Thirty generations
Thirty years old. Write a story about a thirty-year-old.
In 1995, China's first Internet company, "Yinghaiwei", appeared
In 1998, Tencent was foundedIn 1999, Alibaba Group (Alibaba) was foundedIn 2000, Zhongguancun (Baidu) was established.
In just five years, the three giants of the Internet have been assembled, and at the beginning of the 21st century, they have dominated the development of China's Internet. A series of large Internet companies, such as JD.com, Byte, Xiaomi, Meituan, etc., have been named "Internet giants".
The vigorous dividends of the Internet industry have made it a yearning for many young people to work in large factories. Computer science majors were once hot, and positions such as product manager and operations broke through the boundaries of arts and sciences. Getting a job in a big factory means a decent salary, a gilded career resume, and even a possible future with a million-dollar annual salary and financial freedom.
In 2015, Yang Jia became a member of the Internet giant. In the past eight years, she has experienced three Internet jobs, all of which are in well-known Internet companies, and some have also experienced the early start-up period of enterprises. When I asked her if she was counted as the wave of people who had eaten the dividends of the Internet, she said that she was not.
While a wave of people take advantage of the Internet dividend to move towards financial freedom, there are still some people who are more immersed in this wave and want to work hard to maintain their lives.
One from one month to four days
My first job after graduating from graduate school was in a market research company in Beijing, where my clients were mainly from the traditional FMCG sector. When I watched the leaders run between customers and mediate at the wine table, I didn't want to be like this in ten years.
I've always liked new things and have a keen sense of smell. When I was looking for a second job, I switched to the Internet. At that time, I received two offers, one was a user research I had done before, and the other was a product manager. Following my instincts, I chose a product manager that I had never been exposed to.
At that time, Company X was still in the start-up stage, and the office was rented in a building that was not foreign. When I interviewed for the interview, I felt a completely different atmosphere from my previous job. Everyone is generally young, active in thinking, and fast-paced. The interviewer at that time later became a colleague of mine, and when we chatted later, he said that he would deliberately speed up the pace of the Q&A to test my reaction speed. If I react slowly, I'll be brushed off.
There is a question during the interview, to the effect that it asks how long it takes to research the user needs of a project. In the previous job, it often took us a month to go from pre-design to execution to analysis. At that time, my answer was purely online operation, pressing the execution period, and then automating the data analysis, which was about four days. My colleague said that once I still estimate according to the previous pattern, I will definitely not pass the interview.
Soon, I was immersed in the fast-paced pace of working on the Internet.
In the beginning, I lived very close to the company and went to work at 10 o'clock in the morning. But in fact, before I arrived at the company, I already had to deal with all kinds of messages on my mobile phone. During the day, there are generally various meetings, and the appointment is almost full.
Some of them are related to their own projects, such as communicating with colleagues in other departments such as algorithms and operations. There are also some that are not very relevant, but you must be present, so as not to be unable to explain something from time to time, maybe someone has a meeting and buried a mine there, or you can't change it if you want to change it after making a decision. Everyone sat down with their computers in their hands, and when it was your turn to be in charge, they listened to it.
In short, there will be people looking for you all the time, going to meetings all the time, and it will be almost after 8 o'clock in the evening that you can focus on yourself. Overtime does not mean that you have to show the leader, or that you are procrastinating in efficiency, but that there are really a lot of things to deal with and cannot be done.
At that time, I felt like I was working overtime habitually. Because of the proximity to the house, I will work in the company for a while after dinner, and few people will come to disturb me at this time, and I will generally stay until after 10 o'clock in the evening. When I go back, I swipe my phone and fall asleep, and I don't have much energy to read a book or do anything else.
When you see your project or strategy working and the data feedback is good, you still feel a sense of accomplishment. The speed of the Internet lies in the need for continuous verification, and then iteration and optimization. There is a high probability that the industry that Internet companies have entered will be brought up.
I have a colleague who switched from the Internet to a foreign company, and he said that the pace of foreign companies is too slow, and he leaves work at 7 p.m. every day. They want to return to the high-density talent environment of the Internet. Slow down, afraid that you will be eliminated.
