Summary:The story is evolving in the opposite direction: layoffs are no longer a bad thing, but more like a carnival waiting to "go ashore".
Text丨Gao Huiping.
Edit丨Shi Mo.
After sitting in the library for two months, Li Yan finally finished reading a book.
In the days after being laid off, in order to avoid being discovered by his parents, he pretended to go out to work every morning and walked for ten minutes to the library near his home to read books.
Li Yan was once the envy of many people. He has been working in Internet companies for the past ten years and is a typical beneficiary of industry dividends. At the beginning of this year, with the layoffs and the reality of the old and the young, he became the representative of the "most miserable middle-aged person" in the mouth of the ** overnight.
But recalling the moment when he was laid off, Li Yan only felt "relieved". After all, after joining this company, Li Yan found that the grand blueprint drawn by the person in charge was difficult to realize. No one told him what to do, and this kind of chaos and ambiguity is the norm in big factories. A few months later, Li Yan waited for the results of the layoffs, during which time the person who recruited him had even left the company.
When the halo and vanity are gone, more and more people are "recognizing" the essence of the Internet and big factories.
A ByteDance employee told Jingxiang Studio that her business line emphasizes performance and will be eliminated every quarter based on the last place in performance. In the past, she only needed to review 400 pieces of content a day to meet the standard, but now she needs to review 800 pieces.
Yang Qian, another employee of a major Internet company, agrees. She was a survivor of a layoff in her line of business, but now she was looking forward to leaving. She has been sick several times this year because of work pressure. She said that many people who are as physically and mentally exhausted as herself see layoffs as a forced break. "It's also a relief. So when there were mass layoffs, I think most people had a mental feeling that the boots had finally landed. ”
After two years of drastic and continuous layoffs in major Internet companies, 2023 is a year of disenchantment in the workplace of large companies. On Xiaohongshu, posts of "asking for layoffs, asking for n+1" are endless. A few years ago, the content that taught people how to get promoted and raised salaries gradually lost their popularity, and this generation of young people and even middle-aged people no longer have "obsession" with the workplace.
After interviewing several employees and headhunters who have experienced layoffs, Mirror Studio found that although the cold wave is not over, people seem to have learned to live with this state.
From the initial fear, confusion, powerlessness, and helplessness, to the current acceptance, and even expectation. The whole layoff story is evolving in the opposite direction: it seems to have turned into a wish-grant. Layoffs are no longer a bad thing, but more like a carnival waiting to "go ashore".
Photo source movie "Daydreamer".
When the pain of layoffs was bloodied in front of the headhunter, she also felt panic for a while.
Rachel is a veteran headhunter with 5 years of experience and is used to befriending most candidates. In 2022, major Internet companies will lay off employees ferociously, and she will often receive calls from candidates who have been laid off. They'll ask me what to doWhat should I do if I can't find a job in the next time?Can you help me find a suitable job?"The answer is that it's hard to get the right job.
In her observations, at the beginning of the wave of layoffs, candidates are often ashamed to mention that they have been laid off, but throughout the year, these candidates will take the initiative to explain to her.
All people need to be educated by the market. Headhunter Lin Ji told the mirror studio that the current candidates' expectations and posture are constantly being lowered, from arrogant and dismissive to urgent, "not picky" to find a job.
Headhunter Han Yang has met many people, "At first, I was reluctant to give 1 million, and when I gave 700,000, I said that I wanted to wait, and when I waited until 500,000 or even less than 500,000, I didn't work and lost my job at home." ”
According to the above headhunters, there are three types of people who are easy to be laid off: first, the business line is abolished, which affects people with strong business attributes;The second is the last elimination, the person with poor performance;The third is people who are old and do not have good room for growth and potential.
