Image credits @pixabay
Wen 丨 Jingxun
On December 20, the café under Mushroom Street was once again full of friends.
Employees in line are waiting to run out of balances on their badges as benefits, employees who have ordered orders sit in groups and chat, discussing whether to give themselves a "gap time" to take a break, and some people sit alone in a daze – because everything happens very suddenly.
From 10 o'clock on the same day, HR began to talk individually with employees, most of the employees' DDL was on the same day, some of the handover work was more complicated and postponed for 1-2 days, and the HR responsible for the aftermath stayed behind until Friday. Among them, there are many employees who are five or six years old or even ten years old.
N+ 1.5 compensation, attendance of the month's salary, and the annual leave that should be obtained are not sneaky and slippery, but are really confirmed with the employees. Mushroom Street's compensation scheme is generous, even making some of the employees who were left envious.
What happened to Mushroom Street?
I interviewed three laid-off employees who joined Mushroom Street at different stages, Yue Yuan, who only joined Mushroom Street in mid-2021, Hu Ke, who joined Mushroom Street after graduating in 2018, and Fika, who accompanied Mushroom Street for 10 years. Listen to the voices of this Internet winter.
01, if there is a fate, goodbye to the jianghu
The main body of this layoff is the technical team, the overall proportion may be about 80%, counting other functional employees, the overall layoff ratio is about 30%.
The workplace atmosphere of Mushroom Street is notoriously "friendly" in the Hangzhou Internet circle with serious "inner volume", with less overtime and no internal friction, which is nicknamed "pension company" in the circle of technical practitioners.
To be fair, this layoff is not at the level of the technical team. On the contrary, the technical team of Mushroom Street is not lowly recognized in the industry. Some technical employees wrote on the pulse: "Mushroom Street's e-commerce infrastructure can rank in the top 5 in the entire Internet circle, but sometimes people really can't do things outside the company's capabilities." ”
When Hu Ke joined Mushroom Street, it was a highlight moment - the listing on the New York Stock Exchange, the first stock of fashion e-commerce... At this time, the mushroom street building that has not been relocated is located in Block A of Zhejiang Wealth Center, and the mushroom coffee on the 1st floor is the most willing place for office workers in the nearby office building to sit idly, the decoration is fashionable and the atmosphere is full, and the occasional passing mushroom street girl dressing style can be used directly as street shooting material. Therefore, Mushroom Street was once jokingly called the Internet company with the highest value in Hangzhou.
▲ The previous Mushroom Street building
Hu Ke's first job in society from college was Mushroom Street.
At the beginning of 2020, Mushroom Street chose All In live broadcasting, and indeed made some achievements - during the double 11 period in 2020, the head anchor of Mushroom Street was the first single-game single-game of the whole network to break 100 million, and the platform also had many tens of millions of single-game anchors.
That year's Singles' Day was hu ke's first S-level marketing campaign. At that time, Mushroom Street did have the power of a war. However, since the second half of 2020, after the head e-commerce companies have concentrated on live broadcasting, the difficulty of mushroom street highlighting the siege has risen sharply. Previously, the single game of breaking 100 million was already the top environment, and gradually pushed to a higher level under the blessing of capital, and in 2021, the double eleven reached the order of 10 billion yuan of a single game.
Although still standing in the same fighting ring, the confrontation between featherweights and heavyweights is obviously not high. Mushroom Street's judgment on the market is still extremely accurate, "In fact, we have been preparing for both hands since April, on the one hand, we are expanding the category, and women-related medical beauty, cute pets are trying, on the other hand, it is a specialized original design women's clothing, and in September, because the effect is good, there has been a business conference." ”
One of the facilitators of this business conference is Yue Yuan. At the meeting, Mushroom Street CEO Chen Qi said that after Mushroom Street, he would bet on the original design as the main pallet of the platform, "In fact, at this time, he has basically determined that he wants to be more vertical small and beautiful", Yue Yuan said, "But he is not willing to concede defeat so quickly." ”
Indeed, I am not willing.
In May 2021, Mushroom Street proposed a new model of "short broadcast", the essence of which is to replace the graphic display with high-quality live broadcast room product explanation screen slices, so as to pull the information flow display logic of traditional shelf-type e-commerce into live e-commerce, making it possible for live streaming with goods and level sales to coexist, and can improve the acceptance of users' live broadcasts.
Tiger Sniff calls this model "the answer to the second half of live broadcasting", because short broadcasting can solve the problem of the live broadcast market where some head anchors have a surplus matthew effect.
The pattern is really good.
Douyin's mall module and Taobao live broadcast section immediately followed up, and introduced new ideas, and the live broadcast room push stream was also implanted.
It's a lot like the usual practice of Mushroom Street — forward-looking business innovations always bring some change to the industry, but always make wedding dresses for others.
"Now it is also very good, the business adjustment should be a comprehensive contraction without scale." Hu Ke said, "Be small and beautiful, but more moist." "When she came to the scene to go through the resignation procedures, she still needed to queue up. In the largest conference room, tables are spliced into confirmation points for different links, assets, technology, finances, salaries... In the process, no one quarreled, and the expression on his face was more dazed and sudden.
