Image source @ Visual China
Text | Houchang Youth, author | Wei Jie
It has been 180 days since the implementation of the double reduction policy, and in this half a year, the fate trajectory of nearly ten million people has been rewritten. From a darling with a high salary and standing on the cusp of the wind to a wave of people who are "disliked" by the company, suddenly people have no time to react.
Liu Cha, the star tutor who continued to report the country's first, has not yet returned from the glory of the past, he has become one of the thousands of "drowning people" in the tide of departure, fate pushed him to become a push, in Chengdu rainstorm on the street, he rode a battery car to visit the street merchants, the mobile phone n +1 to the account text message reminded him, this is not a dream.
Wang Haoying, who holds the three major abilities of growth, product publicity and BD, transferred from the education line to the short video business before the policy landed, but when he re-applied for a job, he still missed many of his favorite job opportunities because of the identity of "education and training", and the sharp gas of the past turned into self-doubt.
Sun Ming, who has been engaged in growth operations in the education and training industry, also felt the difficulty of job hunting, and while using his skills to sell small things, he also had doubts about the industry he was engaged in before. In the contrast between reality and reality, he reflects over and over again on whether what he has done before is just selling anxiety, and whether online education that promotes universal and fairness is just a zero-sum game.
However, their story does not end there. Depicting the embarrassment and bitterness of the training people falling into the water is not the original intention of the young people in the factory, we are more willing to wear headlamps to see how the training people can open the Jedi counterattack in adversity, and find a glimmer of light for more practitioners trapped in the dark.
Sought after
Online education was once an industry that many young people aspire to.
"More money, low threshold, good welfare" is the common feeling of many people who teach and train. After graduating from Xinze University, majoring in English at a normal college in Southwest China, he worked as a teaching assistant at New Oriental, and after graduation, he went to Xueersi as a tutor.
One year after graduation, Xinze returned to school as an outstanding graduate to share his work experience with his students. Annual salary of 300,000 +, birthday benefits, hotel subsidies of 500 yuan a day of business trips, afternoon tea, girls' day gifts, taxi subsidies... Xin Ze will not forget that the students in the audience heard these surprised and envious eyes, and learned from the counselor that they were the few people who did not work in the public institutions.
Xinze felt that she had taken a different path, which was what she wanted to tell her students - teachers college students do not necessarily have to be teachers, there is a broader and more wonderful world outside that can play their own expertise, even if they graduate from the second book, they can go to a big company and get a decent salary.
According to the "2020 Online Learning Service Teacher (Tutor) New Occupational Group Survey Report" released by Beijing Normal University, the number of tutors in more than ten online educational institutions in K12 alone is close to 100,000, and more than 75% of the tutors are post-95s who have just graduated.
If Xinze is the epitome of an ordinary employee in the online education industry, then Liu Jing is a young man who took off on the cusp. After two online education companies have been operating for 1 year each, Liu Jing, who is only 26 years old, became the sales director of a local branch of Youdao last year. "Not counting options and stocks, I got 600,000 after taxes, and I also got an offer of 1.2 million bytes and gaotu."
According to the "Talent Flow and Migration 2021" released by the Pulse Data Research Institute in March 2021, 16% of unemployed people list education and training as an industry to engage in in the future, and new education and training is also the fourth most active industry for talents in 2020. In the top 20 companies in the net inflow of talents, whose degree ranks 6th, and homework help and ape tutoring rank 10th and 12th.
In the wind, the main speaker and tutor are experiencing the highlight moments of their careers. Jiang Yeguang, head of the high school business of Youdao Boutique Class, said in an interview with Tencent Deep Network that more than 45% of the company's K12 main teachers in 2019 were paid more than 1 million.
Liu Qia began to work as a tutor in the homework help in 2019, and in only 8 months, he became the team leader and then promoted to the head of the subject. "The sixth grade math renewal rate I was in charge of at that time reached the first place in the country, and I won the Most Popular Teacher Award, the Most Ingenious Teacher, the Tutor... I still have those awards."
Liu Cha recalled that on the last day of the 2020 summer and autumn renewal day, he shared his experience in front of more than 100 people on the 22nd floor of the Sunshine New Industry Building. It was the highlight of his life.
Liu Cha remembers that in order to achieve his goal, he had called his parents from morning to night to communicate, did not eat lunch or dinner, and made up to 40 phone calls a day. "I was in charge of more than 120 sixth-graders, and at the end of the course in June, many parents told me that their children's grades had improved and that I thought it was all worth it."
After this group of students went to junior high school, Liu Qia also changed teams and handed in his work phone, but he often wondered how these children were doing after they went to junior high school.
Once, he saw that he had updated the circle of friends with his work WeChat before, and he couldn't help but send a message to ask the teacher, "Have any parents asked me on this WeChat signal?" Did any child say they missed me? Liu Qia felt that at that time, that experience, "digging out the heart socket."
Abandoned
"Big ups and downs, everything goes to zero", in August 2020, after Liu Qi left the education and training industry to start a job search, he changed his profile on the pulse to this sentence.
