Source: Visual China
Author 丨Lius Zhang Rui
Editor 丨 Kang Xiao
Produced by 丨Shenwang Tencent News Xiaoman Studio
"The position I hung up a year ago has recently begun to have frequent programmers to consult, which shows that the number of programmers looking for jobs recently is indeed increasing," Lin Yu told Deep Web.
Lin Yu is a middle-level AI unicorn company in China, a year ago in order to expand his business, he had released several positions to recruit programmers on the recruitment website, and no one was interested in it for a long time, but in the past month, more and more programmers consulted his position in private messages. His experience is just a microcosm of this year's "Gold, Silver and Four" recruitment season.
Talent flow is often an intuitive incision to judge the direction of the industry. When programmers, who are the cornerstone of the Internet, are also involved in the layoff storm, this may indicate that an era is coming to an end and a new cycle is being conceived.
In 1842, Ada Lovelace, the daughter of the famous English poet Byron, invented the first computer program for calculating Bernoulli numbers on an analytical machine, becoming the first programmer in history.
In the following 100 years, programmers gradually became the main drivers of the development of the technology industry from individual heroism geeks and hackers, and the scale of programs and systems with open source as the core also expanded rapidly. Behind the computer screen, they have shaped a new era with computer language.
"The Father of Antivirus Software" Wang Jiangmin, Jin Shan Qiu Bojun, Lei Jun, Ma Huateng, Li Yanhong, Ding Lei, Wang Xiaochuan, Zhang Yiming, Su Hua... These founders of computer, software engineering and other technologies have created the ultimate model for the growth path of programmers, they monetize the technology through code, and push the founded companies to the market.
The miracle created by the early generation of programmers has promoted the rapid rise of China's Internet and mobile Internet, and allowed them to complete the accumulation of personal wealth to a certain extent, and also made "entering the big factory" the goal of many programmers. That was their golden age.
The winds of the times are changing. With the adjustment of the Internet industry since the end of last year, the aura that originally surrounded the profession of programmer is dissipating.
In the past two months, Didi, Xiaomi, Baidu, JD.com, Byte, Ali, Tencent and other Internet manufacturers have reported layoffs, offering banners such as "cost reduction and efficiency increase", "fattening and thinning", "optimizing winter" and so on, and the programmer group is also among them.
Under the "cold winter", re-finding a job has become a dark cloud floating above the heads of Employees of Internet companies. The "darlings" of the old big factories have to accept the fact that job turmoil, options stocks are shrinking, and wages are falling.
Vanishing wealth
"When the stock price of (Baidu) was $350 last year, the total value of the stocks in his hands was more than 2.5 million yuan, and after leaving, the options were invalidated by half, and the rest had to be sold at $150, and finally less than 500,000 yuan," said Lin Hua, a programmer.
Lin Hua worked in Baidu for 7 years, in the latest adjustment of Baidu, Lin Hua gave up the transfer, chose to leave, got 8 months of salary compensation and half a month bonus, but due to the departure of 750 shares that did not expire, according to the price of 140 US dollars / ADS, Lin Hua's part of the unexpired options lost more than 100,000 US dollars.
The shrinkage of options and stocks has become a common "scar" for employees of large factories under the "Internet winter".
According to Oriental Wealth Choice data, as of March 11, Eastern Time, there were 111 Chinese stocks with stock prices falling by more than 80%, and 42 stocks with a decline of more than 90%. Didi, Huya, Wuxin Technology, iQiyi, Tencent Music, Vipshop, Shell, Bilibili, Pinduoduo and other companies fell by more than 80% in a year.
For the shrinkage of stocks and options of Internet companies, Yaoyao, who once gave up ali's position, is somewhat fortunate.
Yaoyao has worked in a traditional IT company for many years. In the summer of 2021, Yaoyao, who wants to jump out of her comfort zone, frequently logs on to the recruitment website to seek job opportunities in large factories. After comprehensive consideration, Ali gave the P7 rank and 1.3 million annual package the most competitive. However, of the 1.3 million annual package, 700,000 are stocks that will be unbanned according to the deadline given by the stock price at that time. Due to personal family reasons, Yaoyao eventually gave up Ali's position.
