After "graduating" from the big factory, young people have found a new way to make money

Cover source|Figureworm Creative

About a week ago, a news about "Byte female employees switching to selling fast food" went viral on a social platform.

She wrote: Leaving the company, I am so happy, every day is to buy vegetables, wash vegetables, cut vegetables, stir-fry, beat vegetables, wash dishes, no more daily, weekly, monthly, debriefing reports. This new life has received 11,000 likes and has become a veritable hit.

The trouble of female employees of Byte is not uncommon in most Internet companies.

In the past 10 years, Internet companies have connected consumers' food, clothing, housing and transportation with a mobile phone, and tens of thousands of programmers have used "996" style work to help entrepreneurs fulfill their dreams one after another.

In this process, the Internet company has become bigger step by step, the top few have exceeded 100,000 people, and the employees can fill 10 football fields in turn, and can eat 150 tons of food a day. However, when the demographic dividend and traffic dividend are exhausted, the development model of scale for growth is unsustainable, and the bloated giants have gone to fatten and thin. Over the past year, news of personnel optimization has come out almost every month. Taking Station B as an example, 340 million cash was spent on severance staff expenses in 2022 alone.

A large number of young people have re-entered the society because of "graduation", and the rest are physically and mentally exhausted in cumbersome PPT modifications, interpersonal games and the endless cycle of "996" work mode.

When the aura of big factories is gone, how do young people make a living. Around this topic, this time, Tech Planet interviewed several young people who left large factories to do small business, they were either laid off by large factories, or took the initiative to "leave", but no longer follow the rules to "go to work", is their common desire.

For these young people, in the big factories where growth is bottlenecked, the sense of value and achievement that work can bring is less and less, and the human touch is getting thinner and thinner. And the new round of large-scale language model AI entrepreneurship wave, without a few hundred million is impossible to enter the game, most ordinary people can only look up.

The "small luck" of doing your own small business, while it may be a break-even, is also a way to defend your own life.

Plunged into the pet track for half a year, and never wanted to return to the big factory

Originally worked for a mobile phone manufacturer in the southeast region, product manager

At the end of 2018, after returning from abroad, I worked as a product manager in a mobile phone company, and then jumped to a large factory to continue to be a product manager to serve the company's core products. After taking a few particularly intense projects, my body and mind had problems, and I already wanted to leave, but I hadn't decided what to do yet.

After leaving the factory half a year ago, I founded the pet baking brand "Oh Woo Pet Life Museum" in Shenzhen with friends I met because of pets.

Partners have always been freelancers and have a lot of ideas in entrepreneurship. She first proposed to try the pet industry. Because we own pets, we understand the consumption level of this group, and we can accompany our little pets every day. From my personal point of view, do it when you are young. Whether it succeeds or not, taking this step is better than not doing it.

We now have our own studio and will also cooperate with offline stores. The two of us handmade pet baked goods, pet treats, etc. by ourselves, and sold them in the form of online private domains. Tuoke mainly participates in some interesting and high-quality activities through offline. Because the pendant of pet baking has social attributes, it is still necessary to communicate face-to-face to be persuasive.

In half a year, "Oh Woo Pet Life Museum" has reached a state where it can have a certain profit, and the sales data has been growing and has improved. And the accumulation of customer sources reaches about 1,000 levels, but active users, and then there are repurchases, you need to screen for a few more rounds.

My partner used to be a florist, and he also did brand planning and event planning. Her and my work experience can be reused in entrepreneurial projects, and we just complement each other.

The transition from working as a worker to being a boss and starting a business is actually a good and bad. The good thing is that it is more free, and if it is bad, it is that the anxiety of entrepreneurship and work anxiety are different, and many things need to be done by yourself. "From zero to one" is actually very difficult.

Starting a business is also very tiring, especially when you first start researching products, you may have to work until two or three o'clock in the morning, or even four or five o'clock every day. Now the product is running smoothly, and the main energy is focused on expanding customers. Now it's harder to go out on weekends to set up stalls, and I basically go out every weekend. But cumbersomely, the body and mind are free. If I had to choose again, I wouldn't want to go back to the big factory.

