Per reporter: Ding Zhouyang Bi Yuanyuan Wen Menghua Per reporter: Dong Xingsheng, Song Hong
The New Year of the Tiger has just gone to work, and I know that layoffs will be on the hot search; an employee of Station B unfortunately fell down and did not wake up again... Tired Internet manufacturers have been in the whirlpool of public opinion many times from the end of last year to the beginning of this year.
Hearing the news that his sister, who was a programmer in the US group, left her job to become a teacher at the university, Wang Qianqian was sincerely envious. As an operation post at Tencent, he regards leaving the "Internet factory" and being admitted to the civil service or career editor as "going ashore".
Subsequently, Wang Qianqian shared a post with the Daily Economic News reporter, an engineer of an Internet company wrote "How to be admitted to the civil service". On the programmer exchange APP, the popularity of this experience post remains high. "It shows that many Internet people are now looking forward to transforming into the system and having a stable job."
At one time, winning the offer of the internet giant was the highlight moment in the life of the "Wang Qianqian". Although Wang Qianqian, who joined in 2020, did not catch up with the wave of "overnight wealth" of Ali, Tencent, and Kuaishou listed and shareholding employees, compared with the previous job for a small and medium-sized game company, the advantages of internet manufacturers can be clearly felt - relaxed corporate culture, rich learning resources, decent salary treatment, and the sense of aura when saying "I work at Tencent".
However, the above attraction was quickly overwhelmed by certain anxieties. Since 2021, Wang Qianqian has witnessed the Internet industry from rapid expansion, salary increases and recruitment to cost reduction and efficiency increase, "defertization and thinning". The industry "squeezes the bubble", and the personnel of the non-core department may become the one who is optimized at any time.
From the tide, boiling to dormant, in less than 30 years, the history of China's Internet commercialization is just around the corner. People who look at history are people in history, and everyone is no stranger to the rapid growth and rapid withering of grass and trees in the Internet world. The vigorous momentum will not be maintained forever, put in the background, the current situation of the big factory is only a fragment of the trajectory of the times, and for the individuals in it, it is like people drinking water, cold and warm self-knowledge.
Regarding the situation of "optimizing employees" of major Internet companies, every time the reporter sent interview appeals to ByteDance, Kuaishou, iQiyi, etc., the other party said: There is no more news.
How the "Internet factory" will further transform and upgrade in the future is worth paying attention to. The picture shows the Logo IC photo in front of the iQIYI headquarters building
The "human resources" dug up by high salaries have become "labor costs"
Seeing Liu Xiaodong again a year later, her state was much tighter than when she first joined ByteDance.
"Spring River plumbing duck prophet, now the water is cold, is also a duck prophet." Liu Xiaodong sighed to every reporter, "Front-line employees can feel the changes in the industry ecology the most, our department is not affected on the surface, but now the practice is to make resources more concentrated, before the same business was done by different departments, everyone competed with each other, now to converge, integration, everyone is responsible for the plate is bigger, do more things, in the final analysis is to save costs." ”
When the "cost reduction and efficiency increase" is implemented, the "human resources" that have been screened by large factories or dug up with salaries higher than their peers have become the "labor costs" that need to be eliminated.
At the end of 2021, Li Ruobei successfully applied for a new job in a local city for iQIYI, and before officially joining the company, a group of new employees conducted pre-job centralized training. "A few days after the training, the person in charge suddenly called us to a meeting, and without any written explanation, he orally notified us, because of the company's internal business adjustment, more than a dozen new employees who were in the training period were all dissuaded." Li Ruobei said.
Zhang An felt that the "water temperature change" occurred earlier. In 2021, she sensed a sharp turn for the worse. "The first half of the year is still good, to the second half of the year first canceled the 'big and small week', the original weekend overtime is double wages, two days of work per month, you can get four days of wages." After the cancellation of the big and small weeks, it is nominally possible to take a double holiday, but everyone still works overtime, which is equivalent to a disguised wage reduction. Zhang An told every reporter, followed by the "optimization of employees", "double reduction" policy, ByteDance layout of the online education business fully compressed, Zhang An's design post became the object of overall dismissal.