In the job search process, the most common sentences he heard were - "Sorry, do not recruit people in the online education industry", "This position is different from the tutor, please be cautious".
Liu Qia's dialogue with the recruiter Image source/Courtesy of the interviewee
In the online education industry, on the one hand, tutors provide pre-registration consulting services as teachers to follow up the learning progress of students, and on the other hand, they undertake to improve the renewal rate of this indicator with a sales nature. Tutor = sales is basically the consensus of the industry.
After leaving the homework gang, Liu Qia thought that there was no problem in finding a sales job with a monthly salary of more than 10,000 yuan in the big factory, but after a round of interviews, he found that the only thing left for him by the big factory was to push the position.
When interviewing the preferred position of meituan, Liu Qia learned from the regional manager that "recently many people from educational institutions have come to interview and push." After arriving at the company at 9 a.m. the next morning, Liu Qia stood in the middle of a large group of people in uniform clothes, singing inspirational songs on the side of the road, and no colleague knew that he had been the subject director of a well-known education company.
He rode a battery car with the team members and carried posters to visit small street shops. On the first day of the push, there was heavy rain, and Liu Cha sat in the back seat of the battery car, holding an umbrella, afraid that the poster would be blown away by the wind. In the continuous rain, Liu Qia felt extremely confused, "completely unaware of where the future is."
Liu Cha pushed in the rainy day image source / courtesy of the interviewee
After trying to push the ground, Liu Cha thought unwillingly that although subject education was rectified, adult education and quality education may still have opportunities, so he joined a quality education enterprise. However, he found that even if it was a nine-to-ten+ single holiday, because parents' recognition of quality education was low, it was difficult to promote, and he left his job more than forty days later, and since then completely cut off the idea of returning to the education industry.
Unlike Liu Qia, who was laid off, 1 month before the double reduction policy landed, Wang Haoying switched from byte education business to Douyin. However, even so, when he began to look for a new job in September, Wang Haoying could feel the "rejection" of the company for educating and training people.
"What I want to go to most about this job change is Tencent", Wang Haoying noticed that a Tencent Entertainment executive directly recruited a position, the leader is a doctor of Tsinghua University, Wang Haoying felt that he and the position are very matched, to the other side showed the willingness to join, but what she did not expect is that she not only did not have a resume screened, but also did not reply to the reason for the inquiry. "This incident has brought a great negative impact on my mentality", for a while, Wang Haoying, who has always been confident, fell into self-doubt.
Moreover, during the interview process, Wang Haoying found that the interviewer would habitually avoid the experience of education and only listen to this experience of Douyin. "When the double subtraction did not come out, it was easy to teach and train people to change their lines and find jobs, and everyone would feel that the education and training people were very powerful, but after the policy came out, the market's attitude towards education and training people took a 180-degree turn."
Zero-sum games?
The great changes in the industry not only make the educators experience doubts about their own abilities, but also make them doubt the industry they have fought for.
After the double reduction policy came down, Sun Ming, who has been engaged in growth operations in the education and training industry, began to think over and over again, "If what I do is really like what I think, it is a good thing, why should the state control it?" ”
Sun Ming, who had experience in online classes when he was in school, recognized the concept that online education "can promote inclusive and fair education", and he felt that this job had a high sense of meaning. However, as he deepened his thinking, he felt more and more that online education was like a zero-sum game.
"You help some people, some people climb up, others fall. If you win, he loses, and I didn't help everyone make a big cake, I just changed the way we split the cake. This result was not what I really wanted. “
One of the hardest questions to answer is – Am I selling anxiety?
In November last year, Sun Ming rotated as a tutor for more than half a month. He found that unlike the programming education enterprises where he worked before, most of the parents who applied for programming classes belonged to the elite class, with high education level and good economic conditions. K12 in the later growth stage, most parents from the fourth and fifth tier cities, and even rural areas, for the curriculum to distinguish is low.
He compared the effects of two different techniques on K12 parents. "If you tell him that your child doesn't even know 3× 2=6 right now, he doesn't get the attention of the teacher in school. In our case, teachers will give children Q&A number of times a week, giving children encouragement that they can't get in school, because the parents' literacy level is not enough, it is difficult to perceive."
And the more efficient new word pulling technique is - "I myself am from a small county, how can I get out?" It's because of learning. Do you think about how bitter your life is now, and do you want the suffering you have suffered to make your children eat it again? ”
After having a sense of substitution, the godparent opened Huabei payment, and this order became. In the end, parents often say, "Teacher, I don't know if this course is good or not, the future of the child is up to you."
Pulse education and training industry circle for the discussion of selling courses Figure source/pulse
At that time, Sun Ming began to doubt the way online education "grew". "Allowing children who can't enjoy good educational resources to enroll in classes is at least not a bad thing, and it is even likely to be a good thing, right?" But after hanging up the phone, why did I feel so bad in my heart? ”
"Creating anxiety in speech, telephone bombardment, and inducing loans" was a common practice in the past education and training industry. Liu Cha told the young people of the factory that he was responsible for the renewal of the short-term class, and every night he left work at 12 o'clock, and the work group was frantically posting orders all the time, brushing the screen and sending "applause" and "like" expressions. From top to bottom, a "goal to achieve results" philosophy is instilled.