Building a small garden out of personal hobby saved me from severe depression

Originally worked for Meituan, business operations

In March last year, I moved to a new position, which I had no experience in before, and the work was very difficult. At that time, the team had some interpersonal disputes, I didn't like to participate, and the whole person was in a very uncomfortable state. At first, I felt out of breath, but one day I fainted directly in the company, went to the hospital for examination, and was diagnosed with severe depression. Later, it was optimized.

I have always had a dream of building a garden, and when the epidemic in Shanghai was lockdown, I picked up this hobby because of chance. I also want to have my own chalet in the garden, like in a fairy tale. But please the master is very expensive, I will turn to Xiaohongshu, B station, and even go to YouTube, little by little, including how to hit the base, how to build the frame, how to waterproof and so on.

Slowly, I found that there are still many people who like me on the platform, and it may be that planting flowers is more healing than other themes, so it is easier to catch fire. And I found that I can also use this method to make money, and after accumulating a certain number of fans, more and more people began to find me to promote.

I will screen the brands myself, about 2 to 3 a month, maybe more during the e-commerce promotion. The brands are basically home appliances, such as floor scrubbers or yard cleaning machines. Recently promoted a scissors, a handmade product, because there are many things made by their own in their own garden.

Probably because of this garden, I was seen by more people. In addition to incubating my own account, I now have a lot of part-time jobs, such as helping friends shoot some promotional videos in the store, and recently filming a friend planning a wedding.

To be honest, I don't have a particularly clear idea for my account, and I'm hesitant to make it a regular job, because once I get to that point, there will be data anxiety. But because of this garden, my life is currently able to break even. Although there are often no weekends, the film is changed to two or three o'clock in the evening, which is more difficult than going to work before. But I'm not as tired as before, I'm quite happy.

I remember that after I came home from leave last year, I had been planting flowers, and my condition was getting better little by little. In April and May last year, the flowers were all blooming, and I already felt like a normal person.

Part-time job to the ceiling, resigned to be a workplace blogger selling classes to receive advertisements originally worked for ByteDance, HR

I have had several experiences in big factories. In the early days, I did search promotion in Baidu, and later did training at Byte. The biggest feeling in Byte is fast, because Byte previously implemented a bi-monthly OKR system, and I parachuted into a new business line, so I had to work with the team to quickly achieve from 0 to 1. After being laid off, I went to work for Meituan for a while.

When Byte goes to work, I am tired from work, so I eat a lot. After being laid off, the whole person was extremely anxious, could not eat, and lost 20 pounds in a month.

After these experiences, I feel that I basically know where the ceiling of part-time work is, and I want to come out and trade directly with the market. I wanted to go to Hangzhou to see e-commerce, at that time, I calculated that the monthly rent was almost 2,000, plus the meal may be three or four thousand, then I can leave the company if I earn enough 20,000, in fact, I also did it.

I now mainly rely on being a workplace blogger on the platform, building my own IP, and then picking up advertisements or selling my services. In terms of advertising, it mainly promotes digital products, 3C, office goodies, etc. In terms of service, because I was born in HR before, I will help users clarify what to do at what time based on my past experience and knowledge, and build his personal brand system and course system, about 399~599 yuan a time.

Being a workplace blogger, the advantage is that the threshold is low, everyone can say two sentences, if there is a large factory or have a very good work experience endorsement, can quickly pull up traffic. The disadvantage is that the worse the market, the more difficult it is for workplace bloggers to do, because they can only complain about the phenomenon and cannot give the audience a solution.

Therefore, I define a transition link for workplace bloggers, and the long-term direction is to be a real entrepreneur, make a specific product or business model. Lately, I've been spending most of my time going to contacts, looking for resources, talking about how to do it and how to work together in this situation this year.

Compared with the previous work, the biggest feeling is: when you work, you only need to do the corresponding work, and then get paid; But now you need to write content to attract people, to trade with users, you can feel the entire business closed loop, and grow greater.

If you don't have a bad boss, you can't have financial freedom, and I will definitely start a business eventually, originally working for JD.com, selling management trainees

From the beginning, I knew that I would not continue to do it in the big factory for long.

