Chapter 279: Honors And Titles
“Nanfeng, I’m quite satisfied with you. The offered compensation is around 50+20, 500,000 annual salary as fixed compensation, then 200,000 performance bonus. When you come over, you’ll directly take charge of the specific design of the moon thermal management system.
I can’t guarantee on the equity side, because the entire Apollo Technology’s equity structure is still not very clear right now.
What do you think?”
Recruiting people is similar to dating; both parties need to agree to be together, but for breaking up, only one side needs to propose it.
“I’m willing.” Xia Nanfeng said without hesitation.
As a German PhD, with the rise of Chinese new energy vehicles, it’s no longer considered a dead-end major at this point.
With Xia Nanfeng’s resume, at top Chinese new energy manufacturers, he could pretty much get compensation at this price level, and even more at Huawei.
But nothing beats it—how can car manufacturing compare to building a base on the moon?
Not to mention that 700,000 is already on par with offers available on the market; even at 500,000, Xia Nanfeng would choose Apollo Technology without hesitation.
The goal is the sea of stars, and judging from Apollo Technology’s previous performance, progress is lightning fast.
Just thinking about it made Xia Nanfeng’s heart surge with excitement.
Lin Ran continued, “Nanfeng, here’s the thing: we need you to join as soon as possible, best after the New Year. We can’t wait for you to finish your postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute.”
Xia Nanfeng nodded and said, “That’s natural. We’ve now completed the moon landing, and there’s a lot of follow-up work to carry out. I completely understand.
Since I’ve decided to go into industry, the postdoctoral stage isn’t that important anymore. General Manager Lin, rest assured, I’ll arrange things as soon as possible and strive to join after the New Year.”
Ask if they’re around, then have a 30-minute video chat, and top talent is secured just like that.
This is the current appeal of Apollo Technology and Lin Ran.
Since the other party chose to do postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute—which is the full name of the Max Planck Institute, from that famous Planck, Germany’s largest research institution—it shows Xia Nanfeng originally planned to stay in academia.
Göttingen PhD, postdoctoral at Max Planck Institute; finding a faculty position in Europe wouldn’t be too difficult.
Yet Lin Ran’s one phone call completely changed the other’s life trajectory.
From academia to industry, from Europe to China.
Of course, Lin Ran was also very satisfied with Xia Nanfeng. Although they only chatted for about 20 minutes, Lin Ran found him to be one of the rare talents who had an extremely solid grasp of both theory and practice.
A simple PhD isn’t omnipotent. Most materials science PhDs, when doing theoretical modeling of electronic and thermal properties, just know what Quantum Monte Carlo Method and Dynamical Mean-Field Theory are about, how to use them, and how to apply formulas from others’ papers.
PhDs who can understand the underlying principles, the meaning of each parameter in mathematical modeling, and the overall design thinking are few and far between—this requires extremely solid theoretical mathematics, and some understanding of statistics and analysis.
So Apollo Technology and Xia Nanfeng were a perfect mutual match.
While lying in Tongji Wenchang Hospital, Lin Ran mainly did this work.
He dug through his memory for Jiaotong University students he thought were decent, then checked their recent achievements on Google Scholar. If they looked good, he’d find them on WeChat, arrange an interview, and if the interview went well, lock in the offer.
It could be said that when Lin Ran personally stepped in, nothing could stop him. In just one short month, he recruited nearly 100 PhDs from various fields for Apollo Technology.
Except for a few Jiaotong alumni still studying without their PhDs who hoped to delay, the others all said they could come to Shanghai to join immediately.
While Lin Ran was aggressively recruiting, Apollo Technology’s employees were also being continuously poached.
After all, in the past year and a half, Apollo Technology had been almost entirely devoted to the moon landing project, charging ahead on this path.
At the very beginning, aside from core employees, others were all through labor dispatch.
Later, as funds gradually came in, it didn’t mean the organizational structure was sorted out. Core employees certainly had confidentiality agreements and non-compete agreements to constrain them, but such clauses couldn’t cover every single employee.
Even non-core employees had access to valuable information during this process, facing poaching from companies ranging from Chinese companies to American companies and enterprises from countries around the world.
