At present, how to go ashore and how to survive has become a proposition for too many workers. Most people strive to train themselves to be a precise part that can continue to function without deviations in the company.
But there are always people who yearn for freedom.
In April this year, Lao Zhou, who has been working in Tianmei for 9 years and is in the management post of "Glory of Kings", made a bold decision: quit his job and go home with his baby.
After Lao Zhou's resignation post was posted, it caused a lot of repercussions and resonance on Weibo and Xiaohongshu, and many people admired his courage.
In the beginning, almost no one around him could understand him right away. It's not easy to live, so why give up the position that countless people dream of? Even if you have a certain amount of savings, resigning and taking care of a baby still means giving up better living conditions and possibilities, and even being prepared to derail from society.
Moreover, Lao Zhou, who has just turned 35, said that he is the same as ordinary people, far from financial freedom, and he is also suffering from the pressure that should be at this age: for various reasons, he had the idea of changing jobs, but after having a baby, he quickly put aside his restless thoughts; As children grow up, the already small house may become cramped; Not to mention, now that he is at home, he has to face the trivial matters of firewood, rice, oil and salt.
Despite this, Lao Zhou still did not regret his resignation. Faced with the gradual imbalance of life and the internal friction at work, he believes that he must press the pause button.
The following is based on Lao Zhou's narration:
01
On the first day of resumption of work during the Spring Festival this year, I found the leader's chat window on WeChat, which opened and closed for a while, and after three hours of entanglement, I still sent a large number of resignation letters.
He was shocked and wondered if my values had suddenly changed to another dimension, and asked me back and forth to meet and talk a few times. Many people around me say that this decision is too cerebral and too arbitrary. Looking back, I also think it's a bit incredible, after all, I had imagined that I would work at Tencent until I retired.
I've always loved games since I was a kid, and I would pull my classmates up between classes and draw maps on paper like Red Alert and Resident Evil. I'm going to play the director, roll the dice, take a few steps, and draw a weird, kind of like the paper prototype we're doing now.
After graduating from Chuanmei, I successfully entered Tencent. In the past nine years, I have been very emotional about the project. Before, I told my daughter-in-law that now we have a baby, but he can only be regarded as the second, and the eldest is the king, and I have been involved in doing it now.
In the early days of the project of "Glory of Kings", every time I tackled the project, I could really feel that this was something I was interested in and loved, and the friends in the team were also on fire, and everyone accompanied each other and volunteered to work overtime until late. Even if it was two months in a row, my mind never changed.
Of course, the workplace is unpredictable, and I thought about when I would leave this station. For example, when the project encountered some situations, I was laid off and transferred; Or if I'm tired of staying on the same project for so long, and I want to change my mind, it's possible; I even thought I'd do indie games.
But in fact, considering the trust and atmosphere that the team has built up over the years, the process system that has been established with great difficulty, and the various halos and benefits brought by the project, I have no reason to leave here. If I tell you lightly that there is no reluctance to leave the job, it is definitely pretending.
Moreover, after having a baby to raise in the first two years, I immediately dispelled all the strange ideas and waited for a while. But what I didn't expect was that in the end, it was precisely because of the child's words that I decided to leave my job.
My child is two and a half years old, but I spend very little time with him. Although it is not normal to have to work overtime until the early hours of the morning, the child goes to bed early, and when I usually return home, he is probably already resting.
The personal IP "Kalpan" that I'm working on was first created as a bedtime story. After my wife became pregnant, I started to write, and I wrote more than 100 chapters, thinking that I could tell my children every day, but later I found out that he couldn't see me at all before going to bed, and I didn't talk about a few chapters in total.
What broke me the most was that during the Spring Festival this year, I spent more time with my children at home, and the relationship was really at its peak, and I felt that he loved me very much. But on the third day of the Lunar New Year, he may have gotten up, and suddenly he looked at me impatiently, pointed to the company building outside the window and said, "Dad goes home, Dad goes to work." ”
I was stunned, isn't my dad at home? Isn't Dad at home with you? In an instant, I burst into tears and felt like I had been woken up. It turns out that in the eyes of a child, my meaning may be the white building.
