Behind the flow of talents, the Internet landscape is also quietly changing.

Editor’s note: This article is from Interface News.

Reporter | Zhou Yixue

Edit | Wen Shuqi

Internet talent is gathering like never before. Jumping from one big factory to another has long been an operation for Internet employees.

“The Internet has developed for so many years, and the giants have formed a monopoly on business and excellent talents. Large companies recruit people, either from within the company or from the benchmarking company.” A consulting company focused on the Internet field is headhunting The consultant said to Jiemian News, “For example, Tmall operations positions, the most suitable person is first on Taobao, and secondly on Jingdong.”

When a company wants to start a new business, the most direct way is to dig out people from competitors. According to the aforementioned headhunters, Ali has been working hard on local life and has been digging people from Meituan, but the effect is not satisfactory; while Douyin wants to be an e-commerce company, and established a research and development center in Hangzhou 5 kilometers away from Ali last year, Ali P6 and P7 are relatively easy to dig.

Who is digging people? Who is being dug? Behind the flow of talents, the Internet landscape is also quietly changing.

Emerging big companies rush to recruit talents

If you ask which Internet giant hired the most people in the first half of the year, the first reaction of many people is byte beating. Despite successive setbacks in overseas markets, the company’s momentum in recruiting talents globally has not diminished.

In addition to the high-profile Disney’s head of international marketing and video business, Kevin Meyer was dug into Tiktok as chief operating officer. Not long ago, Tiktok announced plans to add 10,000 jobs in the United States in the next three years. In the first half of the year alone, Tiktok’s job growth in the United States has nearly tripled, from 500 to 1,400.

In the United States, Facebook, which is in direct competition with Tiktok, has become the preferred target for digging people.

A person familiar with the matter told Jiemian News that Tiktok dug a lot of people from Facebook in the first half of the year, and there are more high-level employees. The basic salary of L5 (senior engineer with a team) can be 200,000 US dollars, which is higher than Facebook. 20% out.

“More importantly, stock options are given a lot.” The above-mentioned person familiar with the matter said that this kind of frantic digging has caused Facebook to sign agreements with these former employees to require that no more employees can be poached.

An Airbnb employee revealed that Airbnb announced layoffs in April and May.I came to the site to ask if I wanted to join Tiktok. “A group of more than a dozen people in the company for growth has been poached.”

In China, Bytedance has also launched a huge recruitment plan. In July, ByteDance announced that its e-commerce business in Shanghai has been integrated and upgraded to the Douyin e-commerce sector. In the next three years, the number of employees in Shanghai will increase to 20,000 (currently 6,000). In addition, the total number of employees in the Beijing area in the next three years will exceed 60,000.

ByteDance has been continuously expanding its business footprint. After the great success in the fields of information flow recommendation and short video, new business sectors such as e-commerce and education are regarded as the next growth point. “Byte wants to do too many things. The company thinks it can’t live by headlines and Douyin, and it’s still exploring the next big thing.” An employee of Bytedance said.

When a company is preparing to open a new business, the first thing is to dig out the team. At the beginning of 2019, ByteDance set up a research and development center in Hangzhou, located in the future science and technology city of Yuhang District, which is only 5 kilometers away from the location of Taobao City, the headquarters of Alibaba.

There is no direct evidence that BYTE set up this R&D center to dig out Ali employees, but coincidentally, Douyin started its e-commerce business almost at the same time.

The above-mentioned headhunting consultant told the interface news reporter that for ordinary employees, the salary offered by ByteDance is 20% to 30% higher than that of Ali, and the overall option is much higher. What’s more, at the moment, Douyin’s e-commerce business is in the early stages of development, which often means that employees have greater room for growth and promotion in the future. “Therefore, it is easy to dig P6 and P7 employees from Alibaba (about 5 years of work experience).”

In addition to Bytedance, Kuaishou and Pinduoduo were also two other Internet companies with relatively high recruitment needs in the first half of the year.

Kaishou announced a recruitment plan for 10,000 people at the beginning of the year, covering multiple positions in R&D, product, and operations. The outside world generally believes that the expansion of personnel is related to the commercialization of Kuaishou starting this year in e-commerce. Pinduoduo has not disclosed its recruitment plan to the public. The official website shows that Pinduoduo currently has 815 positions released, and each position does not specify the specific number of people.

According to Jiemian News, among the major Internet companies, Pinduoduo, which has seen strong stock price gains this year, has overwhelmed Bytedance and has become the company with the most competitive salary increase.