In addition, ByteDance's strategic investment department has also become a sector that has been drastically compressed.
"In 2021, it has been 'de-fattening and weight gaining', and the target management plan of many big leaders clearly states 'de-fattening and weight-increasing'." Sun Lin, a former employee of ByteDance, told every reporter, "The large-scale laying off of departments, shutdown and transfer is also from 2021, and the education sector is basically completely dissolved." In addition, there are departments such as enterprise organizational development and internal training, which have also been adjusted. ”
"This is the shock that the entire industry is facing." Sun Lin said that the common situation of Internet companies is that there is not so much abundant funds, and the current plan is to maintain the stability of the main business, lay off departments that have nothing to do with the main business or projects that require long-term investment and do not see clear returns. "Just like Tencent will not cut down WeChat, Byte will not cut off Douyin, the so-called 'fattening and thinning' is such a logic, to maintain the greatest advantage, to concentrate resources on the 'main channel'."
iQiyi once released a strategy in 2018 that it can no longer use an apple tree to describe the company's business model, and has now become an apple orchard, with the largest tree in the middle being video, and other new businesses such as literature, live broadcasting, games, comics, movie tickets, and light novels. However, according to iQIYI's 2021 third quarter report, the above new business is still classified as "other businesses", and the video business is still the absolute main business. In other words, iQiyi's above-mentioned non-main business has not been able to achieve substantial breakthroughs.
"The people who were recruited before are recruited for the future, for the business to be expanded in the future. The non-main businesses that once expanded the layout have now become 'business excess', corresponding to 'excess personnel'. An Internet practitioner told every reporter, "So iQiyi's 'optimization of employees' is the most obvious, because the excess apple trees are cut down, and the corresponding business personnel can only leave up to the director level." These people were not laid off because they became bad, but the Internet temporarily could not accommodate so many people. ”
Long video platforms drastically cut waist content
"The dream has come true again, looking forward to the explosion, very happy to cooperate for the second time." With the poster of the official launch of a film and television project, in November 2021, Li Yang, a producer who had made a blockbuster sweet pet drama, wrote on Weibo.
In the expectation of netizens, Li Yang is undoubtedly optimistic about this film and television drama. The project was set up as A-class, and he had the confidence to run to the S-class. But a month later, the platform custom drama, which was originally launched in December last year, was suddenly pressed the pause button because of financial problems.
Such an outcome was not expected. After all, as early as last October, when the platform first reduced its budget, they had already reduced their costs. "At that time, the platform felt that 36 integration was too expensive, so we adjusted it to 30 episodes according to the requirements." Li Yang told reporters.
In retrospect, budget cuts at that time were more like a precursor.
In Li Yang's recollection, all the projects that did not pass at that time were stopped, and a drama like theirs that had passed the meeting and was normally prepared could be filmed, but this project still failed to escape the fate of being abandoned. In the interview, he expressed his understanding several times, "The platform is really helpless, and this project will certainly not be stopped until it is absolutely necessary." But the loss of real money and silver still makes him hesitate, whether to stick to this industry or not?
It is reported that because the project is a customized drama fully invested by the platform, the early stage needs to be advanced by the contractor first, so counting the early advance and subsequent default losses, "calculated down, I almost lost tens of millions of yuan."
"Back in March 2021 I felt that the industry was already hard to do. To be honest, now the platform custom drama is basically unable to operate. Li Yang said frankly.
The abortiveness of the above project is only a microcosm. Since the end of 2021, the ecological changes and optimization and integration of the Internet industry have spread to long video platforms that have not been able to achieve profitability so far. Behind the cost reduction and efficiency increase, the fate of many film and television projects and film and television companies has also quietly changed.