Headhunter Rachel classifies the risk of these people, among which the middle level of the Internet is the high-risk group of layoffs in large factories, and it is also the group of people who are most difficult to find jobs in the job market. "This year, we will not be given expert positions in large factories, but only some senior positions, such as P10 or above for Meituan, and P8 and P9 for Alibaba. She believes that the root cause of this problem is the pursuit of large Internet companies to reduce costs and increase efficiency.
Headhunter Han Yang also confirmed this observation: Internet companies are tilting a higher proportion of funds towards hunting for high-level talents.
This undoubtedly narrows the choice space and employment difficulty of middle-aged people who have been laid off.
Source: American drama "Friends".
As a 30-year-old woman, it was difficult for Goryeo to find a suitable job. She submitted more than 50 resumes on BOSS Zhipin, and only received 5 interviews. She is often rejected because of her age, and when she goes to the interview, she will be asked "whether she is married, and whether she plans to have children." "The salary negotiation link was also unsatisfactory, and the salary of 20,000 yuan was directly cut to 10,000.
Even if he wasn't laid off, 39-year-old Tian Yu, who voluntarily resigned from an Internet company a year ago, had a hard time returning to the workplace after a year of self-employment. The resumes that were sent out were all lost.
He worked in the well-known ** for several years, and later moved to a major Internet company. Tian Yu said that most of the emails he received replies were "sorry for being too old" and "sorry that your resume does not match our position".
To be honest, the world is quite cruel," Rachel's candidate sent her a screenshot of an online discussion "Does anyone still join Byte at the age of 40?"."She's especially sentimental at moments like this. Although she is not interested in Internet companies and has never considered joining them, she will also fall into anxiety and helplessness at that moment, "I am also worried about whether I will be abandoned by the times like them when I am 40 years old."
Finding a job is not only difficult for middle-aged people, but also for young people. After being laid off by one of the largest Internet companies in China, Guo Song joined a small Internet company in Guangzhou, cutting his salary by 30% and reducing his savings by 60%. She thought about returning to Dachang again, because the system there was more perfect, there was light, and her vanity was still there. But after facing Byte, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu and other companies, there is no follow-up.
Goryeo briefly stayed at a major Internet education company, but was forced to leave because the probationary period did not expire.
She has her own career highlights. She has been working on the Internet for four years, and the solution she built in her former company is still a template that can be used directly. In her previous post, she was always the one to be rewarded, with trophies and certificates stuffed into a cabinet. And the negative voice began with the moment she entered the factory.
There's no time left for her to get used to, she needs to get straight to work. At the stage when she crossed the river by feeling the stones, the leader would always say that she couldn't do this or that.
If there is a slight problem, they will immediately come to me to talk. There were never positive reviews, and she had to stay up all night to change the plan repeatedly. When it came to the conversion process, "I stupidly thought I could turn positive." The final reason is that the defense data is too poor to be guaranteed. ”
Trophies of Goryeo. Source: Interviewee.
Goryeo always regretted that if he had read the labor law at that time, he would definitely go for N+1 compensation, maybe a month or half a month. But at that time, she cried like a child who had not been approved by the teacher. In the end, he said to the leader, "It's my own problem, thank you for taking care of it." ”
After leaving, Gao Li thought that he had seen the ruthlessness of Dachang clearly, and he also began to reflect on the Dachang system. She doesn't think she's as bad as people say, but that "the project itself isn't that efficient, there are too many tasks, and it squeezes my time and I can't think of such good ideas." ”
Yang Qian also feels that these Internet companies have inevitably had a lot of big factory diseases. "Its corporate culture and what it's trying to promote is no longer being done in day-to-day execution. "More importantly, the big Internet companies are not a place to stay for a long time. "You can't handle the current pace of work, both physically and mentally, and it's very unfriendly to middle-aged people and people with families. ”
At this moment, almost everyone wants to escape. After all, even survivors of layoffs are unlikely to have a sense of happiness at all.
