36Kr exclusive | streamlined personnel in multiple business lines of Baidu, involving core technology departments

Author | Wang and Tong

Edit | Yang Xuan

36Kr learned from a number of employees in Baidu's various departments that in January 2022, Baidu AIG (ACG, TPG, INF), MEG and other business lines are being streamlined. The reduction involves multiple departments of Baidu, and each department claims the KPI of the reduction.

Combined with baidu's departing employee descriptions and public information on the pulse, the second round of layoffs began in January 2022, the current round of personnel was streamlined, and most of Baidu's departments were laid off. According to some employees' estimates of their own departments, the reduction rate is 10% to 15%, and grass-roots employees, middle-level and high-level employees are involved.

Baidu responded to 36Kr, Baidu did not carry out "layoffs": "Just like other large factories, we will optimize the performance of employees in the next year. The number of optimizers is not 10%. As for the specific proportion of "performance optimization", Baidu did not respond.

Previously, Sina reported that Baidu's first round of layoffs began in December 2021: the overall layoff ratio of MEG (mobile ecological business group) was 50%; almost all of the more than 300 people in the game department were laid off, and the live broadcast business was laid off by 90%; education and other businesses also had layoffs, the specific proportion is unknown. Cao Xiaodong, vice president of Baidu, head of the mobile ecosystem user growth department, and head of the interactive entertainment platform, is indeed leaving Baidu. Cao Xiaodong is a veteran of Baidu, who was appointed head of YY in February after baidu completed its $3.6 billion acquisition of YY.

This time, the news of "layoffs" was initially sent out by TPG's INF department, Baidu Infrastructure Department. A number of Baidu employees confirmed to 36Kr that an employee of the department was laid off, dissatisfied with Baidu's plan of "not giving N+1", and sent the negotiation recording to the INF's department group, and the group was urgently dissolved. There are TPG technology middle office groups that were laid off employees told 36Kr that the department's staff reduction rate is about 10%, giving employees two choices, either leave at the end of February, compensate N, or leave at the end of March, no compensation.

At the same time, a number of Baidu employees said that AIG's artificial intelligence department is undergoing a 10% to 15% reduction. Among them, the ACG Baidu intelligent cloud business group is also streamlining, and Some Baidu employees said: "ACG is only a very few privatization (cloud) business, can not see the revenue hope of cutting, and routine optimization", which means that it is not a large-scale layoff. According to Baidu's third-quarter financial report, Baidu's intelligent cloud revenue in the third quarter increased by 73% year-on-year.

Some MEG employees informed 36Kr that in February, the MEG business group was starting the second round of personnel reduction. On the pulse, some people proposed that the MEG staff reduction rate is 10%.

At present, there is no news of downsizing the IDG intelligent driving business group, but some employees said that there will be commercialization goals in 2022. Sina has reported that as early as December last year, baidu intelligent driving business group had organizational structure and high-level personnel changes, and the employees and assets of related business departments have been transferred from baidu group related main companies to baidu wholly-owned subsidiaries. Among them, some commercialization departments are beginning to need to develop and complete annual revenue targets.

A number of departing Baidu employees mentioned that some departments of Baidu act very quickly, and they are not allowed to participate in the morning notice and the afternoon department meeting. Someone on The Pulse posted that it had just been notified of being cut, such as Stream (Baidu's internal collaboration software) and could not be used.

A number of laid-off employees said that Baidu's layoffs, some departments gave N compensation, and some departments directly said that they would not compensate, and there was a situation where the stock was cleared. One INF employee said: "Hr strategy is constantly changing. ”

Whether it is "layoffs" or "normal elimination of employees with poor performance" seems to be controversial at present. An AIG employee told 36Kr that he joined in 2020 and that his previous OKR performance was basically satisfactory, that is, medium, with two levels below, and no work errors in the year and a half of the induction. He believes that he should not be rated as the worst, and is required to leave on his own initiative and not to give unilaterally (unilateral refers to the unilateral termination of the labor relationship by the company, which is regarded as a sign of "layoffs"). After four rounds of negotiations, Baidu is still unwilling to compensate him because he is not "cut".

