Image source @ Visual China
Text | Shenrancaijing, author | Wang Min, Editor | Towards the small garden
"In 2022, what industry is the 'sunrise industry'?"
Someone asks over and over again on social platforms. However, under the influence of the global economic situation and the epidemic, no one dares to give a definitive answer to the future direction of the industry.
"Either follow the capital or follow the 'profits'", one executive search industry practitioner described the influx of the traditional Internet. In the eyes of the headhunters who convert the track, social networking, short videos, live broadcasts, communities and other fields belong to the "traditional Internet", and traditional Internet people who seek jobs must at least go to the industry with cash flow in hand, "with grain in hand, not panic in the heart".
Seeking a sense of security in the workplace and reducing risks are the common choices of professionals. However, many Internet people are more concerned about the growth of the industry and want to enter a new industry that is still rising in the next 3-5 years.
The first quarter of 2022 has ended, and the Internet giants who have reduced costs and increased efficiency have collectively stepped on the brakes. A large number of Internet people have returned to the talent market under the "graduation tide" and have been forced to rethink their career direction.
Where will they go? In fact, it represents the "high-potential industry" in the eyes of traditional Internet people. According to the observation of deep combustion, their flow direction can be summarized as "real" and "virtual" two directions.
Some people decided to move from the virtual to the real, believing that the integration of the digital economy and the real economy is the trend of the times, so they are moving closer to the direction of intelligent manufacturing, including new energy and semiconductors; some people are attracted by the "illusory" Web3 concept and intend to do a big job and explore the next generation of the Internet in advance.
Is this a real and a false industry? What kind of Internet people can enter these industries? Transformation often means pain, is their transformation still smooth?
From the traditional Internet, it has shifted to new energy and semiconductors
Since 2021, there have been many new energy and autonomous driving companies in the market to offer "million annual salary, N times salary" to grab talent news.
The robbery war of high-end manufacturing industry still shows no signs of weakening in 2022. "Talents related to autonomous driving algorithm positions, five years after graduating with a master's degree, can reach an average annual salary of one million," headhunter Wei Xin told Shen Yan. May be scared by the headhunter's telephone bombardment, some new energy vehicle algorithm related talents, directly in the workplace social platform account under the note of four words, "do not look at the opportunity."
Behind the manufacturing industry's robbery from the Internet factory is the general trend of "getting out of the virtual into the real". The outline of the "14th Five-Year Plan" points out that it is necessary to build a modern industrial system with coordinated development of the real economy, scientific and technological innovation, modern finance and human resources.
In the context of the 2022 Internet factory changing the pattern optimization personnel, the previous headhunting wind transformation of the service factory, one of the mainstream directions of the transformation is intelligent manufacturing. A number of headhunters who were still recommending talents for Internet manufacturers last year told Shen Yan that they had begun to transform in the first quarter of this year, turning to semiconductor chips, automatic driving, new energy and other industries.
"Before the Qingming Festival holiday, our company just finished the meeting, to accelerate the expansion of the layout of new tracks," headhunter Liu Hong told Shen Yan, "the previous hot financial and IT industry talents, has been considered saturated."
Compared with the decline in the growth rate of traditional Internet recruitment, the recruitment scale in the high-end manufacturing field is indeed expanding. BOSS Direct Employment "Spring 2022 Job Market Trend Observation" shows that the recruitment scale of the Internet industry in the spring of 2022 will maintain growth, but the year-on-year growth rate is 13%, at the lowest point since 2019. In stark contrast, the recruitment demand of high-end manufacturing has grown rapidly, the recruitment scale has increased by 40% year-on-year, and various segments are generally facing the shortage of talents.
Source / Spring 2022 Job Market Trend Watch
Some reports estimate that among the leading industries that have obtained salary increases through job hopping, the chip industry has the largest increase of about 50%, new energy vehicles rank second, with an increase of about 45%, and medical health ranks third, about 35%.
For core technical talents, high-end manufacturing industry offers high salaries to grab, and even more and more doctors have entered the industry and done research in the workshop.
At the same time, because the industry is on the rise, a large number of non-high-end technical talents in the market have not waited for headhunting bombing, and have also poured in.
Wei Xin mentioned that some chip companies are in the entrepreneurial stage and are now favored by capital. Traditional Internet technology talents want to join these companies on the cusp, can not participate in chip design, but can do software development related positions, so enter these fields to find job opportunities.
The seventh brother of the workplace planner told Shen Yan that last year, many fresh graduates hesitated to choose which offer related to the Internet factory and high-end manufacturing industry when consulting him on workplace planning, and finally gave up the offer of the Internet factory after measuring the cost performance and stability.
