人啊，是无法委屈自己一辈子的You Can't Sell Yourself Short Forever

A Reader's Guide

This runs to about 6,000 characters in the original, in four parts:

1. The curious economics of career income
2. The venture I want to build, and why
3. Why I'm the one to build it
4. Questions and answers
5. About the podcast

Budget about 15 minutes to read it. I'd suggest going back and rereading Part 1 once you've finished. Enjoy.

01 A Word Before We Start

Everything I've been doing since 2018 boils down to three things: staying fit, reading books, and reading people. Even as I've deliberately pared my life down, I've in effect become a large information hub.

At some point I realized I'd acquired a kind of God's-eye view: letting people teach me, listening to them explain how they made their choices. It's a little like watching one film reel after another flicker past in my mind. I didn't set out to have this vantage point; it was simply what fell into my lap once I'd shifted the angle from which I looked at things.

Let me cut straight to the chase. Take the one thing consulting people and PE people never fail to ask within their first three sentences—the same thing most people today fixate on when they're job-hunting or switching jobs: pay. Here are the numbers and the conclusion, no preamble:

• An article that genuinely, organically clears 100,000 reads (no bots) commands an ad rate of 100,000–150,000 yuan a piece;
• A well-disguised Zhihu answer with 200-plus upvotes can charge 20,000–50,000 yuan;
• A native-ad Weibo post with 2,000-plus reposts, comments, and likes goes for roughly 100,000–150,000 yuan; a single repost from a genuinely million-follower influencer runs 20,000–40,000 yuan;
• A single Bilibili video with a million-plus views can charge 200,000–300,000 yuan;
• A Douyin or Kuaishou livestream with a real concurrent audience of 300,000-plus goes for 100,000–150,000 yuan;
• A successful Taobao livestream selling deal splits the take 30–50%;

…and so on.

Granted, these are all asking prices; the number that actually lands is still a matter of negotiation. But the sharp-eyed and the industry-savvy will already have spotted the common thread: in every one of these examples, the person has already reached the top of their platform.

The same logic holds in careers: in any job or industry, unless you're touching the capital markets or the equity dimension of value creation, once you reach the top the income is in the tens of millions of yuan.

This is genuinely fascinating. On one hand, "tens of millions" is a magic ceiling on a career: the professional manager, the Big Four partner, the consulting partner, the fund partner, the mutual-fund portfolio manager, the top lawyer at a Red Circle firm, the chief actuary, the second-tier influencer or celebrity, the early employee at an internet company, and on and on.

That tens-of-millions ceiling is scattered across every industry and every job, following you like a shadow, everywhere you look.

On the other hand, we have, "by accident," entered an era in which the traditional caste system of professions is steadily losing its grip and falling apart. Go back to those opening numbers. If you're sharp, if you're paying attention, if you have a feel for figures, do the arithmetic and you'll see: the income ceiling for a top influencer also happens to land right around tens of millions.

So what do all these examples add up to? Come back down to the specific job or industry: far, far too many people are far too fixated on investing, on consulting, on banking, and now on the internet.

Investing, banking, consulting, the internet—you can do any of them at any time. Only the timing differs, the order differs, the choices differ; in the end the career paths converge, and so does the income.

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But every individual plays this game called life by completely different rules, and the joy, the pleasure, the sense of fulfillment, and its durability all differ completely too. The difference comes down entirely to how well you know and understand yourself, and the choices you make as a result.

02 What I Want to Build

People should meet each other while they're still nobodies.

The same goes for building a company or doing investing. You've seen a company go public and the founder thank the angel investor, thank the VCs—but have you ever seen one thank a mega-fund? You did nothing for them. I bet someone will bring up DST. But bear in mind: what Shou Zi Chew led at DST was ByteDance's Series B round—the B round—and back then ByteDance was nearly on its deathbed.

From 2018 to now I've met all kinds of people, and I've lived through the internet and venture worlds firsthand: the swell, the frenzy, the glory, and now the extreme grind of it all.

Building on some of my own ideas and strengths, I want to start a career-coaching venture.

What is coaching? Coaching isn't training. It's more like a catalyst: through guidance and questioning, it helps the other person find their own way to the solution. Coaching always trusts that the other person is capable of solving the problem; our job is simply to ask and to reflect back.

I'd realized some time ago that I'm more attuned to content and to people than to numbers—my love of psychology, my interest in architecture and design, and later my passion for marketing. It turned out my sensitivity to buildings and to spaces could be put to use here: knowing how much physical space shapes people. The next step was to go to different places and feel out different "fields"—a marathon, say. That's part of what travel means to me.

