Jingguantai (ID: jingguantaicn) original.
Text丨Hu Ying.
Editor丨Cao Huimin.
At the end of the year and the beginning of the year, the year-end bonus can always stimulate the nerves of the workers. To send or not to send? How much? What to send? Everyone will always talk and compare.
In particular, the huge year-end bonuses of Internet companies, which have attracted much attention, are much higher than those in other industries in previous years, which frequently arouses envy, jealousy and hatred.
But can there still be attractive year-end bonuses from Internet giants this year?
From the wave of "reducing costs and increasing efficiency" slogan at the beginning of last year, to the rounds of layoffs and salary cuts in the middle of the year, and finally to the end of the year, most workers have lowered their psychological expectations for whether or not to pay the year-end bonus: "If you don't lay off employees, what more do you need for the year-end bonus?" It's too much of a luxury. ”
However, the joys and sorrows of migrant workers are not the same, and individual differences are obvious, especially this year. In the top factories, there are still a few people who get high year-end bonuses, and most people do not have year-end bonuses, and some people are laid off and do not even keep their jobs.
At the end of January this year, Tencent announced the results of the 2023 year-end bonus performance evaluation, with a maximum monthly salary of 5 months+. And the amount of the year-end bonus is directly linked to the business and department. Byte also announced that it will adjust the year-end bonus incentive policy from January 2025, from the past "all cash, you can choose whether to convert it into options" to a cash cap of 3 months, and high-performance employees will be issued additional options, which will be vested on a monthly basis within 2 years.
Some people are happy and some people are sad. There is news that the intelligent driving business group is undergoing adjustment, and the staff of the intelligent transportation division has been notified that there may be no year-end bonus this year; Alibaba's year-end bonus evaluation is based on the comprehensive score of company and individual KPIs, but if the performance is at the bottom for two consecutive fiscal years, you may receive a "graduation gift package", that is, face resignation.
The year-end bonus is actually a company's "barometer". It is one of the important indicators to measure a company's financial health and market competitiveness. It is not only related to the personal income of employees, but also reflects the operating conditions of the enterprise and the expectations for the future.
In recent years, when the performance and traffic growth curve of the Internet industry has slipped from the peak to the flat, the astonishingly high year-end bonus is also destined to fade and become a "historical myth" that is getting farther and farther away.
A few families are happy and a few are sad
In the context of economic fluctuations and intensified competition, many major Internet companies are not having a good time. Will the year-end bonus in 2023 be issued? It has aroused widespread concern.
From the company's point of view, although the detailed figures are rarely disclosed for confidentiality reasons, as one of the "sub-venues" for the year-end inventory of each company's operation, many large companies also choose to disclose the relevant information of the year-end bonus.
At the same time, there are many differences in the time for large factories to issue year-end bonuses. According to the statistics of public data disclosed by netizens and employees of Dachang on the social ** platform, the distribution of year-end bonuses from 54 large factories shows that 13 companies such as Tencent, Kuaishou, Shell, and Station B issued year-end bonuses before the Chinese New Year; Alibaba, Meituan, Byte, NetEase, and other 23 companies choose to issue after the year, generally in March and April; Pinduoduo, JD.com, and Himalaya were distributed in two waves before and after the New Year; There are also 15 large factories that have no news or no year-end bonuses.
* Visual China.
Among the companies that have announced year-end bonuses, JD.com is undoubtedly one of the enviable representatives. As early as December 2023, JD.com announced the release time of the 2023 year-end bonus. According to the content of the notice, the year-end bonus of JD OS sequence (grassroots employees) will be issued on February 7; MPT (management) did not receive the year-end bonus a year ago, and the distribution time is scheduled for February 28.
After that, the good news of JD.com's salary increase followed, and the target of this salary increase was the hottest retail business. According to insiders close to JD.com, from January 1, 2024, all online business personnel of JD Retail will have their original monthly performance salary and floating year-end bonus increased to fixed salary, enjoying a fixed year-end bonus of 4 times the monthly salary, and the adjusted annual fixed salary will increase by nearly 100%. In addition, the business head unit will additionally improve its performance according to the year-on-year improvement rate, and can obtain performance incentives with no upper limit.
