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XinOu Original

Author | Leaf

Editor | Zhao

After working in the declining auto repair industry and the increasingly introverted online ride-hailing driver for 20 years, Lu Weibing "got off the bus" and became a team manager, standing at a new forefront.

After resolutely changing his career in the middle of his career and overcoming the "transition crisis" from integrated design to software testing, Zhang Jiaqiang successfully ushered in the second spring of his career.

Liu Jianhua, who crossed over to the driverless car track with his passion for driving, finally came to Luobo Kuaipao after many twists and turns. He is using his own strength to promote the growth of the driverless car industry.

These are stories that happened to the employees of Luobokuaipao.

While these choices are giving their careers a new lease of life, they are also quietly rewriting the landscape of the global driverless industry.

1

Online car-hailing drivers

Sending passengers home in another way

"From auto mechanic to online car-hailing driver, and then to ground safety officer, my life is tied to the development of automobiles," said Lu Weibing.

As a post-80s who witnessed the growth, prosperity, transformation and rebirth of Wuhan, the "Automobile Capital of China", Lu Weibing's life trajectory is a microcosm of the changes in this city's automobile industry.

In 1979, Hubei's automobile industry entered the stage of adjustment and reform and opening up ahead of other industries, and Hubei's automobile industry developed rapidly during the reform and opening up. In 1992, Second Automobile Works was officially renamed "Dongfeng Motor Corporation", and successively established joint ventures with international automobile giants such as Nissan Motor Company, Cummins, Renault Commercial Vehicles, Citroen Group, Honda, etc., and promoted the progress of China's automobile industry to a large extent. Wuhan is also known as the "China Automobile Valley".

It was the prosperity of the automobile industry in Wuhan that made Lu Weibing choose this path. After graduating from high school, he chose to go to college to study a major related to automobile maintenance and officially entered the automobile industry.

Like many people, his first stop was a 4S shop, where he came into contact with the industry for the first time. Although his major was maintenance, the hard-working Lu Weibing did not limit himself to a certain category. Instead, he learned everything about cars in ten years. "I have done car service, after-sales service, maintenance, and consulting."

After accumulating sufficient industry experience, Lu Weibing was unwilling to work for others and opened his own repair shop. However, the good times did not last long. After several years of entrepreneurship, the decline of traditional fuel vehicles became a turning point in his career.

"In the sixth year of opening my own shop, the market environment deteriorated and competition in the automotive industry became increasingly inward-looking. There was no way out for me to continue running my own repair shop, and I didn't want to go back to doing repair work. It happened that online ride-hailing was not a car rental model at that time, and I had stable social insurances and a stable salary, so I tried it for a few years," Lu Weibing told us. Although the basic salary was not high at that time, with the addition of rewards such as online time, assessments, and number of orders, you can earn more than 10,000 yuan with a little effort.

Unfortunately, the good times did not last long. In the fourth year after Lu Weibing joined the online ride-hailing industry, it became increasingly difficult.

According to him, the days when one could earn over ten thousand yuan with just a little effort are gone. Only those drivers who drive their cars for 12 hours a day and even move their beds into the car can be ranked among the 5% A+ and get a salary of 13,000 yuan. Lu Weibing, who was unwilling to sacrifice his health to run orders but wanted to spend more time with his family, gave up his job as an online car-hailing driver, which had a low cost-effectiveness, after the online car-hailing platform started the car rental mode and the number of orders dropped sharply.

According to Lu Weibing, he originally wanted to find a job related to automotive after-sales services, but during the job search process he found that Luobo Kuaipao was recruiting safety officers. At that time, he already had a preliminary understanding of driverless cars.

As an "old driver" who has worked in the automotive industry for more than ten years, is proficient in everything about automobiles and has several years of experience in online car-hailing, Lu Weibing easily passed the assessment and training of Luobo Kuaipao and became a main driver safety officer.

