December 21, 2019, Xishan Industrial Park, Zhangjiakou City, Hebei Province, China.
Chuanming Group is one of the world's top 500 companies, with production capacity mainly in heavy industry, including steel metallurgy, precision manufacturing, mechanical processing, automobile industry, electronic communications and other major areas.
Ye Mo is a project manager of the precision manufacturing engineering department of Chuanming. He holds relevant certificates such as senior mechanical engineer and equipment engineer, and is currently engaged in mechanical design-related work.
It sounds a bit high-end, but the money earned was not enough to pay off the mortgage and car loan until three years ago.
In science and engineering, especially engineering work, the imbalance between men and women has been going on for more than one or two days. The main factors are the physical fitness gap between men and women, fixed labels in the eyes of the world, and working environment.
Ye Mo was lucky to find a job in a related field when she graduated from university.
After that, she worked in a workshop for a year and a half as a rookie, and finally mastered the process skillfully and well, which was her personal ability. Finally, she was able to persevere in the boring assistant job...
I don't know how many people were eliminated by this series of levels.
Less than 10% of Ye Mo's classmates were engaged in machinery-related work.
There was no woman among them except her.
Of course, there were not many girls who chose to study engineering at that time, maybe the engineering management and engineering cost next door were a bit rare.
Despite her strong professional skills, Ye Mo was still treated differently based on gender at work.
At the beginning, she didn't get any projects related to mechanical equipment design. Her daily work mainly focused on designing beautiful shells for light industries such as the electronic communications industry to match the main performance of the products.
After working as an assistant for two years, Ye Mo began to take projects independently.
Because her work ability has always been good, she has gradually become a little famous in the industry. Now when the next department is busy, she can also cooperate with key automotive parts and matching integration as a professional consultant.
Mechanical design work is very hard.
Just computer drawing, dozens or hundreds of parts, one by one design and integration, must consider many aspects of structure, equipment quality, price and cost issues, and the project process is quite hard.
Fortunately, all projects have been completed this year, or have entered the final stage of testing.
As long as we finish these two projects, this year's task indicators will exceed the target immediately, and we can basically have a meal before the Spring Festival.
It's worth it even if it's a little tiring.
"Ah, cut..."
After taking a glance at the combustion threshold of a certain composite material, Ye Mo sneezed twice in succession through his mask.
...
Outside the flame retardant test laboratory.
A tall and thin young man, holding a stack of design drawings with a confidentiality red official seal in his left hand, pulled his light gray work clothes that he was not used to wearing with his right hand.
"Ah Xiang." A shorter young man with a crew cut next to him frowned and lip-synced, "Are you attracted to our Director Ye?"
"..." Ah Xiang's hands froze as he was fixing his work clothes. He quickly glanced at the heavy door of the laboratory in front of him, "No, don't talk nonsense."
But his ears turned red.
"I understand. Everyone has been young!" The short young man shook his head in disbelief and muttered in a low voice.
"Our manager Ye is not bad looking, but I tell you, she is not young, she is already 30, almost 40, and she is not suitable for a young man like you who is in his 20s. You should go to the administration department or the sales department to find a partner. There are a new batch of interns this year."
"40..." Ah Xiang's pupils dilated, and then he shook his head and explained again, "Really not."
This time, the redness behind his ears faded a lot.
As a dull young man who often immersed himself in work drawings, he pursued his girlfriend with the intention of getting married. Such a big span of sister-brother relationship was not in his plan.
This is the reality.
However, Ah Xiang still had doubts about the fact that Manager Ye was almost 40 years old.
"Over 38 years old." The short and fat middle-aged man stretched out his hand and made a number, and continued, "Manager Ye is about the same age as our deputy manager Liu in the engineering department. They joined in the same batch."
Ah Xiang's eyes widened even more: "How is it possible? Brother Qing, you are not fooling me, are you?"
The deputy manager's name is Liu Bo, a middle-aged greasy man with a beer belly and sparse hair, while their manager's tall figure and beautiful appearance are worthy of the word "beauty".
Ye Mo usually doesn't wear makeup except for skin care. Her skin is very white because she stays in the laboratory and at home for many years. In addition, she has a youthful oval face, which makes her look younger than her actual age.
Deputy Manager Liu Bo and their Manager Ye are very at odds. Liu Bo's professional level is far inferior to Manager Ye's, but he married the only daughter of a middle-level leader in the group.
As everyone knows, China is a society based on personal relationships.
Thanks to Ye Mo's good technical skills and her pure technical route.
Manager Xie, the head of the engineering department, is both her teacher and friend, helping her to block most of the open and hidden arrows, and Chuanming Group's experimental equipment and funds are among the best in the country, so Ye Mo stayed and worked for so many years.
After saying that, the man called Brother Qing looked tangled.
He patted A Xiang on the shoulder and whispered in A Xiang's ear: "A friend of mine told me this. I'm only telling you, don't tell anyone else."
"Deputy Manager Liu is not happy with our supervisor. It's because he failed to catch up with Supervisor Ye when he first joined the company."
"He's so petty. Damn, is he not a man?"
"It's really embarrassing for us men!" "Really
? His skills are not as good as our supervisor's. He became a deputy manager by relying on his connections. Tsk!"
"..."
The conversation went completely astray.
...
While gossiping, the door of the flame retardant room made a slight noise, and the indignant young people stopped talking at the same time.
As the door opened, a slight smell of burning came out of the laboratory.
Then, a woman with a net height of 1.7 meters came out, wearing a long white work coat and a light gray sweater.
She tied her hair up high and took off her mask, revealing a well-proportioned oval face.
Her facial features were pretty, except that she wore thick half-frame glasses due to her severe myopia. Her skin was one or two shades lighter than normal, and it was cold white. Due to her work environment, she had many minor problems.
Ah Xiang looked at it very carefully.
But with his straight-man aesthetic, he couldn't tell that his boss was actually more than ten years older than him.
"Manager Ye, this is the engineering drawing of the key slot for Project B."
Ye Mo took the document from Ah Xiang, flipped through it, and walked to his office area.
The two young men looked at each other, breathed a sigh of relief, and hurriedly followed the team leader to report the situation.
"Group B's switch life test is in progress. Twenty minutes ago, there were 8,983 results left. It will take at most four hours to get the results."
"Didn't they say it would be completed at noon today?"
"Uh, um, the test team said that Team 3 interrupted and did a life test on a small part. Deputy Manager Liu approved it. I heard that the test data of Group 3 was wrong, and I'm getting angry."
"..."
Ye Mo took out his phone from his pocket and took a look. It was now two o'clock in the afternoon. He had to work overtime again today. Overtime is common in project work.
"Ah Qing, ask them to bring the results over after work today."
As he spoke, he turned his attention to an app that appeared on the homepage of his phone.
The app's icon is a world map with a very realistic red eye right above the map, which makes people feel a little uncomfortable. Below the map are three simple words -
"Survivor".