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In the past two years, the market has been crammed with optimized Internet manufacturers. In the past, Dachang people were considered to be at the top of the chain of employment contempt, and their salaries and benefits, career promotion space, and vision and spirit were all leveraged.
But ten years in the east of the river, ten years in the west of the river. Nowadays, unemployed large factories have also begun to actively or passively aim at small enterprises. However, their entry into the game is not a dimensionality reduction blow to others. On the contrary, small factories with the ability to oppose the election began to pick and choose from this group of former pride.
A small company can't fit a big factory
"We're worried about your resume." Chang Baishan was politely rejected again, and the boss of the exhibition company looked at Chang Baishan's resume and said to her, "Jobs change too often." ”
35-year-old Lemon will choose to "downgrade" from the operation director of a large factory to a small company to do codeword editing in 2022, at the cost of dropping from the original monthly income of more than 30,000 yuan to more than 10,000 yuan.
Prior to this, Lemon described himself as "a pig that flew up on the cusp of the times".
When he graduated in 2013, Lemon got an offer from the Internet industry, when the Internet was still in its golden decade.
Lemon went from being a portal editor to an overseas e-commerce business, and jumping all the way from Guangzhou to Chengdu to be promoted.
But this shareholder trend has been slowly declining since a few years ago.
In 2021, Lemon was promoted and raised after joining a large company, and was once responsible for the core business of traffic operation in the game sector. Here, in addition to her monthly income of more than 30,000 yuan, including the year-end bonus, she has a comprehensive annual salary of 500,000 yuan. She is based in a local provincial capital, and the 500,000 is already very good in the local area.
But behind the sun is shadow. While receiving a high salary, she also encountered unprecedented difficulties.
The high-intensity work did not give people a chance to breathe, and the frequent overtime and performance pressure in front of her made her lose sleep and fall into psychological depression.
"It's like wearing gold handcuffs, in fact, everyone is unhappy, and everyone has different degrees of psychological problems. The intense and intense pace of work makes everyone doubt themselves. ”
Lemon still didn't finish self-regulation in the end, she couldn't ignore the hollowness in her heart, even if it had nothing to do with the outside world, she couldn't support her to keep going.
图｜韩剧《Start Up》
In 2022, when his peers were still worried about being optimized, Lemon took the initiative to choose to leave. She didn't realize that the job market was going through a difficult time.
When he recuperated and applied for a job again, Lemon found that he had been interviewing for more than two months, but he had found nothing.
Lemon was incredible: "I have a beautiful resume and a rich resume, how did I go from being a sweet and sweet to being ignored?" ”
After a lot of internal friction, Lemon gradually accepted the reality that he was no longer popular in the workplace, and lowered his expectations to "as long as he has a job", and finally joined a small company, returning to his old business of content operation.
The salary has dropped to more than 10,000 yuan, which is the level she had six or seven years ago, but the 9-to-5 work rhythm is also very comfortable for Lemon, and she once thought it was a gift from God.
Photo: Japanese drama "I, get off work at the end of the day"
But after just two and a half months of work, she still feels uncomfortable everywhere, and her boss's views are not frequent, and the boss is also very dissatisfied with her, and directly said: "I'm used to seeing people like you who come out of so-called big companies, and they are useless." It's not that I'm off the platform, and I don't have any ability. ”
Unable to bear this malice, Lemon was stimulated and left his job again.
Finally found the next small company, but Lemon was fired after only a week. The reason for this is that small companies find Lemon not cost-effective: it only costs six or seven thousand to recruit ordinary copywriters, but the price of recruiting her is more than 12,000.
Lemon felt very desperate: "I was actually fired by this kind of small company, in this kind of business position. ”
In this way, she was unemployed 3 times in a year, and she completely let go of the aura of a big factory person, and laughed at herself "Dead pigs are not afraid of boiling water".
Now Lemon is still working in a small company, the salary is okay, and the environment is retro, which cannot be compared with the previous top factory office. But she said that after all these ups and downs, she found a career she loved.
She has been engaged in the coding work of psychology content, although the salary is very low, but the spiritual feedback and nourishment, so that she feels that this cross-industry is also a success.