In just less than two years after joining the company, Lu Weibing witnessed the growth of driverless technology. He also experienced the process of moving from the driver's seat to the front passenger seat, then to the back seat, and finally leaving the car to become a ground safety officer.

The job of ground security officer is somewhat similar to the job Lu Weibing did in a 4S store when she first entered the industry.

According to him, unlike his previous job as an online ride-hailing driver where he had to work all the time, he only needs to go to the departure point before departure every day to record and organize the vehicles to be operated that day, send them out successfully, and be on standby to solve problems on site during the day. After the night shift, he only needs to record the collection and cleaning of the vehicles, and he has completed his work for the day.

When talking about salary, although Lu Weibing did not reveal the specific amount to us, he also answered that the income from working at Luobo Kuaipao is definitely more than that from driving a ride-hailing car.

At present, Lu Weibing has become a ground crew leader, leading a team of more than a dozen people, including online taxi drivers, food delivery boys, truck drivers and auto repair workers.

Lu Weibing and their lives have taken a new direction. "Embracing new things has brought so many unexpected changes to my life," Lu Weibing said with emotion.

Just as Lu Weibing said, compared to the safety officer who follows the car, it can be said that it is a challenge for the ground crew leader who has to coordinate communication and solve problems. But for Lu Weibing, who has worked from a 4S store to an entrepreneur, then to an online car-hailing driver, and finally to a safety officer, which one is not a challenge?

Beyond the personal level, Lu Weibing's experience of transforming from an online car-hailing driver to a promoter in the field of driverless cars perfectly fits the spirit of the policy of "improving the system and mechanism for developing new-quality productive forces in accordance with local conditions" - that is, promoting the optimal combination and upgrading of workers, production tools and production objects.

In addition, driverless cars are one of the most competitive cutting-edge technology industries in the world.

Recently, Waymo, a driverless taxi company under Google, announced that after expanding the scope of its driverless travel services twice in a row, the number of paid driverless car trips in the United States per week has doubled compared to May, and with an average of 100,000 paid trips per week, it has surpassed China's largest driverless travel platform Luobotai.

Not only that, Google's parent company Alphabet stated in its second-quarter earnings call that it will invest another $5 billion (about 36.4 billion yuan) in Waymo in the next few years. This round of investment will enable Waymo to continue to build the world's leading driverless technology company.

Therefore, this transformation of "Lu Weibing and others" not only opened up new horizons for his personal career, but also contributed the power of ordinary people to the development of new quality productivity and the competition between China and the United States in the science and technology industry.

This is also the unique sense of pride of "Lu Weibing and others".

In fact, cases like Lu Weibing's are not uncommon; on major recruitment platforms, whether it is LuoBoKuaiPao, Pony.ai or other driverless companies, they usually indicate that applicants with a background in online ride-hailing operations are given priority. This has provided new career opportunities for many practitioners in traditional industries, and many drivers like Lu Weibing have already started a new career.

2

Midlife crisis? Cross-disciplinary employment?

Autonomous driving welcomes all serious and hardworking explorers

In fact, in addition to providing new employment options for "old" online ride-hailing drivers like Lu Weibing, such as smart connected vehicle testers and smart connected vehicle installers and operators, driverless cars have also become a "new" starting point for many people's careers.

Among them, Zhang Jiaqiang, a vehicle software operation and maintenance expert, was one of them. He was not satisfied with his stable job and joined Luobokuaipao with curiosity and yearning for new technologies.

In 2008, Zhang Jiaqiang graduated with a degree in mechanical design, manufacturing and automation and began his working career in Luoyang, mainly involved in the manufacturing, maintenance and design of various types of vehicles.

After working steadily for ten years, Zhang Jiaqiang was moved when he saw the recruitment information posted by the LuoBoKuaiPao team. He understood that Beijing, as the country's political and economic center, has a broader job market and development opportunities, and LuoBoKuaiPao, as a global leader in driverless cars, also has a bigger stage.

When he first joined LoBoKuaiPao, Zhang Jiaqiang was a structural design engineer, but a year later, due to work requirements, he encountered the first "transformation crisis" in his career.

