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"The world is big and there's a lot to do."
At the No. 1 gate of Hangzhou Ali Park, an employee comforted a friend who "graduated early" next to him.
On the afternoon of May 24, the Alibaba campus, which was at the center of the public opinion storm, was a little different from usual, saying goodbye one after another. Just the day before, it was revealed that a business unit of Alibaba began to optimize organizational positions and personnel, with a total proportion of about 7%
It's 5:00 p.m. and it's still an hour before work. A skinny man, carrying a suitcase in his hand, walked out of the park gate. The gray hair in his sideburns made him look a little weathered. He had a black computer bag with some books scattered inside, and a packet of cucumber-flavored Happy Potato chips stuffed in another pocket.
Alibaba employees quickly left the park Photo source: Times Finance Photo
Afterwards, people left the park one by one carrying large and small bags. They looked cold and fast, looking at the upcoming ride-hailing. No one looked back at the battlefield where they fought. At dusk, the limousine had driven out of the park gates, flashing bright nameplates and whizzing away.
As a factory for technical talents, Alibaba carries the aspirations of most employees for a better future. However, under the blade of organizational change and cost reduction and efficiency gains, some people's dreams were suddenly interrupted.
The Alibaba campus was officially launched last year. A north-south road separates the headquarters building from the ecosystem's corporate offices. At the same time, an east-west pedestrian bridge connects the two areas. It is said that this symbolizes the unhindered transmission and sharing of data throughout the campus.
Alibaba's response to rumors of layoffs came too late. On the evening of May 25, Alibaba Group's official Weibo announced that its six business groups will need to hire a total of 15,000 new employees in 2023, of which more than 3,000 will be recruited on campus.
However, the atmosphere of tension spread throughout the Internet circle. "After hearing the news, many companies have reduced their hiring budgets and some have closed their recruitment positions." A Hangzhou headhunter shared on social media.
There are rumors of layoffs, and high-end P is the hardest hit area
Even before the layoffs caused a stir, Yaman, who had worked at Alibaba for a year, already felt the red flags. "The list of layoffs was finalized a week ago."
It's a storm of layoffs that comes and goes quickly. The time to cancel a target is only one month at most. Most people will choose to retire the same day and take N+3 decent compensation. "I often eat two meals a day, so don't worry, most people accept it." An Alibaba employee told Times Finance.
A group of employees leave the Cloud Valley campus. Image source: Times Finance Image
According to some Alibaba employees, the layoffs focused on high-P groups, most of which were low-level "small shrimp" implicated.
"The nearly 100 fresh graduates recruited last year are not part of the layoffs, but the P8-P10 leaders of the project team have left one by one, and the corresponding layoffs in each department are different, and the layoff target of our group should be 10%. Yanan told Times Finance that she vaguely felt that this was a precursor to major changes in the middle team of her business department.
Employees on outsourcing teams are used to frequent farewell moments from large companies. An Alibaba computer room maintenance staff revealed to Times Finance that the computer room operation and maintenance personnel are replaced almost every three months.
Li Xiao is an employee of the Taotian Group in Xixi Park. Within a week, she received no fewer than 20 greetings from family and friends. As for the concerns of her circle of acquaintances, she could only respond that it was "not as strong as the outside world said".
Although Li Xiao's department remained quiet, most employees were afraid that the gears of layoffs would soon be launched on them, so she was in a state of disengagement in intense meetings and tasks, as well as the central issues that everyone discussed privately. Also What is the way out after the layoffs?
"Even if you escape this layoff, it will be difficult to guarantee safety next time." Enterprises with good performance must complete the layoff rate, and employees of other companies with poor profitability should not escape. Li Xiao told Times Finance that since last year, her department has experienced two major shocks. Gradually, she had to accept the fact that "layoffs are normalized".
Since 2022, cost reduction and efficiency improvement have become the keynote of Alibaba's business development. Financial report data shows that Alibaba's employees will decrease by nearly 20,000 in 2022. According to the latest data, the number of employees decreased again by 4,524 in the first quarter of 2023.
With significant organizational restructuring, the risk of uncertainty for employees has increased dramatically.
The recently optimized Li Ming has been doing psychological construction for nearly three months. Its business groups are in an awkward position, and it is difficult to clearly divide them into specific business units. He told Times Finance frankly: "The business is ambiguous, and the employees of the development zone are the biggest victims of this structural adjustment. ”
The employees of the big factory lost their jobs, which brought disaster to Chiyou
In 2017, when the mobile Internet was developing rapidly, Taobao employee Wang Ping resigned.
He experienced a golden age in the development of the e-commerce industry. In his memory, Alibaba's headquarters campus was always rich. As soon as you open your eyes every day, an exciting array of numbers urges employees to work overtime: GMV boosts, strong growth in the number of new customers, and a rapidly expanding workforce.
"Recruitment seems to be happening every day, with unlimited ideas waiting. During the expansion, even two employees were crammed into a workstation. Wang Ping couldn't forget the warm atmosphere in the park during his rise. Every time the Double 11 promotion arrives, the entire Xixi Park is decorated with brilliant spotlights, and the record-breaking transaction volume is always accompanied by the sound of gongs and drums. What he didn't expect was that the once lively scene would become history.
In 2021, the total transaction volume of Tmall Double 11 is expected to be 540.3 billion yuan, an increase of 8.45% over the same period in 2020, and the growth rate is slowing down. The following year, Alibaba stopped publishing GMV and focused instead on business quality. Public information shows that from 2022, the number of consumers in China's Alibaba market will exceed 1 billion, reaching the ceiling of user growth.
The brightly lit night in Xixi Park has supported the income of ride-hailing driver Yang Fan for nearly a decade. In 2013, the ride-hailing war had not yet begun. Taxis are a common means of transportation for employees to commute to and from work. After 8 o'clock in the evening, there was a steady stream of traffic at the gate of Xixi Park.
