Fairness

by 碧树西风 translated by Shicheng

Experts

Recently people are discussing the low marriage rate in developed regions. Lots of experts express their opinions. Many naive people are swimming in experts’ care, they think the world is a nice place where the experts care a lot about them and give them good advice.

If people think the house prices are too high, then some experts will continue to predict the house prices will drop and provide lots of reason why that would happen.

For instance, there is XXX. Everyone loves him but stuff he says may not be what he believes. Because he has to publish 600+ articles per year. 600+ articles, not blogs… With those articles, he can make millions of dollars.

People like advice and consolation, and experts like to count money.

To get rich, You just have to pretend you care about the general public, and say whatever people like to hear.

The Marriage Story

This blog tends to talk about harsh things, but sometimes people don’t want to take in the reality.

Let me tell your a marriage story.

During my startup times, I once had a business dinner with some old colleagues from my previous state-owned company. My startup thanked them for completing all the payments.

There are lots of middle-aged people, mostly born in the 70s. There were only a few 80s-born, including myself. There was a guy who was around my age.

He talked about how he was trying to get married, but the mother-in-law asked for 300k which he couldn’t afford.

There were lots of different people in the state-owned company.

There were many young people who drive million-dollar sports cars and make 5000 rmb per month; there were many whose relatives were high-ranking government officials; there were also people like that guy who made very little and had almost no background.

Even though those people worked in the same company, in the same team.

Everyone there were already big figures. They all were very “sophisticated.” First, that guy’s direct boss complained, “How could that happen? Nowadays it was common for the bride’s parents to give cars and houses as dowry. “

Then a few women directors commented that, back in the day they all married for love. There was no money involved and they were still very happy with their marriages.

Did they tell the truth? Of course.

I believe when their daughters get married, they will not ask the guy for a dime. And they will give the guy houses and cars. But that doesn’t mean they won’t consider the guy’s socio-economic status. They would not let their daughters marry someone lower.

Next, people started to talk about society. They commented on why society had become like that…

Thinking back, Gao (a super fat and ugly guy) easily won a girl’s heart by singing his original song in Qinghua’s lawn.

After two rounds of discussions, they were still in the mood. So I switched the topics to heritage tax. As expected, many were interested because that was relatable to them.

My point is not to tell you adults are fake. I believe everyone there cared about the young man who couldn’t afford 300k rmb. But no one actually helped. Not because they were stingy, because they didn’t have to.

It was not like the guy would die if he couldn’t get married.

Country’s Bottom Line

Different countries have different bottom lines.

For instance, Australia has better social benefits than the United States. Australia feeds lazy people, the United State doesn’t.

Some people say our benefits are not good enough. It depends on the country we are comparing to.

We indeed have less benefits than Australia and Europe. But we are better than places like India or Philippine.

If you go to those places for a business trip, your company will force you to stay in 5 star hotels. Because anywhere else is very dangerous. The company has to pay more if you get hurt.

Those places need private securities because the government doesn’t have enough resources.

See, our country’s bottom line is stronger than those countries. If your safety is threatened, you can just call then the police will protect you. But the government is in no business to help you deal with your mother-in-law.

the Young BA Construction Worker

I used to hire a BA when I worked at the state-owned corp. That was the only time in my career that I hired a BA.

The guy came from the middle of nowhere. Nobody knows about his school. Because he couldn’t find any decent jobs after graduation, he picked up a job as a construction worker to pay for programming classes.

At first I didn’t think of hiring him, since we only hired master degrees. So I told him, “it was very tough to work overtime, you can’t stand it.” But he replied in a defiant tone, “I have worked at constructions, working overtime is nothing to me”

His confidence got me. I had never seen any programmer worked at constructions before, though lots of programmers joke about transferring bricks(blocks of codes) every day.

Because of that, I went against all the disagreements from the company and hired him.

At work, he quickly realized how unfair the world was.

In the same team, some people only came to work once a week. Those people only came to the company to chat. At the same time, I forced him to work overtime until 3am in the morning every day.

He never asked why. I believed he had some questions and doubts about the differences, but he just didn’t say anything.

I told him everything a few months later. The dude who came once a week was only a few years older than him. But he already had a house in the downtown district. His nanny alone made more than 10k per month. And his nanny only used expensive kitchenwares. The dude didn’t come to work because he played mahjong overnight. His parents let him work there just to keep him from meeting terrible friends.

The dude doesn’t even need to get paid at all. The 5k salary was just for the formality. His dad gave him 50k rmb allowances every month.

And the young BA? His dad depends on him. He can’t even live in this city even if he makes 15krmb a month. That is the reality.

The young BA was actually easy to manage. He was very happy that I gave him 2x salary for doing three people’s work. I have only taken him to the restaurants once. The guy never went to see a single movie. He never cared about cars, watches and wines. He can only want to make money.

In my opinion, he was a man “who understands situations.” So I took him to my startup.

I told him a story the only time I ate out with him. It was about SD and CC in a TV show. SD and CC are both soldiers.

CC has so many viable career options. He can become a government official, he can become a businessman…

But SD’s options are limited. He is not so smart, he doesn’t know how to communicate well. The only chance he has is to be a soldier, and he holds onto it like the only pill that keeps him alive.

And the young BA guy is just like SD. He has no credentials, no talking skills. He can’t do any business, can’t be a manager, can’t invest. He can only be a developer, an entry level developer. But no one would hire BA, especially from a terrible school.

The best outcome he had was to be a QA (software tester), worked three years to become a senior QA, then waited until 35 to get fired. I don’t know what else he can do after that.

Therefore, I think the best option he had was to focus on working and making money, only, nothing else. Work, save money, buy a house. That is my best solution given his circumstances.

When he got the developer job, he already had a 50% salary increase compared to being a QA. Then he yolo took 3-people’s workload for another 2x salary boost.

He worked for 3 years then used all the saving to pay for 20% down payment of a house. Then the house price tripled.

1.5(from QA) * 2(Overwork) * 3(years) * 5(down payment reverse) * 3(price increase). The house is now 135x his salary if he started off as a QA. Do you think it is still possible for him to stay in the cities? To earn the same downpayment, he had to work for 9 years. But the house prices was jumping higher and higher every year.

Some people asked what happened to him later? This is not a fictional story. He didn’t become a CEO, neither did he married a white-rich-beautiful(白富美) wife.

What he bornt with determined how high he could go. He bought a house then got married, then bought a car, then moved to another company and got a raise. Now he was just a normal young software engineer who made few hundred thousands every year. I think it was very difficult for him to climb to manager level.

He had so many valid reasons to blame the world. For instance, he used to work with lots of rich-dad sons, high-officials-dad sons. All those colleagues have houses, they don’t have to work. With the same years, those colleagues made way way more money while traveling, while showing off on wechat, while staying up playing mahjong.

What would happen if you just waste all your time away not letting go the sense of fairness?

Keep whining then not being able to have 300k to your mother-in-law?