2. The "data" that is optimized in rapid iteration
The colleague who went to a foreign company was laid off. I've been laid off twice. One of them was a disguised layoff.
At that time, at Company X, we developed OKRs (management tools invented by Intel's founders in 2014 and widely adopted by major manufacturers after being introduced to China in 2014 to clarify goals and measurable key results achieved for each goal). We will list our OKRs according to the goals given by the leader. In most cases, it will be listed more ideally, but in fact it is not possible to complete all of them, and often only the important parts can be completed. Historically, this has not affected performance appraisals.
I have been working in Company X for more than a year and a half, and one day, the leader called me to the office, and he gave me a low performance appraisal result. He said that I have not been in good shape recently, the output is low, and the OKR has not all met the target. I thought, wasn't it okay before, how to say no, it won't work.
What makes me even more indignant is that the values score is also low. Normally, when we do a 360-degree EIA, we rarely give a low score to our colleagues, and I had a good relationship with the rest of the team at the time. The low score of values given by the leader simply makes me feel that I can not be humiliated.
After communicating for a long time, the leader threw a sentence, you go and talk to HR. The "great" thing about HR is that they won't get tangled up with your actual business. He turned to me and asked, "You think you're doing a good job, so how do you prove that you're doing a good job?"How about comparing yourself to the best in the industry?How many points do you rate yourself?In short, it is a series of debasements from your responsibilities and style.
My final decision was that I would rather leave than accept this performance review. In the end, the result of the company was that I could not come to work next month, but the salary and social security were paid, which was equivalent to giving one month of compensation. At that time, we had a group of people who left their jobs like this. In fact, there should have been an N+1 layoff compensation, but we didn't understand it at the time, it was tantamount to a disguised layoff.
In the process of expanding and iterating the company, we become the part that is optimized. This experience hit me quite hard at the time, and I secretly cried in the bathroom alone. It's been uncomfortable for a long time.
The second layoff was in Company Y, an Internet unicorn company in Shanghai. Although it is not a large factory in terms of scale, it is actually a large factory in terms of working mode and atmosphere.
At that time, my work was at a bottleneck, and the leader wanted to see the project look better, but I didn't know what was better. Unlike in the past, it doesn't have a set goal for you to find a route to iterate, it's an open exploration. I can't make visible results anytime soon.
Although I had my first experience, I was still surprised and hard to accept this "optimization". In 2022, when it was still during the epidemic period, the whole city was blocked. Within a few days of being at home, I was diagnosed with the infection and then taken to FC. The feeling of being laid off for the second time and the FC experience that followed were a mixture.
At that time, the toilet was built as simple as the ** section, and there was no special person to clean it, and many "leftovers" were not washed away, and papers were littered all over the ground. Every time I wanted to go to the toilet, I was nervous and resistant.
I am a psychology major, and I know the concept of "embodied cognition", and the physiological feelings of people in a certain environment will affect their psychological state. Faced with the dirty toilet environment, I had a lot of self-doubt, I felt that I was bad, that I had done something wrong to go to this place to suffer this sin.
Fortunately, the environment has improved since the increase in staff. A week later, I was cured. However, the wounds in my heart did not heal so quickly.
After the last job, I went back to Beijing and went to a well-known Internet company, Company Z. Both the headhunter and the other party's HR said that the pace of Company Z is relatively slow, not too volatile, and generally can get off work at 19 o'clock. This appealed to me, and after two fast-paced jobs, I wanted to find a place where I could lie flat on the Internet.
In addition, there was a victim mentality at that time, and I felt that I had suffered a lot before. I am very satisfied with the salary I received from this offer, and I have fulfilled my wish to "get back all that I have lost". With a high position and a high salary, it makes me feel that my value is seen and recognized.
However, it turns out that the probability of lying flat on the Internet is almost zero. There will be no less things to deal with, and there will be other bad things. Behind a high-paying position may be a fire pit that greets you. Compared with the overall industry, Company Z's R&D resources are relatively small, and my project has not been scheduled in terms of priority. The mismatch between the expectations of the two parties brought the job to a halt during the probationary period.
From June and July 2023 to now, I have been in a GAP state for most of the past six months. It's a bit like going back to the summer vacation of graduating from the third year of high school, free from external pressure, and the whereabouts are still unknown, which is a transitional stage of connecting the past and the next.