A few nights later, I lost sleep, lay in bed and thought a lot, and began to wonder what I had been doing in the past two years. The golden time of my child's companionship may be before the age of three, and I have wasted more than two years and do not want to lose the last half year.
After I had the idea of leaving, many friends around me came to persuade me. I guess they might think, everybody is like this, everybody can do it, why can't you? But I'm sorry, I just can't.
02
In many Internet companies, people with babies will encounter a real problem: not enough time. I leave work late in the evening, but my work is not particularly flexible, so I may have to go early in the morning.
However, according to my observation, many practitioners may have long been accustomed to this state - work is always greater than family, and it seems that this is a matter of conformism.
Before, I was on the same page as everyone else, staying in the office all day and doing work as if it was the most important thing in life. But with a child, your worldview will be shocked, and he will be both familiar and strange, becoming a member of your family. Many people will say that we have to work hard to earn money and give our children a better future, but at the spiritual level, what can we give him without companionship?
So, after the Spring Festival, when I jumped out and looked at it, I thought this thing was quite abnormal, but I don't know why, in the current atmosphere, it's like this.
I've also tried to balance work hours and get stuck with the kids coming home before bed, but weirdly, you get a sense of guilt. It's a feeling of guilt for the team members, when you run home at eight o'clock with your bag and see other classmates still at the desk, it's hard for you to walk so decisively.
I'm also quite concerned about improving efficiency, assuming that we can handle the work at hand in a good way within the specified time, then everyone can leave work early. But the problem is that the work can never be done, it will go up one after another, this is the Internet company, its product iteration is frequent, overtime is unavoidable.
Many people say that 35 years old is a hurdle, and at this age, no matter how strong a person is, he may lose something.
I've also thought about whether it's too late for me to have a baby, because at this age, there are too many things that consume my energy, and if I have a child in my twenties, will I be able to do it until retirement? But actually, when I was younger, I definitely couldn't understand this kind of thinking, and I had to work hard to become a positive person, to work hard.
I think that in the midst of it, everyone must have a certain amount of conflict and pain, and the same is true for the management. In Marx's words, this is a kind of alienation.
This alienation is extremely unfair to children. We may have long been accustomed to being a screw, but children are not. And you can't ask the company and the team to change, you can only make self-sacrifices and trade-offs.
Moreover, I am also a designer and artist, and the source of my creation comes from life. The reason why I have the theme of Kalpan is the birth of a child, which inspires me. Essentially, if I continue to stay the same, I'm only going to become more and more inconsistent, unable to reconcile with myself.
After figuring it out, even if the leader persuaded me, I never wavered in my mind. There was no turning back, and I knew that if I let go of it at all, I might be able to reconvince myself to accept it all. I don't want to make this thing quite "meaty", this is a Sichuan dialect, which is a twist, so the whole resignation process is vigorous.
It was quite interesting at the time, one day in a group meeting, we were talking about the priorities for next week, and my mind was full of resignation, and suddenly I subconsciously said it, and it was really blurted out, and my mind went blank. I counted it, and the conference room was silent for almost half a minute, and everyone was confused.
After the meeting, a colleague came to me, "Lao Zhou, don't say anything, I actually understand you very well, I have been thinking about how to balance family and work recently, you have done the right thing." "You know what? I was so touched and relieved that I was understood.
03
After the resignation post, many people asked me why I left my job. 80% of the reasons are definitely because of personal families, and 20% may be due to internal friction at work.
After the handover, I took a long vacation, and during that time, I would still dream of meetings and reports at three or four o'clock in the morning. When this happened a few years ago, I thought it was an isolated phenomenon, but later I found that it was quite common.
Going deep into the hearts of every art student, everyone must have their own pursuit of artistry. However, under the framework of the product model of large companies, artistry will inevitably be deformed, and then it will be obeyed.
Most commonly, after an artist proposes a plan, he needs to face the challenges of operation and planning. We've also experienced conference wheel battles before, from half past nine in the morning until eleven in the evening.
When I first entered the industry, I was quite confrontational, and when my professional ability was violated, I would often fight with cross-module classmates. As a result, I can convince them to form a norm and then do it in that direction. The bad outcome may be a compromise.
