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Text | Dark matter WAVES, author | empty collection
"Can you bear working overtime?"
Everyone who comes to CATL for interview will be repeatedly hinted at this problem. Whether the intention to take the job is operator , engineer, or middle-level manager, the first assessment when you come to this company is to work overtime.
The "996" of the Internet major manufacturer is called "voluntary overtime" among the workers of CATL, with an average of 100 hours a month.
Overtime hours of ordinary blue-collar workers will be counted as working hours for the month and settled in the form of wages. Engineers do not have overtime pay for overtime, only performance appraisal.
Just 10 days ago, CATL issued its first performance this year.
is different from most companies paying year-end bonuses at the end of each year. CATL’s year-end bonuses are distributed in two times, one at the end of that year, and the other at May of the following year.
In other words, employees who do not leave during this period can receive the performance rewards they receive from working overtime for a year.
Even so, batch after batch of young people still chose to enter the factory. There is no "Times Factory" near my hometown. I switch to high-speed trains and buses, and transfer to several transportation vehicles, risking being quarantined across provinces just to successfully get started.
, "Fuding Times", is only 120 kilometers away from CATL's headquarters. Its first phase of the lithium-ion battery project was officially put into production at the end of last year. It is one of the most shortage subsidiaries of Ningde .
In addition to Fuding , the "Sichuan Era" in Yibin, Sichuan and the "Ruiqing Era" in Zhaoqing, Guangdong are also recruiting employees on a large scale.
An employee said that at the craziest time, when he passed by a printing shop near the company, he could see CATL's recruitment promotional videos repeatedly played on the screen.
cannot fill the capacity gap that cannot be filled by overtime, and more new production lines need to be built and more people are recruited to fill it.
01 When "struggle for 100 days" normalized
Xiaoshan graduated from an ordinary 211 school, and his undergraduate major is Materials Chemistry . At the end of last year, he came to Ningde, Fujian by a senior who had already joined the job.
and he participated in the interview with him, including , master's degree from , and doctoral students with patents written on their resumes. In contrast, his resume seems very thin, with only two internship experiences, and he is a small local factory.
To Xiaoshan's surprise, he received an offer from CATL in just two days. A week later, Xiaoshan officially joined the company, and the senior received a bonus of 4,000 yuan as the recommender. After
came, he found that "it was only about 6 pm for the two weeks of training, and it was early to get off work at 9 pm every night."
Xiaoshan mentioned that the Z base where a colleague of the training group was located, which is the current main production base of CATL. All employees usually have to be busy until 11 and 2 pm before they get off work.
Some people occasionally finish their work, but stay at the base and don’t leave, afraid that the department leaders will know that they have gotten off work early. Because getting off work at 8 o'clock in the evening is considered early, and if you work overtime for less than 70 hours per month, you will definitely be interviewed.
Hu Qiang has resigned for a year, and he worked overtime on average 120 hours a month while he was in office.
is calculated based on the effective working time of 10 hours a day. Hu Qiang has to work 12 more days a month, and when he is in office, he only has one off every week.
He said that most departments are "896" and "8106", eight to nine in the morning or eight to ten in the morning, and one-day break every week. The few new departments, such as 21C laboratory, energy storage, and sodium ion battery, are developed. The get off work time is relatively early, basically nine in the morning to eight in the morning.
Among many production departments, overtime work the most frequently in process-related positions. Some employees revealed that the most overtime work is 240 hours a month.
As long as you step into the base, you will have no chance to rest.
An MDE employee said that their job responsibilities are to do equipment development, installation and debugging management, which is the preliminary project of power battery production. In fact, the suppliers are really responsible for the development. MDE is like Party B in Ningdeli, transferring the demand of the demand department to the supplier, and the supplier will make the plan before reviewing it. The
production line operates 24 hours a day.Although the MDE department does not need to go to the night shift, if there is a problem with the equipment, you have to go to the production line to check it immediately. Especially when new equipment is imported, problems are most likely to occur. It is common for departments to work overtime until one o'clock in the morning.