Equally enviable is Kuaishou. Tech Planet quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that the performance of Kuaishou's teams this year, the e-commerce business line is A-, the commercialization team may be A, and the main station is B. The overall efficiency of the department is directly related to the amount of year-end bonus that employees can get. A grade generally corresponds to 5-6 months' salary, but if the department's performance is not good, the personal year-end bonus is lower than this level; The year-end bonus generally corresponding to B is usually 4 months' monthly salary. But even if the performance is poor, the B grade may correspond to 3-33 months' monthly salary.
In addition, Kuaishou also announced on January 6 that it would issue heart-warming shopping funds to employees, with an amount of up to 2,866 yuan, and it is roughly estimated that the total value of Kuaishou's shopping funds this time is more than 50 million.
Compared with the simple and straightforward "salary increase" of the above-mentioned companies, ByteDance's adjustment this year is a bit "brain-consuming".
On January 18, ByteDance issued an internal letter to all employees, updating the salary and year-end bonus incentive policies. According to people familiar with the matter on the public platform, after the adjustment, employee options can be vested faster. From 2024 onwards, the pace of option vesting in the total salary package will accelerate. Except for the first year of employment, it has been adjusted from "yearly vesting" to "quarterly vesting". At the same time, the four-year vesting ratio has changed from "15%-25%-25%-35%" to "20%-25%-25%-30%". That is to say, the vesting will be on an annual basis in the first year, and the vesting will be adjusted to quarterly vesting from the second year; The additional options issued after joining the company are vested directly on a quarterly basis.
At the same time, the byte product sequence has been adjusted from the past 18 salaries to 15 salaries for R&D and other positions, and the total package remains unchanged. This means that the basic salary of product employees has increased by 20%, but the proportion of year-end bonuses has also decreased. Byte also announced that from January 2025, the year-end bonus incentive policy will be adjusted, from the past "all cash, you can choose whether to convert into options" to a cash cap of 3 months, and high-performance employees will be issued additional options, which will be vested on a monthly basis within 2 years.
In fact, these adjustments will not have much impact on our 2023 year-end bonus, and it may be reflected more next year. Liang Meng, an employee of Byte, told Jingguantai, "This measure is actually to keep those who do a good job and let those who do not do a good job go." The people who are more favorable to this policy are the kind of people who have options in hand and have a lot of options, generally speaking, senior employees and middle and high-level managers.
According to the analysis of people familiar with the matter on Xiaohongshu, "the acceleration of the pace of employee option vesting is good for employees as a whole, and the quarterly vesting method can also get more options for employees who have been on the job for less than four years and leave the company." It is said that the average length of service of bytes is only 7 months, and it is believed that the relevant adjustments can increase employee satisfaction and length of service to a certain extent. ”
The analysis also made relevant adjustments, the main reasons can be summarized into two points, one is to reduce the company's short-term cash flow pressure, reduce the cash ratio of new employees in the future, and spend money for the winter; The second is to use high options instead of cash to motivate employees and improve the retention rate of high-performing talents in the long run.
Will the huge year-end bonus become history?
For a long time, "cutting-edge talents" have always been a scarce resource that Internet companies have competed for. In addition to high salaries and generous benefits, year-end bonuses have always been one of the important means for major companies to compete for talents, motivate employees, and even publicize externally. "Achieve financial freedom with a huge year-end bonus", "receive a year-end bonus in the morning, buy a house in full in the afternoon" and other first-class news also occupied the first page for a time.
But by 2024, the huge year-end bonuses of major factories seem to have become history.
