Tech Planet (WeChat ID: tech618)
Wen | Yang Xiaohe
Cover source | IC Photo
In 2022, the most coincidental thing for Internet manufacturers is to start layoff plans.
Among them, there are tencent, Ali, Baidu's innovative business cuts, and there are also cases of optimization of the whole system such as Meituan, Didi, Byte, and JD.com. Compensation means such as N+1 are only temporary compensation for laid-off employees. In the future, the trajectory of many people will inevitably change.
In the context of the big layoffs, because Internet companies have locked or even reduced the HC (staffing), they are laid off and then look at the opportunity, it is difficult to return to the big factory, and many small and medium-sized enterprises and traditional enterprises, the salary and welfare benefits are also quite large. Wandering, helpless, and even not knowing how to pay social security next month is a true portrayal of most of the laid-off employees of large factories.
Among these people, there are also a small number of employees who have made plans to "in case they are laid off" earlier. They were originally making plans for the cruel 35-year-old crisis of the Internet, exercising their business capabilities outside of their own work, and quietly came up with the idea of starting a business. Not wanting everything to be disrupted by this wave of Internet layoffs, they also need to rush to deal with the challenge of social survival.
Zhang Liang is a typical example of this wave of layoffs in large factories, he decided to start a business independently, and became a member of the entrepreneurial population that accounted for 38% of the "35-year-old factory people's work direction" in pulse statistics, that is, that part of the future is not willing to be a member. At the same time, Zhang Liang also admitted frankly, "Although I have been preparing for leaving for 5 years, I am still very flustered." ”
Project branding, commercialization, and finding financing are all new topics for him. Sitting in front of Tech Planet, he told why he was laid off, his three entrepreneurial experiences in SaaS, homestay and online ride-hailing in the past 5 years, and how these preparations helped him grow.
The following is Zhang Liang's readme:
Unexpected entrepreneurial experience: from developing a SaaS system to investing in a homestay
7 and a half years ago, I joined the "B" in BAT from Sina Finance, and at that time, the abbreviation of "B" was Baidu, and there was no objection in the industry. It's just that the vigorous rise of the mobile Internet still makes Baidu feel anxious.
I didn't think about it so much at the time, anyway, Sina's salary is relatively low, Baidu can rise by 60%, which is already attractive enough for me. Of course, there are also "adjustments" in the middle, I first interviewed Du Xiaoman, and then I came to glutinous rice.
In 2014, O2O also happened to be the outlet, and glutinous rice was also a key project of Baidu Group. I am also full of enthusiasm and look forward to doing a good job in this business. At that time, we did an open platform, one end linked merchants, one end linked consumers, after all, Baidu has a lot of traffic, can build its own ecology is very powerful.
After joining, I was responsible for the membership system, and it was this business that allowed me to experience a business process. At that time, I thought that we should empower the merchant from the aggregation payment, so I made a scan code payment product, and then jointly did marketing with the merchant.
My director also felt that it was more reasonable and supportive of me. However, the scruples of large manufacturers are still more, and BAT's payment products are reluctant to access other homes. And at that time, the glutinous rice was too turbulent, and the director above me changed 6 times a year, and many things could not be pushed down. But I believe that this system is very meaningful, I made this system into a SaaS service, printed a number of leaflets, and then promoted more than 10 restaurants near Lishuiqiao in Beijing, but everyone was too repulsive to strange sales, forced me to find a friend who opened a restaurant, a merchant in Xiamen to try this system.
This set of products, at that time Xiamen friends feedback effect is not bad. But the individual innovation that is detached from the ecology is meaningless, and now there are similar perfect products such as zan and "let's start the class".
And this system also has an episode, at that time Baidu had a hacking competition, I signed up for this product, and then the entire project of glutinous rice was gone, and this system was useless. However, Tencent happened to have a WeChat entrepreneurship festival, and I spent 9.9 yuan to register a company. This company has remained in the present and has become a testing ground for my various businesses.
During this period, due to the unstable content of the work and the lack of concrete results, my salary increased by only 10%. I wasn't discouraged, after all, Baidu's mobile pressure is very high, a lot of things need wolf work, and I turn around and enter a new project.