Ali's stock price has shrunk sharply since 2021 and is now more than 60% smaller than its 2021 high. Seeing Ali's current stock price, Yaoyao calculated an account, 700,000 shares shrank by 60%, and its annual salary for a year was less than the previous job.
"When the industry is growing at a high speed, the company is willing to recruit a group of experienced leaders with high salaries to lead the team and quickly bring up a business line, so it is willing to retain people with high salaries." But when the industry as a whole shrinks, the non-core business of burning money bears the brunt of it, and it is more important to ensure cash flow and profits at this time," Zhang Hua, who has done HR in large factories, told DeepNet.
For the logic behind the high-paying recruitment of large factories, Liu Qiang looked more thoroughly.
Liu Qiang worked in BAT for a while, and in 2019 went to a start-up company to do technical management. "When the startup team gives me a salary increase of more than 50%, or directly double, I personally wake up to whether my value matches such a high salary." Liu Qiang said.
Accepting the vanished "paper wealth" is only the first threshold faced by programmers, and in the process of reemployment, some optimized programmers have to face the dilemma of salary reduction.
When he heard the company's HR calmly tell him that "you are doing well, but we don't need this position", Liu Tong did not have too many waves in his heart. Liu Tong seems to have prepared for the company's layoffs at the end of 2021. For example, he has become accustomed to looking for clues about the real situation of the company's development from the science and technology financial news, even if the leaders declare that the company's development prospects are broad at the monthly meeting, Liu Tong is still skeptical.
Liu Tong's company is doing a big health industry. "Seeing the company's large losses and vague profit methods, especially in the Internet medical industry, the 'national team' has a large number of resources to enter, and it is difficult to make money quickly with a high threshold." Last year's listing failed, and I knew that I was not far from layoffs. Liu Tong told "Deep Web".
One clear sign is that attendance is getting more and more inward-volume. "Say it's 965, but it's still common to leave work at 9 p.m." Those colleagues who do not have enough attendance time will be named by the leader in the group and asked to "make up for the working hours". Later, some colleagues simply wrote their own code and remotely controlled the punch card.
After leaving the company, Liu Tong submitted some resumes on boss direct employment and lagou online, compared with the previous salary level, he has now accepted the reality of a 20% salary cut.
Also feeling the expectation of job-hopping employees to reduce their salaries is Liu Qiang. He believes that the so-called "salary cut" has returned to the normal level of the market.
In the current position, Liu Qiang himself will also do some recruitment work. In the past, the salaries of programmers from Toutiao, Kuaishou, and iQiyi were generally higher than 10-20% of the same level in the market, "We can't give that high, some people can accept salary cuts or translations, and some can't accept them." ”
The obvious feeling since 2022 is that those salary reduction candidates who did not dare to continue to follow up in the past, Liu Qiang felt that he could continue to talk.
For the adjustment of the entire industry, he is relatively optimistic, believing that most programmers have still caught up with the dividends of Internet development, "even if there is a business adjustment in major companies this year, but in general, the dividend period is still there, and there will be a return on doing things." ”
"Dancing" on the tip of the tide
"The work of a programmer is not so mysterious, simply put, the specialty of a programmer is to use code to achieve what you want", many programmers have explained their work.
Programmers' jobs are divided into various positions such as software development, database design, back-end development, and front-end development. Some programmers have made a very vivid analogy, the development of software is like building a building, the architecture is the general design of the building, decide what way to build; the database design is to build a building, to build a shelf, tie steel bars, support templates; back-end development is poured concrete, library, SDK is materials, can be used; front-end development is engaged in decoration; testing is to do acceptance of the building.
Source: Visual China
However, from the perspective of salary level, the salary level of programmers in large factories is significantly higher than that of operations, marketing and other positions.
If the company is considered to be a pyramid structure, then from the spire to the bottom layer is the market, operations, products, research and development. As a backstage research and development, it is the base and core of the company. The closer to the core, the higher the premium to the company, which has also become one of the underlying logics of the computer major, which has always been a popular major in college education.
Lin Yu, who graduated from a computer science major in 2012, felt this deeply. From a novice in the workplace to becoming the middle level of a unicorn company in the field of AI, Lin Yu has spent less than 10 years.