In CATL, ensuring quality and production capacity are the first priority. Such priorities were reflected six years ago.
In 2016, CATL invested 10 billion yuan in Liyang, Jiangsu to prepare to build a lithium battery factory with an annual production capacity of 10GWh. In the first half of the year, its power battery production capacity was only 7.5GWh.
At this time, the global power battery pattern is that Panasonic has firmly ranked first with its cooperation with Tesla , followed by BYD , and CATL left LG Chem and ranked third.
CATL has not yet become the King of Ning. Whether internally or externally, it is facing a fierce battle.
Zeng Yuqun mentioned in an internal email that we should work hard with our competitors and deliver production capacity in 100 days. Each department immediately issued this requirement, and employees began to work overtime until nine or ten o'clock in the evening every day.
voluntarily working overtime, no overtime pay, and doing fourteen or one-year breaks. This is the "100-day plan for struggle" that every employee will mention.
Old employees have long had no feelings about overtime work. When the first "100 days" ended, they ushered in countless such 100 days.
A project manager said that more and more car companies are cooperating with each other, and most of them are talking about long-term cooperation. The consensus between the two parties is that capacity fluctuations are within plus or minus 15%. Some car companies will also directly contract the production line for
. Car companies paid for the production line, and CATL built a factory building and put it into production.
Whenever the order volume is large and urgent and the capacity needs to be delivered as soon as possible, the struggle for 100 days becomes a clockwork, tightening everyone's nerves.
02 Strict professional agreement and level evolution
"On the one hand, employees work hard to work overtime, and if they can't keep people, they threaten them with competition agreements. If I had known that it was such a company, I would definitely not have joined the company." Xu Peiyuan, who has resigned for two and a half years, has previously accepted interviews from many media. When asked about the specific position and job content, he responded vigilantly, "It's not important" and then talked about his job rank.
CATL has a complex rank system, divided into three modules: hierarchy, rank and level. The corresponding names of management, technology, operation, and civil service positions are different.
For example, the first-level, second-level and third-level operators are all divided into the first-level employees, corresponding to the three levels of 1A, 1B, and 1C, and the levels are also ranked from 1 to 3.
Xu Peiyuan said that graduates of 211 and 985 entered CATL, and their job level was at least 7. As for promotions at ranks, some are fast and some are slow. Some are promoted two levels a year, while others are unable to upgrade one level in three or four years.
The phenomenon of mismatch between contribution and return in this way also occurs between engineers and ordinary workers.
An engineer at level 7 is about 10,000 yuan. An average worker can work overtime for at least 120 hours a week on average, and he can get the same salary.
But after 2019, the basic salary for each upgrade has changed from an increase of 1,000 yuan to 3,000-4,000 yuan. By 2021, employees' salaries generally increased by about 17%. These statements of
have been confirmed by insiders. The most important thing about
is that as long as employees at level 7 or above, CATL will require the other party to sign a competition agreement.
Competitive Agreement is a security mechanism set up by large companies in order to protect their own rights and interests and avoid the damage caused by unfair competition in the industry.
But in CATL, this agreement is like lithium dendrites that can spontaneously ignite lithium batteries at any time, making resigned employees desperate and on-the-job employees walking on thin ice.
CATL was the first company in the industry to draft a business agreement. In 2017, the amount of breach of contract compensation agreed in the competition agreement was 300,000 yuan, but in 2018 it increased to 1 million yuan.
competition agreement lists more than 100 companies, including LG Chem, Panasonic, BYD, and AVIC Lithium Battery . These are obviously direct competitors of CATL, as well as companies such as Oupengbach Power and Neilsen Power, which are rarely heard of industry insiders.
and this list is still expanding.Not only the companies listed in writing, but also the parent companies, subsidiaries, branches, and shareholding companies related to restricted companies are covered.
