The most ridiculous "reduce costs and increase laughter".
In order to lay off employees, the company was moved into the Qinling Mountains
After all, the biggest cost of a company is manpower expenditure, and layoffs have the fastest effect.
In the face of common disguised layoffs such as job transfers and salary cuts, the way some companies avoid layoffs is a reflection of a popular phrase in 2023 - "the mental state is very good".
A netizen in Xi'an posted ** that on Thursday, October 19, 2023, a brand planning company where he works suddenly informed all employees that they would move their office from the CBD area of Xi'an to a village at the foot of the Qinling Mountains, and asked all employees to clock in and out of work on time at 9 a.m. next Monday.
The map shows that the village is 3 kilometers away from Yukou and has entered the foothills of the Qinling Mountains, and some netizens commented: "Qinling didn't expect that in addition to doing the dividing line between the north and the south, he also had the function of laying off employees." ”
The company's new place of work is located in the mountainous area. Map map released ** netizens said in an interview with upstream news that it is slightly better to drive, colleagues who do not have a car can only take a bus every 3 hours, and need to walk 3 kilometers, walk more than 30 minutes on the mountain village road to reach the office, one-way commuting time is almost 2 hours, if you take a taxi from the nearest subway station will cost fifty or sixty yuan, and the company clearly told that there is no commuting subsidy.
After the employee raised a question, the company's administrative reply said that it could not be insisted on, could not accept it, and could settle the monthly salary. To this end, 14 of the company's more than 20 people signed severance agreements.
But then, four days after leaving the company, the whistleblower learned from his former colleague that the company had moved back to the city and started recruiting online, so he felt very angry, "If you don't use this way, everyone will be fired or otherwise, and they will ask for N+1 compensation as normal."
Of course, the company has its own rhetoric, a person in charge admitted in an interview that the company did move to the "mountain" in October, but it is impossible to work in the mountain for a long time, "because the CBD rent is very expensive, just expired, the new office is being renovated", he said that the company in the second half of the year is more difficult, but has not been in arrears of wages, just a temporary transition for a week, originally hoped that everyone would share the weal and woe, but did not expect many people to resign, but also posted the matter on the Internet.
Comparison of the company's working environment before and after the move. Figure The upstream news exposer denied this statement, saying that the communication at that time was that the office cycle in the mountains may be very long, and it may not be possible until next year. The office is located on the second floor of a farmer's own house, and the first floor is where the villagers and their husbands live, and more than a dozen people have to squeeze into the second floor to work. After leaving the company, he also found that he had bought social security after one year of employment, and that some performance, overtime pay, and paid annual leave had not been calculated, and he had filed an arbitration claim with the local labor arbitration department with several colleagues.
The workers were forced to use the law to protect their rights and interests, and the person in charge of the company also said that he felt a little aggrieved, because this exposure caused a great negative impact and loss to the company, "Now I want to defend my rights, but I was persuaded by the lawyer, and I also want to sue them for absenteeism, because the salary advance is until the end of October, and you won't come for the remaining days, and the work handover is a mess."
Here the two sides are constantly tearing apart, and there is a "hell of jokes" about layoffs that never stop.
At the end of 2023, there have been large-scale layoffs of NetEase and Himalaya, NetEase will focus on cutting NetEase's media and game departments, and Himalaya will lay off 30% of its staff. Both denied this, saying that the company is still hiring, saying that it is a normal organizational adjustment and personnel turnover. However, the news of layoffs at the approaching juncture of the New Year also made many people sigh, "This is the main thing, no one should think about having a good year."
In 2023, when layoffs are continuous, some netizens have summarized the unique layoff tactics for major Internet companies: "Ali wants to export talents, JD.com wants to take brothers to open the knife, Station B will send you to graduate, Tencent is structural optimization and strategic adjustment, and Huawei is to encourage you to give up mediocrity." ”
The ultimate "cost reduction and laughter".
Second-hand ice machine, paper on both sides, cut the lamp
In addition to reducing employment costs, in order to reduce costs and increase efficiency, many companies have also worked daily expenses and employee benefits, and have also made a lot of jokes. At the beginning of November 2023, NetEase and Nestle almost faced off in court over a second-hand ice machine.
The second-hand ice machine that sparked the controversy. The reason for the screenshot of Xiaohongshu is that NetEase employees found that one of the company's ice machines had Tencent's logo on it, so they reported to the company that the machine was second-hand. This little incident gave birth to the ridicule that "the ice machine is miserable, it was laid off in the goose factory, and the Nestle headhunter falsified and concealed his resume, and recommended it to the pig factory for employment".
The next day, NetEase Recruitment issued a statement, pursuing Nestle, saying that Nescafe and its ** business provided NetEase with second-hand ice machines without prior notice, NetEase did not despise and could not bear this "resume concealment", and has suspended the ice machine and its supporting materials to collect evidence, and handed over to a third-party agency for testing, once any problems are found, will be complained to the relevant departments, and reserves the right to sue Nescafe first-class ** business and related responsible parties.
