Text/VR Gyro Pancake
Gold, three silver and four, it is the golden age of annual job hopping (wage increase).
However, unlike the lively situation in previous years, this year's Internet manufacturers were affected by more external unstable factors, coupled with the slowdown in internal business development, and successive news of layoffs, HC showed a state of further control.
On March 13, the topics of "Ali layoffs" and "Tencent layoffs" were successively searched on Weibo. There are rumors that Internet giants such as Tencent Ali will carry out major layoffs in the coming weeks. Tencent expects to lay off 10% to 30% of employees, and Ali will lay off 30%.
Of course, not only Ali Tencent, according to the relevant words of Pulse, since the second half of 2021, Internet manufacturers such as iQiyi, Baidu, Xiaomi, Meituan, Didi, and Weibo have successively sent out news of "business optimization" and personnel structure adjustment.
While Internet manufacturers collectively slashed their business and controlled HC, the meta-universe boom set off last year has made VR/AR and the industry have a development trend contrary to the Internet industry.
On the one hand, due to the popularity of the meta-universe, the business needs of many vr/AR industry veteran players have surged, and it is urgent to expand talents, build technical teams, and derive vertically; on the other hand, a number of large manufacturers led by Bytes have also seen new economic growth points and begun to enter the VR/AR industry and expand horizontally.
According to the data of a well-known domestic recruitment platform, there are currently more than 2141 VR/AR-related jobs, covering software and hardware development engineers, algorithms, marketing, sales, 3D art design and other functional positions, involving games, real estate, Internet of Things, automobiles, e-commerce and consumer electronics and other nearly industry-wide fields.
Image source: Network
The "robbery" war under the meta-universe boom
If you see two VR devices of similar design on the market, don't be surprised that it may be that the industrial designers of one manufacturer have been poached by another.
Since last year, new VR/AR players include ByteDance, Tencent Black Shark, ZTE Red Devils, TCL, Net fish Internet cafe and other big manufacturers. The entry of new players, the expansion of old players, and a battle for talent have begun.
"Grabbing people" has become the most representative word in the VR/AR industry in the past two years, and an industry HR complained to the VR gyro: "They are really very powerful at grabbing people, they may have talked about one, but because the other company gave a higher salary, it was directly pigeonted."
It is reported that the entry of large factories is changing the recruitment status quo of the entire VR/AR industry. On the one hand, due to the refined division of labor operation mode of large factories, it will make professional talents more "single-minded", which has caused more job demand.
On the other hand, compared with the single-digit HR of many start-up VR/AR companies, the big factory not only has a number of HR at the same time, but also entrusts third-party headhunting companies to find people, with higher than the average salary of industry positions, stock options and various welfare subsidies to strongly recruit people.
VR Gyro received a survey showing that cross-regional robbery has also become a basic phenomenon in the industry, and industry manufacturers in first-tier cities are also targeting the surrounding small cities because of the company's business expansion, shortage of personnel and other needs, crazy to absorb talents.
At present, the recruitment phenomenon of the VR/AR industry is mainly manifested as: new players grab people from old players, old players rob people from small players, and talents as a whole gather in first-tier cities, and the Matthew effect is obvious. However, an HR also stressed that the VR industry is actually a niche industry, so the bosses know each other, and the core talent is not easy to dig (except for the new big factories).
Of course, not only at home, but also abroad, the war of grabbing people is also in full swing. According to the earlier News of the New York Times, Meta has created thousands of new jobs to develop AR/VR hardware and software this year due to its aggressive expansion of its VR/AR team, which has also led to an increase in internal turnover and confusion in functional departments.
In addition, In order to attract higher quality talent, Meta is also trying to poach talent from Apple and Microsoft. To discourage job hopping and leaving behind great talent, Apple even offered some engineers up to $180,000 in stock as a reward.
Talent is in short supply, and salaries are upside down
When the talent market is in short supply, workers will occupy the buyer's market, which is exactly what is true for the VR/AR industry today. According to the international recruitment website Indeed, the salary of meta-universe-related positions such as VR/AR engineers will increase by about 10 times in 2021.
VR Gyro has learned from many parties that since the explosion of the meta-universe last year, the salary of almost all technical positions in the domestic VR/AR industry has increased by 20% to 30%, and the core position has increased by 30 to 50%. Although the growth rate has not reached dozens of times, the overall performance is still very strong.
It is reported that many technical bulls are basically in a "passive" state in the job search process, and there is no need to visit the market at all, there will be HR and headhunters to personally find the door, and offer millions of sky-high annual salaries. For newcomers who have recently entered the industry, as long as they dare to jump ship, there will basically be a certain salary increase.
In addition, the shortage of talents, difficulty in technical training and other issues have also led to the current PROBLEM of inverted salaries in the VR/AR industry, that is, everyone is not willing to pay the time cost to cultivate a new person, but is more willing to spend a higher price to dig up a technical talent.