In 2012, Lin Yu, who had just graduated from school, entered the then hot Internet company and became a programmer in a business line. At that time, all the business lines of the Internet company were in a state of "full firepower". A detail that has impressed Lin Yu so far, "a year after joining the company, the company's stock price rose rapidly after the 'one-to-five' stock, and suddenly some million-dollar shareholders suddenly appeared around him."
However, Lin Yu, who has just been employed for more than a year, did not enjoy the dividends brought by this wave of "stock splitting", but instead encountered the ceiling of technological growth after a year.
"In the business line as a programmer, the main job is to cooperate with the market, operation, product to do technology research and development and improvement, basically in a state of small-step iteration, if there is no major breakthrough in the business line, programmers are easy to fall into screws, take the original experience to repair", want to break through the technical barriers Lin Yu decisively chose to leave.
In mid-2015, Lin Yu, who left his job, received offers from a number of Internet manufacturers and AI companies, based on technical and project considerations, Lin Yu chose an AI company that mainly does TOB and TOG business, which gradually ranks among the "FOUR LITTLE DRAGONS OF AI" in the following 5 years.
According to Lin Yu's recollection, at that time, when some programmers who had been gilded in large factories and then jumped to start-up companies, their salaries increased a lot. However, in Lin Yu's view, the premium of these salaries is not because of the improvement of their own technology, but the programmers at this time just happen to be standing at the top of the wave. At that time, it was a boom in double creation, and the tide of VC entrepreneurship was in full swing, and a large wave of hot money poured into the market.
"In addition to personal efforts and skills, this wave of programmers' coincidental choices under the tide of the times have also stepped on the beat of the times," Lin Yu sighed. Some programmers have laughed at themselves: this wave of hot spots and entrepreneurial waves is like an elevator that is rising rapidly, as long as you stand up, even if you don't do anything, you will rise to a certain height with the elevator.
At this time, Yang He, who stepped into the Internet industry, also felt that the rapid development of the company was driven by personal skills and salaries.
In 2015, Yanghe joined Didi's security department and was responsible for dealing with various information security issues. This year, Didi Kuaidi has just merged, and the sharp edge is beginning to bloom. In addition to taxis, Didi has lined up troops in various travel fields such as taxis, special cars, and hitchhiking, and constantly recruited technical talents to improve its algorithmic capabilities. The short-term effects of resource skewing are immediate. In that year, Didi's total annual orders exceeded 1.43 billion, and the number of registered users exceeded 250 million, and with the surge in orders, various problems also followed.
The systematic operation mode of start-ups in the period of rapid development drives each individual employee to summarize abstract working methods into reusable methodologies. Yang He believes that this is the fastest growing period of his career.
"At that time, the sense of pride was bursting," Yang He told DeepNet, "you can really feel that what you do can protect the safety of users and solve various problems they encounter in the process of using software." ”
In addition to feelings and sense of mission, Yanghe's salary is quite competitive among peers. In 2015, Didi gave Yang He an annual salary of 300,000, which he believes is at a medium level in technical posts, although he did not get options in the later stages, but this number and the company's development prospects are enough to attract young programmers to join, even if it is to be a springboard.
Compared with BAT manufacturers, some startups are paid more. A programmer at the back end of a large factory recalled that in 2014, the company's technical internship salary was 4,000 yuan, and some startups could give tens of thousands of yuan. In addition, the salary level of graduates of the big factory has risen by 40% in two years, and the programmer's senior earned 140,000 yuan per year when he recruited a bat in 2012, and his annual salary rose to 200,000 when he entered another BAT in 2014.
Every wave cannot be copied and traced back, and these high-paying stories of programmers first stopped in 2018. This year, with the gradual disappearance of online traffic and demographic dividends, the rapid growth of consumer Internet has become unsustainable, and more and more enterprises have begun to "replace the engine".
From the end of 2018 to 2019, Internet companies cut jobs and slimmed down. Baidu, Meituan, Didi and other layoffs are mostly around 10%. When the high growth is pressed the pause button, the salary cut naturally turns into the lingering anxiety and difficulty in the hearts of the programmers of the big factory.
35-year-old anxiety and "Moore's Law"
The big factory has always had a metaphor for the anxiety of 35 years old, especially in the software research and development industry that relies on brain power and learning ability to eat.
