Tech Planet (WeChat ID: tech618)
Wen | Wang Lin
Cover source | Visual China
Hu Jie decided to resign, in this spring when the news of layoffs was so many that people's ears were cocooned.
As soon as she graduated, she joined a super e-commerce platform, counting the internship, and will soon turn 2 years. The first 2 years of entering the workplace are the fastest growing and the fastest promotions. In the past, admissions promotions like hers that had performed A for two consecutive quarters did not even require a defense, and the promotion was successful and did not occupy a quota. But now she needs to go with everyone to prepare the PPT, defend, and even promote the quota.
"The situation is grim and stuck very tightly. Even 1 liter 2 is stuck," she told Tech Planet. The failed promotion and the low salary increase led her to decide to raise her salary by job hopping to hedge against house prices and inflation.
She was not alone in this feeling.
Tech Planet has learned from employees of many internet companies such as ByteDance, JD.com, Baidu, and Alibaba that promotion this year is more difficult than in previous years. This seems to be to be expected – in November 2021, China's e-commerce industry ushered in negative month-on-year growth for the first time in 20 years; Douyin, which once created a myth of 150 million users a year, is now using the method of "downloading a speed version to get a Starbucks Cup" to resist the slowdown in growth.
The Internet industry has gone from soaring and rapid business expansion to flattening, and large factories have reduced the scale of recruitment and naturally have fewer promotions. The mentality of most employees has changed from hoping for successful promotion to just don't off. Promotion in the big factory has become a luxury.
Business is no longer expanding, and there are fewer opportunities for promotion
Fu Lei is waiting for the promotion notice, but he feels that the situation is not good, because in previous years, at this time, the company would notify everyone to prepare materials, and this year it really looks like it has been delayed until July, as it was uploaded online.
Fu Lei works for a super-head local life service platform company and is a grassroots employee. Since last year, the company has begun to implement a new grade adjustment, changing the original promotion window from twice a year in spring/autumn to once in spring. At the same time, managers give small cash adjustments in the fall to employees who are particularly outstanding, such as making particularly important contributions and growing particularly rapidly, which is internally called the autumn special report.
An employee of the above-mentioned companies said that the company's promotion difficulties have increased since last year. Especially during the autumn small promotion period, no one will generally go to the report, because if the report cannot be reported, the supervisor is responsible. Fu Lei had prepared for the worst, the promotion failed, and the internal living water was alive.
Promotions are generally accompanied by salary increases, and the outside world believes that the delay in the company's spring promotion is to hedge the pressure on the business.
"Will the company's promotion ratio be reduced this year?" When Tech Planet asked about hr from one of the above-mentioned companies, his response was, "What do you think?" In this situation, the platform enterprises are not having a good time. ”
JD.com was the only big manufacturer with good performance last year. Last year, JD.com adjusted its promotion time from June and November to February and September of previous years, a three-month delay than usual.
A number of JD Retail Group employees told Tech Planet that there are not many promotions in retail this year. However, there are more Jingdong International there. "This is the policy reason, and the international side is mostly because it was said before that direct promotion in the past six months does not occupy a quota." A JD employee explained.
A veteran employee who has worked at JD.com for 5 years said that the overall feeling this year is that low P is more stringent than high P card. His subsidiary predicts that the overall promotion quota will be reduced by about 20%.
Baidu, like Meituan, is divided into spring promotions and autumn promotions. An employee of Baidu's search division who participated in the spring promotion said that this year's card is very strict, and according to the certain probability of OKR over-completion in previous years, it is possible to be promoted successfully, but several such colleagues around him have not succeeded.
A Pinduoduo employee said that Pinduoduo has almost no concept of rank, so there is no promotion, but the salary increase twice a year is indeed very large.
Alibaba has been in the whirlpool of public opinion last year, in order to stabilize and motivate P5-P7 grassroots employees, most of them have received a large-scale general adjustment, some P6 employees directly increased their monthly salaries by 10,000, or the total contract increased by 50%.
An Ali employee told Tech Planet that it was the judges of other departments who decided to promote the quota, they were always complained that they did not understand the business, and now they are given the authority to the supervisor to decide for themselves, not fixed a few, but there must be a good reason.
ByteDance, once one of the most aggressive Internet companies in its business expansion and recruitment, also fell into a downward spiral last year. A mid-level byteDance told Tech Planet that this year's promotion card is expected and a must for the company to save costs.
The "promoter" is invalid
In mid-2020, Xu Hao, who has been working in Meituan for more than 5 years, decided to adjust the choice of Meituan through internal living water. Two years after going public in Hong Kong to recuperate, the US group once again opened its firepower. This year, Meituan preferred to upgrade to a strategic business.
