The shrinking year-end bonus persuades e-commerce people: the annual income is less than one-third, and hundreds of thousands of bonuses become a bubble

Source of this article: Times Finance Author: Xu Xiaoqian

Source: Figureworm Creative

The lottery of the year-end bonus touched the sensitive nerves of a group of workers. It was previously reported that Evergreen Shipping paid employees an extra 52 months' salary as a year-end bonus, and then there were rumors in the game circle that Mihayou employees had up to 108 months' salary for the 2022 year-end bonus.

The excitement is someone else's, and the news about the discount of the year-end bonus or even the cancellation has spread in the e-commerce circle.

The first to spark public opinion discussion is Southeast Asian e-commerce giant Shopee. Some employees posted in Pulse that the company's internal email said that the year-end bonus was greatly discounted, and performance B could only get 0.5 months at the end of the year, B+ took 1.5 months, and A took 2-3 months. This plan caused dissatisfaction among a large number of Shopee's employees, "The company is too disrespectful to talent, and it chills the hearts of insiders." ”

The same scene also happened to e-commerce person Meina. A month ago, the company's founder sincerely apologized to hundreds of employees for the company's poor performance and inability to issue year-end bonuses. Meina has been in the e-commerce industry for more than 3 years, and this is the first time she has encountered such a situation.

"Although I know that the business is not good this year, there are many employees who have a glimmer of hope." For them, after the busy New Year Festival, the moment the year-end bonus arrives represents that the year's work has not been in vain.

"At the annual meeting, the department director and project leader have been vaccinated, so that everyone should not expect too much, and the year-end bonus is at most the same as last year." An employee of an e-commerce small and medium-sized factory told Times Finance.

Lowering expectations is the common mentality of e-commerce people towards year-end bonuses. After more than ten years of rapid growth, the e-commerce industry has entered a period of stable development, and under the background of the slowdown in the growth of the two e-commerce giants, the shrinkage and cancellation of the year-end bonus have become self-help measures for e-commerce companies in the face of the cold winter.

Annual income fell by a third, and plans to renovate new homes were put on hold

In fact, the year-end bonus was already within Mina's expectations.

As a middle and senior executive of the company, she knows a little about the profitability of various departments of the company. "The price increase of raw materials and logistics continues, and even the departments that have been profitable for many years have shown signs of loss." In order to further reduce expenses, the company set its sights on the packaging box: eliminating the product introduction card in the package, it can save at least 1 cent in costs.

However, Mina also understood the company's decision. In November last year, due to the impact of the epidemic across the country, thousands of orders in warehouses could not be shipped, followed by chain reactions such as user refunds and expired goods. Due to the delay in solving the logistics problems of Double 11, the company did not dare to devote all resources to the Double 12 promotion.

Meina's company is located in the local e-commerce park, and two years ago, she could see trucks passing by through the company's glass windows every day, but since December this year, the park has simply closed the side doors due to reduced traffic.

The impact of the cancellation of the year-end bonus continues, and some employees have the idea of leaving. During the past few days at work, Meina observed that most of her colleagues were dejected at their desks, some employees had taken annual leave in advance, and there were many vacant places in the office.

Mina calculated that excluding the year-end bonus and extra bonuses, her income in 2022 shrank by nearly a third. According to Meina's plan, she was originally going to use the year-end bonus for new house decoration, but due to a gap of nearly 100,000 yuan, this idea had to be shelved.

"The company's HR talks about cost reduction and efficiency improvement every day, and most employees have a hunch that the year-end bonus will be greatly discounted." According to the regulations of previous years, ordinary employees can generally get 1-3 months of year-end bonuses, and most employees can rely on year-end bonuses to return blood.

According to Xiaoxiao, her e-commerce department has sales that must be achieved every month, and the completion index of sales is linked to employee performance, and the performance of each month is tied to the year-end bonus. In 2021, the company's e-commerce business is in a period of rapid development, and colleagues in the department are like chicken blood, as long as they tiptoe every month.

In 2022, the growth curve that made the department feel excited became much smoother, and the company deliberately reduced the number of department personnel, and Xiaoxiao voluntarily offered to leave three months ago.

"The company's HR generally suppresses performance, and no more than 10% of employees should get a 3-month year-end bonus." Xiaoxiao said to Times Finance.

Huge year-end bonuses belong to only a few

The shrinkage and cancellation of year-end bonuses are not unrelated to the growth bottleneck of the entire e-commerce industry. On Double 11 this year, Ali did not disclose GMV figures for the first time, but only said that "the transaction size is the same as last year"; JD.com replaces sales data with "creating new records" and "creating new results"; Shopee has experienced a year of ups and downs, and under the influence of plummeting stock prices, station closures, layoffs and many other influences, the shrinkage of year-end bonuses has become an established fact.

Even TikTok, which has been soaring all the way, has hit a growth ceiling. According to a late report, Douyin conducted multiple tests in the first half of 2022 and found that once the e-commerce content displayed by Douyin exceeded 8%, the user retention and user usage time of the main site would be significantly negatively affected.

Alibaba's financial report for the third quarter of 2022 showed that China's retail commercial revenue was 131.222 billion yuan, down 1% year-on-year, falling into a weak state. In the same period, JD.com's self-operated e-commerce revenue reached 197 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of only 6%.

Wang Xiao is a purchasing staff of a leading e-commerce manufacturer, and in his impression, the year-end bonus of the e-commerce manufacturer is not generous, even if it is in the period of rapid growth of the company's business, it can only ensure that the year-end bonus does not shrink, rather than overpay the bonus. The annual bonus of hundreds of thousands of yuan is only a rare case, most employees have to face harsh assessment indicators, Wang Xiao heard from many colleagues that this year's high-performance quota will be further reduced.

"Ordinary employees only have a two-month year-end bonus, and in the first three years, the company's year-end bonus is only one month. It was originally planned to raise the year-end bonus to 3 months in 2022, but in 2023, the middle and senior management will face a collective salary cut, so it is better not to have expectations. Wang Xiao said to Times Finance.

Coinciding with the life cycle of project development, the high year-end bonus of technical personnel only occurs at the peak of project development.

Li Chao is an algorithm engineer at a leading e-commerce company, and one year, he handled a new project of page algorithm optimization, and by the end of the year, the core data of the project had increased by 12 times. In return, Li Chao received a year-end bonus of nearly 500,000 yuan, provided that his basic salary could reach 50,000 yuan per month, far higher than the monthly income level of ordinary employees.

However, the number of patrons of the huge year-end bonus was very limited, and after bidding farewell to the peak period of project growth, Li Chao's year-end bonus fell back to the normal level.

"Now that the e-commerce industry is becoming more and more traditional industries, employees have to accept the changes brought about by the end of the dividend period and the decline in consumption." Meina said to Times Finance.

(The interviewees in this article are pseudonyms.) ）