As the focus of attention over the years, the year-end bonus for employees in Tencent's general departments in recent years is about 3-6 months' salary. Departments with outstanding performance or rapid growth in the current year may receive a year-end bonus of up to 24-48 months' monthly salary. Recall that in 2015, Tencent's phenomenal mobile game "Honor of Kings" was born, and only two months after its launch, the number of registered users worldwide exceeded 100 million, becoming a phenomenal hit. According to a report by the Beijing Morning Post at the time, in 2016, the game team's year-end bonus per capita was 1.4 million yuan, the minimum dividend was 600,000 yuan, and the core employees even received 2.9 million yuan.
But nowadays, such a high fairy year-end bonus seems to no longer exist. As early as the end of January this year, Tencent has announced the results of the 2023 year-end bonus performance evaluation, with a maximum monthly salary of 5 months+.
Xu Yan, a former Tencent back-end technology employee, told Jingguantai that Tencent's employee year-end performance appraisal is divided into five grades, ranging from one star to five stars. A large part of the year-end bonus will vary due to the different year-end performance appraisals of individuals, and the other part will also be affected by different departments. Combining these two factors, in the final embodiment, the difference between each person's year-end bonus may be particularly huge.
When I joined Tencent, the HR department would state that it was 16 salaries when talking about salary, which is equivalent to a 4-month year-end bonus. When I was still working, I was guaranteed to get this value. But in fact, this data is not completely fixed, and the department that makes game products even has a year-end bonus of more than ten months' salary. As for how Tencent's year-end bonus is this year, I didn't ask in detail, but I heard them complain together, saying that this year is more ordinary. Xu Yan added.
* Visual China.
As the ace of the old e-commerce, Jingdong has also created a dazzling year-end bonus "myth". According to Lin Hong, a former employee of JD.com, told Jingguantai that around 2015, the biggest award of JD.com's year-end award at that time was the CEO Special Award of 1 million yuan, which was awarded to the most outstanding employee in the comprehensive evaluation that year; Other employees' year-end bonuses range from 5 months to 12 months, and of course, there are a small number of employees whose performance appraisals do not meet the standards, and may not be eligible for the year-end bonuses. "Compared with the present, the biggest difference is that the current year-end bonus is almost fully covered, rather than the current serious differentiation between various business departments. ”
If you want to say that the previous year-end bonus is a big one, it is definitely on the list. At the 2014 annual meeting, founder Robin Li announced that the company had come up with the largest amount of bonuses in history, and one of the employees' year-end bonuses was even equivalent to 50 months' salary. Subsequently, although there is no news of such a scale of "sky-high" year-end bonuses, year-end bonuses will generally be issued to employees before the Spring Festival.
However, according to people familiar with the matter, with the continuous increase in efforts to reduce costs and increase efficiency, it was first announced in November 2021 that the year-end bonus would be postponed to March 31 of the following year, and there has been no change since then. In 2022, the year-end bonus will be issued, and it will be announced that the employee handbook will be revised to add a new clause for low-performance year-end bonus, making it clear that "employees with a performance level of M- or L in the current year will no longer enjoy the year-end bonus".
According to the "2023 White Collar Year-end Bonus Survey Report" released by Zhaopin, there will only be 20 in 20232% of white-collar workers are sure to receive a year-end bonus, down from 26 in 20229%；The average amount of year-end bonuses also dropped to 6,950 yuan, a decrease of 1,478 yuan from 8,428 yuan in the previous year.
With the changes in the general environment and the intensive adjustment of business direction, "we must use money on the cutting edge", and reducing costs and increasing efficiency have become the primary principles of major companies.
What does the year-end bonus reflect?
The year-end bonus is not only one of the most important salary incentives for enterprises in addition to wages, but also reflects the performance of the company's business segments. The change of the year-end bonus also reflects the company's ability to adapt to changes in the economic and market environment, as well as the company's confidence and expectation for future development.
According to the analysis of human resources industry experts, the incentive system of enterprises is divided into salary incentives, material incentives and honor incentives. Salary incentives are divided into immediate incentives, short-term incentives, and long-term incentives according to the time nature of the incentives. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory, enterprises can meet the needs of employees at different levels through different dimensions of incentive design. Through the tilt of resource allocation, employees who contribute to the company are rewarded, and finally the purpose of attracting and retaining employees is achieved, so that employees can create greater value after completing basic work.