For a long time now, more than breadth, what I've wanted is depth of connection. And if the small handful of people I touch can be changed by it a little and come away happier, that's enough for me. That feeling is pure happiness.

Why do this, and why not the kind of "deliverable" everyone else on the market is peddling?

The first reason is that I refuse to be freeloaded off. To the person who's never met me, doesn't know me, has no connection to me whatsoever, yet has the nerve to march up and start "lecturing" me with demands—I have exactly one thing to say: get lost.

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Second: give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.

The mainstream career training aimed at new graduates—and the other education-and-training products too—is basically in the "deliverable" business, or to put it bluntly, the racket business: exploit the information gap, round up a few "mentors," feed you some industry tidbits, and that's about it. The pricey "guaranteed pass" packages and the like are even more unreliable and useless.

That stuff has no barrier to entry, no moat, and no value. Its one real function is to be a chief accelerant of the rat race.

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What I want to do is not to tell you directly, or help you directly, that banking, consulting, the internet, such-and-such company or fund is great and here's where you should go, or to hand you a referral. I could do the referral—it's just not what interests me. What I want to do is, over one to five deep conversations, help you understand more clearly what kind of person you are, what kind of person you want to become, and what your real career goal is.

Once someone sees themselves more clearly, they'll be on their own battlefield and the right track—rather than grinding themselves endlessly for some short-term gain, for the approval of the crowd, to "do better than my classmates."

This is a hidden need—one that has to be awakened and cultivated over the long haul. But it is the right one. It is the missing one. It is the hard, right thing to do.

Take the three functions a lot of finance people look down on—HR, finance, and legal. Who do you think lasts longer in their career, the finance people or the HR/finance/legal people? Most people have only ever seen the investor pulling in 5 million yuan a year. But I've personally seen the HR person pulling in 5 million a year—plus equity.

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Human beings are a species that will spend eighteen years studying, all to pass one exam, earn one certificate, and land a job paying 10,000–20,000 yuan a month—yet won't spend five or ten years sticking with the one thing they truly want to do.

They'll spend eighteen years second-guessing the exam-writers' intentions, dissecting the syllabus, grinding through problem sets, orbiting the exam—yet be utterly cavalier about the big directions of life: marriage, career path.

If you were at the mercy of others before you turned twenty, fine. But after graduation, have you ever truly tried to take command of your own life? Maybe one day you'll suddenly wake up to the fact that you spent the first half of your life picking up sesame seeds while letting the watermelon roll away.

If sesame seeds are what you want, that's one way to live. But if the sesame seeds aren't your desire, why not go after the watermelon?

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I've seen far too many people "suddenly wake up" in their mid-thirties, or after a long time on the job—because of their ego, because of their short-sightedness, because they cared what society thought, because their eyes were fixed only on their peers (classmates, seniors)—and make "blind" choices. By the time it hits them, there isn't much time left to adjust, and all they can do is make the best of a bad job.

In the end, people, after all the wandering, come back to the thing they're best at, love most, and feel the least inner friction doing. It's very hard to sell yourself short. When someone talks about something they genuinely love, their eyes, the corners of their mouth, their whole expression are utterly different—a happiness, joy, and delight that spills out of them without their willing it. That look is profoundly moving.

Whether it's the confusion at twenty-five or the confusion and bewilderment at thirty-five, the core is the same: who am I, and where am I going. A person's inner self-knowledge is what determines both where they head and how far they get. The standards of the world can't sustain us forever; in the end the individual has to come back to the road of self-knowledge. The more we understand ourselves, and the more we accept, the happier we'll be.

And job-hunting or job-switching isn't about the job-hunting or job-switching itself. It's about understanding what kind of person you want to become, about choosing a life strategy, about being the entrepreneur of your own self. The first thing to focus on, at the outset, is not pay; it's your direction, your track, your interests and passion, and whether you're qualified.

Most people—and people early in their careers especially—open by asking only about pay, and it blinds them. What's more, this crowd only wants to freeload and fish for intel. Suppose I tell you Sequoia's or Hillhouse's pay—what good is it if you yourself don't qualify? And internet-company pay is relatively transparent anyway; a little research turns it up.

To the students who think the sky's the limit, who think they're hot stuff or fully qualified: please, go talk to the market first. See how many interviews you can land. See how many offers you can get. Then—and only then—let's look at, and talk about, the pay you can command.

