A follower sent me a long private message. Let’s call him Xiao Zhang.
He’s in sales. He poured everything in — ground down his words, swallowed his pride, smiled through it all — and finally closed a NT$10K deal. The client was thrilled and paid on the spot. This was his finest moment that month. He’d already started calculating what this commission could add to his family’s life.
Then payday arrived.
He opened his payslip, checked it repeatedly, and finally found the commission for that order buried in an obscure corner —
How much do you think? NT$250.
In that moment, Xiao Zhang said, he didn’t feel like he was in a modern company — he felt like he was in a massive, precision-engineered casino. He’d wagered his time and dignity, won the client’s NT$10K in chips — but at the cashier’s window, the house rules said:
“Per our rules, these 10K chips can only be exchanged for NT$250 in cash. The remaining NT$9,750 vanishes into thin air and has nothing to do with you ever again.”
You might think this company is exceptionally shady. But today I want to tell you — this isn’t just common, it’s practically the operating code of our commercial society.
Xiao Zhang’s story is like a cold mirror, reflecting a reality that each of us lives through daily — one carefully wrapped in words like “stability,” “benefits,” and “career development.”
Today we’ll tear off that wrapping with surgical precision, dissecting the most painful truth about jobs and money that today’s young people need to see.
1 | The Missing NT$9,750: Swallowed by the Black Box
Let’s play detective and trace where those missing NT$9,750 went.
The money didn’t vanish — it entered a system called a “company.”
Xiao Zhang told me his company’s compensation structure was like an airtight net, filled with terms ordinary employees couldn’t decipher:
Step one: his NT$10K in sales gets halved by a “conversion coefficient.” The company’s rationale: your sales depend on the company’s brand, marketing, technical support — so your personal credit is only 50%.
That first cut uses a rule to slash half his credit. The remaining NT$5K becomes “effective performance.”
Step two: commission is calculated at 5% of NT$5K. The reasoning: the company needs to cover office rent, utilities, admin salaries, legal costs, and most importantly — risk reserves and shareholder profits.
10,000 × 50% × 5% = 250
Every number, every percentage is written clearly in the employment contract. The moment you signed, you accepted these value distribution rules.
You might feel outraged, but legally and from a business logic standpoint, it’s airtight.
This is the cruelest part about having a job: between the value you create and the pay you ultimately receive, there’s always a massive, opaque black box.
The NT$10K you personally pulled from the client’s pocket is real, tangible money. But once it enters the company’s black box, it gets decomposed and redistributed through countless cost items, fees, coefficients, and profit allocations. What reaches your hands is only what the system “permits you to receive.”
2 | The True Nature of Employment: You’re Not the Value Distributor
This leads to today’s core discussion:
Having a job and making money are fundamentally two different things. They might even be deeply contradictory.
What’s the core of employment? Doing things for someone else. It’s essentially a transaction — the company, as the client, purchases your specific time block (say 9-to-5), your professional skills, and most importantly, your compliance.
The salary you receive is not the fair return for the value you create — it’s the fee the client pays for this purchase.
How much value you create doesn’t really matter. What matters is: in this transaction, who holds the final pricing power?
Your boss — the company’s owner. The rules they design determine that your value can only be discounted. The commission percentages they set determine you get only a sliver of frosting from the cake. They say you’re worth X, so you’re worth X. They are the sole pricing mechanism — not the volatile market, and certainly not hard-working you.
- Working hard doesn’t mean the value you create reaches your hands
- Burning midnight oil doesn’t mean your returns will be proportional
Because in the employment game framework, from the start you chose a passive role. You’re a value creator, an excellent executor, but you are not the value distributor.
That big, delicious cake you baked with your own hands? The knife that cuts it is always in someone else’s grip.
3 | Industrial-Age Thinking Residue: Why We See Jobs as the Only Path
But the strangest and most thought-provoking question is — given how unfair this system is, why does the overwhelming majority’s first (and often only) thought about making money default to finding a job?
Trace it back to our entire modern society’s foundation: this is industrial-age thinking residue.
In that era of roaring machines where assembly lines were everything, society needed massive quantities of standardized, obedient labor to fill every factory position. So our education systems and social evaluation systems were designed around one core goal:
Produce qualified “screws” — obedient, skilled, strong executors. Be a good employee, find a big factory or company, and stay put for life.
This was the life path our parents — even ourselves — once considered the best. Its core: trade personal creativity, freedom, and value ownership for the certainty an organization provides.
We choose employment, and the hidden cost is clear: you traded the massive price of giving up value pricing power for an illusion of stability.
4 | Deconstructing “Security”: Is Employment Really an Iron Rice Bowl?
But does this stability truly exist? Is it really as unbreakable as we imagine?
Let’s deconstruct so-called “security.” What does employment security actually mean? It means you show up for one day, and the company guarantees that day’s wages. That thick employment contract is more like a lease — the company rents your time and skills, and the lease can be terminated at any time for any reason.
The “iron rice bowl” rusted long ago. “Lifetime employment” became a distant myth.
In today’s rapidly changing business environment, a company can rise and fall within just a few years. The power to lay people off was never in your hands — economic downturns, business restructuring, technology displacement, or simply the boss finding cheaper, younger, more cost-effective replacements.
All the stability you have today could evaporate tomorrow.
You traded control for what was only ever a temporary, revocable shelter.
This is employment’s greatest risk — you’ve placed your and your family’s future livelihood entirely on an external system you cannot control. In investment terms, this is called systemic risk — impossible to hedge through individual effort.