After that, I joined the Baidu App department and was responsible for the recruitment business of HandBai. Many people who do not understand Baidu, will certainly be surprised that Baidu has also done recruitment, in fact, its model is more complicated, the front end is a cooperation model at the beginning, connected to 58 the same city, catch up with the network, the people's network and other links, they give us data, and then we show it to the website, and then the user clicks on which position, jump back to the website that provides the corresponding position.
This model Baidu provides limited services, can only simply charge a little service fee or advertising fees, and then Baidu is determined to do it itself, the advantage of doing it itself is to eat the profits of the entire industry. However, after the production, the content is not good enough, and it is difficult for users to stay and use the service, and at the same time, the ecological players are gradually not cooperating with us.
After we did it ourselves, the cost of buying recruitment data in a month was 30 million, and then coupled with the service and operating costs, it was difficult for the revenue to cover the cost. I worked very hard at that time, and I often left work at 1 o'clock. The project withered day by day, and the pressure was very high but I didn't know what to do in the future.
The only fortunate thing is that the house I bought in Tongzhou in 2009 was won with a down payment of 80,000 yuan. Later, Tongzhou soared all the way, and at that time it had risen to more than 20,000 per square meter.
Buying a house made me realize the importance of investing, so I looked around for properties with growth value. I then invested in 3 homestays, and in 2021, Beijing began to supervise the homestays particularly strictly, so I let one of them live with my parents and rented out one, and only one is currently operating.
This homestay is still in operation, at that time I saw a house in Gubei Water Town, just 1 million. This house is only a few hundred meters away from the ticket office of Gubei Water Town, and it is said that it is the only homestay in the country with a scenic residential building, and it also has a homestay license. After buying it, I didn't have time to take care of it specifically, and entrusted a local housekeeper who was responsible for reception and cleaning. When it is not a major holiday, four or five hundred accommodation fees, 200 yuan is drawn to the housekeeper.
The income of the homestay is not particularly high, but for me, he can generate Beijing settlement points. I hardly need to put in the effort, and it's a decent investment.
Speaking of returning to work, although Baidu's recruitment business has been suspended, Baidu's autonomous steps in various fields have not stopped, real estate, medical care, games, finance, etc., Baidu has thought about doing it itself. Due to the poor recruitment business, I was later transferred.
Return to the "old bank" to do fund business
At the time of the transfer, Baidu's financial team was short of people, and I was very interested in finance, so I went without hesitation. But when I went, I found that the work was not what I imagined, and the work done by our technical team was too basic, and the things I did felt like I did 10 years ago.
10 years ago, I did finance and college entrance examination business at Sina, and I know a lot of products and technologies. In Baidu as a financial product manager, in fact, the entry time is later than me, the relevant experience is not as rich as me, it is my junior. He was more wary of me, and many projects did not call me, and slowly the two of us did not communicate much.
Of course, the project still has to be done, in the past Baidu in the financial field is to develop intelligent data templates, directly display the data of partners, and so he wants to do business closed loop, he needs to buy data, and then do in-depth product development. The data cost of more than 10 million a year is not high, and the biggest problem is actually the license.
Baidu's stock trading license has not been discussed for so many years, and fund sales are recently negotiating with a licensed company in Guangdong. Foreign exchange, futures, precious metals, etc. have not been done, which require policy approval. At present, these services can only generate some advertising costs, and the overall progress has not met expectations.
Finance is not a very smooth business, in fact, I have a successful experience, I first did this set of funds in Sina, Sina was originally the first platform to sell funds on the Internet in China, and then it did not succeed, because I did not want to invest money, and the cost of 4 million a year did not want to invest. The manager of Sina Fund later went to Ali to do Tianhong Fund, and the influence of this product is still quite large.
However, the current Sina Fund uses that technical solution, which we developed at that time. Technically, I don't think I have a problem with myself. Since then, the projects I have done on my own have also verified the feasibility of my technology and solutions.
During this period, I also began to try a third venture, and in the Spring Festival of 2019, I found that the fund had a big opportunity to rise. So during the Spring Festival holiday at home, 6 days developed a product that predicted the rise and fall of the fund.