After the Spring Festival of the Year of the Dragon, it will soon be my 35th birthday on the Gregorian calendar. In fact, when I talk to you about my 30-year-old, I will feel a kind of apprehension in my heart. At the moment, I am not married or working, which is a rather embarrassing state in traditional social evaluation.
3. Anxiety that begins early than the age of 35
35 years old is an age gap in the Internet industry. I have age anxiety, but my anxiety started long before I graduated.
When I was in elementary school, I used to read an anime magazine called "Manyou". The editors there can get access to the latest Japanese comic information, and then make high-quality content recommendations to readers. They will also write their own life stories and talk about life and ideals with young readers. I really like the content and atmosphere of this magazine, I think the life of the editors is cool, I feel that I have found a purpose in life, and I want to work hard for it.
When I came home from school one day in the fourth and fifth grades, I was happy to share my dream of life with my mother, saying that I wanted to be a magazine editor when I grew up. As a result, my mother laughed, and she said that I was useless, and my dream was actually this thing. It was like a fire that was immediately poured with cold water, and I was silent at the moment.
Maybe my mom thought it was funny at the time, but her words did hurt me for years. It was the first time I had revealed something I loved to someone close to me, only to be met with ridicule. For weak children, they are more likely to seek a sense of identity from authority. And mom and dad are the biggest authority in the eyes of children.
Probably because of this experience, I hardly talked about the things I liked in my heart, and I didn't really want to talk about things in the depths, and I was faintly afraid of being ridiculed and said that it was unrealistic. I don't dare to try what I like.
The psychology major in college was the result of voluntary adjustment, and after reading it, I found that I still liked it. Originally, I was going to go to Beijing Normal University to continue my studies in psychology, but there was an accident during this period. There was a sister in my hometown who had a serious case of relatives in her family, and my father thought that I was studying psychology, and for face reasons, he insisted that I go to this sister for psychological therapy.
This is actually a PTSD case, and it can be a challenge for even a highly qualified counselor to take on this case. At that time, I didn't have any counseling experience, and I didn't do any psychological protection, so I went hard. At the end of the conversation, my sister and I hugged each other and cried.
This "psychological healing" for others had a great impact on myself, leading me to think that I was not suitable for the path of psychology anymore.
In the middle, I also participated in an internship in the documentary group of a TV station. During the exchange period in Taiwan, the graduate students went to various extracurricular exhibitions and volunteered in the film group of the school's art and culture center, completely following their own interests. I want to do this too, and I want to try that. It was a very happy time.
You can see Taipei 101 from the exchange school Courtesy of Yang Jia).
The Lego exhibition seen during the exchange Courtesy of Yang Jia).
However, after the exchange, I became more and more anxious about what I would do in the future. I have done a lot of things that I am interested in in Taiwan, but I am also afraid that after I really do it as a profession, that interest will disappear again, or that interest and actual experience are the same. For example, like my ** dream when I was a child, I actually took a double-degree journalism course in college, but after contact, I found that most of the courses were about theories such as journalism history, which did not match my expectations.
I didn't dare to try anything, I just felt more and more anxious, and this increased the pressure, making me more and more unable to move, and I could only think about finishing my graduation first**. Looking back now, in fact, there were solutions at that time, such as talking to seniors more, or finding a direction that is relatively good in the long run to try first. But I never talked to anyone about what I really thought in my heart.
Later, when I was in Company Y, I was stuck in the open exploration of the project, which was a bit like returning to the state before graduation. When anxiety is too intense, it can stifle my thoughts and actions, even when there are infinite possibilities in front of you. You will panic, you will have a great sense of uncertainty, you will not know what to do next, you will feel that there will be some bad results, you will be scared.
After work, the anxiety is still there, but the object of anxiety has changed. When I got my first job in Beijing, I thought I had to buy a house in Beijing on my own.
There is no direct demand or pressure from your parents at home, but you can feel it. For example, my mom will mention in the chat who works where, how much money they make, and whose children are very capable. What they're thinking is actually quite obvious.
