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In the past two years, the market has been filled with optimized Internet giants. In the past, people from big companies were considered to be at the top of the employment contempt chain, with excellent salaries, benefits, career advancement opportunities, and vision and ambition.

But things change over time. Today, unemployed people in large companies are also actively or passively turning their attention to small companies. However, their entry into the market is not a dimensionality reduction attack on others. Instead, small companies, which have the ability to counter-select, have begun to pick and choose on these former favorites.

In 2022, 35-year-old Lemon chose to "downgrade" from the operation director of a large company to a coding editor in a small company. The cost was that his monthly income dropped from more than 30,000 yuan to just over 10,000 yuan.

In his career before this, Lemon described himself as "a pig flying on the wind of the times."

When Lemon graduated in 2013, he got an offer in the Internet industry.The Internet was still in its golden decade.。

Lemon worked her way up from a portal website editor to an overseas e-commerce business manager, and she jumped from job to job in Guangzhou to Chengdu. The strong-willed Lemon said that she "hit the ceiling in every job."

But this favorable trend has gradually declined since a few years ago.

In 2021, Lemon joined a large company and was promoted and given a raise. She was once responsible for the core business of traffic operation in the gaming sector. Here, in addition to her monthly income of more than 30,000 yuan, including the year-end bonus, her annual salary is 500,000 yuan. She is based in a provincial capital city, and this 500,000 yuan is already very good in the local area.

But behind the sunshine is the shadow. While earning a high salary, she also encountered unprecedented difficulties.

The high-intensity work did not give her a chance to breathe. The frequent overtime and performance pressure made her start to suffer from insomnia and fall into psychological depression.

“It's like wearing golden handcuffs. In fact, no one is happy. Everyone has psychological problems to varying degrees.The intense work pace makes everyone doubt themselves. "

Lemon ultimately failed to adjust herself. She couldn't ignore the emptiness in her heart. Even though it had nothing to do with the outside world, it couldn't support her to keep going.

Picture｜Korean drama "Start Up"

In 2022, when her peers were still worried about being replaced, Lemon took the initiative to resign. She had no time to think about other things at the time and did not realize that the job market was heading towards a difficult period.

When Lemon recovered and started looking for a job again, he found that after more than two months of interviews, he had not found anything.

Lemon was surprised:I have a great resume and rich experience, so how come I went from being a popular guy to being ignored by everyone?”

After experiencing 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 I have a job." He eventually joined a small company and returned to his old job of content operation.

Her salary dropped to just over 10,000, which was the level she had six or seven years ago. However, the nine-to-five work rhythm was very comfortable for Lemon. She once thought it was a gift from God.

Picture｜Japanese drama "I, Get Off Work on Time"

But after just two and a half months at the job, she still felt out of place and had different opinions from her boss, who was also very dissatisfied with her and said directly:I'm used to seeing people like you who come from so-called big companies, who are good for nothing. They just leave the platform and have no ability at all.”

Unable to tolerate such malice, Lemon was stimulated and resigned again.

After much difficulty, she found another small company, but she was fired after only one week. The reason was that the small company found that Lemon was not cost-effective: it only costs 6,000 to 7,000 yuan to hire an ordinary copywriter, but the price for her was over 12,000 yuan.

Lemon felt desperate: "I was fired from such a small company in such a business position."

Just like that, she lost her job three times within a year. She completely gave up the halo of working in a big factory and joked about herself that "a dead pig is not afraid of boiling water."

Today, Lemon still works in a small company, with a decent salary and a retro environment, which is incomparable to the top-notch offices in large companies. But she said that after all these ups and downs, she found a career she loves.

She has been engaged in writing content related to psychology. Although the salary is very low, the spiritual nourishment she receives makes her feel that this career change is a success.

She feels relieved about the past:When the wind is gone, I return to the ground and become a happy pig.。”

It is not easy to get into a small company, but even if you get into a small company, many people who used to work in large companies can easily experience the huge "downgrading" and "gap" in the process of downward compatibility, and thus lose their way.