After graduating from university, I joined a large factory as a management trainee. After working for three years, inside the big factory, I felt the slump in the Internet industry earlier and more strongly than outsiders. Although the indicators on the company's financial report were very good at that time, things could not be sold, and there was no means to stimulate consumption. And the penetration rate of Internet users is already about the same, and this industry will not grow much.

After voluntarily resigning, I returned to the family business and became the general manager of the Hangzhou branch of E-Dermic Mega, doing home building materials business. On the one hand, I am responsible for putting content into the accounts of different platforms of the company, and on the other hand, I am responsible for capturing ideas in the industry, connecting with distributors, and determining whether the two parties are compatible and how to cooperate.

After becoming the boss, I have a deeper understanding of management, and the doubts that I used to be troubled have been answered: although some people have average ability, they are very loyal and can serve in the enterprise for a long time; Although some people's strengths are not obvious, they are reliable and can support the bottom; Although I don't like some employees, but they can generate value, I have to pay attention to him.

Also, as a leader, I can no longer be as moody as I used to be. No matter what happens, the most important thing is to stay calm and give employees confidence.

Frankly speaking, I think part-time jobs have their benefits. Entrepreneurship is not so glamorous, at least in the current market, it is difficult. The money I have on hand now is just the same as before in the big factory, but I really don't like my working status in the big factory. In a big factory, every day is 9 to 9, if you encounter a big promotion, the data is not particularly good, you have to work until the early hours of the morning, with long working hours to produce meaningless work results.

What impressed me the most was that at two o'clock in the morning that day, I took the shuttle home, because I was too sleepy, and the master asked me to get off at the next stop. When I got out of the car, it was pitch black and I didn't know where I was. I am a lot of creative people, but I work like this every day, and by the last six months, I have no ideas in my work, only chaos.

So now I am quite excited to go from work to entrepreneurship. I like to try new things and I find it interesting. When I was in high school, my father and I would discuss the traffic and revenue ratio of the restaurant, how big the restaurant is, how much rent it is, and how much the table turnover rate is. I knew early on that I would definitely start a business, because it was impossible to achieve financial freedom without a bad boss.

It's really not a good time to start a business, and I plan to do a small business that I am good at, and I originally worked for a leading technology company and marketing personnel

I was not actually laid off, but voluntarily left. The reason is simple, I am tired, and after canceling the general survey last year, there is no hope of promotion and salary increase, coupled with various difficulties of my boss, so I voluntarily left at the beginning of last year.

Another reason for leaving the company was that I clearly realized that the dividend period of the Internet had passed, and I did not have much stock in the company, and the possibility of achieving financial freedom was very small. So I wanted to come out and see if there was anything else I could do.

At that time, there were also good colleagues leaving, and we all had plans to start a business, so we came out together. We actually had a goal direction from the beginning, we wanted to make sleep aids. The experience of working in a large factory for 8 years has allowed me to see many people who are plagued by insomnia, some colleagues work with dark circles all year round, and some colleagues who are obviously very young have crazy hair loss because of insomnia. I remember a set of data that said that more than 300 million people in China had sleep disorders.

We are sure that this product will sell well. Because in the early days, we didn't rent an office, but we rented a house or Starbucks. It took almost 3 months to polish the PPT alone, and it also cost 10,000 yuan to find FA polishing.

At that time, it seemed clear that we must not use our own money to start a business, because we have met many friends around us, and we end up spending all our savings with our own money. So our goal from the beginning was financing. We're going to raise a seed round of 1 million, or even 500,000, not much.

But the poor financing environment is still beyond our imagination, we have met with dozens of institutions, some of them politely refused as soon as they saw our academic background, and some directly told us to give up the illusion, they do not plan to invest in this track project. Always, two months later, we went from full of faith to despondent.

Now that you think about it, it may not really be a good time to start a business. We're still looking for new opportunities, but for now we're going to start a little bit of a small business that we're good at, like helping some companies with events, because we're good at that.

Tech Planet (WeChat ID: tech618), He Xuyang, Wang Lin, Xi Rui