None of the big Internet manufacturers have been spared, and new business has become the hardest hit area for layoffs.
Affected by the epidemic, many industries are facing a sluggish situation, with declining performance, declining earnings, and even causing huge losses.
On April 15, Meituan opened a new round of large-scale layoffs. Prior to this, the topics of "Ali layoffs", "Tencent layoffs" and "JD.com layoffs" were on the Weibo hot search in March. Tencent cut 10% to 30% of employees, and Ali laid off 30% of employees.
More than halfway through April, more than 20 internet manufacturers such as ByteDance, iQiyi, Ctrip, Kuaishou, Baidu, Xiaomi, and Didi were laying off employees.
According to zhaopin's survey statistics, in 2021, 49.9% of the respondents' companies are laying off employees. What should have been a talent season for enterprises to recruit talents has become the graduation season for employees of major Internet companies.
In 2022, Dachang is mired in layoffs.
01
Layoffs are also crazy
There are a large number of anonymous posts in the chat section of the US group, sharing their feelings of "graduation" or "possible graduation", and the layoffs have reached 10%-20%.
The current round of Layoffs by Meituan is the largest in the company's two years, and the layoffs involve almost all business units.
However, this layoff is not without a trace. In March, a few employees found that the attendance time was locked and the employees could not see it. Some people also said that at that time, the individual school city space was notified that there should be no work content, the space authority should be sorted out, and all the content should be placed in the public space. In addition, an attendance system was developed without limiting the clock-in time.
In addition to layoffs, Meituan also froze its staffing and suspended recruitment.
As for the reasons for this layoff, in addition to the known epidemic situation, supervision and other factors, in the short term, around May of the calendar year is the season of the US group's salary adjustment, and the layoffs at this time may also take into account the cost factor.
According to Meituan's 2021 annual report, the cash and cash equivalents and cash reserves at the end of the period exceeded 100 billion, and if the loss surface is no longer expanded (including the 3.44 billion yuan fine of last year's anti-monopoly law), then Meituan can still support more than ten years.
At Tencent's annual meeting at the end of 2021, Ma Huateng took the initiative to mention the topic of winter and layoffs.
The "goose factory" that has always been generous is the choice of countless young people, and compared with other Internet manufacturers, Tencent is one of the best developed Internet companies. As the first echelon of the Internet, "stability" is the biggest reason for everyone to choose it.
Tencent's total number of new employees in 2018 was 10,000, while the number of employees increased by 30,000 in 2021. In the nearly 20 years since Tencent was founded, the total number of employees has only 50,000, but in the past three years, this number has doubled to more than 100,000.
Ma Huateng believes that Tencent's personnel inflation is serious, the efficiency is not high, and many of the adjustments have not been adjusted.
In 2022, Tencent is no longer "stable".
Tencent Group began to lay off employees for the second time, ma Huateng led by example, and the amount of compensation fell by about 24.9% year-on-year.
This round of adjustment involves business streamlining, organizational integration and personnel layoffs, and the six BGs (business groups, business groups and other organizational structures) are involved. The edge business was shut down, some teams were dismantled and reorganized, low-star employees were laid off, and a large number of departments suspended recruitment. It is reported that Tencent has laid off 6,000 employees this time.
"At that time, the school recruited a lot of offers, and Tencent gave the lowest, but it still chose Tencent."
"My social recruitment is also the lowest given by Tencent, but it still comes."
"I came in with a pay cut..."
After being laid off by Tencent, an employee wrote his feelings in the circle of friends: "I have been in the company for so many years, and I have never seen such a layoff. ”
At the same time as Tencent, the news of the big layoffs was also reported by Alibaba.
In March this year, some Alibaba employees revealed on the workplace social platform Pulse that "Alibaba is about to start a new round of layoffs, its MMC business group layoffs of 20%, and other departments also have indicators."
According to public information, the total number of employees at Alibaba in 2021 more than doubled compared with 2019, reaching 251462.
Sources who know Alibaba said that Alibaba will lay off more than 15% of the total number of employees, about 39,000 people, specific to which department, there is also a general direction.
Just recently, Ali's Dharma Academy plans to lay off employees, and it is expected that one-third of its employees will be transported to the society.
Also sending talents to the society is JD.com. On the layoffs, JD.com called it a "graduation."
The former Jingdong "brothers" did not think that one day they would receive a letter that read, "Happy graduation, congratulations on successful graduation from Jingdong!" Thanks for being with you all the way! "The layoff notice.