Yang Zhen, 30 years old, worked as a senior product manager in a large Internet company for 7 years, focusing on the C-end.

In June this year, he felt that he had had enough, so he switched to a small factory for a "salary increase", but he immediately found himself in a pit:It used to be a small mess in a big factory, but now it is a big mess in a small factory.”。

He described his previous survival strategy in a large company as "Get more money and do more, get less money and do worse"Nowadays, even if you have money, it is difficult to resist.

After arriving at the new company, the first thing I noticed was an all-round downgrade in the working environment. The location was inconvenient for commuting, the workstations were cramped, and even the takeout in the cafeteria tasted worse.

In terms of workplace relationships, the frequent adjustments to the organizational structure have made everyone nervous, colleagues are also testing each other, and there is a lack of clear business planning, and the future is not in sight.

He had a premonition that things would be very difficult for him: "If I can make it, things will be better. If I can't, I'll just keep running away."

Picture｜Korean drama "It's okay to not know each other much, we are family"

Many people also sympathize with Yang Zhen's idea. Some people said,Before changing jobs, many people who leave large companies have the fantasy of a "small and beautiful" new company, but what awaits them may be a "small and ugly" new workplace.。

Cici, a newcomer in the workplace, is also experiencing the pain of backward compatibility. With a bachelor's and master's degree from a 985 university and several valuable internships, she joined a large company in Beijing last year as a key customer salesperson. She was mainly responsible for encouraging customers to release information flows, and needed to travel around to "sell traffic."

The normal base salary for a fresh graduate is 6,500 yuan, plus a housing allowance of 1,500 yuan, for a stable monthly income of 8,000 yuan. If travel allowances are included, an additional few hundred yuan will be added each month. Performance bonuses are calculated separately, so the total monthly income is over 10,000 yuan.

It can be said that the cost-effectiveness of the starting point in the workplace is not low.

However, Cici didn't like this job. She chose to join the company because it was enough to have a class to attend during the cold winter of employment, and it was a big company, giving her the illusion of being a workplace elite.

But after joining the company, she discovered:The professional elites around me are flowing like the tide.。

Everyone sits in a decent and bright office every day, becoming a cog in a flat management system, accepting overtime voluntarily or passively, and when they feel tired, they think about the afternoon tea and snacks provided by the company, as well as the free cafeteria for three meals a day.

In her opinion, most of the time "when the work is not so disgusting", the sense of pride fostered by these soft benefits can relieve the fatigue of people in large companies to a certain extent.

But all the superficial glamour failed to retain these elites, nor did it retain Cici. After more than four months, she decided to resign.

With a background in literature and a low-key personality, she felt "forced" to work in a fierce working environment. At the same time, the sales position required frequent overtime and business trips, which was a bit too much for her body.I am usually on call 24 hours a day, and work and life are completely integrated.

Picture｜Japanese drama "Restart Life"

She couldn't bear it anymore, so she resigned and switched to a small traditional manufacturing company to do online e-commerce with a pay raise.

Quitting a job makes people happy, but this happiness does not last long.

Not only were the office conditions at the new company poor, but the sanitary conditions were also deteriorating. As a germaphobe, she could only go to the toilet to disinfect herself with alcohol.

After the "honeymoon period" of joining the company, she was also not used to the irregular management of the small workshop. Unlike the SOP process implemented by large factories, small companies require employees to be self-reliant. She often couldn't find the person in charge of the work, and she had no idea where to start when she first started working.

As the company's business changed, the overall atmosphere in the workplace also deteriorated. The harmonious workplace she expected did not last long, and colleagues who had resigned had already started labor arbitration.

Cici had to face up to the drawbacks of a small company and was worried about her future: "The ceiling I met here was an old employee who had reached a very high position, but was limited to this company system."

This was not the result she wanted, and resigning seemed to have become an option on her to-do list.

Considering the future development, she plans to work in a small company for the time being.Try to maintain a work-life balance, at least for now。

Small bosses actually have something to say about the various situations encountered by people who leave large companies.

Zheng Qian started a small startup company in Beijing. During the startup process, he learned from his mistakes and decided not to hire people from big companies anymore.