According to him, due to the need to switch to unmanned driving, his position also needed to be changed from structural design engineering to software testing.

This is not an easy task. No matter who you are, switching from integrated design to software testing will face huge challenges, because software testing uses the Linux operating system. Compared with the Windows system he has been using, the pure command line operation is a huge change, especially for a 33-year-old employee who is almost at the age of "optimization".

However, with the encouragement of his leaders and the help of someone special, Zhang Jiaqiang also gradually mastered the Linux operating system and related programming languages ​​by himself. This also became a new beginning for his career. In the following years, Zhang Jiaqiang participated in supporting and witnessed the launch of the fifth-generation Polar Fox and the launch of a new car robot, and promoted the vehicle-side operation and maintenance tools he developed to the whole country.

When we asked about the difficulty of starting a career in AI driving, Zhang Jiaqiang admitted that if you don’t understand it, you will definitely feel that the threshold is very high, but after in-depth study, as long as you are interested in the driverless industry and willing to learn, you will always be able to do it, and this industry is also willing to open its arms and welcome every outstanding talent.

In addition to welcoming middle-aged people like Zhang Jiaqiang who are in their thirties and have "changed careers", the autonomous driving industry has also become the first stepping stone for many young people to reap the benefits of the times.

Liu Jianhua, who graduated with a degree in electronic information engineering, should have been suitable for an embedded hardware engineer job. However, out of his love for new things, he did not choose this traditional career path, but instead devoted himself to the driverless car industry.

Initially, Liu Jianhua provided technical support for unmanned vehicles in unmanned vehicle delivery companies and unmanned driving companies to ensure the stability of related vehicles. However, because he wanted to learn more in-depth and powerful unmanned driving related technologies, he came to Wuhan from Dongguan in 2021 and joined Luobo Kuaipao as an unmanned driving operation and maintenance engineer.

Liu Jianhua said that he did face huge challenges when he first joined the company. As a more demanding job, he needed to quickly master the complex autonomous driving system, including software, the relationship between various modules, body hardware, and the number and functions of sensors.

He recalled: "At the beginning, I felt that the system was too powerful and too complicated, and I didn't know if I could adapt to this job." Fortunately, Luobo Kuaipao has a systematic training system that provides rich theoretical teaching and practical training, helping Liu Jianhua overcome these difficulties step by step.

As time went by, Liu Jianhua not only successfully adapted to the job, but also became an excellent operation and maintenance engineer. He proudly said: "I feel that I have really improved a lot in driverless technology and enhanced my professional skills."

He told us that although his work involves little direct interaction with users, he feels very proud every time he sees the Turnip Run vehicles carrying passengers safely and stably on the road. "I feel that I have contributed a little to the Turnip Run vehicles that carry passengers safely and stably on the road, and I feel very proud at that time."

When talking about the jobs brought about by driverless cars, Liu Jianhua admitted that the new technology does provide many new jobs and also provides a new career option for many graduates who are unwilling to pursue a degree in this major.

Liu Jianhua is full of expectations for the future. He said: "In the future, I will continue to work on driverless cars." He hopes that driverless technology can provide safe and comfortable travel services for more people, and believes that this industry will continue to create more new job opportunities.

3

Final Thoughts

Will driverless cars make online ride-hailing drivers lose their jobs en masse? Lu Weibing and the thousands of other former online ride-hailing drivers like him who work for driverless car companies all agree that the answer is no.

Maybe they don't personally send every passenger home, but they are all participating in the process of providing passengers with safer and more efficient travel services in a new professional identity.

In addition to the online car-hailing drivers, driverless cars also provide new employment opportunities for people of more professions and ages. Both Zhang Jiaqiang and Liu Jianhua have shown one thing, that is, standing at the forefront of the times and facing technological progress, as long as they are willing to take the initiative to learn and adapt, they can seize new development opportunities and become the first to try out new technologies in the next era.