An industry HR told VR Gyro: "To be honest, although the industry may be exploding now, it is actually a niche industry, if you want to cultivate a software or hardware talent who really understands technology, it is really very difficult, and you are afraid of being poached, which also leads to a very serious problem of salary inversion in the industry."
Compared with the situation that newcomers are difficult to see results in the short term and have low stability, high-paid professionals can create greater value for the company in a certain period of time, which may be the more optimistic talent for VR/AR companies at present.
Algorithm + U3D, UE development gap is the largest
Hardware lacks algorithms and content lacks 3D. VR Gyro learned from multi-party investigations that the current scarce talents in the entire industry are mainly SLAM algorithm engineers, U3D and UE development.
It is reported that the SLAM algorithm is the core technology of VR/AR equipment to perceive the outside world and locate interaction, such as the 6DoF interaction of the VR all-in-one machine, which needs to use the SLAM algorithm, its development is not only very difficult, but also due to the long-term need for data feeding, the molding cycle is also very long.
For the VR/AR industry, the current SLAM algorithm professional and technical personnel is extremely difficult to recruit and long-term retention, on the one hand, the company has higher requirements for the resume of such technical talents, less matching talents; on the other hand, in terms of gold absorption ability, most of the job candidates are actually more inclined to new energy vehicles, robots / drones and other larger industries.
VR Gyro sorted out hundreds of SLAM algorithm job data on a recruitment website and found that the top 30 salaries were mainly large Internet companies and car companies, with monthly salaries up to 120K. In addition, it is worth mentioning that Gyro Jun also saw Pico's figure in the top 30 high-paying positions.
As a domestic VR head brand, Pico, backed by bytes, also appeared SLAM algorithm engineer talent gap, other companies are more difficult to recruit is more reasonable.
In addition, U3D is currently a key and difficult position in the industry, especially for those companies that do VR/AR content.
On the one hand, although since August last year, the game industry has suffered a heavy blow due to the version number problem, well-known game companies Lilith, Perfect World, NetEase Games, etc. have successively reported news of layoffs, and many projects under development have even been directly cut, but this series of market changes has not brought too many development opportunities to the VR/AR industry.
A company in the industry said in the feedback to the VR gyroscope: "From the company's point of view, one is that people do not change jobs, there are fewer people in the market, and the other is that most people in U3D positions are more interested in making games, and although VR is a sunrise industry in hardware, it is not stable enough, and it is also a point for many experienced job seekers to consider." ”
An industry HR also has the same attitude, she told VR Gyro: "In the game industry, there are actually more talents like modeling, art, and technology, but if they have already done it in the game industry, it will be more difficult for them to change tracks." ”
It is true that the VR/AR industry is facing a huge talent gap in U3D and UE personnel, but many HR have thrown out the view that there is no shortage of people, and they still hold a high threshold for corporate recruitment - that is, a science class, a full-time undergraduate, and a certain project experience.
In addition to the SLAM algorithm and U3D, UE development related talents, for some companies that have a certain product, professional and experienced regional sales is also a difficult position, mainly because the current domestic VR/AR industry market share is small, not fully penetrated the Chinese market, so the relative number of employees is also small.
Overall, the word "hard" runs through almost the current hiring situation of most VR/AR companies.
Opportunities and challenges coexist
Under the boom of the meta-universe, new players enter, old players expand, VR/AR industry competition intensifies, and opportunities and challenges coexist.
According to the Gyro Research Institute's "2021 Global XR Industry Financing Report", there were 340 financing and mergers and acquisitions in the world in 2021, an increase of 54.55% over the same period last year; the amount of financing mergers and acquisitions reached 55.60 billion yuan, an increase of 127.98% over the same period last year.
Whether capital sees the prospect of VR/AR as a next-generation computing platform or blindly follows the heat of the metaverse, today's VR/AR industry is on the cusp of the times.
In addition, with the transformation of China's economy from the pursuit of simple and high growth to the pursuit of high-quality development, many industries have entered a new stage of adjustment and reshaping, "extensive" development is restricted, and standard compliance has been further strengthened.
Of course, the challenges under the opportunity cannot be ignored.
From byte's acquisition of Pico, the massive expansion of the money to Tencent's acquisition of Black Shark, the transformation into VR hardware, the entry of Internet manufacturers has made the entire VR/AR industry face unprecedented challenges.
Not only that, the enterprise investigation shows that in the past year, there are 856 companies related to the meta-universe (including enterprise names), and their addition has also increased the competitive landscape of VR/AR enterprises to a certain extent.
Under the background of the new growth opportunities of industrial digital transformation, the demand for talents in digital-related positions in various industries has increased across the board, while there are few high-end talents in the VR/AR industry, and the labor costs of enterprises are large.
This is both a collision of capital and a technical game.
Special thanks: HR sisters in the industry and VR/AR-related companies that participated in the survey feedback.