Take a non-core engineer who participated in the Saturn V rocket replication as an example: from the first successful Saturn V launch, he started receiving calls from headhunters every day.
And now, that number has become 5—at least five every day.
Shanghai itself is where China’s headhunting industry is most booming, giving headhunters plenty to do.
The most diligent poacher is naturally Blue Origin.
After being convinced by Patel, Bezos felt that relying solely on Indian workers wasn’t enough; it was best to recruit some Chinese engineers too, especially those who had participated in Apollo Technology’s moon landing project.
As for America’s ITAR and EAR regulations restricting foreigners from working in sensitive technology positions, those apply to foreign multinational companies, not to Bezos.
They have ten thousand ways to circumvent legal risks.
Blue Origin’s approach was to poach under Amazon’s name, but in reality, these engineers would work for Blue Origin.
After all, Lin Ran’s slogan was indeed loud enough, and the US dollars offered by American companies led by Blue Origin were enticing enough.
Even core engineers like Li Rui—Blue Origin and Japanese universities were willing to help pay the liquidated damages, not even blinking at 5 million RMB.
Of course, Japanese universities—though called universities—were actually helping the Japanese Space Agency JAXA poach people.
Who could blame JAXA’s moon landing program for repeated failures?
Starting from 2013, JAXA solicited moon landing plans from various institutions. Their goal wasn’t manned moon landing, but first achieving a soft landing of a spacecraft on the moon.
Among them, Mitsubishi Electric’s SLIM and University of Tokyo’s OMOTENASHI CubeSat lander were successfully selected, but both technical routes have repeatedly been delayed.
Their current progress is stuck at lunar orbit insertion, and at such a time, Li Rui, as the head of Apollo moon landing orbital calculation, was targeted.
Of course, they couldn’t poach core engineers, because Song Nanping had talked to each one individually, and all signed supplemental non-compete agreements.
If resigning, no going abroad for two years, and no working in the same industry for two years.
All to prevent such situations.
Core engineers couldn’t be poached, but non-core ones repeatedly faced poaching risks.
Apollo Technology’s employee count approached 3000; after the moon landing, over 300 employees resigned. Those working via labor dispatch at Apollo Technology also had over 300 choosing not to renew and vanishing into the vast sea of people.
And former NASA employees who participated in the moon landing—companies like Blue Origin, NASA, SpaceX offered sky-high prices to hire them as consultants, at least 2 million US dollars in consulting fees per person per year, comparable to retired senators.
After all, this was just consulting, not formal employment.
For these people, you can’t stop them from returning to their homeland.
Some left, some stayed in China.
Just like a story reaching its end, the warriors all embarking on new lives, Apollo Technology’s personnel faced drastic changes.
Chinese New Year’s Eve in 2022 was January 31st. Not sticking too rigidly, on January 30th, Lin Ran returned to Yangcheng for the New Year.
CCTV strongly wanted to invite Lin Ran to CCTV for the Spring Festival Gala, but he refused; at this time, he just wanted to stay in his hometown.
However, Wei Xuhang couldn’t refuse; he and Buzz Aldrin, as moon landing representatives, went to Yanjing for the Spring Festival Gala.
After returning to Yangcheng, Lin Ran found he couldn’t stop at all.
Local and provincial officials at all levels, using New Year greetings as pretext, openly and implicitly hoped to have some production capacity placed locally in Yangcheng—countless such requests.
In a sense, this was also the trouble of fame.
So Lin Ran rushed back to Shanghai the next day, and conveniently visited Hengshan Hotel to pay New Year respects to the elder—this reason was too upright, no one in Guangdong Province could object.
“Mission accomplished, moon landing successfully completed!”
After simple New Year pleasantries, Lin Ran said seriously.
“Good, good, good. Indeed, each generation has its own Long March. The land has talents in every generation, each dominating for centuries!
When I watched the live broadcast, my heart was in my throat.
Getting old, my heart can’t take it. When you were up there, my doctor let me watch only ten minutes at a time.
Later, I even just waited for the results and watched the recorded broadcast.
Of course I fully believed you could successfully complete the moon landing, but this was China’s first after all, so there was inevitably some worry.
