Layoffs are becoming the main theme of the Internet.
A while ago, Alibaba released its annual report, showing that the number of Ali at the end of 2022 was 239,740, a sharp decrease of 15,076 compared with the end of 2021. In one year, more than 15,000 people have been exported to society, and this layoff is not intense.
Not only Ali, Tencent also started layoffs in 2022, according to the financial report, in the fourth quarter of 2022, the number of Tencent employees was 108436, 4,335 fewer than the same period last year
At the beginning of the year, some media revealed that ByteDance laid off 11,000 employees, and the overall optimization scale was about 10%, involving R&D, products, operations and other positions.
In addition, domestic Internet companies such as Douyu, Netease, JD.com, CreditEase, and Zhihu have also been exposed to layoffs.
The scenery abroad is not unique -
Recently, Amazon announced that it will carry out a second round of layoffs, involving about 9,000 employees, mainly focused on cloud computing business AWS, human resources, advertising and Twitch live streaming business, after Amazon has carried out a round of major layoffs.
Accenture, a global IT outsourcing services and consulting giant, recently announced that it plans to lay off about 19,000 jobs in the next 18 months, accounting for 2.5% of its current workforce.
It can be seen that under the uncertain prospects of global economic development, major Internet giants are trying to reduce costs by laying off employees and spending money to survive the cold winter that is or has arrived.
However, the three major operators have ushered in the spring of talent!
Recently, the three major operators have released their 2022 financial reports, from the perspective of business performance, operators have experienced several years of trough, have achieved a U-shaped rebound, returned to the normal development track, for example, China Mobile's revenue and net profit have both refreshed historical records, especially the net profit finally exceeded the previous high in 2018 (117.8 billion yuan).
This is a very strong signal! At present, the construction of digital China is in full swing, the digital economy is booming, and the future growth space of the communication industry is infinitely expanding, and it will no longer be limited by the barrier of traditional communication operations.
Another positive sign is that the number of IT talents for operators is rising sharply!
Let's look at China Mobile first.
China Mobile's total number of employees at the end of 2022 was 450,698, while the number of employees at the end of 2021 was 449,934, which means that China Mobile grew by 764 people in 2022. Among them, the number of R&D personnel at the end of 2022 was 39,749, an increase of 26,060 compared with 2021!
Look at China Telecom.
China Telecom had a total of 280683 employees at the end of 2022, compared to 278922 in 2021, an increase of 1,761. Among them, the number of R&D personnel at the end of 2022 was 22,342, an increase of 6,966 over 2021.
Finally, look at China Unicom.
China Unicom had a total of 244,508 employees at the end of 2022, compared to 242,661 employees in 2021, an increase of 1,847. Among them, the number of R&D personnel at the end of 2022 was 18,813, an increase of 3,896 over 2021.
It can be seen that in 2022, the number of R&D personnel of the three major operators has increased significantly, and the three have increased by nearly 40,000 R&D personnel, and the total number of R&D personnel of the three major operators has exceeded 80,000, which will be a scientific and technological innovation force that cannot be ignored, and will continue to promote the rapid development and application of digital technology.
More importantly, according to the current operators' incentive policies and talent strategies, the trend of digital talent growth will continue. For example, China Mobile's employee compensation in 2022 will be 91.7 billion yuan, an increase of 10.7% over the previous year, and its proportion of operating income has also increased to 9.8%. China Mobile has also made it clear that it will continue to adjust and optimize the employment structure, strengthen the external introduction and internal training of digital and intelligent talents, and establish the first batch of "talent highland construction demonstration zones" of China Mobile. China Telecom and China Unicom are in a similar situation, and they are also raising employee salaries to grab high-end IT talent.
In the past, we often joked that "operators are the talent training center of Internet enterprises", because in the past, the flow of talents was basically a one-way flow from operators to Internet enterprises. From the current situation, the flow of talents between operators and Internet companies has formed a relatively balanced two-way flow. For example, in the past two years, there have been many talents who have flowed from Internet giants such as Ali, Tencent, Baidu, and Byte to Tianyi Cloud and Mobile Cloud.
I think there are two main reasons behind this: on the one hand, the "salary" mentioned above, the salary level of operator enterprises has steadily increased in recent years, especially the increasing incentive policies for IT talents, coupled with the relatively stable employment atmosphere of state-owned enterprises, the sense of acquisition of IT talents has actually surpassed some Internet giants to a certain extent.
On the other hand, the perception that "operators can also do something in a career" is gradually forming, in the past, operators were considered to be a sunset industry, fresh talent blood was reluctant to join, and existing talents also fled. Nowadays, the development positioning of operators has undergone fundamental changes, the business boundary has broken through the barriers of communication operations in the past, broadened to the digital economy, digital society, and more importantly, under the guidance of national policies, the institutional mechanism of operators has also made many breakthroughs, and the atmosphere of entrepreneurship has basically formed.
The significant increase in the number of IT talents in operators is a sign of the resurgence of operators, but it is worth noting that operators need more diverse talents, not just IT talents, to go further in the wave of the digital economy.