Million - Annual - Salary Series 009: A returnee programmer who voluntarily left Amazon is heading towards vintage fashion, markets, music, and youth culture.
36Kr "Career Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)
Behind most million - dollar annual salaries, there is always a bonus boost.
Although a million - dollar annual salary has become a label for countless public accounts to tease in their titles, it must be admitted that it is not easy to achieve. Behind each story of a million - dollar annual salary, there are a large number of bonuses driving it. Region, industry, mentor, occupation, personal talent... We believe that these dimensions determine a person's chances of career development.
The amount of annual salary is not the only standard to measure success and happiness. We neither want to teach everyone "Machiavellianism" nor write stories of "survivorship bias". This series will take you to explore the choices made by each interviewee with a million - dollar annual salary at critical moments and their visions for the future. May we see the direction of the bonus tide from it.
With short black hair and a pair of black - framed glasses, he wears old clothes from his "Hypebeast" (referring to those crazy fashion enthusiasts) days in the United States in summer, and adds a vintage [1] coat he picked up in recent years in winter. Someone once thought that personal information contained in clothing choices was more than people expected, and in He Fangzhou's outfit, there are two very different career stories.
After graduating from university in 2017, He Fangzhou has only had two full - time jobs so far. The first one is a typical white - collar job in the eyes of the public - he worked as a senior engineer in the Amazon AWS Network Cloud Service Department, a large American company. There, as soon as he started working after graduation, he received an enviable salary package, which was already a million - dollar annual salary when converted into RMB.
The second experience is a niche startup: getting involved in the vintage and youth culture fields. He spent a year establishing the product and making initial accumulations, and the offline events he held also achieved a breakthrough in million - dollar revenue. In this process, he and his best friend and partner Liang Yicheng "led the team" and formed their own NEED! team.
Resigning from Amazon, the e - commerce giant in the United States, and joining the wave of returning to China to start a business; transforming from a programmer who codes to an explorer who builds a youth culture brand in the vintage field... These leaps don't even seem like a "contrast" when it comes to He Fangzhou - both are things that their generation of Internet natives pursue and enjoy from birth.
Whether it's coding at work or setting up a stall to sell vintage items, what remains unchanged is that He Fangzhou and Liang Yicheng always "want to do what they find fun". They named their startup brand NEED! - this is the simplest and most commonly used word they use to express their love - and positioned the mission of NEED! as "exploring unique, fashionable, and sustainable lifestyles with Chinese young people".
In 2024, the market consumption had not fully recovered. Although NEED!, which had been very popular in the early stage, actively tried to expand its business, it soon encountered setbacks. The offline store project had to be withdrawn because it was too costly to maintain, and the main market fair business also fell into a development bottleneck due to the insufficient budget of the venue provider and the decline in customers' consumption power.
"But it's no big deal that we didn't earn much money in 2024." He Fangzhou said firmly, "If this little thing can knock down NEED!, then why did we resign from the large American company back then instead of going to Mars with Amazon?"
After experiencing the sense of emptiness brought by the "lack of breakthrough", He Fangzhou cherishes what he has because of NEED! even more. It is not only a bridge to convey love and connect like - minded people, but also gives him the "privilege" to control his large chunks of time and the freedom to travel around the world to gain inspiration.
[1] Refers to vintage items. Second - hand items with a certain history, which are loved by collectors and fashion enthusiasts because of their unique style, scarcity, or cultural value.
An Amazon programmer who is also a sneaker dealer chooses to leverage the sneaker market with code ╱ 01
Give up the high - paying Internet job and choose to return to China to establish a vintage e - commerce platform ╱ 02
Return to hometown and choose to launch an offline market fair business ╱ 03
Go against the consumption downgrade cycle and choose to start laying out a multi - cultural matrix ╱ 04
Gain growth from setbacks and choose to continue to believe in the value of freedom ╱ 05
Epilogue ╱ 06
Q&A with Bonus Figures ╱ 07
An Amazon programmer who is also a sneaker dealer chooses to leverage the sneaker market with code
Age: 23 | Location: Boston | Annual income: 1.5 million
"When I first joined the company and knew nothing, I spent more time on learning. Later, I basically went to the company around ten o'clock in the morning for a group meeting, checked my emails, coded for a while in the afternoon, and got off work at six o'clock." In He Fangzhou's eyes, his years at Amazon were a "pension - style" career, and it did bring them a really comfortable life.
In 2017, He Fangzhou graduated from the University of Minnesota in the United States with a major in computer science. His high - school classmate from Nanshan Middle School in Mianyang, Sichuan, who also majored in computer science and later became his partner in two startups, Liang Yicheng (current CEO of NEED!), also completed his studies at the University of California, Berkeley at this time. The two entered the door of Amazon, the world's largest e - commerce company, and became senior software engineers.
With a starting salary as high as $150,000, a generous signing bonus, and stock dividends, they joined the eye - catching "million - dollar annual salary" group as soon as they graduated. This was almost the highest annual salary that fresh graduates could get at that time - in contrast, the average salary of those who entered the "Big Four (accounting firms)" was only about $60,000.
"We were where the trend was at that time." He Fangzhou and Liang Yicheng were typical "Hypebeasts" at that time. They would fly to different places specifically to buy sneakers and would not hesitate to buy tickets for the Rolling Loud and Coachella music festivals.
● After graduation, their apartment was filled with limited - edition sneakers
During the peak of the sneaker craze, their apartment was filled with limited - edition sneakers. Many exclusive sneakers were expensive and hard to grab. As programmers, they naturally used scripts to buy sneakers in bulk and then resold them to sneaker stores and crazy sneaker fans in China on a consignment basis, with a profit margin of over 20%.