During the company's growth period, Zheng Qian hired an experienced person from a large company at a high price. The company needed to learn from the experience of the large company, and the latter was seeking promotion and entrepreneurship opportunities, and the two hit it off.

The ability of the people in the big companies is beyond doubt, but Zheng Qian soon discovered that the core needs of both parties did not match: small companies need more comprehensive talents, and when necessary, they need to provide emotional value to ordinary employees, while the ability model of the people in the big companies is more professional and sophisticated, and they cannot lead everyone to "live a good life". After less than two years of stalemate, the two sides, who could not get along, finally "parted peacefully".

Since then, Zheng Qian has reflected on the misalignment between people in small companies and those in large companies.For small businesses, "can't afford it, it's not easy to use" is the biggest pain point. It's still possible to give it a try when the industry is booming, but for some small companies that put survival first, it's better not to hire.

In fact, looking at it from the perspective of the times, the current experiences of people who once worked in large companies are quite worthy of reflection and analysis.

In essence, the biggest economic motivation behind this isThe process of China's Internet giants shifting from rapid development to steady and rational development, and the salaries of employees in the giants shifting from flashy and inflated to squeezing out excess bubbles。

It is the market that has refreshed the judgment of bystanders on people in big companies, shifting from "beautification filters" to "demystification" - in layman's terms, there is no shortage of excellent people in big companies, but not all people who have been gilded by big companies have real skills.

Yu, who is over 35 years old this year, has experienced the golden decade of China's Internet. He shared that during that decade, an acquaintance of his changed jobs at 7 companies in half a year, and achieved rapid salary increases by constantly jumping between large companies. As for how much his personal abilities have really grown, it is a question mark.

Some of Lao Yu's friends have taken advantage of big companies that are on the rise, with monthly salaries of 30,000 to 40,000 yuan, but in fact the work they do is not complicated, and can even be said to be very simple and mechanical, and they have plenty of time to do other things while working.

In Beijing, when summer vacation comes, some top students from Tsinghua University will also flock to large companies for internships, with a daily salary of 150 yuan. An employee of a large company once told Lao Yu that the daily work of the company's Tsinghua interns is to fill out forms and make copies. "But everyone is still willing to do it. One reason is that they are passive and there are problems with the department's arrangement; the other reason is that the interns also know that what they do is not the most important thing.The most important thing is that you need this gold on your resume。”

In an era of rampant hot money, I am often confused about the recruitment of some companies. Generally speaking, the positions are constantly subdivided and subdivided again. As a result, it is easy for everyone to be confined to a cubicle, and even if they have lofty ambitions, they can only do a little bit.

At the same time, it is easy to cause redundancy and under-saturation of work for everyone. The work that can be done by one person, due to the subdivision of positions, leads to cross-group and cross-departmental meetings and communication for even the smallest matters, which only increases hidden costs.

An operations director of a company once introduced the department's organizational structure to Lao Yu, which is divided into three groups. The first group is called the user growth group, responsible for attracting users; the second group is called the user conversion group, responsible for getting users to spend money; the third group is called the after-sales service group, 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 complained that the same team could be responsible for users throughout the entire process, but they were divided into you, me and him, resulting in each group being able to do only a part of the work. When it came to coordination, it was particularly time-consuming and energy-consuming, and it was easy to cause trouble.

In large companies, only a limited number of people are promoted to middle and senior management positions. Even if they are promoted to middle management positions, it does not mean that “this is where you can work until you die.”

Once they fail to break through and encounter a mid-life crisis, they need to seek a way out. "But how much comprehensive competitiveness can an ordinary employee of a large company who comes out of a cubicle have?"

Lao Yu admits that although many small companies are "crappy", the capability model they need is real. Not only business capabilities, but also team management capabilities, resource integration capabilities, and the ability to coordinate the emotional intelligence and IQ of various groups of people. It also requires true knowledge from practice, rather than results from processes.

"Because small companies are very pragmatic, you don't have that ability. The company's life and death will teach you to start a new life," said Lao Yu.