Chapter 27: Timing

After Li Dongling and Gao Peng entered the office building, they saw that the building before them was a world apart from when Li Dongling had last visited. The previous office building had been in the style of the 70s and 80s, basically just painted in white and green, but now it was completely renovated to modern office standards.

Just inside was a reception desk. Walking forward, the spaces that had previously been partitioned into small, individual offices had all been opened up into a large office area. Rows of cubicle desks and chairs were already placed inside. For the office staff, this small cubicle seemed to provide a sense of enclosure, independence, and privacy, which was completely different from the face-to-face office setup of other companies.

On the individual desks, there were potted plants, and office equipment such as computers, telephones, fax machines, printers, and air conditioning had all been installed. In addition, water dispensers, coffee machines, and the like were also fully equipped.

Seeing Li Dongling's expression, Gao Peng knew that he had, in all likelihood, passed the test. "Li Ge, I specifically hired a designer from Shanghai to design this. The lounge, pantry, and smoking area here are still under renovation. When it's finished, I dare say the Dongling High-Tech office will be the best in Pingyang, or even the whole of Hanxi!"

Li Dongling glanced at him and nodded with a smile. Gao Peng's ability to get things done was indeed impressive.

The two walked upstairs. The second floor was not yet finished with construction. After going up, Li Dongshan was there supervising the work. Seeing Li Dongshan, Gao Peng immediately called out, "Brother Dongshan!"

As for Li Dongshan, upon hearing his name, Gao Peng's mind turned, and he knew what the relationship was between him and Li Dongling. Regarding Li Dongshan's arrival, Gao Peng had no dissatisfaction or resistance. Even if Li Dongshan was not as flexible in handling matters and lacked experience in many things, Gao Peng explained everything to Li Dongshan in great detail.

"Thanks to Gao Peng, otherwise things wouldn't have gone so smoothly here!" Li Dongshan said truthfully, without any intention of taking credit.

Gao Peng also said, "This still relies on Brother Dongshan's support, otherwise I couldn't have handled so many things alone!"

This time, Li Dongling took a serious look at Gao Peng, and the few of them arrived at the office prepared for Li Dongling.

The entire office was very large. Gao Peng had clearly put a lot of thought into this office, with a completely modern renovation. The old, outdated windows had been removed, and a portion of the wall had been extended to form a small floor-to-ceiling window.

Seeing Li Dongling sit down, Gao Peng finally felt at ease. "Li Ge, this is the property certificate for this office building. The total price was 143,000 yuan. I bought a few more plots of land behind it, spending a total of 40,000 yuan!

Now that the renovation isn't finished yet, the renovation plus design fees will probably not be a small sum."

Looking at the stack of bills next to those property certificates, Li Dongling had previously given Gao Peng a total of 200,000 yuan to buy these two floors of office space and the land behind them. Gao Peng had actually not asked for a service fee and had returned the remaining money to Li Dongling.

Li Dongling pushed that stack of money back toward Gao Peng. "The service fee I promised you is yours. You ran around so much and pulled so many strings; I can't let you pay out of pocket. There will be things I need you to do in the future!"

Hearing Li Dongling's words, Gao Peng didn't act coy. He had expressed his attitude to Li Dongling today. Gao Peng smiled and took the stack of bills. "Then I thank you, Li Ge!"

After pondering for a moment, Li Dongling looked at Li Dongshan and Gao Peng in the office and said, "Dongling High-Tech is about to recruit personnel and start its business and projects. If you are willing, you can join Dongling High-Tech!"

Regarding this, Li Dongshan had no second thoughts. He had come here to help Li Dongling, and as long as Li Dongling needed him to do something, Li Dongshan would complete it no matter what.

"I'm willing!"

Gao Peng didn't think much about it and agreed directly. He was prepared to take a gamble. Previously in Pingyang City, he could rely on his father's connections to earn some money, never worrying about food or drink, and could hang out with a bunch of fair-weather friends. But Gao Peng also knew clearly that just by relying on his father's connections, wanting to do the "big things" he spoke of was basically wishful thinking. Meeting Li Dongling, Gao Peng felt it was one of the few opportunities he would have in his life, perhaps the only one!

Once a person succeeds once, it is easy for people to believe that they can succeed again. The satellite dish project had already proven Li Dongling's vision and ability. Whether it was Gao Peng or Zhang Xiaocheng and the others, subconsciously, they would believe that Li Dongling was very likely to succeed again!

After trading canned goods for several airplanes with train cars and making over a hundred million in one go, countless people followed Boss Mou, willing to be at his beck and call. Shi Laoban of Giant was the same. If Li Dongling could succeed one more time, then the attitude of Gao Peng, Zhang Xiaocheng, Zhang Ao, and Fan Xugang toward Li Dongling would be similar to those followers of Boss Mou and Shi Laoban.

