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Behind the scenes of the scenery….

Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “瞎说工作” (ID: HRInsight) by Sean Ye.

Last year, if you asked a recent graduate, would you like to go to the Internet industry or a foreign company? A high probability will choose the Internet.

This year? Judging from the newly released Youxing Consulting “Universal Ideal Employer List“, it is still the Internet industry.

A lot of students’ singer’s operation is to take the Big Four or consult the company offer, and then fight for the Internet company’s offer.

01,Foreign companies have been infinitely

Ten years of Hedong, ten years of Hexi.

In the past, foreign companies were powerful forces that the Internet industry could not shake.

Ma Yun mentions: The earliest Ali is not very smart and capable.

2001, 2002, who wants to join Alibaba? We even recruited people who walked on the street. As long as he walks, it is not too embarrassing, we can all (accept).

What is the best talent at the time? Of course, in a foreign company.

Even many talents in Ali Hangzhou have been dug up by foreign companies in Shanghai. Those early employees stayed because they “can’t find a job elsewhere”, “no headhunter to dig them” and had to stay,

After 2000, with China’s entry into the WTO, foreign companies have entered the Chinese market. At that time, foreign companies have tens of thousands of salaries, which far exceeds the market level and naturally attracts the best talents.

I can still hear from HP at the time, the case of IBM employees getting rich:

When the Shanghai people took their 800-month salary, IBM employees in HP took a salary of 20,000-30,000. At that time, Shanghai had a policy of buying a house tax rebate. Foreign companies had high salaries, and they could refund thousands of taxes per month, which could be used as a monthly loan.

So many foreign companies entered the army to buy a house and successfully completed the early accumulation of the original.

We will look at the “Universal Ideal Employer List” selected by Youxing Consulting in 2008.

In the top ten list, half of the engineering divisions are foreign companies; in business, foreign companies account for 80%.

Internet? There is only one seedling: Baidu.

Joining Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, McKinsey, and the well-known foreign companies such as the Big Four accounting firms was the goal of every newcomer at the time.

02,When does a foreign company begin to decline?

In 2008, things changed. As the subprime mortgage crisis surfaced, the world’s largest economy and the United States, which provided the most out-of-band enterprises for Chinese professionals, encountered trouble.

On Sunday, September 14, 2008, when the Chinese people celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and shocked the world.

The financial crisis then involved mainstream Wall Street firms, from Merrill Lynch, to AIG, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.

Soon, well-known big companies in other industries, GM and Ford were also involved.

The Chinese working people on the other side of the ocean also quickly felt the pressure.

I was at Randstad, a top 500 headhunting and talent service organization.

China soon fell into chaos: our mainstream customers, foreign companies, stopped recruiting plans – customers were gone.

The Dutch boss quickly introduced the corresponding emergency plan, let me pass it on to the executives. I watched it for 5 minutes. I understand that it is actually a layoff plan, and every department must cut it.

Coworkers began to turn to each other “Ten Financial Crisis”:

1. Don’t resign, don’t change jobs, don’t change careers, don’t start a business;

2. Many more than a few company positions you can go to;

3. Do not take the initiative to ask the boss to raise wages, layoffs are often cut from high wages;

4. Let’s help your friends to pay attention to job opportunities and introduce them. When it’s your turn to find a job, you will have friends to help you;

5. Save money, buy treasury bonds, or double-currency deposits, don’t buy stocks

6. Send money to parents every month, the economy is not good, the poorer the poorer the better;

7. Don’t buy a car;

8. CrisisThe most difficult later, I haven’t started yet, don’t feel strong;

9. Don’t divorce, don’t have children;

10. Even if you don’t feel the crisis, you should be tight, and use the previous 70% of the money to live the day

Soon colleagues will leave soon.

An HR commissioner just cut one person and talked to her boss for five minutes. I came to my office and silently broke my business card.

I was the first person to come into contact with the “emergency plan” and knew that she was also on the list, but I could not say it.

I don’t know how to comfort her, I don’t even know if I should pretend that she didn’t know she was laid off. The atmosphere in the office is especially strange.

The layoffs brought about by this financial crisis have seriously hampered the confidence of the workplace in foreign companies.

The foreign company must have seen the foreign colleagues of the old company. The idea of ​​serving foreign companies for life has actually sprouted in everyone’s heart. However, when things came to the fore, they found that foreign companies could not rely on them.

In 2009, the “Universal Ideal Employer List” changed dramatically. Take the business list as an example, Wall Street enterprises are all extinct, replaced by a slippery state-owned enterprise.