A film and television company executive told every reporter that at the recent internal project decision-making meeting of a large video platform, more than 70 projects only passed two. "It would have been unthinkable a year ago that the passing rate was so low that the entire industry was tightening its belts to get by."
Whether it is a reduction in budgets or the layoffs of personnel, the biggest problem is that the long video platform has less revenue and no money. Related financial reports show that in the past decade, the video platform of the three parents of Aiyouteng has burned more than 100 billion yuan.
In the past 2021, the life of video sites is particularly difficult. Hot dramas and hot roundups are frequent, but there are few big hits. At the same time, the advanced on-demand broadcast was cancelled, the advertising environment contracted, and the idol cultivation system variety show and delay drama were stopped.
iQIYI's latest financial report shows that the total revenue in the third quarter of 2021 reached 7.6 billion yuan, and the net loss attributable to iQIYI was 1.7 billion yuan, an increase of 41.7% compared with the same period last year. As of the end of the third quarter of last year, iQIYI's subscription membership reached 103.6 million, compared with 103 million in the same period last year, and membership growth was bottlenecked.
"Last year, there were many major negative storms in the entertainment industry, which led to a cold wave in the industry. Therefore, in terms of content investment, the platform will concentrate funds to focus more on the head, and the waist content will become more and more difficult to do. A senior industry insider who has been practicing for more than ten years told every reporter.
Some industry observations pointed out that starting from 2020, from the perspective of distribution model, the "waist drama" and "central drama" on the market are gradually disappearing, and the pre-start new dramas are mainly self-made dramas + head copyright dramas on video platforms.
Li Yang has a deep understanding of this, and his most obvious feeling is that custom dramas have become more and more immovable. "The industry no longer needs customized dramas, and the future direction should be the platform's self-made dramas plus account dramas, and there is no category of customized dramas in the middle."
Short video platforms need to find the next growth point
Some Internet companies regard the age of 35 as a workplace threshold, giving practitioners a certain amount of pressure. The embarrassment stuck in the middle is the film and television drama on the screen, but also the appearance of the sentient beings off the screen.
On the evening of January 11, Zhou Hongyi, founder and CEO of 360, talked about the problem of "the big factory was eliminated at the age of 35". "I don't know why, Chinese seems to be old at 35, I don't quite understand this statement, in Silicon Valley a lot of the main programmers are over 35 years old, if a person has not written 100,000 lines of code, he will not become a good programmer." 」 Although people may not be able to stay up late after the age of 35, they can make their experience more fully utilized. ”
Someone leaves before this anxiety arrives. But in first-tier cities, this conversion is not so smooth. The higher cost of living makes internet companies that can pay high salaries an option that is difficult for them to give up.
Xiao Liang, a Beijing native who works at Alibaba, has no pressure to rent a house, but as a father of two, his desire for school district housing continues to drive him. He knew he couldn't easily say he was leaving.
Xiao Liang is not yet 35 years old, but is particularly sensitive to the topic of 35 years old. "The knife hasn't landed on me yet, but it's always hanging over my head." He told reporters.
Xiao Liang laughed at himself: "Working in an Internet company gives me an advantage: I will predict." The epidemic has affected all walks of life and physical online. Don't say that The Internet company is not affected, the vibrato, kuaishou advertising is a lot less, the core of the Internet company is to earn advertising fees, the brand business has no money, the company naturally has no money. ”
"Unless you're a really capable person who can stand out in the industry, the 35-year-old is still doing execution, and the anxiety will be very strong." Younger young people are constantly popping up, reminding you of your old age. ”
"Destroy you, what do you have to do with it?" A sentence in "The Three-Body Problem" made Xiao Liang feel related. "This sentence explains why people in the Internet industry are insecure, and once someone finds a 'killer' application or scenario, destroying you is a matter of minutes."