A former employee said that signing a competition agreement almost means losing his future after leaving the job. There is no choice but to have a new line break and unemployed at home. Even if you have passed the restricted period, you still have risks. "Patient research and development positions will inevitably involve patents. Ningde has been closely watching over the past two years and has sued many companies."
In fact, as early as 2019, CATL sued 9 former employees who violated the competition agreement. Among them, some are the chief engineers of level 10, some are the assistant engineers of level 6, and ordinary marketing specialists. The only thing in common is that they all signed a competition agreement with CATL.
It is reported that the monthly salary of the employees who were sued ranged from 8,000 yuan to 30,000 yuan when they were on duty. The limited time for the competition agreement is between March and 2 years, but CATL has claimed million yuan in liquidated damages from them indiscriminately.
It is worth noting that there is no rule for CATL to follow in the limited time of the competition, and it is basically decided by the department manager to which the employee belongs.
CATL believes that the nine employees involved joined Baoding Yixin Consulting Co., Ltd. and Wuxi Tianhong Enterprise Management Consulting before the deadline of the non-compete period was completed, which violated the agreement of competition.
Last year, CATL also sued Honeycomb Energy for this matter, because Baoding Yixin's legal representative is the general manager of Honeycomb Energy.
The employee involved counter-claimed CATL because he was less than a million yuan claim, but both the first and second instances ended in losing the case.
Although CATL did not include Honeycomb Energy on the list of restricted competition companies, the court found that Baoding Yixin had a substantial relationship with Honeycomb Energy Company.
However, is the million-dollar claim excessive?
According to the terms of the competition agreement, the enterprise requires the competition agreement to restrict the workers in the period to provide economic compensation, and the general compensation amount is 30% of the monthly average salary amount.
In CATL, an employee of 9-10 grades has an annual salary of about 300,000 yuan. After resigning, he can receive compensation of about 6,000-7,000 yuan per month during the non-compete period.
assumes that its competition limit is one year, which means that the employee must work at CATL for at least 3 years before he can offset his salary, compensation and compensation.
, but there seems to be no way out except to choose a settlement.
03 The Great Prophet
"It's really tiring to work hard. It's almost done for three years." Many former Ningde people said that three years is a cycle, which means that the option may be unlocked.
More often, many people leave after staying within a year, especially undergraduate and master's students who graduated from 985 and 211.
A campus recruitment employee who had been in office for three months said that his department was related to battery cell technology. Six people left in less than 20 days after joining the company.
In the early days, CATL was able to retain people, a large part of the reason was equity incentives.
In July 2018, CATL announced its equity incentive plan for the first time, awarding 22.5804 million restricted shares to 195 middle-level managers and 1,475 key employees, a total of 1,628 people. The grant price is 35.15 yuan, which is equivalent to a 54% discount on the share price on the date of grant.
"half-price investment" has become a topic of discussion for internal employees. Many old employees who have experienced the first "100 days of struggle" have a different experience after working for three years: the overtime hours in CATL can be converted into numbers in the account, provided that they can persist.
100 days of struggle have gradually changed from the slogan on the wall to a system and a company culture, which is deeply rooted in people's hearts.
In the following years, CATL launched an equity incentive plan every year, and 2019, 2020 and 2021 granted restricted stocks to 3105, 4573, 4483 middle-level management and core backbone employees respectively.
But getting into the list is becoming more and more difficult and the rules are becoming more and more complicated.
Take the equity incentive plan in 2021 as an example, and is divided into two ways: stock option incentives and restricted stock incentives.
Among them, CATL intends to grant 2.9403 million stock options to 297 incentive targets, accounting for 60.1262% of its total capital of ; and grant 2.22074 million restricted stocks to the remaining incentive targets, accounting for 0.0954% of its total capital of
exercise period and vesting period are divided into three and four periods. The third period is the three years after the grant date. The incentive targets can exercise or be 20%, 30%, and 50% respectively during each year; the fourth period is the four years after the grant date. The second period is the four years after the grant date. The right may exercise or be 20%, 25%, 25%, and 30% respectively during each year.
However, the target of the exercise performance evaluation is astonishing.