This means that human, financial and material resources will be inclined to the preferred. New businesses that are given high hopes are the hope for promotion for many employees whose ranks have been stagnant for many years — easier to perform, and more relaxed promotion criteria when companies want to grow a business.
However, Xu Hao, who had a good performance last year, still did not succeed in promotion. "The leader told me to wait and let an old man in the team rise one liter." He told Tech Planet.
Just after the Spring Festival this year, Meituan Preferred, which lost $3 billion in one quarter, reported layoffs. In fact, in 2020, after Meituan completed the "Thousand Cities Plan" as planned, in 2021, its core strategy has changed from large-scale expansion to the pursuit of gross profits. Layoffs are one of the effective ways to reduce costs and achieve gross profits.
Local life was once highly anticipated by Alibaba. In 2018, Alibaba and Ant Financial spent $9.5 billion to acquire Ele.me, initially, Ali hoped that Ele.me's market share would be "five-five-open" compared to meituan takeaway, and after recognizing the reality of inability to win quickly, Ali decided to fight a protracted war.
In the past, he was once called Ali's "promotion device", but now an Ali local life employee said that Ali's internal promotion is already strict, there are many assessments, and local life is more stringent.
In July 2020, after investing in the education track for 3 years, Byte decided to go down in person. The brand of "Vigorous Education" heralds Byte's expectations: this is a track that requires patience, but Byte hopes to make a miracle."
In more than two years, Byte Education has recruited nearly 20,000 people, but it laid off half of them in a month or two last year. "I don't expect to be promoted anymore, the difficulty will definitely increase, and it would be nice not to be laid off." A programmer who still works on the Byte Education Line and earns millions a year expressed his attitude towards this year's promotion to Tech Planet.
A large manufacturer HR told Tech Planet that the profit center of the general company, the promotion ratio of the main business will be higher than that of other businesses. However, the company's strategic business, in order to expand the scale quickly in the early stage, will tend to internal living water, one of the conditions is that it can be promoted faster, but it is highly related to performance.
In the past year, the businesses that meituan preferred, Byte Education, Alibaba Local Life, etc., which had been highly expected by the company, have not progressed as expected. The cake is not bigger, and the dividends that can be shared are naturally limited.
Compared with the promotion of rank, more emphasis is placed on salary increases
After three consecutive failed promotions on a super short video platform, Qiao Jia gradually lost patience.
She had almost succeeded. That year, the company named the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, and she became a member of the Spring Festival Gala project. She felt that her performance was good, and after the defense, her direct leaders also told her that she was basically determined. But in the end, she was not successfully promoted, because her business unit was not the most important department of the company.
The second time she was notified to prepare her promotion materials, she only took one weekend to get it done, "just feel that there is no hope." Now she has no hope, just hopes that her salary will rise a little faster so that she can save more money to deal with the impending crisis of 35 years old.
More than one Internet powerhouse employee told Tech Planet that not all promotions are accompanied by successful salary increases.
Promotion is never an easy task, and everyone wants to find the rules. An example is that Li Yunhua, a former employee of Ali, went from an ordinary programmer to P9, and all the promotions passed once, and later he once summed up a complete set of promotion methodologies, which were online for 1 month, and the subscriptions exceeded 10,000.
However, in the eyes of many employees of large factories, promotion is a metaphysics.
An employee who once worked at Meituan said that he had been promoted to S for two consecutive years, but he could not get promoted. He had witnessed that an undergraduate student who graduated from a second college defeated a Tsinghua undergraduate master's student when he was promoted. The reason is not the performance gap, but the former is more clear about their work over the past year, and the material is beautiful.
Failed promotions, and salary increases of 10% per year alone do not win the loyalty of young people to the company. Some of them, after working for a company for two years, will choose to jump ship for higher salary increases. An unwritten rule is that job hopping will require a salary increase of at least 30 per cent or a promotion. And in a company for 2 years and then jump ship, it is almost a hidden threshold for large factories to recruit people.
If you happen to be the employer who needs people the most, you can get a better salary. An employee who jumped from Xiaomi to Byte said that its total package was directly doubled, and At that time, Byte was vigorously doing education.
The above-mentioned Meituan employees finally chose to jump ship, which brought him a lot of salary increases. "In fact, the rank is not so important, and there may be a salary gap of 50% or more in the same grade." He said.
"Promotion is just a means of expectancy management, and with expectations, it will stay for a long time, but salary is more important." A Tencent employee said.
This is the attitude of most of the interviewees that Tech Planet has come into contact with. At a time when Chinese stocks have evaporated $277.1 billion in market capitalization in just three trading days (which is almost equivalent to the market value of Alibaba), and the news of layoffs is flying around, the salary that can rise has become one of the few placebos for employees of Internet companies.
(Remarks: In the text, Hu Jie, Xu Hao, Qiao Jia, and Fu Lei are pseudonyms.) ）
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