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Consumer-goods people can jump to the internet, and internet people can go do consumer goods; banking and capital-markets people can go to the internet, but not many internet people can get into finance. Plenty of paths are one-way, and plenty of paths are irreversible. PE and consulting people—apart from staying in PE, consulting, startups, or the internet, do they even think about the other routes? There are actually quite a few. When it comes to life choices, you people are not being MECE.

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I wrote two things last year:

Whether you're at BAT (or ByteDance), or at Sequoia or Hillhouse; whether you're at MBB, or at a startup or a hedge fund; whether you're from Tsinghua, Peking, Fudan, or Jiao Tong, a North American Ivy, or the plainest of the plain rank and file—in the end, you're all wrestling with the maniacs of the industry. If you're not good at it and you have no love or passion for it, you cannot out-wrestle the others. Love, after all, is what carries you through the long years.

I've seen plenty of this type around me and in the industry, and they all seem stamped from the same mold. Here's an example: most of them went abroad in secondary school, did their undergrad at HYPSM, went into banking on graduating, did a two-year MBA and then private equity and hedge funds, jumped into an operating company to learn how the real business runs, caught the big boss's eye, and got moved over to run the Asia region. By their mid-thirties, their careers have already peaked—"topped out," you could say—and of course they're totally set for money. Yet the two questions lodged in their hearts never change:

1. What on earth do I actually want to do with my life?
2. I made it, got famous so young (30 Under 30)—why am I still not especially happy?

So: understanding what you want to do is the important thing, the strategy. Which industries and companies you go to—those are merely tactics.

Because all their lives they were told the same story by everyone: even if you're not happy now, don't worry—once you succeed, you'll be happy. So when they succeeded, they could summon anyone they wanted, people respected and admired them, and at first they thought it was the most wonderful feeling in the world—but before long they slid right back to where they'd started.

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You think that going to some company, some industry, or attending some school is going to solve your problems and your predicament? That's impossible. ByteDance has already turned into "Byte-grinding."

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If you want to change jobs, hang a left out the door and go find Michael Page—everything they've got is an urgent opening.

03 Let the Facts Speak

Let's take ByteDance as an example.

I'd sum up the core philosophy of ByteDance's compensation in two phrases: peak on day one, and pull a blind box.

At every level they run the same drill—pulling blind boxes: they pay you far above your current grade on the way in, and then you enter the grind. Using a horse-racing mechanism similar to Tencent's but not identical, the people who can actually deliver are probably under 10%; these get 15–20 months' worth of year-end plus mid-year bonuses, promotions, and raises, while the worst 10% get cut, and everyone in the middle goes two years without a raise.

Take the fresh-grad kids, for instance. In year one they're paid 20k on the nose (well above the average for an entry-level operations role). One of the girls was exceptional; a year in, she was bumped to 27k, then given 30 months—so at twenty-four, total income of a million yuan. But her cohort didn't get so lucky: peak on day one. Two years later, while she pulls a million, the others who joined at the same time got a raise of zero, most still stuck in the low-to-mid-200,000s. Come April the attrition rate is 50%. No matter—"gone is gone."

This is a shrewd way to organize people: pull blind boxes at intake, drawing A-tier people in bulk. The cost is still manageable, and even the ones who don't turn out to be S-tier are extremely dependable soldiers. Because they're all A-tier draws, this bunch has fierce pride and drive, and they'd never settle for being deadweight. Turn it around: if what you recruit is foot soldiers, they'll happily collect a fat salary and coast—bad money driving out good.

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Here's another example. A certain top-tier consulting firm—pay even higher than MBB—breaks 1 million in two years. But given the choice, I wouldn't pick it; I'd still pick MBB. Why?

Leaving MBB usually means a raise, whereas leaving this firm usually means a pay cut—because its people can't get into PE and hedge funds, look down on the smaller shops, and mostly end up at VCs, and going to a VC means a lower pay. Leaving MBB, all you lose is your old perks and benefits; leaving this firm, what you lose is cold, hard cash.

And if you don't leave? The longer you stay, the harder it gets to leave, because you've become too expensive—beyond what most companies and funds can bear. The longer you stay, the more tightly you're bound to the firm.

The high salary "blinds" you, and makes you miss out on all sorts of other possibilities and options.

Pay enough, and even if I tell you there's some chance of a catastrophe, plenty of people will still be tempted enough to go. Great rewards summon brave men; wherever the money goes, the eyes are sure to follow.