Later, they jointly developed a sneaker trading platform called "PandaBrick". This weekend side - job even brought in a monthly income that exceeded He Fangzhou's monthly salary at Amazon at its peak.
"From today's perspective, PandaBrick is actually a Toy Project (experimental project). It is not very perfect, but its most important significance to us is that it helped shape the founding team of NEED! later."
In addition to Liang Yicheng, the later CEO of NEED!, there was also a senior from Mianyang in Shanghai at that time, Wang Zhichao [2], who used his home as a sneaker warehouse for PandaBrick. Through frequent interactions, they developed a deep friendship and later continued to participate in the establishment of NEED! as co - founders.
With four years of work experience at Amazon and the income from "tinkering" with PandaBrick during the same period, He Fangzhou and Liang Yicheng saved some money and stocks, which also gave them the confidence to start a business in the future.
"This is our first pot of gold, which made us not so anxious when we had no income in the early stage of starting a business in Shanghai and knew that we had to pay rent for a long time."
[2] Wang Zhichao is a master of business administration from Cornell University. He once worked at Riot Games and is currently a senior business leader at Moonton Games; he is also the founder of Hedou Sports.
Bonus review:
In 2017 when He Fangzhou graduated, the US cloud - computing market was just maturing, and the market competition was fierce. Major manufacturers such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft were constantly launching new products and services. The application scenarios of cloud computing not only covered the traditional IT field but also penetrated into emerging technology fields such as artificial intelligence, big - data analysis, and the Internet of Things. Enterprises were very active in recruiting and training talents. As international students majoring in computer science, it was relatively easy for them to get high - paying jobs in large companies during this period. In addition, it is quite common for American programmers to have side - jobs. The professional skills that programmers possess are highly versatile and transferable. He Fangzhou and Liang Yicheng, who had just entered society, keenly grasped their skill advantages, combined with their own interests and hobbies, and realized the secondary monetization of technology and diversified income channels.
Give up the high - paying Internet job and choose to return to China to establish a vintage e - commerce platform
Age: 25 | Location: Shanghai | Annual income: 0
In July 2020, just after the lockdown in New York was lifted, He Fangzhou and Liang Yicheng were strolling in Brooklyn and accidentally walked into a vintage store on the street. They were pleasantly surprised to find that they could buy all kinds of unique vintage short - sleeved shirts for $20 here.
"The people shopping in the store were all very cool." They felt that they were a bit out of place with this "coolness".
After that, they began to intentionally explore vintage culture. Before returning to China, he and his friends visited high - quality vintage stores in New York, Boston and other places.
● Before returning to China, He Fangzhou and Liang Yicheng traveled across the United States in an RV
During this period, He Fangzhou, Liang Yicheng, and another friend all had the idea of returning to China.
"Actually, it was the joint effort of the three of us that gave me the courage. I thought I could continue to make money by selling sneakers in China. If all else failed, I could go back to graduate school or return to the United States to work." He Fangzhou recalled, "If I had been the only one with the idea of returning to China at that time, I wouldn't have been able to make up my mind to give up what I had already achieved in the United States."
In September of that year, the three of them simultaneously clicked to send an email named "Sayonara (meaning goodbye in Japanese)" at their Amazon workstations, officially bidding farewell to their "pension - like" well - paid jobs and boarding the plane back to Shanghai.
However, after returning to Shanghai, the price of sneakers in the United States remained high due to inflation, while the price of sneakers in China showed a downward trend. "Originally, there would be at least a 20% profit from consigning American sneakers to China, but later the situation was even reversed."
Not knowing what to do next, He Fangzhou, who could no longer operate PandaBrick, and Liang Yicheng began to explore the hidden vintage stores in the alleys of Shanghai.
Soon, they noticed the pain points of domestic vintage store owners -
These store owners mainly promote their products through channels such as Xianyu, Taobao, or WeChat Moments, and their customer acquisition and sales methods are relatively limited. "There is an app called Depop in the United States that can specifically meet the display and sales needs of vintage merchants, but there is no such thing in China for the time being."
They immediately started modifying the front - end of the PandaBrick mini - program and transformed it into a vintage sales platform. During their travels around the country to explore vintage stores, they showed this platform to the store owners and invited them to try it out online.
Finally, more than a hundred vintage merchants from all over the country settled on the platform, and they all agreed that it had potential market value.
In the winter of 2021, He Fangzhou and Liang Yicheng developed an e - commerce app mainly for vintage sales based on the previous mini - program and named it "NEED!".
● Homepage of the NEED! APP
In the United States, they often visited a New York vintage store with a history of more than 40 years - Metropolis. The store owner told him during a chat that big stars such as Kanye West, the Kardashians, and Rihanna basically came to their store to browse for an hour or two every time they came to New York.
But at that time, in contrast, the vintage market share in China was still very small, and vintage items had not become popular yet. According to the "2021 Research Report on the Development of the Second - hand Luxury Market in China" jointly released by YouSheYiPai and the University of International Business and Economics in 2021, clothing, shoes, and hats accounted for less than 1/4 of the second - hand luxury trading share at that time.
36Kr "Career Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)
But when they went to Shanghai for on - the - spot investigations, they found that there were actually many high - quality vintage stores in China, but they had not been fully recognized by the market.
"There is a vintage store in Shanghai called 'Universe Unlimited Co., Ltd.', which was one of the earliest merchants to settle on our mini - program. It wasn't very popular in 2021, but in 2024, they got the opportunity to cooperate with Adidas." These small stores quietly waiting to be discovered by customers made He Fangzhou realize that even if they are "niche", as long as you do it