NetEase's response to the second-hand ice machine incident. Figure NetEase recruits you where did NetEase buy the ice machine, what does it matter to me Nestle, I don't have to carry this pot. Nestlé responded: "After preliminary verification, the ice machine mentioned in this incident is not produced or supplied by Nestlé. NetEase was not satisfied with this response, believing that "Nestle, as the regulator of its first-class business, should clearly assume the responsibility for relevant security risk management and control, and punish or publicize its violations, rather than transferring or passing the responsibility to the first-class first-class business".
In the end, the matter developed to the point that NetEase sent a letter to the State Administration for Market Regulation, reporting that there were major food safety hazards in second-hand ice machines provided by Nestle and its ** companies to NetEase and other customers.
The identity mystery of the second-hand ice machine is boiling, perhaps it is also related to NetEase's cost reduction and efficiency increase in the subtleties of the past year, the low-cost canteen of large factories, free snacks and fruits have always been regarded as part of employee benefits, but it is rumored on the Internet that at the end of August 2023, NetEase Guangzhou issued an internal email, informing that the meal allowance will be changed from 800 yuan at the beginning of the month to a daily payment, and the distribution rules are linked to attendance.
What followed was all kinds of complaints from employees, the snack shelves in the office area were removed, the vending machines were reduced, the air conditioning temperature was changed, and even the paper towels were adjusted from one pack a month to one pack every two months.
Even ByteDance, known as the "Universe Factory", did not miss the opportunity to reduce costs in details, and an employee of Chongqing Byte posted on social platforms that the company's beverage ** was adjusted, and there was no discount on drinks. At the beginning of this year, ByteDance reported that the Spring Festival red envelopes were discounted in half compared with previous years, and employees at different levels were halved in turn.
In the face of various cuts to reduce costs, only Meituan employees are indifferent. Meituan has been ridiculed on the Internet as a "boiling water group", and there is a meme circulating among employees that the company's benefits are less than those of other major Internet companies, and the most significant benefit is boiled water. Meituan has always had a thrifty company culture, and an employee who once worked in the propaganda department complained: "Do you know why Meituan is invisible in reducing costs and increasing efficiency?" Because there is no way to descend at all. When she first joined the company, she was reminded several times by the administration in a row, "Office paper should be reused on both sides!" ”
Reducing benefits and office supplies is a normal operation, and the most extreme "reducing costs and increasing laughter" often occurs in unexpected places. A netizen in Sichuan complained that it is normal for large factories to cut benefits, and their company has laid off cleaning aunts in order to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and employees take turns to do hygiene.
The most tragic "reduce costs and increase laughter".
The collapse of the big factory is a series of ** things
In November 2023, along with the temperature falling to freezing, I am afraid that there is also the mood of Alibaba Cloud and Didi employees.
On the evening of November 12th, Alibaba Cloud suddenly failed, resulting in the inability to access its entire product line one after another, and for a while, topics such as "Alibaba Cloud disk collapsed", "Xianyu collapsed", "DingTalk collapsed", "* collapsed again" and other topics occupied half of the Weibo hot search list. This is Alibaba Cloud's first year after a year, another "epic crash", some netizens ridiculed: "Suddenly, Ele.me can't order takeout,**Can't watch it, I can't watch it when I turn on TVBOX4K source,I thought the end was coming for a moment." ”
Many apps in the Ali system "collapsed" and appeared on the hot search. According to the timeline released by Alibaba Cloud, the handling time of this fault problem is as long as 3 hours, and Alibaba Cloud only gives a short number of responses to the cause of the failure: "It is related to an underlying service component." On November 27, the previous failure had not been completed, and a new fault occurred again, and from 09:16 on the same day, Alibaba Cloud Monitoring found that the console and OpenAPI access of database products in several regions were abnormal, which lasted for about 2 hours.
On the same day, "Didi collapsed" also appeared on the hot search, passengers could not call a car, the driver could not take the order, or the navigation could not be used after receiving the order, the passengers could not be found, the checkout could not be reached at the end point, and the Qingju bicycle could not be locked, which also gave birth to the joke that "the emergency repair personnel could not get the car and could not arrive at work in time, resulting in a delay in repair".
For this reason, Didi Chuxing apologized three times in two days, and announced that the cause of the accident was "the failure of the underlying system software", and according to Didi Chuxing's previously announced financial report for the third quarter of 2023, the failure may cause Didi to lose more than 10 million orders and more than 400 million turnover.
Later, Alibaba Cloud and Didi paid a lot of vouchers for the failure incident, according to industry estimates, Alibaba Cloud may pay more than 100 million yuan, and Didi pays 10 yuan in vouchers for each user, and the total amount may be as high as billions.