“To Pinduoduo, salaries can now rise by 50% or 60%.” The above-mentioned Baidu employees revealed that employees who lost from Baidu had been dysfunctional in the past few years. In the past one or two years, they have mainly gone to Pinduoduo. A lot.

Another headhunter told Jiemian News that this year Pinduoduo mainly wants to do some vertical e-commerce businesses, such as hotel reservations, train ticket business, etc., and it is already hiring people.

Break-through talents are more sought-after

Emerging Internet companies are recruiting soldiers everywhere, digging into the corners of established companies.

A few years ago, when Toutiao’s products were in a period of rapid development, Bytedance had the most algorithms and technical talents poached from Baidu. A Baidu employee told Jiemian News that almost half of the interviewers who had been interviewed by BYTE came from Baidu.

“Baidu people will go to byte before 2018, and their salaries can jump by 60% to 70%, or even double.” The above-mentioned Baidu employee said, but as products such as Toutiao gradually entered a mature stage, the word The salary increase from Baidu’s digging is not as impressive as before.

He believes that the price/performance ratio of ordinary employees to byte is no longer high. Although Baidu continues to shrink, as an established Internet company, Baidu is more mature in employee training and performance systems. It will increase salary every year. If the performance is good, the salary will even increase by 30% every year, which is not lower than the income from job-hopping. .

“Bytedance’s current salary is similar to that of other Internet companies, except that it motivates employees who are more concentrated in the top performance.” A Bytedance employee told UI News.

Actually, compared with ordinary employees, emerging companies such as Byte and Pinduoduo are now more coveted by senior talents in established Internet companies.

The above-mentioned headhunting consultants observed that this year’s recruitment needs of major Internet companies are also more biased towards higher-level candidates, such as employees with P8 in Alibaba and 3-3 in Meituan. This usually means that they can lead a small and medium-sized team. , Responsible for the revenue of a certain business sector. “The executives are easy to find. In the case of a bad overall environment, they will be more inclined to recruit people who can bring changes to the business. In Ali’s words, those who have the ability to break the game.”

But senior talent with the ability to break games is difficult to dig. According to the experience of the headhunting consultant, two conditions must be met before they can be dug. One is that the client provides better stock options and resource support. In addition, although the candidate has done a good job in business growth, it is due to factional struggles within the original company. The reason for personal development is limited. “If the resources provided by the client are good, it is impossible to mine.”

There is also a situation in which some established Internet companies that are gradually shrinking or going downhill will also release senior talent to the market.

Compared to ordinary employees, it is more difficult for senior employees to be promoted within the company. Not only do they have to be outstanding, they are also closely related to the company’s development. They need to quickly expand their business to be promoted. The aforementioned Baidu employees said that in recent years, Baidu has been relatively shrinking, and such opportunities are rare. In addition, Baidu’s stock price has been sluggish in recent years, which has a greater impact on senior employees whose income mainly depends on stocks. If these people have the right opportunity, they will be more motivated to leave than ordinary employees.

Start-up companies also become talent pools

Under the extremely uncertain economic situation, development encounters bottlenecksTalents from start-up companies, or emerging industries that are squeezing bubbles, are flowing to big factories.

A practitioner in the autonomous driving industry told Jiemian News that the overall situation of the autonomous driving industry is not easy. Start-ups are relatively risky. Basically, they are still relying on capital blood transfusion to survive. It is better to go to large factories.

2017 was the peak period of autonomous driving. At that time, it attracted a large influx of capital and the number of startups and practitioners doubled. But since last year, due to the bottleneck of technology and slow progress in commercialization, the industry has entered a cold winter period. Capital is gradually concentrated in a few head companies, and those mid-tail companies that do not receive capital support and lack hematopoietic capabilities are being eliminated.

The industry consensus is that autonomous driving is a money-burning machine and a long-term race. Compared with start-up companies that rely on external financing, large companies with profitable main businesses and application scenarios are more capable of investing more in the field of autonomous driving where the prospects are still uncertain.

An employee of a company that switched from a start-up to the unmanned driving department of Meituan said that the unmanned driving department of Meituan has been expanding recently. The number of people in his team has doubled in the past two or three months. The recruited employees come from companies such as Horizon and Baidu. Currently, Meituan’s autonomous driving department has hundreds of people.

Didi’s autonomous driving company also announced that it will hire 200 employees this year to accelerate the expansion of autonomous taxi services.

“CXOs with start-up companies have also begun to gradually flow to large companies this year. In terms of salary, the top talents will still not be reduced, but the middle and below may accept flat jumps, or even slightly lower them.” The headhunting consultant said.