She was relieved of the past: "When the wind is gone, I will go back to the ground and be a happy pig." ”
Backward compatible drops
It is not easy to enter a small company, but even if you enter the workplace of a small company, many former large factory employees are easy to experience a huge "downgrade" and "gap" in the process of backward compatibility, and thus lose their way.
30-year-old Yang Zhen has been a senior product manager in a major Internet company for 7 years, focusing on the C-end direction.
In June this year, he felt that he had stayed enough, so he jumped to a small factory for a "salary increase", but immediately found that he had fallen into the pit: "It turned out to be a small mess in a big factory, and now it's a big mess in a small factory."
He described his previous survival strategy in a large factory as "taking more money and doing more, and taking less money to put it bad", but now it is difficult to resist even if he is rich.
After coming to the new company, the first thing is the all-round downgrading of the working environment, the location is inconvenient for commuting, the small environment of the workstation is cramped, and even the takeaway in the canteen is even more unpalatable.
In terms of workplace relationships, the frequent adjustment of the organizational structure makes people panic, colleagues are also testing each other, and there is a lack of clear business planning, and there is no way to see the future.
He had a hunch that he would have a very difficult time in the future: "If you can get through it, it will be better later, and if you can't get through it, you will continue to run."
Korean drama "It's okay to know not much, it's a family"
There are many people who also empathize with Yang Zhen's thoughts. Some people said that before changing jobs, many people who left large factories had the illusion of "small and beautiful" for the new company, but what was waiting for them may be a "small and ugly" new workplace.
Cici, a newcomer to the workplace, is also experiencing this pain of backward compatibility. With a 985 bachelor's degree and a master's degree and a number of high-value internships, she joined a large factory in Beijing last year to do big customer sales, mainly responsible for encouraging customers to put information flow, and need to travel everywhere to "sell traffic".
The normal basic salary of fresh graduates is 6,500 yuan, plus a housing subsidy of 1,500, and a stable income of 8,000 yuan per month.
It can be said that the cost performance of the starting point of the workplace is not low.
However, Cici didn't like the job in his heart. She originally chose to join the company because it was enough to have a class in the cold winter of employment, and she was still a big factory, with the illusion of an elite in the workplace.
But after joining the company, she found that the elite seniors in the workplace around her were flowing like a tide.
Everyone sits in a decent and bright office every day, becomes a screw under the flat management system, voluntarily or passively accepts overtime, and when tired, think about the afternoon tea and snacks provided by the company, as well as the free canteen with three meals a day.
In her opinion, most of the "times when work is not so disgusting", and the pride bred by these soft benefits can still alleviate the fatigue of large factory employees to a certain extent.
But these superficial glamour did not retain these elites, nor did they retain Cici, and after more than four months, she decided to leave.
The background of the literature major and the unassuming personality made her feel a lot of "forced" in the wolf work environment. At the same time, sales positions require frequent overtime and business trips, and the body is also a bit unbearable. I am usually on call 24 hours a day, and my work and life are completely blended together.
Photo: Japanese drama "Restart Life"
She couldn't bear it, so she chose to leave her job and jumped to a small traditional manufacturing company to do online e-commerce.
Leaving a job is a joy, but it doesn't last long.
While the office conditions of the new company are poor, the hygiene situation is also degrading, and she has a habit of cleanliness and can only go to the toilet with alcohol to disinfect herself.
After spending the "honeymoon period" of joining the company, the non-standard management of the small workshop also made her uncomfortable. Unlike the SOP process implemented by large factories, small companies need employees to be self-reliant, and she often can't find a person in charge of job docking, so she simply can't start when she first starts working.
With the changes in the company's business, the overall atmosphere of the workplace is also deteriorating, and the harmonious workplace she was looking forward to lasted not long before the colleagues who left her side had already started labor arbitration.
Cici had to face up to the shortcomings of small companies and worry about his future: "The ceiling I met here was an old employee who had risen to a high position, but only within the system. ”
This wasn't what she wanted to pursue, and leaving seemed to be a to-do list option again.
With the future in mind, she plans to transition to a small company for the time being. Instead of returning to Dachang to live and die, she wants to try to maintain a work-life balance at least at this moment.
