Internet people have entered a period of wandering

Image source: Japanese drama "Spark"

Wen 丨 Digital Force Field, author 丨 She Zongming

On November 20, 2014, Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province, was very lively.

The Internet bigwigs gathered together and had a good chat.

Liu Qiangdong said: What JD.com wants to solve is the problem of commercial cost and efficiency in Chinese society.

Ma Yun "air" responded that Ali is to cultivate more JD.com, and what to do is to make such companies make money.

Ma Yun said: "Money is a burden, our company is bigger, get money, what is the use?" The most fundamental thing is to help others. ”

Robin Li agreed: "Ma Yun said that more money is a burden, in fact, more opportunities are also a burden. I wake up at five o'clock every day and I'm in a hurry. There are too many opportunities, you can't do every one, you must give up. It's a magical time with plenty of opportunities. Our generation is so lucky that people around us have done a lot of unimaginable things, and the real ability of a person is to say no to opportunities that do not belong to themselves. ”

Sounds very Versailles.

But at that time, the Chinese Internet was originally very "Versailles": everywhere there was gold panning, everywhere was a blue ocean, the wind outlet was connected to the wind outlet, and the opportunity was wrapped in opportunity. Strength does not allow them to be undeserved.

That year' Lei Jun also joined the "high-profile chorus": "In five to ten years, Xiaomi will be the first in the world." ”

Bruce Sevier, Apple's senior vice president in attendance, said: "It's easy to say, it's much more difficult to do. The audience laughed.

Lei Jun awkwardly and politely used Ma Yun's famous words: Dreams still have to be had, what if they are realized?

More than 7 years later, Xiaomi mobile phone sales surpassed Apple, becoming the second in the world for the first time, and becoming the first Chinese brand to reach the top of the European market.

However, can Lei Jun still be as spirited as he was then?

Can the big guys still sit together and worry about "too many opportunities"?

difficult. Only afraid of the Sungai Meta universe, can not move, many sorrows.

What they have to worry about is how to survive better, how to seize the ticket to the future.

And the key word that spoke on the Chinese Internet has also become "wandering".

The big guys are wandering, and the employees of Internet companies are also wandering.

After all, the days are hard right now.

The difficulty is not the most worrying, the most worrying thing is that I don't know how long the difficulty will last.

01

The year has come. At this time last year, the most concerned Internet-related topics were the reporting of major factories, annual meetings and year-end awards. Saying it is all about the "Pull Hate Series".

This is combined with the story of "28-year-old programmer options worth more than 100 million yuan in early retirement", causing countless netizens to bend their waists... Express envy.

What about this year? It is said that the layoffs, downsizings, and locks of the big and small factories are the Internet people's "only year-end, dare not expect the award", is the "annual meeting season" is not as lively as before, and is the annual meeting prize that some employees are most looking forward to as "free coupons"...

Take layoffs, according to media statistics, from the spring of 2021 to the end of 2021, the number of Internet companies laying off employees exceeded 35, including many large factories that you could not think of.

The referee is endless, and the Internet people are not sad with me. Feel the style of this painting: games, live broadcasting, local life, war investment plate of the optimized employees in the nabi miserable, the result of online education practitioners put the bricks on their own brain door ...

In terms of year-end awards, the "Internet People Year-end Award Expectation Survey Report" released by a recruitment website shows that 71.1% of Internet people won the year-end award last year, but only 43.3% of Internet people believe that this year will be issued as usual.

The year-end awards of Tencent's "League of Legends" and NetEase's "Harry Potter Magical Awakening" project team are still shocking.

But there are not many such "trench" gas.

They are tightening their belts and ensuring cash flow, shouting "cost reduction and efficiency" and shouting "living".

Think about the "20-year-old stock market crash" suffered by the Chinese Internet last year, look at the appearance of mutual pity in the Chinese Internet, at the moment you are still writing PPT or annual report, are you suddenly a little grateful to the leadership for not optimizing the grace?

