Guide for the 90s

Many 90s (people who are born after 1990) asked me, the oldest 90s are already 30 years old. According to Confucius, 30 is the age of being able to support oneself, how can one support himself?
Even the famous Tang Dynasty poet Baojuyi, at his young age, was warned that it wasn’t easy to live in the Capital. How can the poor 90s live in the big cities?
Most of them took the crowded subway every day, lived in a shared rented apartment, often ate instant noodles, worked 996, and got yelled at by the boss. They already earned 7000rmb per month and got to leave work before 10pm. If you yelled at them too many times they may quit.
That was how the internet described the 90s. To be honest, I think they started with a huge disadvantage, just like the “expert” mode in games.
When I graduated from my Masters, my first job’s monthly salary was 7000 rmb. In addition, the local government also subsidized 2000rmb for high tech professionals. I worked 996 as well, and my boss often had harsh things about me. My life seemed to be similar to the 90s. But if you accounted for the high house price nowadays, the 90s who make 7000rmb was roughly making 1000rmb at my time. Even at my time, school interns were paid 2000rmb with house and rent. Forwarded to today’s standards, it is about 14000rmb per month.
That is why I don’t believe why some bosses complained about the 90s.
Are bosses getting worse, or the employees?
Neither.
The industry profits are not catching up. So the bosses are stuck. The year I graduated, fresh Masters started 7k rmb per month at Huawei. That was basically the standard for good companies.
But nowadays, Huawei never pays fresh grads 50k, even though sometimes you see some phds getting paid 1000k+. They are joining with their research project, so those cases are not representative.
So it is reasonable for the 90s to complain about the situation. I am not the 90s, I am even 9 years older than the oldest 90s. I don’t have any similar experience so I can’t give a good guide how to turn things around. But I can rewind the time and tell you my stories when I was a fresh grad.

I think the 80s were pretty tough too, although the society seems to have forgotten about us now. I think 10 years later, people will start talking about how difficult the 00s are. And the 90s will be forgotten.
The 80s had a rough time because of the 70s. The 70s only needed BA to do product development. But as the competition grew, companies only took Masters. And the BA could only do testing.
Masters often took 3 years. If you delayed working for 3 years, you delayed making money for three years, you delayed buying houses for 3 years. But your salary could not catch up with the house price increase.
When I interned at the first company, one day the interns finished dinner then went for a walk before turning to work. The top school top 5 cs student pointed to the apartment across the lake, saying “it would be nice if I had 300k rmb right now.” If that was the case, he could afford the down payment.
But he didn’t.
He only needed 2-3 years to have 300k. But 2-3 years later, down payment rose to 600k. He would still need 300k.
It was a serious problem for that poor rural kid, even if he knew that long time ago.
A house is not an absolute necessity, but everyone could really use one. Even for someone who was born in the cities, he wanted one for himself as well. On one hand, it is not convenient to live with parents; on the other hand, it tightens a couple’s bond if they buy a house together. Having a mutual house and a mutual loan often makes the collaboration more intimate than not having them.
Because the house price skyrocketed over the years, most of the 80s were fixated on the houses. If you asked a standard Chinese guy, his life goal would be waiting for his company IPO, then cashing out, buying a house, buying a second house, buying a third house…
In the past two decades, you can’t deny house is a very good investment, at least it was going up faster than the tech industry salary. But you can’t say it is a good enough investment. Because its growth has slowed down.
That is why you hear lots of 70s made it rich buying a dozens of houses but not the 80s. Most of the 80s simply couldn’t afford one. My intern colleague, if he sustained the high salary, it was very possible for him to all-in and have a few houses by now. But he can’t have 10+ houses like the 70s.

I realized I at least needed 1000x + increase to be able to afford a house.
When I left my intern dorm I rented a 6 square-feet room . Around the district, there was always someone selling books by pounds. I bought lots of books, including the Og Mandino’s series like “poor dad, rich dad,” but most of them were YY novels. (YY means to fantasize. YY books are books that feed people’s fantasies. Guys tend to like books where the main character possesses many powers and has lots of (potential) girlfriends. Girls tend to like books with the main female character chased by many good quality guys.) At the time I thought of writing novels: sci-fi, YY, time travel…(the blogger-trader’s writing skill was comparable with the famous young novel writer Hanhan at the time.) In fact, this direction was right, nowadays many of the novels written around my time were turned into today’s TV shows, movies and video games.
But I gave up that path. The biggest one was that my day job was too time consuming. The software industry has been a tough industry, ranging from the early digital communication age to the era of the internet. I often had to work over time so I was too busy to write anything.
It was also impossible for me to give up my profession because it was the one of top3 salary professions. So I later picked finance, also one of the top3 professions.
I didn’t start with the A-stock market? Because I heard from a super successful guy from Shenzhen. He had 200x return on his retirement funds. I wasn’t interested because it was not enough for me. Our starting money was not at the same level.
My plan was simple: for my day job, I tried to join a company that would IPO later.
My first company’s CMO used to mock me for being an opportunist. He was absolutely right, I have always been an opportunist.
For my 10+ years of professional career, my only goal was to join a company that will IPO soon and get a good amount of shares. Even if you wanted me to wait, I had to calculate the expectation of returns and opportunity cost.
I had always been clear with my approach. If things went well with the company, I stayed, otherwise I would find another company.
In fact, this strategy worked in the end, although it worked when I no longer needed it.
I started two battlefields, the east battlefield was my profession career, the west battlefield was investing. The east battlefield showed signs of victories when I was ready to retreat. Because the west battlefield already became the main one. All the resources from the east had to transition to the west.

6 years ago, I finally set root on my selected markets.
What is “setting root”?
Just like some pirates settled on a particular island. They “set root” when they set up their defenses to make others hard to enter. Even if I was borne few years later, not even in the 90s range, someone else would have taken my position in that market and made it difficult for me to profit.
In 2008, I was a finance noob. In 2010, I was a novice. In 2012, I had some good profits. In 2014, I had taken up a good share of the market.
If I followed the same path with a 4 year delay, became a finance noob in 2012, a novice in 2014, what happened then? I would have gotten beaten up badly. In fact, when I took the share of the market, I set up multiple attacks against newcomers, undermining their profits. They can’t sustain long without profits.
This was exactly what the 70s did to the 80s. They increased the house price to protect themselves from the rise of the 80s.
So If I was born a few years later then my path would be completely unfeasible. But do people have to walk the same path?
You can turn around and forge your own path. If I have taken over island A, go find island B, C or D… People who occupy territories are often occupied by their territories as well. They have to spend lots of time and effort maintaining their advantages.
Sometimes disadvantage is also an advantage. People who have nothing have all sorts of possibilities.
What is your own opportunity?

Go find it.