Workplace ecology and the people in it
For the various situations encountered by the resignations of large factories, the small boss actually has something to say.
Based in Beijing, Zheng Qian opened a small entrepreneurial company. In the process of starting a business, he grew wise and determined not to recruit people from large factories.
During the company's growth period, Zheng Qian once recruited an experienced Dachang person at a high price, and the company needed to learn from the experience of Dachang, who sought promotion and entrepreneurial opportunities, and the two hit it off.
There is no doubt about the ability of Dachang people, but Zheng Qian soon found that the core needs of the two sides did not match: small companies need more all-round talents, and when necessary, they must provide emotional value for ordinary employees, while Dachang people's ability models are more professional and refined, and they cannot lead everyone to "live a good life". After less than two years of holding each other, the two parties who have never been able to run in finally "broke up peacefully".
Since then, Zheng Qian has reflected on the misalignment of the relationship between small companies and large factories. For small enterprises, "unaffordable, not easy to use" is the biggest pain point, when the industry is booming, you can still give it a try, but some small companies that live first are simply not recruited.
In fact, standing in the great wave of the times, what happened to the people of the former Dachang is worth interesting and analytical.
In essence, the biggest economic driver behind this is the process of China's major Internet companies shifting from high-speed development to steady and rational development, and the wages of large Internet companies from flashy and inflated to squeezing out excess bubbles.
It is the market that refreshes the judgment of the surrounding onlookers on the people of Dachang, from "beauty filter" to "disenchantment" - generally speaking, there is no shortage of excellent people in Dachang, but not all people who have been gilded by Dachang have real skills.
This year's 35+ old Yu has experienced the golden decade of China's Internet. He shared that in those ten years, there were acquaintances around him who jumped 7 companies in half a year, and constantly achieved rapid salary increases by jumping between large factories, as for how much his personal ability has really grown, it is a question mark.
There are also friends who have seized the big factories in the rising period, with a monthly salary of 3-40,000 yuan, but in fact, the work is not complicated, and it can even be said that it is very simple machinery, and there is still a lot of time to do other things when working.
In Beijing, during the summer vacation, some high-achieving students such as Tsinghua University will also flock to large factories for internships, with a daily salary of 150 yuan. An employee of a large factory once told Lao Yu that the daily job of the company's Tsinghua interns is to make forms and make copies. "But everyone is still willing to do it, one is passive, and there are problems with the departmental arrangement; Second, the interns also know that what they do is not the most important, the most important thing is to have this piece of gold on their resumes. ”
In the era of hot money, Lao Yu is often confused about the recruitment of some companies - in general, the position is constantly subdivided and subdivided, which leads to the result that it is easy for everyone to be confined to a cubicle, even if they have great ambitions, they can only do that little thing.
At the same time, it is easy to cause redundancy, and everyone's work is easy to be unsaturated. Obviously the work can be done by one person, but due to the subdivision of the position, a little thing has to be communicated across groups and departments, which only increases the hidden cost.
A company's chief operations officer once introduced the organizational structure of the department to Lao Yu, which is divided into three groups. The first group is called the user growth group, which is responsible for attracting users; The second group is called the user conversion group, which is responsible for making users pay money; The third group is called the after-sales service team, which is responsible for the same role as customer service, even though this company is not an e-commerce company.
At that time, it was said that many employees reported that the same team of people could be responsible for the user in the whole process, but they had to divide you, me and him, resulting in each group only being able to do a period of work.
In large factories, there are very few people who can really be promoted to the middle and senior levels. Even moving up to the middle level doesn't mean "this is the place where you can get old".
Once the upward breakthrough fails, and encountering a mid-life crisis, you need to seek a way to survive outward. "But how much comprehensive competitiveness can ordinary employees of large factories come out of such a lattice room?"
Lao Yu admits that although many small companies are also "sparse", the capability model it needs is real. Not only must it have business ability, but also need team management ability, resource integration ability, and EQ IQ coordination ability of all kinds of people. It is more necessary to produce true knowledge in practice, rather than results in the process.
"Because small companies are very pragmatic, you don't have such ability, and the company's life and death problems will teach you to be a new person." Lao Yu said.