"At that time, the four major portals (Sina, NetEase, Sohu, Tencent) were many cattle, and everyone once felt that the overall situation of Internet competition had been determined. But after the e-commerce came out, the established pattern was immediately broken. In 2012, the byte algorithm turned out, and the era of e-commerce traffic became the past..." Xiao Liang said, "And the current short video is the four major portals of the year, traffic growth has peaked, and it is urgent to find the next growth point, otherwise it will soon retreat from the position of 'top of the tide'." ”
Xiao Liang's "traffic anxiety" largely summarizes the iterative logic of China's Internet industry for more than two decades. This is a world of rapid change, accompanied by the rapid rise of China's economy and a huge demographic dividend, seizing the opportunity to create a scene of wealth myth. After a round of bubble bursting, there is naturally a new round of fields, as long as you master the traffic code, you will not worry about the space for realization.
"The problem with this iterative logic is that the ceiling for traffic growth is too low, and no matter which subdivision track, it will soon encounter growth bottlenecks." The threshold of the Internet is not as high as imagined, just like wearing the red dancing shoes that can't stop, even if the feet are full of blood, they can only continue to jump. Liu Xiaodong said, "At this time, we encounter external factors, such as the rectification of games and online education by regulators, anti-monopoly measures on large platforms, and the tightening of hot money in the capital market. ”
Every reporter interviewed by a number of industry insiders learned that compared with the bursting of the Internet bubble in the United States in 2000, they generally believe that the "squeeze bubble" of China's round of Internet manufacturers will be a relatively mild "soft landing".
Today, the underlying value that drives the Internet giants to realize the original accumulation of capital has changed, and the "big factories" who are accustomed to burning money and enclosure and boundless expansion need to find the most appropriate posture between adapting to changes and eliminating out.
In the past, the rules of the game of spending money, doing traffic, making large revenue, and then going to the capital market for arbitrage in the past did not make sense. "There are many big factories whose market capitalization is inflated, and capital and the market no longer believe such stories." Sun Lin told every reporter that the overall economic environment has been transformed from virtual to real, and in the future, Internet manufacturers may focus more on their main business.
A report by Liepin said that in recent years, the Internet industry has developed too fast, resulting in barbaric growth in some aspects, and has also exposed some problems. The improvement and perfection of supervision and national laws and regulations are better regulating industrial digitalization, reducing development bubbles, and reducing operational risks.
Lin Wei, a Chinese partner at Beijing Daxiao Law Firm, said that the Internet industry's "optimization of employees" will indeed cause some impact in the short term, and in the long run, it will help enterprises improve efficiency and enhance quality development. "The state has also taken note of the relevant situation, which has been reflected in monetary policy to help enterprises overcome difficulties together."
(At the request of the interviewee, the current and former employees of the Internet company interviewed in this article are pseudonyms)
Reporter's Note:
The transformation and upgrading of the Internet industry is at the right time
Ten years ago, the offers of Internet giants such as Tencent and Ali were enviable capital; ten years later, "escaping from Internet giants" is becoming a mainstream "anxiety".
For a long time in the past, we all equated "technological innovation" with "Internet innovation", and after the slowdown in the growth rate of the Internet industry, a new understanding surfaced: China's Internet innovation no longer has a so-called template, and copying Silicon Valley is not the way out. When Internet companies that rise by entrepreneurship and innovation become monopoly giants that abuse their dominant market position, the once innovative driving force becomes innovation resistance.
The law of the jungle and the winner-take-all thinking have won room for the development of Chinese Internet startups in the early days. However, this kind of thinking is obviously incompatible with the development of the current era, and China's Internet economy should rely on its own economic, cultural and social development, and use scientific and technological innovation and scientific and technological services to create real value for people.
The times make heroes, and the wind will always come again. When the "golden age" of large factories is gradually gone, where will the Internet industry, which is eager to transform and upgrade, go? When the "hustle" of industry development is "silent", this is obviously the entire industry needs to "meditate" and think.
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