"Communication began at 10 a.m., and the news actually came out, and when it was my turn, it was the afternoon, and HR's eyes were always red." Yue Yuan said that the place where he handled the induction was in this conference room, and now he is "revisiting the same place" without too many complaints.
After the departure procedures were completed, HR colleagues pulled him into two WeChat groups, one is the "Mushroom Family" spontaneously established by the departed employees of Mushroom Street, and the other is the "Mutual Help and Mutual Help Group" to help the departing employees find jobs.
Hu Ke feels that the process of queuing up at the departure site to go through the formalities is very much like enrolling in school, or a farewell. She spent 30 yuan to buy her own badge, took a photo and sent it to the circle of friends, she wrote: "A warm encounter, the starting point of a new journey." ”
02, one is different and two wide, and each life rejoices
Fei Ka's feelings were deeper than Yue Yuan and Hu Ke.
2021 is the 10th anniversary of Mushroom Street, and Fika has been working in Mushroom Street for exactly 10 years. She has experienced almost all stages of Mushroom Street, such as 2012, when the average daily PV exceeded 50 million a year on the line; such as 2013, when the number of users exceeded 200 million and the transaction conversion rate reached 6% (this year, Taobao's monthly active life just exceeded 400 million); and then in 2014, when the confrontation between the north and south of The Beauty Said was launched.
At this time, mushroom street, whether it is traffic, revenue, commercialization, is the top stream.
It wasn't until Taobao banned Mushroom Street in 2014 that Fika felt the cruelty of commercial competition for the first time. By 2016, under the guidance of the co-investors of the two sides, Mushroom Street and Meili said to merge, this business without added value, the essence is a means of capital realization, "At that time, we really did not hope to merge, because the business of the two companies is basically the same, and there is no increment after the merger." ”
Then, as an operating Fica, it began to constantly change the track with Mushroom Street, self-operated malls, cross-border sea amoys, content community e-commerce, social e-commerce, red economy, live e-commerce... There are many innovations, but they always seem to miss the biggest outlet.
"There was an article calling Mushroom Street a "half-hearted prophet," which is really quite appropriate." Fika has lived through the most chaotic times. It took a month or two of manpower and material resources to do the project, because the overall business adjustment project was directly overturned, and there was no inheritance and optimization, but directly started to do it again. "It can only be said that a lot of potential projects have been missed, but every time Mushroom Street has stood up and moved on."
▲ Mushroom Street NYSE listing was once considered a classic business case
In 2018, Mushroom Street was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, becoming the most eye-catching Internet unicorn in Hangzhou at that time. In the same year, the TV series "Yanxi Raiders" released by Mushroom Street became popular, and the revenue was more than ten times the estimated, and the Mushroom Street App directly appeared on the App Store hot search list, which was taken as a key case by iQiyi in 2019 and displayed to other companies.
"At that time, I was halfway through watching the drama and discovering my company, in fact, I was quite proud in my heart." Fika said. This seems to be the last social exposure that Mushroom Street has left for the public.
Until December 22, 2021, two days after the layoffs, mushroom street related words were on the top of the hot search.
As the youth memories of many people, many people's comments under the hot search are "tears of the times" "Mushroom Street is still alive?" "In fact, Mushroom Street has been living well, with stable revenue, abundant cash flow, and several successful returns on investments."
Like this layoff, there is news that the employee compensation expenditure is expected to be more than 20 million, and the compensation received by some old employees who have been in the division for a long time is indeed more generous. On the day of the layoffs, there was an old employee who proposed to leave his job and agreed to leave the DDL on December 24, which was very depressed, one was that he had no chance of compensation, and the other was that the send-off meal prepared by the colleagues in the department had become a reverse send-off - other colleagues in the department were laid off earlier than him.
On December 21, at 9:30 a.m. the day after the layoffs, Chen Qi and the remaining employees held a meeting. At the beginning of the meeting, Chen Qi said: "For the inconvenience and harm caused to everyone, say sorry." Fika said that the colleagues who stayed behind told her that some of the girls at the scene were crying.
"It can only be said that Shuluo (Chen Qihua's name) has grown." An old mushroom street employee who has previously left the company said. "There is no way for the company to lay off employees and compensate enough for it within the scope of its capabilities, and dragging on will only put both sides in a worse situation."
Fika told me that in the WeChat groups of "Mushroom Home" and "Mutual Help and Mutual Help job Search", the content of the chat was not to denounce Mushroom Street, but to help employees find their next home as much as possible. Because the level of Mushroom Street employees is more recognized in the industry, Ali, Byte and other big factories have come to "grab people", Ali even opened a special Tao HC recruitment fair for the technical team, promising to enter the job within a week of the interview process.
Even, there have been headhunting and HR mixing into the job search group, crazy plus the recruitment of departing employees. Former Mushroom Street employee volunteers responsible for maintaining group order angrily reorganized the community and strictly reviewed the people who joined the group, "Alumni mutual help is friendship, don't treat alumni as business."
After handing over everything, Fika took a picture with her colleagues in her department. Back at the workstation, before returning the computer, Fika changed his flying book signature to: "If there is a chance, see you again."
Note: The content of this article is dictated by the interviewee, and at his request, Yue Yuan, Hu Ke and Fei Ka are pseudonyms.