some professionals in this field to do this!
In a smart phone project, there are actually many such sub-projects. The so-called research and development of smart phones does not mean that a mobile phone designer can just draw a blueprint and then assemble them. You have to understand and develop each subsystem, and then study how to better assemble them together.

This is very difficult for a manufacturer like Zhiyun Technology, which has little technical accumulation in the field of smartphones, and even did not have much technical accumulation in the field of feature phones. In fact, it has more work to do than other large mobile phone manufacturers.

Large mobile phone manufacturers have accumulated some technologies to a certain extent. For example, the power management issue is also available in feature phones, and the same is true for the photo-taking issue.

This series of subdivided issues has led to Zhiyun Technology having relatively large requirements for the number of R&D personnel.

The R&D department is seriously short of staff, and they cannot poach people from the same industry. Fresh graduates can only help out and do some ordinary work, but senior engineers who can lead a team cannot be found for the time being.

What to do? As a long-time human resources expert at Vico Electronics, Luo Yinian shifted his focus from the mobile phone industry to other industries, such as Internet companies and other consumer electronics design and development industries.

Many technologies are common, and similar talents are not only found in the mobile phone industry, but also in other industries... Let’s take power supply as an example. Mobile phones need to use power management technology, and laptops do too!

So, after contacting all major human resources companies, Luo Yinian wore a suit every day and drove the company's Audi A4 to meet people everywhere. It turned out to be effective. In just ten days, he recruited more than ten technical backbones, which greatly alleviated the talent gap in Zhiyun's mobile phone R&D team.

In the past one or two months, more than a dozen mobile phone manufacturers have been eyeing each other. When Luo Yinian of Zhiyun Technology secretly poached a dozen technical backbones from other industries, and the money they spent was not high, and it was completely at the "normal price" of the 3G communication industry, the human resources managers of other mobile phone manufacturers could no longer sit still.

After receiving the relevant report, a human resources director of a mobile phone manufacturer next door immediately read a lot of information, made a few phone calls, and then turned around and shouted to his subordinates: "Immediately start collecting relevant software and hardware R&D engineers in other industries, and then contact them one by one. Those in the Internet, notebooks, PDAs, and other related industries, contact them one by one!"

"Damn it, I almost got tricked by that old guy Luo Yinian. But this idea is really good. The mobile phone industry is too small. Not only are there few talented people, but the prices are getting higher and higher. They all have signed non-compete agreements and are hard to poach. But there are many related talents in other industries... Most of them don't have non-compete agreements yet!"

"Hurry, hurry, more than a dozen peers are watching us. We must act quickly and contact them before they do. Then we can go to their homes to meet them. If they meet the requirements, we can sign the contract with them at a premium. Remember, we must sign the non-compete agreement. I don't want to be poached again just after I poached them!"

"It doesn't matter if Zhiyun Technology eats the first bite of meat, but we must not let go of the second bite of meat. Hurry up and act. Use all the connections you can use, make all the calls you can, and attack directly once you find a suitable target!"

Then, some other related technology industries felt the deep malice from the 3G communications industry... Damn, these mobile phone manufacturers are too crazy about poaching people... The prices they offer are too outrageous, and they have poached all the talents.

Finally, why don’t you come and poach me with a premium?
Boss, although I don’t know how to use a smartphone yet, I can learn…

(End of this chapter)

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