In order to catch the company shuttle bus to Yizhuang in the northeast corner of Beijing, intern Wang Ke gets up at 6:40 every morning. If she can't catch up, she will have to face a very tormented hour and 10 minutes, at the cost of two changes to 21 subway stations from the East Third Ring Road.
Internet people seem to be getting busy. Just recently, Kuaishou announced the launch of full-size weeks (an overtime system, six days in a major week and five days in a small week); to encourage overtime, ByteDance also stated that it would pay twice the salary for employees who work overtime on weekends.
But the fatigue caused by overtime sometimes becomes the last straw that crushes the camel.
On the evening of January 3, someone on the Workplace Social App revealed that a young female employee of Pinduoduo died suddenly on the way home at 1:30 in the morning. Later, someone said that the Pinduoduo grocery shopping department where the deceased was located has implemented a "hard-core struggle model", that is, a "super week" model that works 7 days a week and 6 days a week, and the working hours must not be less than 10 hours a day. It is mandatory to work at least 300 hours a month.
What is it that makes Internet people have to run in the way of overdrawing the future?
The Internet is generally tired
First of all, we have to be clear-most Internet companies must be very tired. Whether you are in a giant, a small startup company, or a supplier serving an Internet company, whether you are doing technology, products, or operations, your status is a full-time employee, outsourcing, or intern.
If not, you should be thankful that your work is not sufficiently saturated. Let's give a few examples below.
In order to catch the company shuttle bus to Yizhuang in the northeast corner of Beijing, intern Wang Ke gets up at 6:40 every morning. If she can't catch up, she will have to face a very tormented hour and 10 minutes, at the cost of two changes to 21 subway stations from the East Third Ring Road.
Sleep time was compressed because of commuting, and she had no life for a long time. Taking the shuttle bus on the way back and forth can give her a short rest, "I can sleep for a while after getting on the shuttle bus." But it's hard for her to sleep securely anymore-in just three days, she experienced two accidents.
One winter night in 2020, she was thinking about whether to eat dumplings when she arrived home, but the shuttle bus broke down on the road. Sitting in the back row, she went to sleep and woke up again. For nearly an hour, the car did not move until the next bus picked them up. When changing cars, she smiled bitterly at each other with a stranger in the car. It was the winter solstice that night, and her meal plan was soaked up.
One morning, when the car drove to the company, the glass in the back row shattered in an instant. Wang Ke woke up from his sleep, not knowing what happened for a while. The car was still driving forward, and the broken glass was crumbling. A colleague next to her was quick-eyed and raised the window shelf to prevent the glass from falling, becoming a "hero" in her eyes. At the end of get off work, the rear window glass had been repaired, but in retrospect, she still felt scared.
Once home, Wang Ke switched from the shuttle bus to the subway and slumped directly on the ground in the carriage. Her face is probably haggard. "An aunt has been staring at me with pity and compassion, and she has looked at me for a few stops."
She also thought about renting a closer house. A friend who was about to leave her job took her to see the house she rented: It takes 10 minutes to take a taxi from the company, and to walk 2 kilometers by subway. It was a Loft with a monthly rent of 3,600 yuan. The layout and lighting were good, but she couldn't feel the fireworks around her.
"There are almost no people outside at night, and there is very little food to eat." She paused when she said that, "Even the shrimp and prawn shabu is a copycat version." Now she still rents at a friend's house, even if there is not much every day. Time to enjoy life, but being able to see the busy traffic outside the window, she feels that she is closer to life.
Of course, in the well-equipped building, there are also fragments of life hidden. Heytea, Muji, and KFC can all be found. The gym is also a popular place to check in. Wang Ke used to line up for a treadmill for more than ten minutes, but she has never lined up in a traditional Chinese medicine physiotherapy room. "The remaining quota is always 0."
In the company's barber shop, Wang Ke witnessed a moving scene.
A male employee with severe hair loss sat on a chair and said to the little hairdresser: "When I trouble you to push, it can make my hair look less sparse." The little hairdresser did the job quickly. The employee looked at his haircut in the mirror, embraced the haircut brother excitedly and satisfied, and said, "Thank you, brother!"
Although the company does not have "weeks", the operating posts are often on duty on weekends. Recently, she took the time to watch the newly released movie "Spiritual Journey". A line in it made her feel very emotional: "The moment you want to live, the spark in your heart has been ignited."
She feels that working in an Internet company is not just a busy job. Long commuting and overtime have made her lose the opportunity to experience life, not to mention the fire in her heart.
She was not the only one who lost the fire in her heart. Zhang Bo used to work in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, but was dug to Beijing by an Internet company's commercialization department not long ago. He started a single-person life in Beijing, except for his roommates who share a room, and rarely has any contact with the outside world.
If there is nothing to do on weekends, he will go to the company to work overtime by himself. He said that working overtime on weekends is more efficient, and various meetings and work connections on weekdays make him useless. When it’s time for a meal, either order a takeaway or buy a bento at the company’s convenience store, and just spend the rest of the working day with afternoon tea.
The internal volume is not enough to explain the tiredness of the Internet
Zhu Xiaohui is doing an urban sociological study on Houchang Village. Her university major is sociology and she is very interested in Houchang Village where Internet companies are densely populated.
Houchang Village is known as the Silicon Valley of China, but the urban form of the entire region resembles an inverted city. In a city in the traditional sense, a variety of commercial forms will appear in the streets, the streets are very busy, showing a vigorous form.
But public facilities here are scarce. Every local Internet company defaults to laying some “public facilities”. Even if Houchang Village has wide roads and streets, there is nothing on both sides, such as cafes, convenience stores, gyms, etc. Bookstores... These commercial entities that should have appeared on the streets are concentrated in the buildings of many Internet companies.