5 | Breaking Free: From “Finding Work” to “Finding Things to Do”
So if you truly don’t want to be employed anymore — if you’re tired of being priced and controlled — what do you do?
The answer isn’t jumping from one fire pit to another on job search apps, but a fundamental cognitive breakthrough: stop looking for a “job” and start looking for “things to do.”
“Job” and “things” — one word apart, worlds apart:
| Job | Things |
|---|---|
| Essence: a position | Essence: value |
| You fill a pre-defined slot | You create solutions for real needs |
| Your function is defined | Your function is created by you |
| Your boundaries are set | Your boundaries are expanded by you |
| Your goal: complete KPIs to satisfy superiors | Your goal: solve problems to satisfy clients |
How does money appear? Through profit generated during value delivery. Employment means you help the boss deliver value to clients, then they split off a tiny piece of huge profits as your salary. This is an indirect, filtered way of earning.
Doing things means you directly complete value delivery, directly face clients, directly capture profits without intermediate layers extracting their share. This is a direct, lossless way of earning.
This is the closest action to money.
6 | 4 Steps to Build Your Personal Value Loop: Start Today
Step 1: Become a Sharp Pain-Point Detective
Starting today, observe the world around you like a detective:
- Friends complaining about finding good activity classes for their kids
- Relatives complaining about elderly parents struggling with smartphones
- Colleagues complaining about spending ages on PowerPoint with poor results
Remember: every complaint, gripe, and inconvenience is a signal of “unmet demand.”
Step 2: Map Your Personal Capability Profile
Don’t define yourself with broad labels like “I’m a programmer” or “I’m a designer.” Break your capabilities down to the finest granularity.
Step 3: Play a Value-Opportunity Matching Game
Put your pain-point list alongside your capability map and try to connect them:
- Friend complains about terrible PPTs, your capability map shows “expert at creating professional presentations” — that’s a connection point
- Relatives complain about elderly smartphone struggles, your map shows “extremely patient, good at simplifying complex things” — another connection point
That connection point is where value is born — the embryo of “things to do.”
Step 4: Build Your Minimum Viable Delivery
Don’t start by planning a platform or founding a company. An ordinary person’s starting point should be the smallest, lowest-cost experiment.
- Help a close friend make one PPT for free. If they’re delighted, try offering a “NT$99 emergency PPT makeover” service on social media
- Record a 5-minute “How to use WeChat Pay for Seniors” video for your family group chat. If the response is great, consider paid one-on-one tutoring or a NT$9.9 PDF guide
The core of this process is completing the smallest business loop — discover need → deliver value → receive money.
Once this loop runs, even if you earn just one dollar, its significance is immense.
That first dollar is a membrane-breaking moment — it shatters the deep-seated spell of “I can only earn money through a company.” It proves you can independently complete the entire value delivery chain without a boss as middleman.
7 | From Resume Thinking to Portfolio Thinking: You Are a One-Person Company
Employees use resume thinking — its core is “proving to others which employers I’ve worked for.” Value requires endorsement from past employers.
Independent value creators use portfolio thinking — its core is “showing the world what problems I can solve and what value I’ve created.” Value is defined directly by the market and clients.
The shift from resume thinking to portfolio thinking is the key to individual empowerment in this era.
You’re no longer some company’s employee — you are the CEO of your own “unlimited liability company.” Every project, every delivery adds to your personal brand. Your reputation, expertise, and professional ability are your core assets — the iron rice bowl no one can take.
8 | Breaking the Membrane with NT$1: Become a Value Gravity Field
Start from “independently earning one dollar.”
This single dollar matters more than its face value. It’s a proof of concept — proving to yourself that without a boss as middleman, you can independently complete the entire value delivery process.
Don’t always think only millionaire bosses can pay wages. The real wealth logic is — collect a little from many people, and it becomes your income.
You need a bucket of water but don’t need to go to the raging ocean — the waves might capsize you. Find many small streams, scoop from each, and your bucket overflows.
Perhaps we should shift from chasing money to attracting it.
How? Simple: stop chasing, start creating. Build yourself into a value gravity field. Your professional skills, your excellent work, your reputation, your consistently shared valuable content — all of it constructs this gravity field.
When this field is powerful enough, money — and the resources, opportunities, and trust it represents — will be attracted to you, rather than needing you to exhaust yourself chasing it.
This is like transforming from a hunter into a farmer:
- Hunter: must go out seeking prey daily, wildly unstable
- Farmer: cultivates their own land, patiently tending it; short-term no harvest, but once mature — sustainable, continuous output
Your personal value system is your farmland.
Flowing water doesn’t compete to be first — it competes to be endless. Making money is the same — what matters isn’t one or two big wins, but building a system that generates sustainable, dignified returns.
This system should depend on no one’s permission or charity — it should be firmly built on your own value. That’s the only path to true financial freedom and personal independence.
9 | The Answer for Xiao Zhang — and for You
This is the most sincere answer for Xiao Zhang with his NT$250 commission — and for all of us sitting in our cubicles feeling confused:
- Stop letting NT$10K of effort buy only NT$250 of frustration
- Stop handing the pricing power of your value to someone else
- Employment is a survival choice, but it was never the endpoint for making money
Starting today:
- Step outside the defined box — become the creator and distributor of your own value
- Complete the smallest delivery loop — use continuous value delivery to attract wealth
- Don’t chase the tides — cultivate your own land
- Ensure every effort gets proportional returns — become self-defined, self-gravitating
This article compiles personal business model and commercial thinking analysis, intended for cognitive inspiration only. It does not constitute specific career or entrepreneurial advice. Everyone’s situation and choices differ — please make decisions based on your own independent judgment.
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