When your own strength is still weak and you are not able to pursue the pursuit of living your own life, you will involuntarily internalize the expectations of your family, because it seems to be safe, and at the same time, it is also an explanation to your parents. The anxiety that comes from this expectation is, I want to work hard, I want to get ahead. In my first job in 2014, my monthly salary after tax was less than 5,000 yuan, and after deducting the rent, I had about 3,000 yuan left. At that time, the average house price in Beijing was 20,000 or 30,000 square meters.
At that time, a friend who was studying in the UK came to Beijing for a party, and we went to see the exhibition together, and then had an afternoon tea. That afternoon tea cost about 200 yuan per person, and I was actually bleeding from my heart as if I had nothing to do on the surface...Later, I once flipped back to the group photo of the exhibition at that time, and suddenly found that the anxiety and tightness on my face back then were really visible to the naked eye, and my face was full of grievances that "I made less money".
At Company X, this anxiety slowly accumulated. In 2016, I went to the hospital for a test and found that I was in a moderate depressive state. The doctor prescribed the pills. After taking the medicine, you will find yourself in a state of desirelessness. It's not too negative, it's not too positive, it's like it's being controlled by a valve.
When I was laid off in 2017, it happened to be in the process of reducing the drug, and that emotion was very strong all of a sudden. At that stage, I left work at about ** o'clock, left earlier than before, and the output in the weekly report was correspondingly less. These performances also made the leaders at the time feel that I was not in a good state.
Later, when I talked to my colleagues about taking my medicine, they were very surprised and couldn't see any change in my mood. My anxiety is rarely outwardly expressed. In fact, I was already in a deep state of self-denial.
The first time I was laid off at Company X, I found that the company's evaluation system had a profound impact on my perception of my own value.
4. Intrusive self-worth
I have a young colleague in the Internet industry, who is 95 years old and very desperate for a promotion and a raise. During the WeChat group chat, I asked him what you were anxious about, and he said that this was a recognition of himself and wanted to prove himself. I asked them a couple of questions about why you want to prove yourself, who asked you to prove yourself, and to whom you are going to prove yourself.
Actually, I want to euphemistically say that it's normal to want a promotion and a raise, but if you are very anxious to think about it, then there are some other things mixed in with this motivation.
In the past few years, I have also been a very important person for salary. If the other party gives me a small salary, I will think that you look down on me. And if the other party can give a more satisfactory salary, I will think that you see my strengths. Once I didn't get a promotion and a salary increase for a long time in the company, and I got less money, I would be anxious and feel that I was not good enough.
Salary positions, including performance levels, are directly related to my self-worth. When the performance of Company X was lowered for the first time, in addition to the unexpected surprise, there was also the impact of its own value being completely denied.
Interestingly, when I was in school, I was also given a low grade by my teacher for one of my elective courses**. My first reaction was not that I felt bad, but that I thought there was something wrong with the teacher...This is a completely different reaction from the workplace.
When I was in school, my grades were always good. In other words, my performance is in line with the score evaluation system, and even if I fail in the middle of the test, I can see the improvement effect immediately after making an adjustment. The low score didn't affect my sense of identity with myself.
After I started working, it seemed that I gradually linked my self-worth to the company's evaluation system. And this time, I wasn't the top student. When my performance was not recognized by the current evaluation system, I found that there was a big crack in my inner sense of identity with myself.
In fact, I don't agree with the evaluation system of big factories that divide people into three, six, nine and so on, which is quite rude. What I value more is being able to live my life and do what I really love. But in reality, I don't have the courage and ability to achieve this pursuit.
It's like saying that I've sacrificed what I really want to come here to make money and work, but as a result, I can't even do this step-by-step thing. When the leader came up with a low performance appraisal in front of me, there was resentment and humiliation, as well as a sense of self-shame and resentment towards myself.
In the face of low evaluation, if I had to do it all over again, I think I would strengthen the communication with the leadership. In the Internet business, my leadership is not an authority in the traditional sense. They will give goals and coordinate work, but the essence of the relationship between me and them is still that of colleagues, and it is a two-way flow of communication, rather than a one-way word. It's just that in the previous jobs, I didn't feel so comfortable looking at and handling the relationship with the leader.