According to JD.com's laid-off employees, JD.com's layoffs were very sudden, and employees needed to successfully leave within 10 days after receiving the notice. Employees are not even given a buffer period to find a job.
In addition to hasty layoffs, JD.com laid off as many as 30%. At the end of March this year, Jingdong's internal employees revealed that Jingdong is making large-scale layoffs, and there are a large number of employees waiting for the resignation procedures in the staff service center of Building 1 of the Jingdong headquarters building, and the number line in a single day is more than 1,000.
According to statistics, from July 2021 to mid-March 2022, Tencent, Alibaba, ByteDance, Meituan, Pinduoduo, Kuaishou, Baidu, JD.com, NetEase, Weibo, Bilibili, Ant Group and 12 companies have left the total number of departures of 216,800 people, the total number of recruits is 295,900, and the net increase in employment is 79,100, of which 11 companies have recruited more than the number of departures.
02
The new business segment is the hardest hit area
In the face of layoffs, the response of major factories is "business optimization" and "business adjustment".
In fact, whether it is Tencent, Alibaba, or Meituan, JD.com and other large manufacturers, layoffs almost involve this wave of layoffs involving grass-roots employees, middle-level and high-level employees.
The layoffs of JD cover a number of business sectors such as Jingxi, JD International, JD Retail, JD Logistics, JD Technology, etc., and the proportion of layoffs is mostly between 10% and 30%. The proportion of layoffs in the individual secondary departments of Jingdong's retail commercial promotion division and technology and data center is 90% and 50%, and the commercial and terminal increase of the secondary department of JD Health Pharmaceutical Beijing Mining is about 70%.
What's more, entire business units were cut down. The Jingxi business sector is the "hardest hit area" for layoffs, and the proportion of layoffs in the Sichuan Theater, Jiangxi Theater and Guangdong Theater marked as a first-level department is 100%, and the operation center is 10%-30%.
Tencent PCG (platform and content business group, business including QQ, QQ space, Tencent Music, etc.) of its social e-commerce products Xiao geypin business almost dissolved.
Pinduoduo, which is regarded by the industry as Tencent's version of Taobao and Incubated by Tencent itself, has stopped operating at 00:00 on February 23, 2022, and will stop all services from April 30.
For the suspension of operation of Xiao ge Pin, Tencent responded, "Based on strategic focus considerations, PCG will adjust the new business Xiao Ge Pin in the internal incubation, and the relevant teams will re-select matching positions within the group through the 'living water' system." ”
In fact, this business has become the hardest hit area for Tencent employees to leave, and it is also one of the reflective dimensions of Tencent's president's concept that "we have also optimized the cost of loss-making businesses in order to maintain healthier growth".
The rapid expansion of Tencent's employees in the past three years has been mainly driven by the expansion of PCG and CSIG (cloud and smart industry business group, which is tencent's TO B business), which also have the largest proportion and absolute number of layoffs. It is reported that PCG and CSCG cut 4,000 and 2,000 jobs respectively.
Since the beginning of the year, the CSIG management team has repeatedly communicated internally that it is necessary to concentrate resources on the highest priority things, and cost control has also been raised to a high position, with more emphasis on "healthy" development rather than "rapid" development.
In the three years since the establishment of the CSIG, the size of the personnel has increased several times, but the market demand has not exploded accordingly. The background related to this is that Tencent Cloud has been in a state of loss, with a decline in profit margins and even negative profits. Under the CSIG Industrial Internet branch, the corresponding teams are facing more layoffs after the smart education, smart retail, transportation and financial businesses that originally performed well are facing major changes in the industry or facing supervision.
The game business that has renewed Tencent's life has attracted much attention from the outside world. According to Tencent's fourth quarter and annual results for 2021, the growth of Tencent's domestic game business is slowing down, achieving revenue of 128.8 billion yuan for the whole year, an increase of only 6% year-on-year.
According to data disclosed by Tencent, the game time of domestic minors has dropped to 0.9%, and the total length of time has dropped by 88% year-on-year.
The future of increasing revenue from games is being considered.
On December 23, 2021, Baidu broke the news that almost all of the more than 300 people in its MEG (mobile ecological business group) game business line were laid off, and the live broadcast business was laid off by 90%.
Subsequently, Baidu people confirmed that the MEG department did have layoffs, mainly because the business development situation was not ideal, and there were small-scale adjustments in individual businesses such as education and games, involving a small amount of personnel turnover.
