Why are wages in economics, finance, IT and other industries so high? Machinery is the basic industry of the real economy. Why do you feel that the machinery manufacturing industry does not make much money? It seems that there are hundreds of thousands of undergraduates entering the IT or financial industry a year, and the average Internet company also has about 100,000. However, some undergraduates graduating from the mechanical industry may be less than 3K a month, and some may be more than 6K. 10w is very rare.
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So the question is, why is IT wages higher than that of machinery industry?
Is mechanical writing simpler than IT programming?
Absolutely not!
In fact, the machine is not simple. But why do most people have this view? The reason is that most of the things we come into contact with every day are mechanical products. Which boy has never repaired things? More or less there will be some insights, such as simple transmission, simple structure, these all exist in life experience, so many people feel that the machinery is very simple, and they know it.
In fact, all we see are finished products. If we go deep into the machinery, we will find that many simple things are not simple. It involves how to manufacture, how to ensure strength and life, what kind of equipment is needed to manufacture it, what kind of precision, precision What to rely on for delivery and guarantee, what form is the best, what process is the best...and a series of questions.
The mechanical products we usually see have been optimized by countless engineers. What we see are only the results, so we think it is simple. In fact, every size and shape decision is made after repeated deliberation. We only see the nice-looking metal frame of a certain Phone. It’s just a frame. In fact, we can’t see how many processes are involved in its manufacturing, how to ensure its strength and quality. This is a machine.
So, looking back, since the machinery is not simple, why are wages so low?
In addition to the lack of attention to the real economy caused by the overheating of real estate, there is another point, that is, maturity.
The machinery industry is already a mature industry. Most of the machinery is now cheap labor for mass processing and manufacturing. If your price is expensive, I will change it. Therefore, you can compete with your peers and naturally reduce costs yourself. There have been hidden rules for the distribution of benefits among various departments. Big fish eat small fish, and small fish eat dried shrimps. The benefits are pooled towards the giants. Small companies have limited resources and limited profit margins. The benefits of foreign machinery companies and large state-owned companies are actually not low. However, the low pay is only for those extremely mature jobs, such as pure operators, anyone can do it after training, so the salary will definitely not be too high.
In fact, there are also engineers in the machinery industry whose salary is comparable to that of the IT industry. They are mainly concentrated in the most profitable part of the machinery industry-the design part. In the domestic machinery field, to put it bluntly, most of them do not have this part (the number of patents of domestic enterprises has continued to increase in recent years, but I really want to put a question mark on how many have real value and are at the forefront of the world. It is said that some core technologies of foreign companies do not apply for patents at first, because they will be disclosed after application, and they will be easily copied.)
Many domestic mechanical products are first imitated or purchased from foreign patents, and then modified and imitated according to needs. The better ones can gradually form their own things. In fact, they do more manufacturing, with little design and less originality. Moreover, better machine tools, core components, and design software are all imported from abroad, and another part of the profit is earned, and the remaining profit can only be the great surplus value of exploiting the working people. Some small units do non-standard equipment as if doing research and development. In fact, the profits are very high, and their mechanical designers are not low in wages. It's a pity that they are a minority in China, and most of China's machinery industry still does not have such companies as "exclusive technology".
This is an analysis of why wages in the machinery industry are generally not high. Let's talk about why wages in IT and other industries are so high!
Why are wages in IT and other industries so high?
In fact, the most important thing is not because of high technology, but because of hot money.
Globally, the IT industry is still in its rising stage, and with the rise of Internet finance and the development and application of advanced technologies such as mobile communications, wearable devices, and virtual reality, we have reason to believe that in the near future , The IT industry will continue to develop at a high speed, and it is entirely possible to subvert the entire world, and its development is revolutionary. In fact, IT technology has been constantly changing our way of life and entertainment, such as Weibo, WeChat, online games, forums and so on.
And at a deeper level, in terms of the entire political economy, such as Taobao's impact on traditional shopping malls, Yu'e Bao's impact on the traditional financial industry, Everbright Securities' oolong practice, the rise of P2P, and the global hype of Bitcoin, we can already see it. With some clues of changes, it is hard to imagine what the future world will look like due to IT technology. If we can travel through time and space, I believe that the impact of future IT technology on us is no less than that of modern "iron birds" on the ancients.
As a sunrise industry, the IT industry has the characteristics of low investment, quick results, and high returns: Tens of millions can be used in the IT industry to make a difference, but in the industrial field, it will be nothing; the myth of Ali Let's not talk about it, Xiaomi's valuation of US$45 billion is really calculated, and Xiaomi is only a few years old. Such a huge rate of return on investment is XX*100% (Sequoia Capital and Softbank make people envious). Faced with such temptation, it is no wonder that the capital market is not crazy, and I don’t know how many bubbles there are today.
After China's reform and opening up, there are still a large number of outstanding talents who have invested in IT-related industries. Although they started later than developed countries such as the United States, some fields still basically keep up with the world's advanced level, and some companies still have a certain level of technology. In addition, Enterprises that can combine China's local characteristics have achieved good results, such as Huawei, Netease, BAT and so on. The favor of capital for the IT industry is worldwide, and China is no exception. When the company is rich, it will naturally pay more. It is still waiting for the people below to go public and collect money. How can we not give more incentives.
Of course, a comparison can also be found that the cost of the IT industry is "lighter":
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The marginal cost of the IT industry is much lower than that of general entities, almost zero in some cases.
A factory produces one more screw, and a real estate company builds one more house, all of which require real materials and manpower. No matter how efficient large-scale production and high-tech equipment are, practical investment is inevitable.
But IT is different: on a certain scale, there may be no difference in cost between an app serving 5 million people and 6 million people, but the income is higher (regardless of the promotion costs common to all industries).
Therefore, compared with some traditional industries, high-end talents in financial and IT companies can directly create huge value, so the proportion of profit distribution is also larger. Although the employees of the manufacturing entities have put in a lot of effort, the value they directly create is limited, and they need to share income with other factors of production.