"Many large factories have grade requirements for job seekers over the age of 35, P7 before the age of 30, and P8 before the age of 35. At a certain age, only at a certain level, it is possible to enter the shortlist again," Zhang Hua, who has done HR in a large factory, told The Deep Web.
According to the "2019-2022 Programmer Job Search Talent Age Distribution Map" compiled by the Lagou Recruitment Data Research Institute, it is shown that from the perspective of the age of talent demand, programmers aged 20-30 have more career opportunities, but the industry's demand for 30-40-year-old talents has increased, which means that programmers can complete the "mid-life crisis" with excellent professional skills.
Source: Lagou Recruitment Data Research Institute
"Layoffs are a regular financial practice for a company. Many companies will significantly expand their recruitment and seize the market when completing financing and expanding the market; on the contrary, when the tide falls, the market tightens or the pressure on profits increases, they must consider cutting off the business line of burning money, streamlining the establishment, and optimizing cash flow to prepare for the winter. ”
But that's not fundamental to the anxiety of a 35-year-old programmer. Programmers' anxiety stems more from their own positioning of themselves, positioning themselves as code farmers, and learning computers is to find a stable job.
"The starting point is not right, programmers are not a stable profession." Lin Yu thinks.
From 2012 to 2017, mainstream development languages and frameworks evolved all the time, big data, virtualization, cloud computing, microservices, every few years there will be a hot word to become the industry trend. The industry and the market demand for programmer skills have also changed several times.
In 2012, the mobile Internet has just emerged, and Android and IOS developers have become the fragrant food of Internet companies; after artificial intelligence and AI are on fire in 2016, programmers who master machine learning have become the object of competition by big manufacturers. Now the tide of machine learning has faded, and market demand has returned to normalcy.
The industry is iterating, the requirements are changing, and the skills that programmers need to master are changing rapidly. The difference is that as the Internet industry shrinks, the screening of programmers by large factories is more stringent.
In the era of barbaric growth of the Internet, Internet companies are very tolerant of job seekers' academic backgrounds. But now, academic qualifications and professional background have become important factors for enterprises to consider, and many technical positions require the recruitment of master's degrees to start.
On the developer community cnblogs, a software test engineer wrote that the change in the economic environment is only an external inducement, and the essential reason is that the talent structure and skill requirements of the software testing industry are in the stage of rapid change. The economic winter has only accelerated the arrival of this singularity.
"Jobs are cut, interviews are rejected, it's not scary, it's scary that the industry is changing dramatically and you're standing still.
In the eyes of many programmers in the dialogue of "Deep Web", the profession of programmer itself is changing rapidly, and it also follows Moore's Law, and the iteration cycle of many technologies is less than 18 months.
"The charm of the computer industry is that it develops fast enough, many open source software are free to obtain, as long as you want to learn, you can contact the leaders in this industry in some foreign industry websites, which is the charm of the industry, but it is also its poison." If programmers can't adapt to this change, they will go downhill and start to be anxious," many of the programmers interviewed explained to The Deep Web.
"Programmers are the largest group of craftsmen in existence," as Paul Graham, the "godfather of entrepreneurship" in Silicon Valley and founder of Y Combinator, once defined it. In his eyes, a good programmer needs not only superb skills, but also inspiration and learning.
According to Lin Yu, in addition to work, he will spend a lot of time browsing well-known programmer communities such as GitHub, Stack Overflow, hacker news, etc., to ensure the update and iteration of his knowledge reserves.
Lin Yu found a phenomenon in this round of recruitment, this wave of candidates' own quality is difficult to meet their business needs, "even with the aura of a large factory, but its code and thinking level is still stuck in a few years ago."
"The key is to position yourself, position yourself as a craftsman or a screw, a group of programmers, high-quality talents are always scarce, and the way to combat the anxiety of 35-year-olds has always been to learn," Lin Yu said.
After the high growth of the Internet economy recedes, it is clear who is swimming naked.
(At the request of the interviewees, Lin Yu, Zhang Hua, Liu Qiang, Liu Tong, Yang He, etc. are pseudonyms, and the author Sun Yu also contributed to this article)
Content produced by Tencent News shall not be copied and reproduced without authorization, otherwise legal responsibility will be pursued