As Baidu's edge business, the current Baidu chooses to shrink the front, on the one hand, layoffs can reduce costs, on the other hand, cutting off some uncompetitive business sectors can focus more on the main business and reduce investment risks.
The common denominator of Internet companies is to expand new business through profitable business, and constantly compete in the race. However, under the situation of disappearing policy dividends and demographic dividends, the expansion of new businesses cannot go on. The direct reason for the large number of layoffs in new businesses such as the lifestyle group buying business, which also expanded the taxi business and the community group buying business, came from huge losses.
According to the 2021 Meituan financial report, according to its three major business segments, catering takeaway, in-store, hotel and tourism, and new business and others, in 2021, the catering takeaway business brought Meituan 96.3 billion yuan of revenue and a profit of 6.1 billion yuan; the operating income of the store, hotel and tourism was 32.5 billion yuan, with a profit of 14 billion yuan; the operating income of the new business segment was 50.2 billion yuan, with a loss of 38.4 billion yuan.
It is understood that the three major business sectors of the US group are not the same, about 5% of the home business group, about 10% of the store business group, and the proportion of layoffs in the new business sector is relatively high, of which the "fast buy excellent" (fast donkey, Meituan preferred, Meituan buy vegetables) layoffs of about 20%. Meituan's preferred business group laid off nearly 50 percent of its workforce, and in addition to layoffs, the business unit plans to evacuate its original office building in June this year.
The life service sector has become the hardest hit area for Ali's layoffs, including local life businesses such as Ele.me and Koubei, as well as Fliggy Division.
The latest financial report data shows that in Q2-Q4 2021, the operating loss of Ali's local life is close to 24 billion yuan, and the loss in a single quarter is close to 8 billion. It is understood that the catering business of word-of-mouth has shrunk from 40 cities directly operated in the past to 11 cities, focusing on first- and second-tier cities, and the rest of the cities will also be transformed from direct operation to service provider model.
03
Compensation for " n "
According to relevant understanding, most of the Internet manufacturers are using N + 1 compensation, before many education and training industry layoffs are also using this form of compensation, laid off employees are still relatively recognized.
So what is N+1 compensation? The so-called N refers to economic compensation, and employees can receive an additional month's compensation when they are laid off for each full year of work. One in N plus one refers to the need to pay an extra month's salary to the laid-off employees because the company did not notify employees 30 days in advance.
The layoffs of JD.com failed to notify employees within 30 days in advance, so JD.com will implement an "N+1" compensation plan for employees.
Baidu Game's layoffs offer two options for severance compensation, with employees who choose "N+1 compensation" requiring their jobs by December 30, 2021, and employees who selecting "N compensation" leaving before January 31, 2022.
According to Baidu's previous plan, the company will give compensation to the laid-off employeeS N+1 or N+0.5, and require employees to give a reply within a time limit, otherwise Baidu will unilaterally terminate the contract.
This plan caused great dissatisfaction among Baidu game employees, because the year-end bonus offered by Baidu is generally 16 salaries. However, in the compensation plan for this layoff, Baidu did not mention the 16 salary plan, only N+1 or N+0.5 compensation.
On April 13, Xiaoxia (pseudonym), a girl who was laid off by Baidu, and Baidu were unilaterally laid off after three months of unsuccessful termination negotiations, and finally paid the compensation amount of "N+1". Xiaoxia said that the vesting period of her employees' internal shareholding shares is may this year, and there are 12 days of annual leave. None of these were compensated at the time of termination.
According to the relevant provisions of the Employment Contract Law, if Baidu has fulfilled the pre-obligation of 30 days' written notice, then the 'N+1' economic compensation given is in line with the payment standards of the Labor Law.
There are also Tencent's laid-off employees on social platforms who said that the most correct decision is to stay in the big factory, be laid off, and then get compensation. "Looking at the amount of compensation is completely sad, not panicking at all."
Compared with other large manufacturers, Meituan's compensation is also "N+1". But there is no human touch that makes the US group highly criticized in the process of this layoff.
Many Meituan employees said on the Internet: "The Layoffs of the Meituan Are Very Vigorous, in order to prevent everyone from communicating and negotiating the group, today suddenly began a large-scale accumulation of talks, after the negotiation will be signed, after signing, let the computer leave the company." ”
More Meituan employees said that those who work overtime for the development of the company are treated like enemies. Not to mention what high compensation.
Every industry has a certain cycle. In recent years, the development of Internet enterprises has stalled, and the model dividend has gradually peaked. Can a big factory and its employees "break up" decently? Where should people leave the Internet factory?