Just as he sought unconditional acceptance from his parents at home as a child, leadership in the workplace became a subconscious continuation of this "authority" role. I obediently accept the leader's task arrangement, try to be obedient, rarely take the initiative to express my inner thoughts directly, and only think about working hard to complete the leader's requirements, and then strive to get a good evaluation from TA and win the recognition of "authority".
Later, I slowly understood that there is no way to accept unconditionally, only I can accept myself unconditionally.
5. Individuals who are fighting against the Internet
Although I have worked in the Internet field for seven or eight years, and I am considered to be a big company, I don't think I have eaten the Internet dividend. A lot of people around me come in with the mentality of making quick money, thinking about getting a promotion and a raise, running towards financial freedom, and then retiring early. I have a colleague who has left a large factory and is already traveling the world.
Some people will be more suitable for the fast and volume of large factories, and finally get a million annual salary or options. When some Internet companies decided to change the week to a weekend, my first reaction when I heard my colleagues was not happy, but anxious that "there will be less money".
Behind those who have eaten the dividends, they are actually exchanged for the price. Because this industry is very draining. Everyone says how can there be happy people at work. A lot of people make money, but they don't really do it happily. People on the Internet, on the one hand, rely on the gambling dividends of this industry, and on the other hand, they struggle with the consumption of work.
As soon as I started working on the Internet, I felt its rapid erosion of the boundaries of my life, from my daily routine to my mental state. In the beginning, I lived very close to Company X, and left work after 10 o'clock every night, with almost no spare time of my own. People who have worked on the Internet for a long time will gradually feel numb to the intrusion state of work, and at the same time, they will slowly find their own way to resist.
The adjustment I made at the time was to move. I deliberately moved to a place farther away from Company X and used the longer commute distance to force myself to leave work earlier. The house I moved to was in an alley, and on the road, I would see my aunt and uncle walking my dog and squatting birds, I would hear clear bird calls from the trees, and kittens running around. When you go for a walk every day, you will feel the real fireworks outside of work. It's a rare quiet time.
Many of my friends around me have their own way of adjusting after working for a few years. For example, some people go to exercise at noon, some people force themselves to do yoga before going to bed and go to bed early, and some people go for night runs after work. In the face of erosive work, everyone's instinct is to save themselves. I have a very interesting colleague who wrote an article about using dating against 996, chatting with interesting people when he sees them, and then making an appointment for dinner or drinking, etc., as a way to spice up the life of the big factory.
In this way, the adjustment is re-consumed, and the dispensing is re-consumed.
You'll find that everyone on the Internet is busy, or it creates a sense that you're busy, giving you the illusion that you're producing. Especially when DAU daily active users are working on hundreds of millions of app products, you will have the illusion that you are really doing something amazing. But really, how much of this is brought by your own values? What did you get this apparent sense of accomplishment in exchange?
I've been through the process of start-up Internet companies scaling up. Maybe what you do at the beginning can really affect the company, but as the business and people expand, you will find that you are less and less connected to the company. It is constantly divided into details, such as data product managers, strategic product managers, and platform product managersAnd the data indicators to be optimized are becoming more and more microscopic. You understand the meaning of the data, but you don't understand the point of doing it.
The result of the refinement of the division of labor is that you are valuable in a large factory, but it is difficult for you to be valuable after jumping out. What I want to do now is to regain my sense of self-worth as an individual.
I've been doing interviews on and off lately. One is from the overseas business department of Company T. In this interview, I can deeply feel what attracts me to the Internet. It pays well, and I have the opportunity to go overseas, which is a very interesting and glamorous experience. The interviewer has a familiar style of a big factory, elitist, rational, quick response, and the kind of intelligence that pursues efficiency. I don't know if he was originally like this, or if he was disciplined in the thinking of Dachang.
The night after the interview, I was a little struggling. The job has its appeal, but at the same time, I realized that what sets me apart from a rational interviewer is that I still have my gut feeling. Even with a high salary, I was worried that I would fall into a lack of meaning while doing it. Some people will say you don't want to find meaning in your work, but I think it's hard for me not to give it meaning when I look at it as a long-term job.