The 30-year-old Wei Ke had plans to return to his hometown as early as last year, and originally planned to leave at the end of this year. Three days before the Spring Festival in 2022, after learning that three colleagues at the adjacent workstation took the initiative to apply for layoff and were successful, he also began to "plan". It wasn't until August this year that Wei Ke finally seized the opportunity, he took the initiative to ask to be laid off, successfully got compensation, and left the company as he wished.
Guo Song, who was also laid off, shared it with his friends as soon as he received the notice. "Friends, I've been laid off, I've got paid!Compared to her friend's worries, her first feeling was excitement. She wants to start traveling, go out and relax.
Expecting to be made redundant was a long time ago. Guo Song experienced a job transfer in that Internet company, and she didn't like the job at that time so much after the transfer, "The sense of accomplishment I got in it was not very strong, and if I was laid off, I could just change the direction I was more interested in." "The layoffs have given her the courage to try things she didn't dare to try before.
Another colleague who is familiar with Guo Song also plans to return to his hometown and has been looking forward to being laid off, Guo Song described that this colleague has been eager to post on social platforms to the extent of "begging".
Compared with the free and easy of young people, middle-aged professionals are a little more helpless. Ms. Yang, 36, often talks about this with her colleagues, but the conversation does not ease anxiety and sometimes exacerbates it. Everyone thinks that it is not easy for them, and middle-aged people are very tired. "But it's not an absolute state of anxiety or absolute balance, it can cross at any time, sometimes it feels like the layoffs boots hit the ground and take a break, and then you remember that the future market is not very stable, there are uncertainties in all aspects. ”
For many people, Dachang is such a contradictory existence. Because the halo is so dazzling that people don't have time to see the other side of the light. Just as those who have ridden the upward path of the Internet have a hard time accepting the fact that all success is the dividend of the times.
Many candidates had hoped to use the experience of large factories to harvest a wave of equity in the middle factory, looking forward to the exponential realization after listing, "but unfortunately everyone has seen what has happened in the past two years, Hong Kong and US stocks have not been listed, and the dream of creating wealth has been shattered." Headhunter Han Yang said.
In the past, when the economy was good, large Internet companies needed more people to support them. Now that the environment has changed, the first thing to judge is human efficiency. Zhu Jupeng, co-founder of 51 headhunting, analyzed the current wave of Internet layoffs from his more than 20 years of experience.
Over the past three years, the carnival has come to an abrupt end. The superposition of various factors such as disorderly expansion being pressed the pause button and financing burning is unsustainable has led to more and more enterprises having to "abandon the car and protect the handsome". Those businesses and people who cannot make a profit in the short term and make their own blood are destined to be cut off.
Photo source movie "Truman's World".
Gu Chudan and Yang Faxiang from the Institute of Applied Sociology of East China University of Science and Technology used ByteDance as a case study to interview a number of internal employees. The study shows that very few Internet companies meet the requirements of "economic layoffs", and some Internet companies still have strong profitability, but are still cutting jobs, "layoffs have changed from a short-term personnel reduction tool to an important means of organizational strategic change, regardless of the position has a sense of insecurity."
On the one hand, there is the urgent pursuit of "human efficiency" and "profit" on the enterprise side, and on the other hand, there is an oversupply of talent reserves. In such a dislocated context, there is only one category of people who will be relatively safe. Rachel concludes that "people in the core business will never be laid off", and Han Yang believes that people who "have irreplaceable technology, have a good understanding of cutting-edge technology applications, and have professional ability" are easy to find jobs even after being laid off.
The snowflakes of layoffs even fell on Han Yang's own company. He is a senior partner at an 800-person executive search firm, and he describes what he sees in his Beijing office: two offices merged into one, people leave one by one, and more and more empty offices, with only 500 of the 800 people left. After the Internet dividend faded, the group of headhunters who were good at the Internet direction recruited because of the tide also dispersed.