03,Who is behind the decline of foreign companies?

The financial crisis has seriously shaken the confidence of Chinese professionals in foreign companies.

However, last year’s Internet layoffs also shattered everyone’s illusions about the Internet.

But after a lapse of one year, for students, entering BAT, TMD and artificial intelligence companies is still their first choice.

This year’s “University’s Ideal Employer List“, in addition to Ali, Tencent, Baidu and Huawei, Xiaomi and Lenovo and Jingdong, which are suffering from negative interference, are also on the list.

The opposite foreign companies were selected by Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers (Business), Apple and Siemens (Engineering).

In the end, who is the black hand behind the decline of foreign companies?

Back to the beginning of the 20th century, there are about a few foreign companies entering the Chinese market:

• The market potential is great;

• Special super national treatment; and

• Value-for-money talent

A lot has changed now.

The first is the exchange rate.

I just graduated, in 2005, a small company that started an entrepreneur in China.

I took a monthly salary of 3000. In the first month, the company had not registered successfully and could not pay wages. The American boss took out his wallet and touched me for four hundred dollars.

According to the exchange rate of 1:8 at the time, I felt that I still earned.

The background of the renminbi is still 1:7. The $400 is already less than 3,000 yuan.

More expensive is the price.

The psychological requirements of Chinese people in the workplace have always been against the price of the house. In the few years when the house price is the most insane, even if the salary is increased by 20% every year, it can only be expected.

When I bought a house, I caught up with 3 trillion to save the market. The landlord jumped 200,000 in one month, which is equivalent to my two-year after-tax salary.

On the other hand, as a foreign company in China, the power of management is very limited.

There are not many incomes for themselves. All budget expenditures need to be approved by the headquarters. Even if you want to raise your salary, it is difficult, let alone want to help employees buy a house?

After all, the Chinese people’s simple marriage and buying culture is incomprehensible to European and American executives.

But Ma Yun and Ma Huateng understand.

In 2011, Alibaba launched the “iHome” program to provide employees with 2 billion interest-free home loans.

In the same year, Tencent launched interest-free loan benefits: employees in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen can apply for up to 300,000 yuan of interest-free loans, and employees in other cities can apply for up to 200,000 yuan of interest-free loans.

Following the footsteps of Erma, some Internet companies such as Jingdong also launched a settlement plan for interest-free loans.

China property market: I don’t kill foreign companies, foreign companies die because of me.

If there is no such rapid increase in housing prices, many people may choose foreign companies with relatively balanced work and life compared to the 996 Internet companies.

Now, I can’t afford to work in an Internet company… I just have to look forward to rent subsidies. Headline’s well-known monthly rent subsidy of 1,500, in foreign companies, is still a courtierCan’t do it.

04,Disappearing salary bonus

When I was at Mercer, I was a Fudan girl. I was very smart and had a hand drawing skills.

She had been intern at Mercer for a few months, but she was dug away by the little red book before turning right.

The salary that Mercer gave to the fresh graduates is competitive in the market. After all, we are ourselves doing salary research.

However, the price of the small red book is 16 salary, plus the bonus is almost doubled than Mercer’s salary. Not at all on a horizontal line.

This is not the only time I have failed to win with a startup. I have brought a very smart girl. After 2 years, she was dug by a startup. Under my strong request, the boss supported the drop matching offer. Counter offer, I hope the sister stays.

But the startup immediately doubled the offer…

Foreign companies cannot accept this increase. My American colleague heard that when we were up 10% a year, we opened our mouths and they were able to raise their salary by 2% a year.

I remember that at a meeting, a company director proposed to raise salaries for employees.

The foreign boss immediately showed painting skills on the whiteboard:

He first drew a slowly rising curve, marking the company’s performance growth curve; and then drew a curve of employee salary increases, the increase significantly exceeded the performance increase.

The boss turned around and put down the pen and asked the director: So, one day, the company’s performance could not support salary growth. What is your response?

The foreign company does not.

But the internet industry has it, there are startups. Their payroll is not based on business growth planning, but on financing planning.

Foreign companies spend today’s money, and Internet companies spend money on the future.

The business of many Internet companies is not B2C or B2B at the present stage, but B2VC, which tells the story of the capital market. Take Xiaohongshu as an example. It is not profitable by itself, but it has a good story to tell the capital market to pay for their robbing strategy.

