Chinese Internet companies, people are middle-aged

This article is transferred from the author | Liu Yuanju

Employees of large technology companies lament that middle-aged people are just a harbinger of large technology companies entering middle age, and for Chinese Internet companies, it is fate to get old, but it is difficult to become young.

01

On March 29, 2023, "Vipshop collapsed" appeared on the hot search, because the collapse time was too long, affecting many consumers who could not place orders normally.

On the afternoon of June 8, a number of netizens from Guangdong Province posted on social platforms that China Telecom's mobile phone card had no signal and could not access the Internet. In this regard, China Telecom's Guangdong customer service said on its official Weibo, "Due to network abnormalities, some users are affected to answer calls, and we are carrying out emergency repairs." ”

On the afternoon of the 28th of the same month, many users of station B found that "it has been prompting that it has failed to obtain video content", and many users complained that "station B collapsed", and the entry then appeared on the hot search.

At more than 5 p.m. on November 12, Alibaba Cloud had an abnormality, and then topics such as "Taobao collapsed again", "Xianyu collapsed", "Aliyun disk collapsed", "DingTalk collapsed" and other topics appeared on the hot search one after another. The reason for the crash is that from 17:44 on November 12, the use of Alibaba Cloud product console access and API calls was abnormal, and Alibaba Cloud engineers were urgently intervening to investigate, and it returned to normal at around 7:20 pm that day.

On November 27, users in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and other places reported that the Didi Chuxing app could not be used and the map could not be loaded. On the morning of November 28, many Didi users still posted screenshots of being unable to place orders. On the morning of November 28, Didi's ride-hailing services have resumed, and cycling and other services are still being restored.

On the evening of December 3, the two topics of "Tencent Video Collapsed" and "Tencent Members Gone" were on the hot search. Tencent Video's official Weibo posted on the evening of the 3rd that there are temporary technical problems in Tencent Video, which are being repaired and gradually restored.

On December 4, there was a suspected system error in the Taobao points exchange for vinyl VIP monthly card activity in NetEase Cloud Music flagship store.

On the evening of December 12, many netizens reported that the Cainiao App collapsed, and the package could not be displayed normally, and the pickup code and logistics-related information could not be seen. "Rookie pickup code" also appeared on Weibo hot search.

Since the beginning of this year, major platforms including Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Didi, Douyin, and Bilibili have all had "collapse" incidents. "Dachang Cloud has collapsed again" has become a popular term on the Internet.

At present, mobile phones are deeply involved in all aspects of life, and the digital facilities of Internet platforms have certain public infrastructure attributes. Asking platforms to pay more attention to cybersecurity, reminding consumers of the risk of abandoning platforms due to network collapse, or even raising the cybersecurity law, has little effect. Because this is a situation that no one wants to see, all kinds of platforms are naturally even more reluctant to see the collapse of the network. What's more, these facilities only have the attributes of public goods, but they are not public goods, and they cannot be punished because someone does not do well in business.

02

Modern IT systems are divided into three layers: upper-layer application software, middle-level cloud platform, and lower-layer IT hardware. The underlying hardware can be solved through redundancy and rapid replacement, the cloud platform will affect multiple apps, and the problem of a single application can be caused by multiple factors such as databases, architecture changes, and external factors. It's not surprising that there will be a network crash, it's inevitable for computer systems. There have been many cyber crashes in the past, both in China and abroad, but the frequency of crashes is indeed increasing. Red Star Capital Bureau has conducted incomplete statistics on the apps that have crashed in the past two years, with about 9 incidents occurring in 2022, and 14 similar incidents have occurred since the beginning of this year.

There is such a paragraph. "Three people took the elevator from the first floor to the tenth floor. One ran on the spot, one did push-ups, one banged his head against the wall, and they all reached the tenth floor. Somebody asked them how they got to the 10th floor? One said they ran up. One said it came up with push-ups. One said he hit his head against the wall. "Actually, they all came up by elevator.

The rapid growth of China's economy in recent years is mainly due to the dividends of technology, demographic, and globalization, and now these dividends are gradually disappearing, and the elevator is slowing down. But the elevator doesn't just slow down, it becomes more unstable as it slows down.

The elevator is slow, the income is less, the mindset will change, and the decision-making will change. Just as in the previous optimism, China's Internet is talking about consumption upgrades, and they are all looking at higher ARPU (value per user). Nowadays, it may all be about cost.

