Riding the wind of rebirth

“So, what other companies can produce in three man-days, we need six man-days to complete.” Zhou Zhi said, “But this has an advantage, that is, all outputs meet the most advanced international standards. When we need to participate in the competition, we can produce them immediately. Companies that can produce products in only three man-days may need more than ten man-days to make up for the shortcomings.”

"Only from this perspective can our efficiency be higher than that of other software companies," Zhou Zhi said. "Of course, the cost is only worthwhile under this usage model."

This statement actually hits the pain point of many software developers. Piracy is prevalent in China now. There are very useful free pirated software to use. Who has the patience to correct the errors of the fledgling domestic software? Wait for them to iterate?

This has led to domestic software development having to play the low-price card and trying every possible means to cut costs. Not to mention the approach of the Clover Group to ensure ISO standard outputs, even the software itself is somewhat shoddy. The products of some software development companies are not as good as those of forum software development enthusiasts who generate electricity with love and do not charge a penny.

However, the software that can be developed by such a lone enthusiast is doomed to be of little use. For example, the breakpoint resume downloading tool developed by Hu Tianyu, although very popular for downloading files online, actually the core program is only two megabytes.

Currently, the larger ones that Zhouzhi can see are basically office software, financial software, and game software.

This road would be difficult even for Clover, so Zhouzhi chose to base itself on the international market while taking into account the domestic market, to build systems and underlying architecture, as well as professional supporting integration, such as business management systems, convenience store systems, hospital information systems, campus card projects, etc.

These projects require large initial capital investments, have complex systems, and are difficult to develop. Although the output benefits are amazing, they are not something that small companies can afford.

Even so, the revenue from the domestic software division of Clover Group is still almost impossible to make a profit. Apart from fonts, antivirus software, underlying operating systems, and the few professional systems just mentioned, the rest are basically "supporting" projects that serve portal websites, yellow page servers, etc. For example, browsers and QQ instant messaging software, these things themselves do not make money, but the additional small software that relies on them makes money.

However, it is very difficult for other software companies to survive in this era. Except for software outsourcing contractors relying on financial or monopoly institutions such as securities companies, insurance companies, banks, post offices, telecommunications, electricity, and transportation, those software developers directly facing the general public are basically squeezed internally and forced externally, and there are really few who are doing well.

In such an environment, if you still want to play like the Clover Group, you really don’t know how to spell the word death.

Everyone here is an old hand. Information engineering technology is a very hot profession nowadays. Even if you are still staying in the ivory tower doing research, who doesn’t have some disciples who have complained to you?

The best performing group of software engineering technicians nowadays almost all work for the Chinese offices of foreign brands, such as Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft, where their starting salary is around 8,000 yuan.

The second batch is those that entered several large enterprises, currently the four communications technology companies known as the "Giant China".

Further down the list are companies that provide services to large monopoly organizations, such as BlueSky and Great Wall, as well as information technology product groups such as Lenovo, Inspur, and Kingsoft.

Next down are the information technology maintenance personnel within local telecommunications bureaus and financial institutions.

The salary of one level dropped by 2,000 yuan, and the fourth group's monthly income was around 2,000 to 3,000 yuan. But 2,000 to 3,000 yuan should not be underestimated. In the era when ordinary city cadres only make a few hundred yuan and bureau chiefs make just over 1,000 yuan, an engineer in a telecommunications room can earn much more than an ordinary bureau-level leader.

The preferred destinations of these technical personnel also show how difficult it was to get started in China's domestic software industry.

It is okay to program using foreign development software, but it is extremely difficult to independently develop large-scale tool software such as JAVA and C++.

Of course, there are also many technicians who have made their first pot of gold by relying on their own skills. For example, Zhou Zhi’s mentor in his previous life once found a board drawing from foreign materials, and then developed a key component of a mobile base station - the "phase-locked loop" - by himself.

The performance stability of a base station equipped with a phase-locked loop board is 20 to 30 percent higher than that of an ordinary base station.

For big companies like China Mobile and China Telecom, they can improve base station performance by spending only seven or eight thousand yuan. If they directly ask foreigners to do it, they may not achieve such an effect even if they spend thirty or forty thousand yuan on a base station.

However, Zhou Zhi, who helped his tutor solder the circuit boards for a whole semester, knew that the cost of one card for his tutor was only 400 yuan.

The same thing happened to Zhou Zhi's senior brother in his previous life. This guy specialized in helping people crack "encryption dogs". He could get five to six thousand yuan for cracking one, and once this thing was cracked once, it could be cracked countless times using the cracking program.

However, these practices are actually flawed. Both the tutor and the senior students have violated the Intellectual Property Protection Law. However, they completed the accumulation in the shortest time and became worth tens of millions in a few years. It is truly the so-called "a horse cannot grow fat without night grass".

And those who are still sitting here, without exception, are people who have withstood the temptation of money from the outside world and made great contributions to the country. Of course, Zhou Zhi has great respect and admiration for such people.

With such respect and admiration, everyone naturally got along very happily. The only regrettable thing was that these people all made the same mistake, which was that they asked questions and turned them into a thesis defense, treating Zhou Zhi and Mai Xiaomiao as students of their own college or graduate school.

6◇9◇Book◇Bar

This also made Zhou Zhi and Mai Xiaomiao feel a bit stressed, so after the meeting ended that day, Zhou Zhi rejected the old leader's invitation to dine in the restaurant, and used the excuse that there were important projects waiting for them to report at the National Museum and the Ministry of Culture, and quickly left with Mai Xiaomiao.

When they arrived at the gate of Demian Hall and said goodbye to the driver who brought them here, Mai Xiaomiao stuck out his tongue and said, "Those old uncles are so scary. They kept asking questions all afternoon."

"This is a good start. The worst thing is that we don't know how to ask." Zhou Zhi said with a smile, "But now that we are here, we are at home. Just relax. I will take you to visit two respected old men. Remember, if you have a good chat, and they want to give you their own calligraphy, paintings, or small gadgets, don't refuse. Accept them quickly."

"Hey, why?" Mai Xiaomiao felt very strange: "Didn't you say in Lianhe Township that you should not accept gifts from fellow villagers no matter what, and even if you accept them, you must return the gifts in kind? Why is the custom different in this capital?" (End of this chapter)