For Han Yang, this is not the first cycle he has experienced. He has experienced the boom of foreign companies in China to the exit, and the prosperity of the Internet to the bleak, he feels that any industry has peaks and troughs, to invest in learning when the tide is high, and to seek transformation when the tide is low.
Of course, a gratifying change is that after the development of the past 20 years, China's Internet has moved away from barbaric growth and is transforming into an "elitist". In the larger context, the contraction and decline of the Internet industry is only part of the economic cycle, and for ordinary people, perhaps they should be more concerned about how to get through the cycle.
It's just that history only keeps repeating itself, and people never learn their lessons. "Now that the dividends of the Internet have come to an end, these people have begun to flock to chips and new energy vehicles. A headhunter sighed.
When the cruel expectation of layoffs is broken, it seems that "those who are laid off first enjoy life first" seems to be becoming a consensus.
More and more young people are trying to break free from this bondage. He Sen graduated in 2020 and is currently working in a major short-term Internet company. Even if he understands that the turmoil of layoffs will not be his turn, he has to take precautions not to become an outcast of a major Internet company after the age of 35.
After going through these things, you will find that the company is not stable, and you do a good job step by step, and the possibility of a good end is very small." He worked hard to get promoted and accumulate resources in the companyOn the other hand, he put his passion in more places: teaching and doing public welfare organizations.
He Sen, who works in Dachang, found that Dachang was not stable, and he now puts his enthusiasm into doing public welfare and other things. Pictured are the children at Hossen Volunteer School.
After failing to become a regular, Gao Li felt that the public examination was the way out. When I was in an Internet education company, I always felt that I was attracting new users and grabbing renewal fees all the time. Being admitted to her hometown as a teacher is her beautiful fantasy after escaping from the Internet factory.
After some sudden critical attacks and heavy blows, people tend to lower their psychological expectations.
After experiencing the turmoil of layoffs, "stability" has become a priority criterion for Li Yan's selection of companies. After sitting in the library for two months, Li Yan has now joined the new company, and although the overall salary has been reduced by 30%, he feels trusted by his boss and can take care of many things.
Rise in rank and learn new things" was his insistence in the past. Now he feels more and more that instead of letting the market go according to his plan, it is better to find a slightly more comfortable place to stay. When people reach middle age, they finally find that they are back to square one. Li Yan also thought about it, "If you go back and choose again, the probability will still be the same."
Counsellors offer another perspective on layoffs, which can be positive in the eyes of counsellor Zhou Mengyuan. It gives a chance to explore yourself: what the hell am I doing?What do I want to do?What else can I do?Existential anxiety is real, but after losing it, you can also find that "what you imagined was at stake may not be that important." ”
Zhou Mengyuan changed her career from the financial industry to a freelance psychological counselor. Although the reduction in wages is also unstable, she feels that "the work and life that people really want will be experienced in the process of doing it, not by imagination." ”
Rachel is 30 years old, and in a few years she wants to quit her headhunter job and do her own thing. She often tells candidates, "If you don't have financial pressure, you want to be happy, and you can afford the gap caused by happiness, then choose happiness." ”
By the time the layoffs hit the ground, Yang Qian was ready for the salary cuts and demotions she might face when looking for a new job. "After all, there are so many jobs that pay about the same. Now in the face of layoffs, she feels more and more that "it is not a personal reason, but the pain of an era." ”
Labor pains aren't necessarily a bad thing. Eventually, people will realize that layoffs are just a milestone in a long life. For example, Gao Li, after being laid off by a major Internet education company, she has a long-term and good enough goal: she wants to return to her hometown, a small county town in the North China Plain, to be admitted to the teaching establishment and become a real teacher. She will share her experience of traveling in Beijing with children like her, so that they can avoid detours. As for herself, "some radical ideas should be put aside and a family should be formed in a prosaic way".
At the request of the interviewees, Li Yan, Tian Yu, Rachel, Yang Qian, Gao Li, He Sen, Guo Song and Wei Ke are pseudonyms).
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