Don't say that the big changes in the macro environment have nothing to do with you, when an avalanche occurs, no gravel is okay underneath it.

02

In 2021, there isn't much good news about the internet.

Community Group Buying? As the final "roll king field", it can't withstand the beating of "don't just worry about a few bundles of cabbage", not to mention, the flood irrigation mode is invalid, and some entrants have not seen the hope of profit after burning the VC's money.

New consumption? Previously trumpeted, and then "over-consumed", now that a song "Cool" has sounded, investors may not even bother to look at the financing plan – since last June, the whole track has been rapidly cold.

Mobile games online games? Don't just look at a few heads, anti-addiction and version number restrictions, the slowdown in growth is there.

Shelf e-commerce? "Double 11" has already given the answer.

Live streaming with goods? Go ahead and pay your taxes. "Via is very small, Sydney blood loss", has told us: the anchor has no owner.

cell phone? At least the price of the folding screen is in "Folding".

chip? Everybody is missing.

Building a car? Burning money can burn a "new car-making force ranking", if only a model car is burned, it is difficult to ensure that there is no big hole left.

One by one, none of them are very good. The reasons have also been summarized many times: market incremental stock (the slowdown in the growth rate of the advertising market is a symptom), the old technology cycle is at the end (there has been no phenomenon-level hard technology innovation for many years), the strongest regulatory hammer (for monopolies, algorithms, data requisition, killing, etc. have been introduced one after another)...

The big factory is not happy, and the employees are also difficult to survive. Nowadays, big factories are looking for a "new curve" of growth, and employees are looking for a "new direction" of transformation. They are all thirsty for "new air outlets".

Is the metacosm the next scene of the Internet? This is good, it is too far from reality, who "fried" this concept, it looks like it is going to cut the leek.

Industrial Internet ahead? That's safe.

It is not a "medicine" that can be effective immediately after taking it. For now, the hard days will have to go on.

For Internet people, if there is good news, it may be -

"Big and small weeks" gradually became history, 996 also began to exit, and the explicit "inner volume" was waving to say bye bye.

Common prosperity and anti-inner-roll fire went hand in hand, and the 996 was right in the muzzle of the gun. Some employees of large factories finally "mentioned" double rest because of this.

It's also important to see that not all employees are happy about it. Some employees of large factories would rather cry in the 996 than laugh in the 955 - they may not like the 996, but they do not like the salary reduction brought about by "thinking of the 996 and not being able to do it, and can only work in the 955".

In the past few years, some employees of large factories with option realization expectations and financial freedom ideas have long advanced their payment capacity for several years and made a down payment for a large house or school district. As soon as incomes fell, mortgages and other debts were protested.

What's more, 996 is gone, and what accompanies it is not necessarily "replacing fish paddling with legitimate vacation", which may be white prostitution-style home overtime.

03

Internet people have entered a period of wandering.

Their wandering is "structural".

The "35-year-old crisis" is an old problem.

There are also many new problems, such as:

Will your industry suddenly turn off like education and training, or quickly decline?

Will the "no surplus food" of Internet companies shrink their income again?

Will the public opinion situation of the big factory "being beaten and standing straight" continue to be transmitted to itself?

Will the implicit inner volume that creates ineffective efforts then trap itself in the "new system"?

These worries resonate with the situation of the Internet, which is ultimately the Internet of Internet people.

The Internet ushered in a "mid-life crisis", and it is difficult for Internet people to "I am still the teenager I was before, without the slightest change".

From the decay of the effect of enrichment in large factories, to the cancellation of afternoon tea and free meal benefits, the treatment has gradually "disappeared into the industry", and it has not given too much time to buffer - the change has also occurred in these three or two years, and there is a psychological gap between whoever is aside.