A large number of non-technical talents flowing out of the traditional Internet, such as marketing, brand public relations, business BD, etc., are also actively moving closer to high-end manufacturing.
After working for a year and a half, a large Internet factory lamented that "the traditional Internet has been rolled to the extreme", "colleagues leave work day by day, but the output has not improved", so at the end of 2020, choose to take the initiative to leave. "At that time, I was also doing cross-border e-commerce projects, and I deeply felt that advertising and traffic were becoming more and more expensive in entrepreneurship. At that time, I felt that the traditional Internet was about to hit the ceiling. ”
At the beginning of 2021, Cheng Dada began to think about the future career direction, and after consulting with seniors in the workplace, he found that almost everyone mentioned "scientific and technological innovation".
Because of "policy support and optimistic capital", she decided to enter the industry as soon as possible, "in the future, in this circle can it stand firm." Eventually, she entered a new energy electric aviation company.
She was very thankful for her choice, because this year, she found that many former colleagues and friends had jumped out of the traditional Internet and entered areas where she thought they had more potential. Some have entered the "Wei Xiaoli" (Weilai, Xiaopeng, Ideal), some have entered the traditional car companies, and some have entered the medical and health industry.
After Sharing His Career Change Experience on the Social Platform, Cheng Da found that there were not a few people with similar ideas, and fresh graduates with many internship experiences in large factories were anxiously asking which step they should start from if they wanted to switch to the new energy industry, what subdivisions of industries, and what opportunities for non-core technical personnel.
Looking for the next generation of the Internet, entering web 3, metaverse
Also seeing the shrinking of the traditional Internet, there is also a group of people flocking to Web3 and the metaverse in search of the next "utopia" of the Internet.
A former employee of an Internet factory who has been following Web3 last year has recently begun to hesitate whether to give up the job of Web2 and transform Web3.
Since 2022, the concept of Web3 has received attention. From the Web 1.0 era can only static one-way reading information, to the Web 2.0 era users can read, write information, participate in interaction, Web3.0 era, users can read and write information, and have data ownership, this concept emphasizes the realization of decentralization, is regarded as the "next generation of the Internet", following the metaverse after the popularity continues to rise.
The above-mentioned former employees of large factories said to Shen Yan: "On the one hand, we can see that Web3 is creating new value, and the attractiveness of some concepts is indeed very strong, on the other hand, Web2 is currently seriously homogenized and insufficiently innovative, and it has indeed encountered bottlenecks." ”
Some institutions predict that the market size of Web 3.0 in the application side will exceed 50 billion US dollars in 2022. Since the beginning of this year, VCs, including Sequoia Capital and A16z, the U.S. investment institution that invested in the Facebook team, have set up funds focused on the Web3 field. Take Sequoia Capital, for example, its fund focused on cryptocurrency investments, with funds ranging from $500 million to $600 million.
Corresponding to the VC frenzy of spending money, there are waves of hiring for startups in the Web3 space. A Web3 follower said that many startups offer high salaries and support remote work, which is quite tempting.
Under such circumstances, there are many traditional Internet users who want to take this opportunity to enter Web3.
Island owners from a Web3 infrastructure team told DeepIn that they noticed in their hiring this year that some Web2 talent was trying to transform.
The island owner believes that taking the infrastructure project of Web3 to B as an example, the current talent needed can be roughly divided into three categories: product, research and development and market. Among the talents transformed from Web2, due to the professionalism of the to B product, the original production and research direction of the talent, the transformation friction is relatively small, and the friction of the practitioners related to market operation is relatively large.
However, if it is a Web3 to C application, the traditional operation can play its own capabilities, and due to the need to deploy smart contracts, the friction of technology research and development will be relatively large.
It is worth noting that since the development of Web3 is still in its early stages, relevant companies have the experience and resources of the crypto circle when recruiting, or have a strong interest in Web3. But also because the industry is in its early stages, the future is also full of uncertainty.
When Web3 is absorbing talents, the metaverse-related fields have not stopped.
Although entering 2022, more and more people realize that the metaverse is difficult to land in the short term, so the concept has cooled down rapidly, but the exploration of related fields is still ongoing. In the overseas market, Meta and Apple in order to lay out the metaverse, the robbery war in the field of AR and VR is still continuing. Domestic manufacturers, including ByteDance and Tencent, are also accelerating the layout of VR and AR fields, focusing on competing for core algorithm talents.