Every infrastructure built with concrete and steel bars is like a miniature city, and employees can solve most problems without leaving their homes. The environment tells people that work is life, and life is inseparable from work.
"The Internet giants place the public space of the city in a closed space. It cuts people's public life and gathers people into a closed space." Zhu Xiaohui said that this kind of space will subtly shape people's terrain. Life and psychology.
In the "Popularity in Humanity·Talent Attraction Report 2020" released by Maimai, the overall job happiness satisfaction of Internet industry professionals ranks third from the bottom in the rankings of various industries. They have to face issues such as 996, workplace PUA, age anxiety, workplace trust, and giant infant management.
Many people think that they are being involved in an endless competition of internal friction. They feel very tired, exhausted and depressed. The self-deprecation of programmers and ppt female workers is by no means a simple ridicule or joke, but also people's introspection and reflection on their own value.
"I think this is a result driven by a huge system. Everyone is a screw. In this huge system, you are constantly being pushed, and you need to continue to complete one KPI after another, and complete one task after another. "Zhu Xiaohui sighed, "This is a choice with no choice."
According to Zhu Xiaohui's observation, "Internet involution" is not the result of an individual or a company. The Internet itself is updated and iterated very quickly, which is even faster than most industries we know. The rapid entry of capital into the Internet industry has accelerated this rate of change. This forward force is applied to the company, and then applied to every employee by the company. Their pressure is much greater than that of practitioners in the traditional industry.
Zhou Xiaolu moved to a new business line of a major Internet company at the end of 2020. The department is responsible for creating new products, but according to the company's regulations, the data does not meet the standards, and their products cannot be launched independently. Instead, they rely on continued incubation in the main product and wait for the data to run through before they can launch the new product separately.
This model is the incubation of new business lines adopted by most Internet companies. Zhou Xiaolu can leave work before 8 o'clock every day in the original Internet company, and can only leave work after 10 o'clock in the evening every day in the new company.
This kind of new business line emphasizes the emphasis on operation. Both the operation model and the business model are under exploration, which requires a lot of manpower, material resources and time to explore, and there is no fixed standard for everything.
This kind of news always ignites people's emotions
She didn't show any disgusting attitude towards her exploratory work and life. She had a Starbucks or coffee machine when she was sleepy, a space capsule and a camp bed when she was tired, and a gym when she was tired, and there was a shower room in the gym. In some large companies that do not spare luxury decoration, there is even a whole climbing wall inside the office building.
"Most people around me are like this, I don't think it's so strange." Zhou Xiaolu said.
So what should we do?
"Silicon Valley still pays more attention to work-life balance than Beijing."
This is the common idea of many practitioners who have been in the Internet industry in China and the United States. Although the work intensity in Silicon Valley is not what some self-media said, "Everyone will be gone after get off work", but overall, the work intensity is still lower than the average level of the same industry in China.
So, is the "Silicon Valley Model" a good future?
A former eBay Chinese employee once had a cooperation with JD.com. The project manager of JD.com said directly that we don’t need to watch your progress, and we don’t need to mention anything. Looking at the Jingdong building that was still brightly lit at 10 o'clock in the evening, and then looking at the people sent by eBay to Jingdong, he returned to the hotel after five o'clock. He felt that what the people of Jingdong said was true.
Obviously, the work intensity and off-get off work hours of domestic Internet people can be compared to Silicon Valley, which can be called "boundless merit".
But it is naive to expect this change in the short term. Under the current domestic Internet competition pressure, overtime and exhaustion will be the norm for Internet users for a long period of time in the future.
The self-proclaimed "Baidu senior R&D engineer" knows that users "one day at a time" analysis believes that the Internet is inherently monopolistic, and once it becomes the leader in the segment, it can monopolize profits. The second and third child can still have some soup, while the latter may lose the panties. Each team can only desperately speed up product iteration and occupy the market faster.
He also believes that the gameplay of the Internet industry is different from the entrepreneurial gameplay of traditional industries. Once the core logic of the Internet industry is verified, it will burn money to grab customers and occupy market share through venture capital. Under the Matthew effect, the faster the company gets the more financing, the greater the hope that it will go back and forth and become bigger and stronger.
In addition, compared with Silicon Valley’s already more mature corporate system and competitive landscape, the domestic Internet industry is still undergoing rapid development and constant changes. The average level of corporate management is far inferior to that of Silicon Valley. A "technical and human-intensive" company is an easy task.
As the workplace author "People and Gods Work Together" said, when the benefits of improving the management level from the company's internal "grabbing" are far less than the benefits of "grabbing" from the external market such as business development and product strategy, 996 It has become a "relatively rational" choice for enterprises.
A year-end summary on WeChat of a “worker” company
In the logic of market allocation of resources, this is an iron law that is difficult to break. It's just that in the fastest-growing Internet industry, its performance is particularly obvious, even with a hint of blood in many cases. To break its shackles, "escape" seems to be the most direct and convenient choice. After all, "people can control their own efforts."
"This is an era of hard work. You can choose the days of ease, but you have to choose the consequences of ease. People can control their own efforts, and we can all."
On January 4, 2020, Pinduoduo's marketing partner Li Mou used his personal mobile phone to post such a remark on Pinduoduo Zhihu's official account that "does not represent any official Pinduoduo attitude".
Although Pinduoduo officials strongly opposed this, the "Li" still told the truth-if you can't do it, just leave.
This article has been included in the open source project: https://github.com/Android-Alvin/Android-LearningNotes , which contains self-learning programming routes in different directions, interview question collection/face sutras, and a series of technical articles, etc. The resources are continuously being updated …