According to Yang Fan's recollection, before the rise of the Internet, no one speculated on houses, but on taxis. At that time, a taxi could sell for 1 million yuan. "Even if it is two shifts, it is conservatively estimated that you can earn 800 yuan a day, and you can earn more than 20,000 yuan a month."
As Internet companies begin to reduce costs and increase efficiency, some subsidies that once supported a culture of overtime are slowly disappearing. In July 2021, a number of large companies, including Kuaishou, ByteDance, and Meituan, announced the cancellation of Big and Small Weeks. Secondly, benefits such as housing subsidies, afternoon tea subsidies, and taxi subsidies have also been greatly reduced.
After Alibaba's large-scale cancellation of ride-hailing subsidies, the rapid development of the surrounding ride-hailing market "stepped on the brakes". According to some employees, Alibaba has eliminated taxi subsidies for more than a year, with a monthly reimbursement limit of only 800 yuan, and some employees who leave work early have switched to public transportation.
The decline in the budget of large factories directly affected Yang Fan's income. At 9:00 p.m., the last batch of operations peaked. After another hour, the volume of orders near the park seems to have hit the brakes. "Two or three years ago, there were a lot of orders at two or three in the morning, but now there are almost no orders at ten o'clock."
Yang Fan has witnessed the ups and downs of Alibaba employees, which he defines as a "tree hole" for frustrated employees. "In November last year, a couple who worked at Alibaba were both fired six months after buying a house... Recently, the DAMO Academy has been in trouble, and the entire autonomous driving business team has been fired..." Yang Fan talked endlessly about his experience.
About a 5-minute walk from Xixi Park is a large residential area: Fuding Homestead, where most of Alibaba's young employees live. However, this is only a temporary stay for them. According to the security guard at the gate of Fuding Home, the transaction volume of tenants here reached its peak in 2023. "Last year there were a lot of people living here, but this year there are certainly fewer residents, and much less."
Supporting facilities around Alixixi Park Image source: Times Finance Photo
As incomes rise, buying a home in the future tech city is often the goal of Alibaba employees. Adjacent to Xixi Park, Sunshine City Future Happy MAX, Zhongnan Yuefu and Dongyuan Yinwei form the "three brothers" of the Future Science and Technology City. In the years after Ali lost weight, there were obvious fluctuations in surrounding housing prices.
Shell house search shows that Sunshine City Future Yue MAX currently has a total of 118 houses for sale, with mainstream listing prices between 55,000 yuan / square meter and 65,000 yuan / square meter. At its peak, the total average price of the community exceeded 70,000 yuan per square meter.
Reborn or stalled, the Internet giant came to a fork in the road
After reducing costs and increasing efficiency throughout 2022, Ali took the most direct approach - organizational slimming.
Since the beginning of this year, Alibaba has undergone the biggest organizational change in history. On March 28, Daniel Zhang issued an open letter: Alibaba launched the "1+6+N" organizational change. In addition, the centers that Alibaba once prided itself on will be completely shrunk and diluted. According to Water, Alibaba's center was completely split in mid-May. At its peak, the team once exceeded 10,000 people.
Wu Fan, a retired employee, saw the flaws of the huge organization. A problem requires countless internal pull and exhaustion. "There are top managers who just want to hold three-thirds of the land and do business without making mistakes."
In the past decade, major Internet companies, including Alibaba, have launched changes of various scales, from ride-hailing, 100-group battles, and mobile payments to first-tier markets and community group buying. Great companies change the lives of their users in every possible way. Life scenes, constantly expanding business boundaries.
At the same time, the rapid expansion of the organization came to an abrupt end. From 2018 to 2020, the number of Alibaba employees grew at a rate of 20,000 per year; Believing in striving to create miracles, ByteDance has exceeded 100,000 employees in just 8 years; From 2016 to 2019, the number of Tencent employees increased by 20,000 per year. The pace of adding 10,000 people is steadily expanding.
"I have the impression that as long as the top of the company makes an investment regardless of cost, at least two teams will follow the business, and hundreds of people will join." Wu Fan said.
There is no doubt that the end result of these two major initiatives will be a downsizing of personnel. "Many business sectors have listing plans, and personnel adjustments are inevitable, not because of operational difficulties." A mid-level employee who retired from DAMO speculated that after experiencing rapid personnel expansion, light operations will become the norm for Alibaba in the future.
As Internet companies in various countries launch large-scale layoffs, major technology giants in the United States are also launching a layoff storm. After Musk acquired Twitter, he launched a series of drastic moves, reducing the number of employees from 7,500 to just 1,500; Recently, Meta completed the second round of 10,000 layoffs, a total of about 21,000 layoffs; in November last year, Amazon set a long-term layoff target, laying off 27,000 people in three months
Internet managers seem to have tasted the sweetness of reducing costs and increasing efficiency. Recently, Musk predicted at the London summit that Twitter could be profitable as early as June. After a quarter of the layoffs, Meta achieved 3% revenue growth in the first quarter of 2023 and advertising growth returned, reaching $28.101 billion in revenue.
The days of big players' budget-conscious will continue for some time, and their attitude towards trends will become more cautious. After the metaverse concept cooled, the arrival of the era of big models did not disrupt the war. Some leading manufacturers have not even taken formal action. In addition, they almost unanimously chose to bring the group CFO to the front desk. Alibaba's Daniel Zhang, TikTok's Zhou Shouzi, JD.com's Xu Ran... Previously, the number one on Weibo was also replaced by someone with a financial background. WANG Gaofei.
"Ten years ago, Internet managers were still people who really relied on business to fight, and it can only be said that major Internet companies have reached a turning point where they need to refine their operations.