A few days ago, a Mercedes old colleague asked questions in the group:

Checked the data and found that the salary level of Chinese employees is no lower than that of European and American talents. Some places in Europe The salary level of talent is not as good as China (even if the exchange rate difference is not considered).

Another old colleague immediately came up with a Mercer report:

In the 20th year of Mercer’s urban living cost survey, the global cost of living ranked in the top ten cities, four of which were in China, three of which were in mainland China.

Note that Mercer’s research does not consider the cost of local housing purchases.

In other words, even if you leave the unattainable purchase, you will only survive in the north and the pressure will be great.

The cost of living is so high, and the salary is not high enough to make people live?

05,What are the advantages of foreign companies

Traditional foreign companies have declined for many years, and foreign companies in the Internet have not been able to fight in China.

Everyone is not optimistic about foreign companies.

But this does not mean that foreign companies have no advantage.

(Europe and America) The biggest advantage of foreign companies is, in my opinion, human.

In a corporate environment of European and American culture, you can get home from work on time. You can find time to take annual leave every year. You can have normal pregnancy and have children. You can live an ordinary person.

A lot of private enterprises don’t see it this way. They want employees to “work hard, struggle, and contribute”, not to mention that such values ​​are anti-human and toxic.

Moreover, today’s Internet startups lack an effective measure of the contribution of ordinary employees, and all their hard work, struggle and dedication are ultimately converted into overtime and night 996.

If you can’t add a class one day, you can’t look down on the night, you have to have a baby. In the eyes of the company, you become a negative asset instantly, and the company will unscrupulously kick you out.

In the past year, the most common consultation I received was: The company wanted to lay off me, but I hope that I will resign myself. What should I do?

In the past year, we have seen a series of novel “human resources innovations” such as the 996 persuasion-type layoffs of private enterprises, the investigation and sales of layoffs, the high number of layoffs, and the company’s relocation.

This kind of culture that I don’t want to face my pride is hard to find in foreign companies in Europe and America.

The same president who painted on the whiteboard and refused to give employees a raise, once recruited a girl into the company.

The director kindly reminds: This candidate is a girl…

He: What happened to the girl?

Director: This girl is married and not bred.

He: What happened to married and not bred?

Director: What if I have a baby? In the third phase, you can’t work and you have to raise it.

He: Isn’t this supposed to be? Is this not a legal requirement? Should employees give protection during their childbirth?

Director:…

As a boss who is unwilling to raise salary for employees, you may feel that he hates it; but his decision is based on the logic of normal people: the salary increase company cannot be profitable; the company has the obligation to take care of pregnant female employees.

On the other hand, some private enterprises do not hesitate to pay a lot of money when they need you, but once you are not wanted, in order to drive you away, you can do anything.

So I would recommend employee benefits, and how to treat a company that can’t help the company temporarily, to judge whether a company is a conscience: “ how to accurately determine whether a company is not a good company? “

For a professional with 5-10 years of experience, you need to make your own judgment. What do you want?

In mature European and American foreign companies, there are more mature mechanisms for cultivating talents and balancing work and life.

And in start-ups, you have a chance to quickly grow into a senior executive, even a free probability of wealth.

As for newcomers in the workplace, don’t think about it. With the ability to graduate, you can’t get good option incentives in start-ups, and growth is definitely not as good as well-known foreign companies.

Write at the end

To be honest, most of the ideas in this article were written last year.

After all, the tenth anniversary of jealousy is much better than the 11th anniversary. However, last year’s Internet as a whole was in a downward trend, and there were also many illegal layoffs, forcing 996 disgusting things.

I hesitated for a moment and wanted to see it again. Is it ten years in Hedong, ten years in Hexi, and the glory will return to foreign companies. But with the rise of China’s talent costs and the rise of global trade protectionism, foreign companies’ performance in China is not good.

From the perspective of the workplace, I hope that foreign companies can restore at least some of the past.After all, how many Internet startups need to learn the ability of foreign companies to operate in a refined way.

However, in fact, these companies have grown so smoothly that they think they are right to do what they do, 996 is right, it is right to force overtime work, and it is right to persuade layoffs.

These companies really need to be taught in the last lesson.

瞎Workplace (HRInsight):

is where Sean shares his 12 years of experience in the HR industry. His main topics include career planning, personal career advancement, and job interview advice.

Sean has more than 10 years of experience in the HR industry, working for Randstad, the world’s leading HR service provider, and Mercer, a consulting firm. In addition to his work, Sean’s identity also includes the First Financial/Southern Weekly/Leading columnist, who knows the best answer to human resources.