Don't you see that those followers of Shi Laoban of Giant have already shouted that in the tech industry, Bill Gates is number one, and the one ranked second can only be Shi Laoban!

After thinking for a while, Li Dongling said to Li Dongshan and Gao Peng, "Big Brother, you and Gao Peng will first join the logistics department of Dongling High-Tech. You will be the Logistics Manager, and Gao Peng will be the Deputy General Manager!"

The status of the logistics department in a company is very special. It seems less important than the HR, finance, or technical departments, but it can affect the survival of a company. The procurement department belongs to the logistics department.

Some companies' procurement sections can save a company a lot of funds, while others are like woodworms, slowly hollowing out a company, or even causing the cost of certain brands of cars to be far higher than their peers, losing money on every car sold, forcing the founder to purge the entire procurement department before costs began to drop.

With Li Dongshan and Gao Peng watching over the logistics department, Li Dongling could feel a bit more at ease. Even if there were people in the procurement section who wanted to fish in troubled waters, they wouldn't dare to be so unscrupulous, or even cause the kind of absurd situation where competitors knew about it before Li Dongling finally found out.

Dongling High-Tech had not yet finished all its renovations, but it had already begun recruiting in full swing, from HR to finance to technology.

Local newspapers like the Pingyang Daily began publishing news of Dongling High-Tech recruiting employees at high wages. Dongling High-Tech offered wages more than 30% higher than other companies in Pingyang City for the same positions, but the requirements were also high. They required the ability to use computers and other modern office products and software. Some positions in the marketing department also required the ability to use English or Japanese, and technical positions had even higher requirements, but the wages offered were sufficiently high!

When they first saw the recruitment news in the newspaper, quite a few people in Pingyang were tempted, but after reading the recruitment conditions, some started cursing directly.

Those who knew computers and foreign languages were now considered high-level talent. Let alone in Pingyang, even if they ran to big cities like Pengcheng, Shanghai, or Yanjing, they could get a monthly salary of one or two thousand. If they could enter a foreign company, they might even get three or five thousand per month, plus various benefits. Why stay in a place like Pingyang?

The office location of Dongling High-Tech slowly began to fill with people. Most of the people who first entered Dongling High-Tech were graduates of Pingyang University, the only university in Pingyang.

In the past, most of these graduates were assigned to various units of the Pingyang municipal government or state-owned enterprises. But now, state-owned enterprises were in a slump, and unit wages were not high. Originally, quite a few Pingyang University graduates wanted to go to the provincial capital or other places to make their way, but seeing the wages of Dongling High-Tech, which were not much worse than those in the provincial capital, and seeing the office environment after entering, many of this year's Pingyang University graduates chose to enter Dongling High-Tech.

On the second floor, in the room hanging the sign "Dongling High-Tech Chairman's Office," Li Dongling was constantly designing on blueprints. Finally, what appeared at Li Dongling's side were two blueprints with a high degree of completion!

It was true that the satellite dish project was still making money, but Li Dongling had to consider what Dongling High-Tech's next project would be. Over the past few days, Li Dongling had checked a lot of information and thought a lot.

Currently, in the tech industry, the hottest project should be pagers. It was simply red-hot. The Subor learning machine, the VCD that had just emerged, and other projects were all latecomers and were far from being comparable to pagers.

Currently, the boss of the domestic communications industry, the Post and Telecommunications Bureau, had its hottest business in pagers. Its performance could double several times a year. The number of paging stations could increase to over a thousand next year, and in the future, it might increase to over three thousand. The Pogo pager, that "fighter jet among mobile phones," had relied on developing Chinese pagers this year, and before the end of the year, its revenue had exceeded 20 million.

Whether Dongling High-Tech should make pagers, Li Dongling had also hesitated for a long time. Everyone knew that pagers were not a long-term project, otherwise they wouldn't have declined early in America, England, Europe, Japan, and other places. But currently, it should be the product most suitable for the domestic communications market.

However, this glory would definitely not last long. At the latest by next year, various pager manufacturers would start a fierce battle, and the price war would be in full swing. The price of pagers would fall from over two thousand yuan to four or five hundred yuan, or even lower "cabbage prices." It wouldn't take many years, and the profit of pagers in the future would definitely not be high. Compared with satellite dishes, they were far behind, and the competition was incomparably fierce.

It was indisputable that pagers would be replaced by mobile phones, but this would take time. Dongling High-Tech entering the mobile phone industry and developing mobile phones would take time. The premise of the arrival of the mobile phone era, the signal towers of communication infrastructure, would also take time to lay.

During this transition period, Li Dongling needed Dongling High-Tech to be able to launch other products to survive this transition period!

And for the next project, Li Dongling was prepared to let Dongling High-Tech launch two products. One product was a digital cordless phone, and the other was a scroll-wheel mouse! ===== CHAPTER 28 =====