The popular argument is that frequent downtime may be related to personnel optimization. If the efficiency is not good, it is necessary to open up sources and reduce expenditure, reduce costs and increase efficiency, and when laying off people and business, most of the people left behind are related households, and the real backbone is laid off. Theoretically, in general, talent optimization doesn't involve core concerns such as security. However, organizational decision-making is not completely rational, leaving upward management experts and PPT experts, and laying off the real work and technology, such office jokes are not groundless. Just as people have a limited budget to buy a car, they often do not downgrade the vehicle level, but abandon the advanced safety features. It's not surprising that individuals shrink their budgets on small probability events first, and it's not surprising that organizations behave the same.

IT O&M plays an important role in modern enterprises, and ensuring the safe operation of Internet infrastructure requires a lot of manpower, material and financial resources. There is a contradictory relationship between security and cost, the greater the cost of achieving security, the greater the redundancy and robustness of the system, and the more robust the system will be. Conversely, the more cost-effective, the less secure and stable it will be.

Costs have decreased, and at the same time, systems have become more complex as China's internet has grown larger and longer to run. In a way, this is the fate of large systems, and the more complex the system, the more entropy will inevitably increase.

On a larger level, this is the inevitable fate of any organization, China's Internet shows a middle-aged atmosphere, and the issue of security and stability is only one of the aspects of China's Internet people reaching middle age.

03

A few years ago, there was a famous article about "people reach middle age, the workplace is halfway down", and now it seems that the employees of large technology companies lament that people are middle-aged, which is just a harbinger of large technology companies entering middle age.

In Buddhism, the "four eons" refer to "becoming, dwelling, decaying, and emptiness", and describe the process of the establishment, continuity, destruction, and extinction of a world, and believe that everything will go through the process of birth, existence, decline, or destruction. This is no different for organizations, any organization has its own life cycle, and over time, any organization can gradually become rigid and aging.

With the passage of time, the business of the organization grows, more people need more people, more people bring more management layers, at the same time, the increase in business, the Internet dividend, all bring more wealth, the organization can also afford the huge human resources. As a result, as organizations grow in size, organizational structures become more complex, bureaucracy grows, and the decision-making chain becomes longer and more cumbersome, resulting in a slow, unresponsive decision-making process.

Where there are people, there are rivers and lakes, and with the increase in the number of people and the increase in levels, there will be political struggles, factional disputes, and conflicts of interest within the organization. As a result, the number of personal goals and departmental goals in addition to the organizational goals increases, which interferes with the organization's information transmission and makes the organization's responsiveness decrease.

On the other hand, any organization is made up of people, and as the age of the organization increases, the people who were unmarried and childless, working overtime day and night, and the company as their home, have become middle-aged uncles and aunts who need to take care of their elderly parents and rebellious children. What's more, this is an uncle and aunt who has enjoyed the dividends of the Internet and has a lot of worth. Although it can be an iron-clad battalion, the enterprise is not a school, although it is necessary, it is impossible to graduate one-third every year, and the more important and critical the person, the less likely he will graduate. As a result, the motivation in the career will naturally decrease.

As people age, physiological changes in the brain occur as objectively as sagging skin and hair loss. People will do things more and more in accordance with their inner thoughts, and reject external drives and influences, such as leadership, company KPIs, and company mission. People make up an organization, and the organizational culture becomes conservative and reluctant to accept new ideas, changes, or innovations.

Under the influence of these factors, decision-making is cumbersome, bureaucracy breeds, efficiency decreases, and the organization can also appear middle-aged.

Of course, the history of the companies in the market is not the same. Employees of some Internet companies have a single day off every week, and their working hours far exceed those of other Internet companies, and all work is split into individuals, whether it is a supervisor, a team leader, or a grassroots employee, most of the time each person usually has only one assessment goal. The direction of employees' efforts is simple and pure, and they cannot excuse themselves from completing their work. This seems to be a problem of corporate management, but the youth of the organization is, to some extent, the premise of the management style.

China's Internet companies are fated to grow old, but it is difficult to become younger. What's even harder is that companies need experienced people to take care of a large and complex entropy increase system, and they have to replace these people to maintain a company's youthful momentum, and at this time, the elevator slows down. The good news is that individuals in the market have their ups and downs, but the market is always green. For China, as long as the market is positive, there will never be a shortage of young companies.