Everyone pays lip service to the equality of all life, but deep down everyone knows (capitalists especially know) that a human life—including your own—can be measured with a price tag. And the younger you are, the stronger the urge to take the gamble.

To put it another way, in my view "996" and the alternating-week grind are no different from gambling.

Logically, if every individual were a rational actor, there'd be no need to ban gambling, because every rational individual would cap their losses—would refuse outright to sit at a table where the combined odds of winning are below 50%. But that's flatly impossible; not everyone is a rational actor, and the young least of all.

The fact is, some people get hooked on gambling. Anyone who's seen Operation Mekong or knows the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia knows there are people who go play Russian roulette: an empty chamber and I win several times over; a live round and my luck runs out and I'm dead.

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It's the exact same logic: someone offers you a million-a-year salary, but there's a 1% chance you drop dead of overwork—how many people would be tempted? That is, at its core, Russian roulette all over again.

People can never be fully rational, and the younger they are, the less so. These are two textbook cases of the local optimum versus the global optimum.

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Here are a few questions for you to think about, or leave in the comments below:

1. Is being able to join Sequoia, Hillhouse, or Warburg Pincus straight out of school a good thing, or not entirely a good thing?
2. Should a fresh graduate go to ZhenFund?
3. What personality trait do you deeply envy in others but lack yourself?
4. What personality trait in other people do you especially dislike?

You'll notice that the more junior and fresh-out-of-school someone is, the more brimming with self-confidence they are and the less reverence they hold for the industry; the more they care about short-term gain (fixating on pay) at the expense of the big-picture choice. The more senior someone is, the first thing they weigh is whether they're qualified enough, whether there's a spot and room for them.

04 Why I Can Do This: Why Me

I've personally made close to a thousand cold calls, and talked with over 3,000 people by phone, video, and in person, with well over a thousand pieces of feedback from those around me too. I've "influenced" several hundred people toward getting closer to, and finding, a direction that interests them.

The industries I know or am familiar with are the following, so my service is concentrated on practitioners in these industries and people interested in them.

Cases I've personally handled:

• Internet: an Alibaba P8; a Tencent M10.
• Finance: Analysts, Associates, VPs, and Principals on the deal teams of USD funds; middle- and back-office IR VP; PR VP; FA senior associates and VPs.
• E-commerce director at a listed company.
• CFO at a startup; product managers; HRVP.
• Consumer-goods GA; Director; Senior Manager.

Industries and companies where I can offer help and advice:

Internet: Alibaba (Cainiao; Ant Financial); Tencent; ByteDance; Kuaishou; Pinduoduo; Meituan; JD; Didi; Xiaomi; Beike; Bilibili; Xiaohongshu.

Finance—

Angel: ZhenFund; K2VC; Plum Ventures; Pine Ventures.

VC: Sequoia; Source Code; Gaorong; Qiming; Morningside (5Y); Lightspeed; GSR; Vertex; Yuansheng; Yunqi; Shunwei; Legend Capital; Vertex (Xiangfeng); Toutou (Today); Redpoint; Joy Capital; Northern Light; China Growth; Kunlun; Sinovation; China Broadband; Lanchi; Zhongding; Tiantu; Frees Fund; Hongtai; DCM; IDG; GGV; BAI; SIG; XVC.

PE & growth: Hillhouse; Tiger; the mega-funds (Warburg Pincus; KKR; TPG; Temasek; Blackstone; Carlyle; Bain); CMC; Boyu; Primavera; China Renaissance New Economy; Yunfeng; Hosen; Hopu; CITIC; CITIC Industrial; FountainVest; NewQuest; CDH; Cathay; Trustar; Orchid Asia.

FA: China Renaissance; Lighthouse; Taihecap; iGeek; Muman; Chongying; Gaohu.

Public markets: Springs Capital; Greenwoods; Hillhouse's Jinglin peers—Jinglin; Yongjin.

Internet corporate development: Alibaba; Alibaba Cloud; Tencent & Strategy; Tencent Cloud; ByteDance & Strategy; Baidu & Ventures; Kuaishou; Meituan & Strategy & Business Analysis; JD; Didi Strategy; 58.

Consulting firms: MBB; BDA; OW; L.E.K.; Kega; Monitor; Parthenon.

Consumer goods—

• Athletic apparel: Nike; Adidas; Anta; Li-Ning.
• Consumer electronics: Apple.
• Beverages: Coca-Cola; Starbucks; Genki Forest.
• Food: McDonald's; KFC.
• Household goods: P&G.
• Cosmetics: Estée Lauder; L'Oréal.
• Media companies.