However, unlike in my previous workplace, I no longer tie the evaluation system from the company, such as salary, to my self-worth. One thing I see clearly is that the salary is just the price offered by the company for the position, it is related to what you have to do in the position and the value that the position can create. It and your self-worth can be two separate things.
I just went through an interview rejection a few days ago, and it doesn't cause self-deprecation now, as if I can be more open and objective to the outside world. It's not that I'm bad, it's that we're not a good match.
I guess it's due to my slow acceptance of myself. On the one hand, I have experienced a lot of things, and on the other hand, I started psychological counseling as a client in 2018. In the process, you will gradually learn more about yourself, and then one day you suddenly feel as if you have figured it out more than before.
In 2015, I read a book called "The Power of the Now", and the author said that what he has now is the best. At that time, I really didn't understand why I was the best at the moment, how could it be the best when I had nothing now, no money and couldn't afford to buy a house? Now, eight years later, I probably know what he meant.
I used to think a lot about what I didn't have, but now, I will see more and more of my good aspects.
Sixth, the new life of the previous and the next
I'm also trying to get back to what I love.
At the GAP stage, I found an internship in Finance **, which is currently part-time. In the process of trying, I discovered something new about my interests, that is, I prefer to do practical things that can have a concrete impact rather than purely observational expressions.
After talking to my counselor and my friends who are majoring in psychology, I saw what happened to my frustrated attempts at counseling, and the trauma is slowly healing. After that, I plan to return to psychology as a side hustle. Unlike the youth of the Internet, psychology accumulates abilities and qualifications over time, and its progress will be slow, but it gives me a sense of stability.
Of course, I still want to make money, but I don't want to make quick money like in the Internet, I want to have an area that allows me to give for a longer period of time and then get some rewards accordingly.
So I don't have any plans to go back to the Internet business at the moment, I want to continue to follow my interest in new things and practical things, and plan to go to technology companies in the future. I've been working with data, strategy, and machines, and I want to go back to people.
The anxiety that begins before graduation has always been there, but it will appear in different degrees and in different ways. After so many years, it feels like an old friend who has been together for a long time. I know how I feel when I'm anxious, and I know how to deal with it. That's why, I, who had never talked about this with anyone before, would open my mouth to share.
Although I am close to 35 years old, unmarried and unemployed, I would like to use two more vulgar words to describe my current state, and that is"New life".
[Postscript].
I have never been to a large factory, and I chatted with Yang Jia several times for nearly 9 hours, which allowed me to immerse myself in the work of a large factory. When I asked Yang Jia, what do you think the Internet has taken away and what has been left, Yang Jia said that her first reaction was that she didn't want to be taken away by the Internet, she wanted to be herself. The past eight years have been the process from entry to stripping, and it is an eight-year "war of resistance" with a sense of erosion by people and work.
In fact, eight years later, this erosive feeling began as early as childhood. Outside the workplace, age, marriage and childbirth, appearance, income...These can be the entrance to the erosion of an individual by the social environment. To exist is to be eroded. Even if it is an honor student with a full A transcript.
When we don't have the support of our real self-skeleton, there is no difference between the evaluation of all A and all C, they are just prostheses implanted in our consciousness from the outside world, making us seem normal, but in fact they are empty inside, or tend to be broken.
Approaching the age of 35, Yang Jia completed a self-defense battle that belonged to her. Although the battle is far from over. For you and for me, it's both.
For privacy reasons, names and companies have been changed).
[Q&A of the Thirty Generations].
1. If you were to write a letter to your 20-year-old self, what would you want to say?
Yang Jia:The world is not as unsafe as it seems.
2. How do you plan to spend the next 30 years old?
Yang Jia:Be brave, try what you want to do and develop a life path that works for you.
3. Do you have any expectations for the age of 40? What are your expectations, if any?
Yang Jia:Jolin Tsai's words at the concert touched me very much, she said that at the age of 40, she "feels damn good! "I feel encouraged, because as you get to know yourself better and do what you love, you will feel better and better.
Yang Jia, born in 89.
He was 34 years old at the time of writing.
Wang Da'an
Field activity incubator Non-fiction writer.
**: Da Anyu Yuyu.
Documenting the exploration of your true self and the world
What is true will meet