The older you get, the smaller your courage, but you did very well, and that speech on the moon was even better.”
The elder was in high spirits, chattering on at length.
“The sky is high and clouds are light, gazing till southern flying geese disappear.
Not reaching the moon palace, no true hero; a snap of fingers, billions in journey.
Copernicus crater peaks, red flag sweeps the moon.
Today long tassel in hand, when to Mars?”
This was the last poem Lin Ran recited.
The elder had him adapt the ci poem “When to Bind the Azure Dragon”; Lin Ran thought for a moment and reluctantly produced a version.
It amused the elder into hearty laughter: “For you to reach this level is not bad. At least you know Mars and moon palace, hahaha. So when to Mars?”
Lin Ran said, “Five years. Within five years, though Mars is far, the red flag will surely reach!”
“Good, good, good. I’ll try to live to that day!”
In the end, the doctor came and forcibly took him back to his room to rest.
Similarly, Lin Ran didn’t stay long in Shanghai; once the Spring Festival holiday was over, he had to fly to Yanjing.
A series of honors awaited him.
Holding the “Aerospace Meritorious Medal” awarded by China, Lin Ran felt deeply moved.
In another spacetime, he had received countless medals, even England’s honorary knighthood and various White House medals.
But in this spacetime, it was not only his first, but also China’s first medal to him even counting both spacetimes together.
During the award ceremony, Lin Ran thought that his contributions to China in another spacetime far exceeded this one.
This spacetime was adding flowers to brocade, while in another spacetime it was sending charcoal in snow.
Besides the awarding, there was also being added as an academician of the Two Houses.
Normally academicians are elected every two years, but the rules have this provision: “The presidium may set up a special nomination mechanism based on national needs.”
Lin Ran was a special nomination, unanimously approved academician of the Two Houses.
After the awarding ceremony, applause from all academicians lasted a full five minutes.
Standing at the podium, Lin Ran thought he had become the academician his dad yearned for even before his dad:
“Leaders, fellow academicians, good day. Standing here today, I feel deeply honored and greatly inspired.
I am Lin Ran, a post-1995. I should also be the youngest academician here. This is an honor, but also a weighty responsibility.
The country has given me this honor, and I need to make more contributions in return.
As a mathematician, I like the frog and bird metaphor: some mathematicians are birds, others are frogs.
Birds soar in the high sky, overlooking the vast mathematical vision stretching to the distant horizon. They like concepts that unify our thoughts and integrate problems from many different fields. Frogs live in the muddy ground under the sky, seeing only the flowers growing around them; they enjoy exploring the details of specific problems, solving one at a time.
Similarly, some scientists are birds, pointing the way for our technology roadmap; some are frogs, focusing on specific problems, constantly delving deep in their familiar fields.
Both are equally important to the nation. Without birds, we have no direction; without frogs, our technology is a castle in the air.
Yet I hope to be both a bird and a frog: able to propose sufficiently forward-looking concepts, and also implement my own concepts in practice.
I hope everyone present can witness this bold statement of mine together.”
After Lin Ran finished, the applause from the audience was unprecedentedly enthusiastic.
On one hand, because of the achievements—undeniable achievements laid out there, everyone was convinced.
On the other hand, resources—the resources Lin Ran held, plus potential future resources, were absolutely the most among all academicians present. As described on the Chinese Internet, he had the highest power content.
Lin Ran looked at the applauding crowd below and recalled the last two lines from the calligraphy draft the elder gave him: “Spring breeze proud, horse hooves swift; one day see all Chang’an flowers.”
He indeed felt a bit like that now.
CCTV building was also the last stop of this Yanjing trip.
Another interview on Face to Face.
To wrap up the entire moon landing.
Still Xiao Sa, still the Face to Face moon landing special program.
“Moon landing really isn’t difficult. Fifty years ago, predecessors already did it. What’s strange about us doing it again?
Few people? Number of people isn’t the point. Our technology now is even more advanced.
We have 100 people here, equivalent to 10,000 NASA back then! Everyone is a one-against-hundred existence!”
Lin Ran’s voice came from the studio’s player.
This was a clip from Bilibili’s moon landing documentary that CCTV had used.