Virtual social networking and virtual people are subdivisions that are ignited by the concept of meta-universe and develop rapidly, so they have attracted the attention of traditional Internet talents.
Metaversary virtual social-related products, such as gels, etc., have been launched one after another, behind which is the construction of one new team after another. Taking virtual idols as an example, in January 2022 alone, there were nearly 100 financing incidents in the virtual person field, and the cumulative financing amount exceeded 400 million yuan. According to Ai Media Consulting, the market size driven by virtual idols will exceed 300 billion yuan in 2022.
Cheng Zhuo, CMO of Xiangxin Technology, a virtual human field project, told Shen Yan, "This year, when recruiting at least low-end algorithm and art-related talents, it is much easier than last year. She explained, but the shortage of algorithm and art talents in the virtual human field, and the annual salary of this type of high-end talent in the industry is basically more than one million, the original number is small, and the job-hopping is more cautious, so it is very scarce.
As a result, a large number of mid-range and ordinary talents are pouring in because they are optimistic about the future of the metaverse. "Although I don't know when the metaverse will arrive, the outside world can feel that this is a thriving industry." Cheng Zhuo said.
Finding a job in 2022: Starting with accepting the gap?
2022 has just passed three months ago and is already thought to be a year of dramatic change. Internet people who have changed their direction want to enter the "high-potential" industry as soon as possible and become "seniors" as soon as possible.
Some people turn to high-end manufacturing, intending to seek innovation and change in stability. Some people are transforming Web3 in the hope of stepping on the "next generation of Internet" and gaining the opportunity for explosive growth.
But to change careers into a whole new industry, you need to find the right time, but also need to learn and adapt.
A Web3 practitioner who began to engage in blockchain four years ago believes that "2022 will be the window period for Web2 practitioners to enter Web3", because perhaps only in this year, the early stage of the field outbreak, the project side will accept trial and error, for the transformation of people more inclusive, or will enter the Red Sea competition stage, the threshold is bound to be raised.
Wei Xin often advises candidates, "If you keep changing industries and failing to accumulate core competencies, it is very detrimental to your career, so even if you want to change careers to a 'high-potential' industry, you must be cautious." ”
It is not easy to precipitate core capabilities in these "high-potential" industries. Liu Hong as a headhunter have feelings, "last year our company began to test the water autonomous driving track, after trying to find that the growth period of this track is longer than IT Internet 1-3 months, generally need more than half a year of precipitation period, in order to carry out the business", for headhunting, it takes a long time to understand the industry, familiar with the needs of enterprises, at the same time, there are fewer job candidates in this direction on the market.
Brother Seven concluded that a key word in the job market in 2022 is "gap". The high salary in the Past of the Internet Industry is a high salary driven by capital, not a person's real salary level, when the market returns to rationality, talents leave the platform of large factories, it is bound to learn to accept the gap in all aspects.
And going to the "high-potential" industry does not necessarily mean high salaries. Cheng Dada went from operating in a large factory to a new energy electric aviation industry to do business BD expansion personnel, at the cost of a 20% salary cut.
Not only salary, she found that the office environment and welfare benefits of high-end manufacturing-related enterprises are far inferior to those of traditional Internet manufacturers. Most of the high-end manufacturing-related enterprises are located in the suburbs of the city, or in remote industrial parks; in the past, the exquisite afternoon tea in large factories rarely appeared in high-end manufacturing enterprises.
Moreover, even if Internet people successfully enter the so-called "high-potential" industry, it does not mean that it is absolutely "safe".
After conducting a circle of surveys of new energy vehicle companies, Cheng Dada found that this industry must be an incremental market in the next 3-5 years, but most new energy vehicle companies are loss-making at present, and there are also layoffs and salary cuts. For example, the ideal car, one of the new car-making forces "Wei Xiaoli", was rumored to be laid off, although it was denied by the company, but some Internet people have been all over the place, interpreting it as "'squeezing bubble' after large-scale expansion".
With the blessing of capital hot money, although the Web3 project is booming, on a global scale, 2022 is still a year of "compliance", that is, it is necessary to wait for the clarity of the policy. At present, he is engaged in Web3 projects in China, mainly in the direction of going to sea, and the compliance and risk cannot be ignored.
Accepting the gap may become the norm for job hunting in 2022. Nowadays, the mentality of a group of traditional Internet people is that even if it is a salary cut, they must re-run and learn from new industries to seize the opportunities of the next era.
*At the request of the interviewees, Liu Hong, Wei Xin, Cheng Dada, Island Lord, and Seventh Brother are pseudonyms in the text.