There are also a few mysterious, non-mainstream ones I'll leave off for now.

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In life I'm a very candid person, so I'll only list the industries where I can actually help you or offer you something. Healthcare, for instance, I know nothing about, so I won't put down what I don't know. In society's terms, the value I can provide is a complete "solution," namely:

• School selection and choices for grad school / MBA.
• First-hand intel on the current hiring situation, market landscape, and org structures of the industries above.
• The job-switch routes between these careers, and the timing of when to move.
• How people with five to ten-plus years of experience make their career choices, and what they're thinking (this is what you should most be learning from and paying attention to).
• The pay you all care most about (this is the least important point).

(Figure in original.)

05 Who This Is and Isn't For

(1) A good fit

• People introduced by friends of mine, or who trust me and figure I'm reasonably reliable, know the industries, and know quality when they see it.
• Age: roughly 18 to 35 (the span from starting university to about ten years on the job). Past ten years of work, whether you graduated with a bachelor's or a master's, you're basically set in your ways. MBAs may be a bit of a special case—we'll treat that separately.

User profile:

• People who haven't figured things out, or feel they can't.
• People with career confusion in the present or over the medium-to-long term; people who are depressed at work, unhappy, unable to find direction or joy, etc.
• People who feel the people or circles they've been exposed to are relatively narrow and monotone, and want to change industry or function.

(2) Not a good fit

• People over 35. People over 35 are actually fine too, but based on my experience and my sample, I won't be of much help or influence to you. If you'd still like to consult, you're welcome.
• People who have already figured it out. Having figured it out is one of life's blessings. Now just go do it—just do it.
• People whose circle, network, and classmates and friends can help them learn / dig up / understand the information, documents, or people they need.

(3) Who I welcome and who I turn away

• Welcome profile: sincere; kind; genuinely wanting to find their own direction or passion; genuinely wanting to make / build something.
• Turned-away profile: big ego; arrogant; freeloaders.

06 On the Consulting Itself

• Price: 496 yuan a year.
• Format: a Knowledge Planet group.
• Content: the group's day-to-day materials and updates, plus deep one-on-one conversations of no less than two hours each, twice a year.
• Discounts: for those who bring a friend, 20% off renewals for existing users, 10% off for the friend.

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07 Questions and Answers

If I'm interested in consulting, what should I do?

A: ① You could read these related articles—they'll help:

• "Today, the internet is looking more and more like investment banking"
• "2020 recruiting-market review and 2021 outlook"
• "2019 recruiting-market review and 2020 outlook"
• "A few words for the 'golden March, silver April' hiring season"
• "A few words for the 'golden March, silver April' hiring season—part two"
  ② Nail down your question, be able to ask it clearly and precisely, and come to the consultation with the question in hand.

Q: Aren't you just fleecing suckers and manufacturing anxiety?

A: If I were out to fleece suckers, I'd do what the outfits on the market do: 5,000-yuan-plus job-coaching packages, guaranteed-pass courses, 10,000-to-20,000-yuan VIP programs. The money comes in fast, sure, but that stuff creates no real social value—it only intensifies the rat race.

Q: Why consult you? It seems like my classmates or friends could do exactly the same?

A: No problem at all.

First, as I said earlier, the number-one item on the "good fit" list is that you find me reasonably reliable and trust me. This need is hidden—it has to be awakened and cultivated over the long haul. But it's the right one. It's the missing one. It's the hard, right thing to do.

Second, it comes down to whether you think your time is more precious, or the consulting fee is. Job interviews are all about timing; miss the window and you've missed it.

Finally, whether you're in a competitive relationship. Your classmates and friends are, on the whole, your peers. Of course, if you can get the points and information you're interested in from friends and people around you, great. The premise is that you need to confirm they're giving you all the information—information that hasn't been prettied up.

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08 About the Podcast

Last year I was torn between a podcast and video, and in the end I chose the podcast. It felt lower-cost, and more like company.

This year I'll be putting out a podcast; the format, or positioning, is the personal interview. Some friends around me already know the specifics and the vision, and some have already gotten invitations.

The podcast is not being monetized at all; it's a work I'll be building over a long horizon. The update frequency and cadence aren't fixed.

The kinds of guests currently on the list include (but aren't limited to):

• People from the sports world (marathon; basketball; badminton).
• Investors.
• Founders.
• People from the entertainment world.
• Some content creators and podcasters.
• To be added.