In response to Baidu's "normal proportion of PIP" (PIP is the "performance improvement plan"), the employee gave a chat record between him and an employee of MEG, which showed that 10 people in the department were dissuaded from 3 people, and 30 people in another department were dissuaded from 4 people, the proportion was higher than 10%.

A TPG employee, when asked by 36Kr how to judge whether the performance is up to standard, replied: "The manager said that the department has indicators and the company lays off employees." ”

In December 2021, Baidu notified that the year-end bonus of this year will be postponed to March, and 0.5 months' salary will be paid as a bonus at the New Year. Several employees believe that this is Baidu's way of "forcing" employees to leave, if you leave at this time, you can get N, can not get the year-end award; if you want to "consume", you will be judged by the worst performance, can not get the year-end award. Generally speaking, Baidu is the year-end bonus in the contract is 4 months salary. In this regard, Baidu responded to 36Kr: "The year-end bonus is released according to the company's operation and personal performance, and it is written in the contract." When the year-end bonus is issued, everyone must be different. ”

36Kr found in a Baidu staffing QQ group totaling 2,000 people that some people said that the HR of its department privately logged into the employee ERP system and submitted a resignation application, which the employee found out two weeks later. There are employees on the pulse, and this situation occurs in two types of people: the first is that the consensus is finally ready to mention the system and finds that it has been initiated and approved by multiple rounds; the other is that there has been no consensus, but it is found that the proposed automatic departure, the current response plan of individual employees in this group is to send an email to HRBP to protest and suspend the departure process.

In this regard, Baidu's reply is: "The employee's system is set by itself, and HR does not have that permission and ability." ”

A MEG employee provided 36Kr with a video showing that, without the employee signing unilaterally, Baidu sent a link to the employee's mailbox, opened the link, and without any notification, showed that the employee had completed the signature.

An employee of TPG told 36Kr that according to his observation, people who walk labor arbitration around them can get N+3 compensation; if they do not take labor arbitration, it is difficult to get the N+1 compensation they deserve. Another AIG employee told 36Kr: "This kind of thing is arbitrated by yourself, and now it is all distributed according to the noise." ”

Many Baidu employees believe that Baidu's multi-departmental downsizing may be related to Baidu's completion of the acquisition of YY in February this year: the acquisition cost $3.6 billion, which is "a big drain on energy". On the evening of February 8, Huanju issued an announcement that the sale of its YY Live business to Baidu was basically completed. Since the formal establishment of the short video business department last year, to the completion of the acquisition of YY, it marks the completion of Baidu's content ecology in the field of short video and live broadcast.

Since the end of last year, baidu has not been the one who has spread the news of "layoffs", but Internet companies such as iQiyi, Didi, and Kuaishou. Judging from the financial reports of a number of listed Internet companies, advertising revenue has dropped significantly from the double-digit growth rate in the past to a single digit in the third and fourth quarters of last year. For example, in the third quarter of 2021:

Alibaba's customer management revenue (mainly advertising fees and commissions) grew by only 3%;

Tencent's advertising revenue increased by 5% year-on-year;

Baidu's search and feed advertising revenue growth also fell to 6%, with total revenue of 19.5 billion yuan (US$3.002 billion).

Baidu's main source of revenue is advertising, Baidu Q3 overall revenue of 31.9 billion yuan, net profit of 5.09 billion yuan, online revenue totaled 19.7 billion yuan, accounting for 61% of Baidu's total revenue, accounting for 79% of Baidu's core (excluding iQiyi) revenue.

Image source network

As can be seen from the figure, the growth rate of advertising revenue of Baidu, Tencent, Ali and Pinduoduo in Q3 2020 will remain above 10%. In Q3 2021, the growth rate of advertising has slowed down collectively, according to the statistics of the third-party agency QuestMobile, the size of China's Internet advertising market Q3 is 158.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth rate of only 9.2%.

During this special period, Baidu replaced the CFO. On November 1, 2021, Baidu issued an announcement announcing the appointment of Luo Rong as the chief financial officer (CFO) of the group company, and it is reported that Luo Rong will fully lead the financial system management of Baidu, reporting to CEO Robin Li. Former CFO Yu Zhengjun will rotate as Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) of the group. According to the announcement, Luo Rong has served as the CFO of Good Future since November 2014 and is now leaving to join Baidu.

For many Baidu employees, this could be a tough spring.