In this year, it is not only Ali and Didi that have collapsed, Tencent**, Yuque, B station, etc. have had outages of different scales, and for the rare large-scale technical failures that have occurred in the Internet industry one after another, many people in the industry believe that there is a relationship with the strong implementation of cost reduction and efficiency increase by various companies, such as the lack of manpower in the operation and maintenance team that is often cut off at the first time, the layoff of old employees who are familiar with the bottom **, or the negligence of work caused by simple fluctuations in people's hearts.
Alibaba Cloud first underwent a drastic change of "one split six" in March 2023, spun off from Alibaba Group to become an independent business group with self-financing profits and losses, and at the end of May, there was news of a 7% layoff, which Alibaba Cloud did not deny, responding that "it is a normal organizational position and personnel optimization".
In May 2023, Alibaba responded to rumors of layoffs. Figure After the Weibo screenshot failed twice, a new term appeared on the social platform - "defensive programming", which refers to the deliberate writing of ** very badly in order to prevent the "ape" from throttling, in case it is laid off, to ensure that the ** left behind is not maintainable. Although it is just a joke, it has resonated with many professionals at a time when the age threshold of 35 is becoming more and more stringent.
It is difficult to say whether there is a direct connection between layoffs, turmoil, adjustments, and successive technical failures in the Internet industry in the past year, but perhaps as the above-mentioned senior Alibaba Cloud employee said: "Ali has developed for so many years, and there are always potholes in it, the loss of technical personnel, and the drastic changes in the company. It is also possible that people's mentality is affected, and people are unstable, and there is a risk, after all, they are all written by people, and many problems will be slowly exposed. ”
The most terrible "reduce costs and increase laughter".
Will the workers be replaced by the arrival of AI?
Looking back at the cost reduction and efficiency increase of major enterprises in 2023, the biggest change may be the attack of AI.
In July 2023, Ding Lei, President of NetEase, bluntly said at the Zhejiang Provincial Platform Economy High-quality Development Conference that the significance of AI development is historic, no less than the second invention of fire by human beings, in order to cope with this once-in-a-century opportunity, NetEase has invested more than 40 billion yuan in research and development in the past three years, and has explored in many fields such as AI + education and AI + games.
At the end of 2023, Lin Yue, technical director of NetEase Interactive Entertainment AI Lab, also delivered a speech on the theme of "When Technology Collides with Art: AI-based Art Resource Production", he said: "The game industry has developed for so long and has formed a very mature industrialization process, and our AI Lab, mainly based on AI technology, hopes to accelerate the industrialization process, reduce costs and increase efficiency, and make the production of art resources more efficient." ”
Lin Yue said that the production process of common art assets has to go through the original art design, and then the modeler makes the model, the rigger erects the skeleton and skin, and then the animator makes the animation resources. The art resources of each finished game are piled up by a large number of art workers."
Since AI is deeply involved in the industrial production of games, it is no longer unusual for NetEase to lay off employees at the end of the year involving some game employees.
In fact, NetEase is not the only company that proposes to use AI to reduce costs and increase efficiency, Shi Yuzhu, chairman of Giant Network, has publicly stated that almost all of its game projects are currently using artificial intelligence for research and development. It is also reported that at the internal business meeting of Himalaya at the end of 2023, Chen Xiaoyu, co-CEO of Himalaya, publicly stated that Himalaya will not use operations and products much in the future, and requires the future APP to "mainly rely on AI".
Figure Visual China.
At present, the most affected by AI technology is probably the customer service industry, according to the daily people have previously written, as early as a few years ago, Ali began to continue to "increase efficiency", customer service supervisors gradually changed from managing people to managing robots.
Customer service is a cost center for any company, but it is difficult to create revenue and value for the company. An employee who has worked in Alibaba's customer service line for more than 3 years said that at the beginning, the front-line customer service and supervisors of the department were complete and neat, but later the department was broken up and the number of people became more and more streamlined, and the last line of customer service has been outsourced to a third-party team or found an online part-time job. And his former customer service supervisor, who has been working at Alibaba for 18 years, will also be laid off in 2023.
Customer service is only the most basic job, but the profession affected by AI in the future is not just the easiest to replace. In a research report titled "The Economic Potential of Generative Artificial Intelligence" released by McKinsey, analysts studied 850 occupations in 47 countries and regions (more than 80% of the world's working population) and concluded that the time for AI to replace human jobs has been greatly advanced by 10 years, and between 2030 and 2060, 50% of occupations will be gradually replaced by AI, among which high-paid and highly educated intellectual workers will be the most affected.
Generative AI increases the potential for technological automation, which is often most in demand in occupations with higher levels of education. Another explanation is that for many years degree certificates have been seen as an indicator of skills, and this will be challenged by generative AI, which can still be described as a technological change with a preference for skills, but with a more nuanced demand for skills. ”
Under the big wave of AI, workers will face the most terrible cost reduction and efficiency increase, if one day it is completely replaced by AI, it will be a blessing or a curse, a joy or a worry, maybe everyone must have a psychological preparation in advance.