This product makes me quite a sense of achievement, just when the stock market fell for a while, I issued a prediction that the bull market will come in the circle of friends, everyone is incredible, and then many people in the circle of friends commented that there is no bull market foundation, it is a variety of rebuttals.
Sure enough, from 2019 onwards, a wave of magnificent ChiNext rising market, I myself also made a lot of money. Indeed, through the observation of fund data, it can reflect some volatility in the stock market. Because now the fund is also the main force in the market, if the batch fund is acting like this, in fact, you can find some signs, and this product is not so complicated.
After being laid off this time, I didn't want to find a job. Ready to develop this product well, do the fund big data prediction. I believe that this market is still quite large, at present, 80% of the domestic investment population plays stocks, and in the United States 90% of people play funds, but also invest in stocks, its market funds account for the majority, I believe that the domestic market will also form a fund This kind of stable investment is dominant.
This is consistent with my previous thinking of doing online ride-hailing, to conform to the general trend of the market. I used to commute to and from work to run a hitchhiker, and then the hitchhiker was shut down, and I didn't do this business. At that time, my friend told me that the express train can also set the route, which is not much different from the hitchhiking, so I often run the express list later. After all, now everyone plays online car-hailing, most of them choose to be fast, so that they can earn more pocket money.
Reflections on being cut, reflections on career planning
During my time at Baidu, I worked diligently for 7 and a half years, and now that I have been laid off, I have thought a lot about it.
I have ideas in my work, and these several startups are actually trying to do a good job. But I don't know much about some of the rules in the workplace, for example, I didn't follow the leader, and my earliest leader in Baidu also rose to a very high position. In addition, the Internet industry, objectively speaking, technology accumulation is not so important, and project achievements are more critical.
For example, we old employees, what we do, and graduate two or three years is actually not much different, because the main thing is not like Huawei and other companies, you may be biased towards the underlying business, this kind of more and more fragrant. In recent years, the Internet has been doing more application-oriented products, and what it needs is just a little thing, there is not much accumulation. So you say that there is not much difference between working for more than ten years and working for two or three years.
I have always been at the grassroots level in Baidu, and the salary is OK, so when the entire Internet "cold wave" hit, we were the first to be cut. The compensation given is "N + one month leave + half a month bonus". This kind of layoff calculation method is actually not the same as N+1, the former calculates social security annual leave, which is also a small experience. The compensation is not bad, but because the resignation option is abstained, more than 750 shares are invalidated, and the remaining half is sold at 150 yuan / share, and more than 500,000 are obtained.
No nostalgia, no complaints, after this cut, it also gave me the opportunity to think about the future development.
From an investment point of view, the future of the US stock market may also enter a bear market cycle, because the Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates, the market value of Chinese stocks will not pick up significantly in a short period of time. Domestic Internet companies will not engage in large-scale innovation in the short term, and maintaining the performance of the main business is the main direction.
This is also the main reason why I don't plan to enter the Internet business again. However, I am more optimistic about the future development of the domestic investment environment, and resident investment will become more and more common. At present, everyone believes in star fund managers, in fact, data products can also predict some trends.
I recently started promoting this product through new media, and many people have come to me to buy the product. Now the pricing of this product is relatively low, as long as a few tens of yuan, the future is ready to increase to hundreds of yuan or even thousands of yuan. I think this forecast product, the future market value can be 100 million. If it is successful, I will do private equity funds later, which is my plan for my future.
I'm 38 years old, I still have a lot to learn, and I feel quite challenging. For example, the fund big data prediction mini program, when submitting for review, also needs a lot of information and certification, and then a private equity manager told me that you should make an app, these will require a lot of cost, I have not decided.
But starting a business makes me feel more energetic. I feel that through this layoff, I finally have the opportunity to realize my dreams.
I think people should not bury their heads in work and think about their own development from time to time. I'm most thankful that I considered the 35-year-old crisis of Internet people very early. Although the cut was made in a hurry this time, it was not without direction, and it was also a fortunate thing.
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