preface

At the beginning of 2017, I joined a research institute (Central Research Institute) of a group (wholly owned by state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of a first-tier city) as a senior software engineer after a one-day written test and interview. I have been working here for a whole year, and now I have moved to an Internet company. Looking back at this whole year, I feel quite deep, so I have to speak up, in order to help and learn from programmers who want to enter state-owned enterprises.

In the test

Written test: State-owned enterprises is not much difference between interview and other enterprises, the first is the written test, are generally in front of 50 multiple choice, behind two of the big questions is an open, big problem there is no fixed answer, as long as in line with the socialist core values can get full marks, choice is the key, all of them are technical problem, need right above 40 questions, is likely to enter the next round of the interview.

In the first round, programmers will ask you some technical questions, such as: election algorithms, application scenarios of Redis, how to handle high concurrency, how to ensure high availability, whether they care about the new Nodejs release, what deno is; Questions like this are many and complicated.

The second interview is with the associate dean (your future direct supervisor). He will ask you questions about the project, such as: what projects were done, what problems were solved, your role in the project, how the project was managed and progressed, which technology stacks were used, why they were chosen, what problems were encountered, and how they were resolved.

The third round of interview is with the party branch secretary (equivalent to the director of administration and human resources), this interview is very simple, briefly say your situation, chat, and then he will explain to you the organizational structure, and some salary issues.

PS: The most important quality for entering a state-owned enterprise is the diploma. There are more graduates with master’s degree or above in our institute than those with bachelor’s degree, and most of them graduated from first-class universities in China (jiaotong University is the main body of the whole institute).

Pressure of work

The work pressure is still quite high, the products are not market-oriented like private enterprises, but policy-oriented; If the country says that ARTIFICIAL intelligence is hot, we will do the project of artificial intelligence. If the country says that blockchain is hot, we will do the project of blockchain. Anyway, I have been engaged in cloud computing, artificial intelligence, big data and blockchain since I was a graduate student for one year. The advantage is that you can learn a lot and keep up with the market. The disadvantage is that you can do everything and master nothing.

Joke: In order to meet the policy to make some products with no market value (there is no corruption in this, it is difficult for state-owned enterprises to corrupt, and the project above 300,000 RMB requires public bidding).

For two examples, we also develop OCR AI image recognition system, there has been a very perfect product in the market, and very cheap, we still spend money to develop this kind of products, basic no market value, because until now, the recognition rate of our products is still not as good as the several mainstream products on the market (ali, baidu).

The second example is private cloud, which we have done really well, but huawei is the strongest company in the market. They sell servers to send private cloud, which is the traditional way of selling hardware to send software. Compared with them, our products are not competitive.

Working strength

Working intensity is really good, generally do not need to work overtime, at least I am not overtime.

Does this mean sheep can be herded? Of course not, I joined the project team, mostly in 2 weeks for a cycle, held once every two weeks to group discussion, if can’t finish the task or bug is need to work overtime to deal with too much, because they are not can go wrong, a wrong can directly incurred and shamed all relevant personnel (including the project), A KPI black record will directly affect your future promotion prospects.

The team is all collaborative, and the project may not be launched on time due to your reasons. Once or twice, you will be marginalized, and eventually you will either leave or be transferred to the subsidiary. Even vice president level will be delegated if they fail to achieve the GROUP’s KPI.

However, compared with Internet companies, state-owned enterprises have less pressure. Internet companies implement the strategy of leaving if they are not competent, so almost everyone has no sense of security, only to work hard to strive for their own sense of security. In state-owned enterprises, especially large ones, personnel management is generally in the hands of the corporate headquarters.

The work environment

The office environment of state-owned enterprises is generally better. We have our own campus and office building with large space and good hardware configuration, including fitness equipment, air purifier, dining hall and vending machine.

It has its own product exhibition hall and company memorial hall.

The promotion space

This part only left to ridicule, a radish a pit, radish does not go, will not let out the pit. There is no point in performing in a state-owned company. You can’t get any practical benefits other than verbal praise.

A good network is more important than hard work. If no one knows you, you won’t get promoted even if your boss recommends you highly. It is common to parachute into a position of executive in a state-owned enterprise.

PS: Organization personnel should be promoted faster than the masses (the masses can not enter the headquarters).

Welfare treatment

If soes were first class 15 years ago, they are second class at best today, especially for the IT sector. Take my company as an example, the salary increases slowly by salary + welfare (toiletries, movie tickets, nearly 1500RMB subsidy, etc.). Compared with the Internet company, the salary is cut in half at least. I also left the state-owned enterprise to make a living and went to an Internet company under pressure.

Joke: state-owned enterprises have no bonus, state-owned enterprises have no bonus, state-owned enterprises have no bonus, important things say three times.

Working stability

The stability of state-owned enterprises should be praised by everyone, especially Chinese enterprises. On the one hand, soes’ sense of social responsibility is unlikely to lead to layoffs; On the other hand, the personnel authority of the company is almost in the hands of the headquarters, and the sub-departments below have no right to make the decision of layoff. Take RESEARCH and development as an example. If someone is incompetent or does not work well with others, the head of the department will apply to the headquarters for a post transfer to the administrative human resources department or other departments, and there will not be leaders to the headquarters for firing you. Therefore, state-owned enterprises provide employees with a great sense of security. In Internet companies, lay-offs are common. When the leader is happy, angry or even thinking about it, lay-offs often occur several times a year. Employees are almost insecure. Many Internet companies rely on financing to survive. Once the financing interval is large or the financing is insufficient, they will lay off employees. The pressure of survival is huge, and they have no ability or professional ethics or shamelessness to consider the feelings of employees. State-owned enterprises, on the other hand, have little fluctuation in their business. Their revenues are relatively stable. Moreover, they are not poor in money, and there is no pressure to survive.

Technology stack

In fact, most of the technologies used by state-owned enterprises are generally commercial, such as Oracle and SQL Server, and few open source frameworks on the Internet are used.

On the one hand, it is because the commercial software system is stable and has large companies to do technical support. Another convenient open source software stability needs to be strengthened, to the online system failure caused by the bug of open source framework can be said to be more than worth the loss, after all, for state-owned enterprises not bad these money.

But we are different. After all, we are a research institute, which focuses on research and development, so we use more open source technology.

PS: The iteration of software development version in state-owned enterprises is slow, and the system test takes a long time. After all, for state-owned enterprises, they are not afraid of being slow, but they are afraid of system problems. The problems of the system are more serious than the failure of system development.

Fan contributions; Is life up there really what you thought it would be?

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