In 2021, CATL's actual operating income was 130.356 billion yuan, meeting the assessment target of the first exercise period; in the first quarter of this year, its revenue was 48.68 billion yuan, which is still more than 60 billion yuan away from the annual revenue target. At this pace, CATL can basically successfully meet the performance appraisal of the second exercise period. The key is that in the last two exercise periods, CATL must maintain an annual revenue growth of about 27% in order to successfully complete all assessments. In the face of huge uncertainty, equity incentives have lost their original significance to the vast majority of employees. Specifically, on one hand, CATL’s bold prediction of performance, and on the other hand, the panic caused by rising raw material costs. Last year, overseas ore prices surged by 400%. Even giants like Ganfeng and Tianqi that own lithium ore in many places in Australia and South America will find it difficult to face mining restrictions and maritime transportation difficulties.
Most downstream power battery manufacturers either stop production or reduce production, and at the same time raise prices to car companies. This is also the main reason why major automakers have increased the prices of new models to varying degrees from the end of last year to now.
, which was also affected by the rise in lithium ore prices, signed an agreement with Yichun, Jiangxi last year. After obtaining the prospecting rights this year, it is planning to build a mine factory in the local area.
insiders said that if the price of lithium ore soars again, they will consider increasing the mining volume and lowering the price of lithium to maintain production costs.
But this uncertain sentiment is still spreading, which also affects investors.
Nowadays, almost no one dares to be a prophet, because the value of "Tenyi Ning King" in their eyes has plummeted, and its market value has evaporated by more than 130 billion yuan.
In the global new energy melee, few institutions have maintained a radical attitude like Swiss Bank (UBS) and have not changed direction.
In mid-November 2018, UBS released a report on the global power battery market research. In the report, UBS predicts that the production capacity of CATL, Panasonic, LG Chem, , Samsung SDI and SKI will exceed 50GWh in 2021. At the same time, these five major battery suppliers will occupy 80% of the global market share.
UBS analysts did not expect that this prophecy was fulfilled in half.
As of 2021, CATL's annual production capacity is 170.39GWh, Panasonic is about 89GWh, and LG New Energy is 165Gwh. Samsung's SDI and SKI have not achieved production capacity of 50GWh.
However, during the same period, the market share of six companies, including CATL, LG New Energy, Panasonic, BYD, SKI, and Samsung SDI, has reached 80%.
It is worth mentioning that this report initially did not give BYD a place in the latecomer. Only a year after the report was published, UBS asked for a make-up for itself and added BYD's name.
The butterfly effect produced by this report has not yet spread.
In February this year, UBS once again jumped to the prophet, pointing out in its latest research report that it has reached the buying opportunity of CATL, with a target price of 700 yuan.
In contrast, Allianz Shenzhou A-share Fund (ALCATUA) has significantly reduced its holdings in CATUA since the beginning of the year. This largest Chinese stock fund overseas has been putting CATL in the top 10 heavily held stocks in the past two years.
Expectations or disappointments are not enough to summarize the market's sentiment towards CATL. Stock investors can only capture new trends through two simple actions of buying and selling in large institutions.
and CATL gave its own interpretation.
st, CATL issued a revised fundraising instruction manual, planning to raise 45 billion yuan, which will be used to build production bases and projects of four subsidiaries, Fuding Times, Ruiqing Times, Jiaocheng Times, and Jiangsu Times Power.
Among them, CATL invested 12 billion yuan in the first phase of Ruiqing Times lithium battery production project; Jiangsu Times Power and Energy Storage Battery R&D and Production Project investment was 11.65 billion yuan.
From the supply side, CATL's production capacity has not yet met market demand.
Whether it is bringing energy storage and battery swap to the market, or continuing to focus on its first curve of revenue - power batteries, more than 30,000 employees are not enough to support this ambitious manufacturing giant.
recruitment is the same as the production line with 24-hour uninterrupted operation, and it cannot be stopped yet.
(all respondents are pseudonyms)
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