Liu Qia thinks that he belongs to a more "gentle" type of tutor, unwilling to say too heavy words to stimulate parents, but he has also seen "wolf nature" tutors, who will angrily rebuke parents like brainwashing and throw out a series of rhetorical questions, such as - "Your hands shake when you pay your child's tuition, have you ever thought that when your child pays you medical expenses one day, his hands will shake?" ”
And the widely circulated phrase , " You come, we raise your children, you don't come, we train your children's competitors" comes from the online education industry.
In a report by the Hedgehog Commune, it was mentioned that through data tracking, the online school found that the main teacher staged a "crying drama" to help increase the renewal rate, and this provision was implemented. In the last class of the winter vacation free class, the teachers have to cry and play the emotional card, and many students will feel reluctant because the teacher cries, and then continue to report.
Liu Cha remembered that until mid-August, a few days before they were laid off, they still had a lot of pressure to transfer and renew their performance, and they could not call their parents less.
Who is the winner in this game? Sun Ming's thinking continued.
Is it parents and children? How much can these kids learn online? Can those parents repay the loan and can afford the interest and handling fees?
Are those tutors? They were the first to be laid off on the eve of the crisis.
Is it an education company? In 2021, The market value of New Oriental fell by 90%, Yu Minhong donated nearly 80,000 sets of brand-new tables and chairs, announcing the "end of the era of education and training" in the circle of friends; Xueersi held a farewell party, and Zhang Bangxin bowed to 20,000 departing employees to apologize.
Image source/New Oriental official WeChat ID
The answer seems to be: there are no winners.
PUBG
In September last year, Sun Ming left the education and training industry in the wave of departures, not knowing where to go and what to do.
Just then, a friend approached him and said that his mother had a small noodle restaurant that she had been running for 6 years, and whenever she missed the taste of her hometown, her mother would send her noodles, which tasted the same as in the shop. Friends invited Sun Ming to do small noodles online together.
Sun Ming decided to join the company after tasting small noodles, and he thought well - he used the methodology of online education industry growth to make small noodles. If the goal of "educational fairness" is too big, then it is also a good choice to fill the user's stomach with a bowl of Chongqing noodles.
Only this time, he no longer wanted to pursue "efficiency" so much, but wanted to do something "slow but meaningful". Past experience in growth has taught him that the more curious and reflective of the evil of human nature, the easier it is to improve operational efficiency, and the criterion for operation is "efficiency", and in this system, it is difficult to do something that can provide value, but the data may not be quickly returned.
Sun Ming's small-sided growth methodology Image source/Courtesy of the interviewee
Sun Ming attached a postcard in the small noodles, and the user left the address of his friend, so that he could send a bowl of noodles to his friend and write a greeting on his behalf to play a "referral" function. According to past experience, the most efficient copywriting must be to sell anxiety, such as rendering how unhealthy takeaway is, while the other kind of copywriting is simple and warm, such as "tell family and friends that there is a good meal."
Today's Sun Ming will ask himself more: "Do I want to awaken the user's anxiety or provide him with value"? Then choose the latter that looks less "efficient".
He also tried another thing he'd always wanted to do — chat with users. When working as a tutor in rotation, all he did every day was to keep calling - saying the words that could sting the parents the most - urging parents to register for class - making the next phone call - pulling up the renewal rate, Sun Ming wanted to stop and really chat with the person on the other end of the phone, talk about what the child's dilemma is, what he really needs. But this is almost a luxury in the online education industry, which is full of smoke and infinite efficiency.
Although from education to small noodles, the unit price of customers has dropped from a few thousand to dozens, Sun Ming began to talk to users, asking them what they wanted from a bowl of small noodles, what other places were not satisfied, and improving the product.
Interestingly, Sun Ming's former leader has also become a user of Xiaomian. He reminded Sun Ming that the "dried onion packets" in small noodles are redundant, which not only increases costs, but also makes it easy for users to associate small noodles with instant foods. He also said sarcastically: Come on, add red oil.
In the process of making small noodles, Sun Ming established his ambition to start a business, and now the way he introduces himself to others has become: Hello, I am a small noodle trader who is determined to drag the snail powder off the altar, and Sun Ming, a former teacher and training worker.
Wang Haoying more fully prepared for each interview, constantly summed up experience, and also looked down on the results of the interview, and put more attention on himself. Bidding farewell to the endless overtime, she read, played the piano, raised flowers, learned to ski, flew a plane, and had a life in the circle of friends in the days of waiting for the results. Recently, she entered an e-commerce company as she wished, forgot the black words of "conversion rate" and "connection rate", and turned to DAU and WAU.
After liu qia went through a bumpy carpet job search, he finally settled down in a furniture new retail company. Bidding farewell to the days of being a "performance machine without feelings", he said that he was like a drowning person who had been deprived of oxygen for a long time, learning new industry knowledge and fully feeling the connection between people in the operation of physical stores, just like taking a big breath of fresh air.
*At the request of the interviewees, Sun Ming and Xin Ze are pseudonyms.