For example, when designing a scene, the artist will consider whether the landmark matches the world view, and will start from the architectural spatial structure and the behavioral relationship between people. It stands to reason that it is a very reasonable design, but when cross-module students come in, they may think that the design does not conform to the tone and is not handsome enough. In the process of repeated debugging, people are prone to internal friction.
This is understandable, given the lack of a common context across modules. It's hard to get an artist to understand gameplay and operational strategy. In the same way, other students may also lack theoretical knowledge of art design. Especially in large factories, everyone is relatively far away, and if there is not enough communication and trust, there will be disputes, and in the end they can only take a step back.
In my opinion, quarrels and compromises are all momentary, but in the end, the finished design is going to be launched, and it is just missing a certain amount of art information, which is not something that can be taken back.
Before I became a manager, I actually had hesitation. As I said, I may be more like a native designer, career path, originally an art director in the direction of consulting, but I later thought that after becoming a manager, I would have the opportunity to fight for some resources and try to change part of the environment.
I agree with what the former leader said, that our professional ability is actually very important. Work should not always wear out employees, and the organization should give resources and space for everyone to grow.
Later, we set up courses in-house, translated excellent knowledge from overseas, established school-enterprise cooperation, and invited masters to give lectures. There are also two internal student sharing sessions every month, and some will even be promoted to the whole IEG to learn together. During that time, I felt that the team atmosphere and condition were very good.
I've also thought about pushing for some institutional reforms. For example, can we slow down our creation, or can we set up a special creative team, so that they can take a break from production and only be responsible for creative ideas. Maybe it's a mixed team, with students from multiple modules such as literature, art, music, etc., and we fix these people and develop them for a certain sub-module, which is conducive to overall cooperation and creation.
But the problem is that the company has its own operating mechanism, which will inevitably involve fairness, such as employees need to be assessed, once someone is out of production, then how to level the bowl of water?
There are so many more issues like that, and I don't think it can be helped. The big factory is like a huge machine, it goes very slowly, and it is difficult to make timely and large adjustments in the process. Whether it's the corporate culture or the work process, it needs a solidity to ensure the minimum efficiency requirements. This is a world-class conundrum.
So, in the business environment, I actually became an old fritter very early, and I can accept the rules of society and the enterprise, and at most I can only find time after work every day to do a little independent creation.
A lot of people don't understand why you're so tired from work and do this, but that's actually my way of detoxing.
Of course, I'm not saying that work is endless pain and internal friction. In the past few years, I have also gained a lot of sense of achievement. Whenever we're doing a map renovation, or designing a tournament year, I feel very satisfied when I see players talking about content, because the creation is ultimately done with the audience.
Didn't Universal Studios in Beijing have a special area for "Honor of Kings" before, and I would also wonder when I could take my child to see it and tell him about these IP stories that my father participated in designing.
04
After I left my job, I took my child to Hainan, he had never seen the sea, and he had only heard about it in stories before.
Now, he doesn't quite get used to me staying at home all the time, and when he gets angry and has a conflict with me, he still yells at me and asks me to paint, but it's actually quite funny because I can feel that he is gradually forgetting my old job.
The quality of my sleep has also improved, the subconscious stress is disappearing, and I don't dream of work at all.
As I've spent a lot of time at home, I've thought about a lot of things.
Nowadays, everyone may feel that there are all kinds of pressures at work, and it is tempting to escape, but my enlightenment teacher said that freedom is relative, not absolute.
Even if I am now free from the pressure of the company, I will still face a lot of firewood, rice, oil and salt in my life, as well as the bottleneck of personal creation. To put it bluntly, a person's life will always be accompanied by stress, which is a norm, assuming that a person is completely free of stress, but it is an unhealthy state.
Moreover, people are social creatures, and you will always maintain your social nature and will be needed by those around you. For example, the team may not need me now, but the industry still needs me, just like there will be many strangers on station B who like to watch me draw, and feel that companionship creation is very valuable; For example, the elderly in the family may need me more and more.
Therefore, I only chose to leave the company for the time being due to personal family reasons, but I will not give up my creation and work. I now spend more time every day creating Kalpan, making personal expressions, and keeping in touch with the industry. In the future, when my children are a little older, I think I may still go back to work.
In the workplace, we all have unpleasant places, no way, it is objective, it is difficult to change, just how do you make choices, how to get a relatively free space.