So, in the tavern of "West Erqi", at that time, Internet people had dreams, about "Internet +" entrepreneurship, about financing IPO, about becoming the next Jobs. Now everyone drinks late at night, and the cups touch together, and it is the sound of broken dreams.

Therefore, the popularity of some topics will naturally increase: the programmers of the big factory decided to go to the public examination; after 95, they took the offer of the big factory to take the civil servant examination...

I have written before that the big factory is still "Bai Fumei", and I think that saying that the big factory is not fragrant is also "visual impairment within the five rings" - it is more competitive than the occupation outside the system.

However, the appeal of the Internet has been defeated by the iron rice bowl, and many people have described entering the big factory as "going to the sea" and the success of the examination as "going ashore", which explains a lot of problems.

04

It is worth saying that the main force of the current Internet is the post-90s.

And the post-90s may be the most wandering group of people in this society - sandwiched between the post-80s who have not yet closed the door of "knowledge to create wealth" and many post-00s who rely on their parents to buy less pressure to buy real estate, professional confusion and social confusion are often entangled.

Buddhism, mourning culture, and lying equality issues are all spread around the behavior of the post-90s generation.

A sentence circulated on the Internet describing their situation: when they began to study the blockchain, the coin circle hung up; when they wanted to join Yu Minhong's army, the education and training group was extinguished; when they began to write public accounts, the traffic crisis...

This is somewhat amplified. Any generation has the mud and smooth road of which generation, and the future of the post-90s does not necessarily have to be bound to the currency circle, education and training, and public names.

But @Late Post's 2019 article "When the Post-90s Encounter the Last Train of the Internet" is still quite right:

The post-90s may be the "generation of discomfort in the middle", who were at the peak of prosperity when they first worked, and suddenly slipped after working for a few years. They may be a generation in pain at the corner of a macroeconomic L-shaped trend, a generation that needs to self-mediate its emotions.

They listened to Ma Yun and Yu Minhong's speeches to beat themselves with chicken blood, but later, they found that the spiritual teachers had been hammered.

They originally wanted to take the number plate of the "Internet Generation" and board the Internet express to achieve class catch-up, but found that the speed of the vehicle was reduced. Look again, this is the last train of the Internet of Information.

In fact, compared with the people around them, the post-90s can squeeze into the Internet door, which is already quite good. But for many post-90s Internet people, they have post-80s as middle and high-level management posts, and then there is a "35-year-old crisis" to catch up with the new forces after 00, in the middle, step by step, but also have to pinch.

They are like dry firewood, like flames, easily burning.

05

It seems that sometimes it is "warming and shaking" in the cold winter, and sometimes it is "the mountains and rivers are doubtful and there is no way" in front of the willows and dark flowers.

The wandering of Internet people is just a projection of the ups and downs of the Internet industry in the times.

Just as the destruction of inner volumes requires "increments", the prospect of dispelling the Internet has become brighter.

The day when the industry broke the game, it seemed to spread out. At least it is expected to be stable.

The key to breaking the game may be hidden in ALT and the industrial Internet, or it may be hidden in the hard technology breakthrough and the forward-looking layout of the meta-universe.

Some scientific and technological practitioners said: Today's technological applications began to accumulate in the middle of the 20th century - computer invention in 1946, modern integrated circuit creation in 1958, Moore's Law in 1965, and the emergence of the Internet in 1969. If this generation wants to create the scientific basis for the next generation of revolution, it needs to quit bloating and conceit, and it needs patience.

Perhaps without breakthroughs such as Berners Lee's invention of the World Wide Web, which is large enough to leverage the information revolution, many innovative new technologies in the pipeline can also leverage a huge number of opportunities.

Time will tell.

06

Thoreau said: After winter, spring is ushered in.

For Internet people, it is important to avoid freezing and drowning in winter.

You have to make a long board and add clothes to protect yourself from the cold.

But there is no doubt that the most important thing is to be "beaten" - to the point where the ice melts and snow melts.