* Visual China.
In terms of financial data, in the third quarter of 2023, Tencent's value-added service business achieved operating income of 75.7 billion yuan. Among them, Tencent's game business rebounded, with overall revenue reaching 46 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7%. Social network revenue was roughly stable at 29.7 billion yuan. In addition, in the third quarter of 2023, Tencent's advertising revenue increased by 20% year-on-year in the third quarter due to the large model helping to improve the accurate recommendation and attribution capabilities of advertisements.
According to the data disclosed by Maimai, the R&D and design staff of Tencent's WeChat Business Group (WXG) and Interactive Entertainment Business Group (IEG) received a year-end bonus of 700,000 yuan as a whole, among which a background developer of WXG won a year-end bonus of 700,000 yuan. Previously, Ma Huateng said that the company is increasing investment in artificial intelligence models, giving new functions to products, and improving the ability to accurately recommend content and advertising.
For departments that are considered by the company to be key growth points or future development directions, even if they are not currently contributing the most, they may receive relatively high year-end bonuses because of their strategic position to attract and retain key talent and encourage the team to make further efforts.
In addition, changes in market demand and industry trends will also affect the differences in year-end bonuses between departments. For example, a sector with rapid technological innovation or a business area that is in the midst of a period of industry growth may receive more bonuses to reflect market value and future potential. On the contrary, if the year-end bonus of a business shrinks significantly, it may reflect the company's cautious or even pessimistic expectations for the future development of the business.
It is worth noting that in recent years, major Internet companies have generally promoted "optimization" of employees. As of the second quarter of 2023, Tencent has laid off employees for five consecutive quarters, with a total of more than 110,000 people. Until the third quarter of 2023, the total number of Tencent employees is 10530,000 people, a slight increase of 08%。At the recent Tencent internal staff meeting and annual meeting, Ma Huateng summarized Tencent's performance in 2023 and pointed out that games are the company's trump card business. In terms of game business, Tencent should focus on its main business, not invest too much in hardware, and invest more energy in going overseas, which is the company's biggest hope for internationalization.
In 2023, Alibaba will carry out the largest organizational restructuring in its history, with some subsidiaries having layoffs planned until early 2024. ByteDance, which has grown the most, has not had a peaceful time, and the game and VR businesses are facing a big retreat; NetEase is rumored to have started large-scale layoffs, and the hardest hit area is NetEase Media, and the game department is also involved.
In November 2023, ByteDance significantly eliminated the PICO team and shut down some game projects. At the same time, ByteDance's Chaoxi Lightyear, which is mainly responsible for the game business, will also undergo large-scale adjustments. At the beginning of 2024, it was reported that ByteDance and Tencent were discussing game projects and strengthening cooperation. In addition, it is reported that the Intelligent Driving Group (IDG) is experiencing layoffs. The main impact is on the Intelligent Transportation Division (ACE), especially the Vehicle-Road Collaboration, Intelligent Connectivity and Intelligent Transportation business units. It is reported that the employees of the Intelligent Transportation Division (ACE) have been informed that they will not receive year-end bonuses this year.
Compared with the changes in the year-end bonuses of major Internet companies over the years, it has gradually developed from "sunshine" to "precise drip irrigation". The division of year-end bonuses of various companies is becoming more and more cautious, and the differentiation of year-end bonuses within enterprises may become more and more serious, but from another perspective, the mapping of year-end bonuses to the core talents and core businesses of various Internet enterprises will become more and more accurate.
Reference link: Employees of large factories no longer have huge year-end bonuses"**Times Finance.
A few are happy and a few are sad, who is "persuaded" by the year-end bonus of the big factory? * Interesting understanding of business.
Title image and text caption** in Visual China.
The subjects of this article, Liang Meng, Xu Yan, and Lin Hong, are pseudonyms.
Disclaimer: Under no circumstances does the information or opinions expressed in this article constitute investment advice to any person.