Recently, a friend of mine was suddenly laid off, and from a top-tier internet giant. We met up over the weekend, had some drinks, and talked a lot. He said I could share his story since he's already over it, as long as I don't mention his name. If anyone tips, just pass it on to him.
I'm not great at writing this kind of article, so I asked him to write down his journey. After he finished, it was basically unreadable. I spent the last two days heavily rewriting it, but it's still a mess—just bear with it.
Let's call him Old Wang in the article, though his surname isn't actually Wang.
Old Wang graduated from a 985 university in Sichuan in 2009. As a Sichuan native, he knew he'd eventually return to Sichuan, so he planned to first check out Beijing for a year or two before heading back. After all, he'd never left Sichuan his whole life—it was now or never.
He chose Beijing because he felt it had cultural depth, perfect for a low-key, artsy kinda guy like him.
After arriving in Beijing, he easily found a job. The company seemed decent—back in Sichuan, campus recruitment only offered around 4,000 RMB, but the Beijing company directly offered over 7,000 RMB, which shocked him. He joined as an Android developer, nervously admitting he knew nothing about Android. His supervisor asked, "Want to learn? I'll teach you."
Little did he know that Android, then a niche field, would explode in the coming years. Fast forward to his third year: his bonus was lower than his coworkers', so he decided to jump ship. Another small startup had just secured venture capital, with a recruitment ad that read, "If you specialize in Android, we'll pay whatever it takes."
He went for the interview. It wasn't an HR but a business manager who briefly asked about his previous work, looked at his code (standard practice back then—directly flipping through project files), asked about his blood pressure and family medical history, and then said, "If nothing's wrong, how about starting this afternoon? Monthly salary 30,000 RMB." This was 2012.
He was stunned. It seemed too absurd—was this a scam to harvest his organs? Later, he found out that someone with three years of Android experience and a solid educational background was indeed worth that price in internet companies, no haggling. Standing on the overpass at Xi'erqi, covered in "for rent" ads, he bought a bag of sugar-fried chestnuts and felt he might actually make something of himself.
So he happily joined the company. Within a year, he noticed he'd changed: he bought Jordan sneakers, an Alienware laptop, a mechanical keyboard, ridiculously expensive headphones—things he'd never dared dream of before. His biggest dream was to buy a Tesla, while still commuting by subway every day. (By the way, Tesla existed in 2013—those cars leaked rain but were astronomically expensive; neither of us remembers exactly how much.)
Then he met a girl in the testing team, also from Sichuan, with similar plans to return to Chengdu. They chatted for over six months, visited each other's parents during National Day, got the family's blessing, and married in 2015.
Before marriage, they had decent savings and planned to buy a house back home. But housing prices skyrocketed in 2016. As young people slow to react, they initially ignored it, planning to buy in Chengdu. It wasn't until late 2016 that they realized they should look in Beijing. When they checked, they immediately wanted to buy. They scraped together a down payment from everywhere, only to buy at the peak of the market, burdening themselves with a monthly mortgage of 16,000 RMB. Then Beijing introduced purchase restrictions, and housing prices froze.
Five years after graduation, things at the small company went sour. The product they'd poured money into failed to gain users; investors lost patience and pulled out. The company started a clear decline. Management became increasingly unreasonable—requiring progress updates at 10 p.m. and full-team stand-ups at 8:30 a.m. He felt it was pointless, so he updated his resume on job apps.
Unexpectedly, he soon received a message from a big tech giant asking if he was interested in joining. He was stunned.
This company, one of the top three internet giants in China, had looked down their noses during campus recruitment at his school—they'd hired fewer than five people total back then.
Younger Old Wang had also applied then. He made it to the second round, but the examiner gave him three problems he couldn't even understand. The examiner said expressionlessly, "Wait for our notice." He slunk out under their contemptuous gaze, feeling no resentment, only admiration—truly, a top-tier company was awesome. He was even more in awe.
Later, he felt like such a sucker.
This time, during the phone interview, he expected some super complex algorithm questions. Instead, they asked about linked list reversal, insertion, deletion—basic stuff from freshman Data Structures. Confused, he passed and joined the company he'd long dreamed of.
When they asked his expected salary, he mumbled, "You decide." He even forgot what offer they'd made when the call ended.
After joining, he was shocked again. Even though he'd lowballed himself, his salary still outranked an old classmate who'd joined through campus recruitment. Naive and outspoken, during a meal his classmate kindly invited him to, he casually mentioned his salary. The classmate soon quit. Life is unpredictable.
Later, he ran into the examiner who'd recruited at his school years ago. "Why is there such a gap between campus and social recruitment? Where did those questions come from?"
The guy had climbed to a high position and said with emotion, "To be honest, I couldn't solve those questions either. But watching you all flounder—it was pretty amusing."
Old Wang pondered: "So that's how it is."
He expected the work to involve complex algorithms, given the company's size. But it turned out to be even more basic than at the small startup. Everyone managed their own patch of responsibility, writing just a few lines of code per month. Most of the day was spent wrangling with colleagues.
However, they were incredibly busy—endless documents to submit, endless PPTs to make, endless requirements to review. Each requirement added just a few lines of code to his patch, but the full process—documents, meetings, project stand-ups—was non-negotiable.
Sometimes, he had to pretend to be busy. The boss didn't leave, the boss's boss didn't leave, and other team members all seemed busy. If he left early, he'd stand out. So he stayed at the office reading web novels. Later, he found out everyone else did the same—leaving after 9 p.m. He got to know authors with strange names like Tang San, Mao Ni, and Fen Nu Xiang Jiao.
This went on for over a year. He felt his technical skills deteriorating badly. He worried that if he stayed five or six years, he'd never find another job. When he mentioned this to a colleague, the colleague laughed: "No big deal. Big companies are all like this. I was an ACM ace from BIT—still got ruined. The key in a big company is understanding the business. They don't care much about code quality. Just stay here, as long as you're not in the bottom 15%, you won't be laid off." Old Wang breathed a sigh of relief.
Years later, looking back, he realized that was the turning point. His mindset shifted; he lost his sense of risk.
The days flew by. They'd bought a house and had to pay the mortgage. A child came along, consuming a huge chunk of his life.
More importantly, the birth of his child completely disrupted his schedule. Before he knew it, the pandemic era of 2020 arrived. Time sped up even more. At work, he got promoted twice, but since he wasn't talkative and had an average relationship with his boss, his annual rating was always above average, so he never worried about being fired.
He became a junior manager, largely because he hadn't made any major mistakes, and the two more capable candidates didn't want the hassle of management. Plus, he was familiar with the business.
Once he became a manager, he completely left coding. He thought that was fine—after all, every coder's ultimate goal is to stop coding. You can't write code forever, right?
I got to know him during that period. Our companies had business dealings—he was their contact, and I was ours.
My boss gave me 1,200 RMB to take key contacts from the partner company out to dinner to reduce friction. So I did, and we got familiar. We both loved ancient games like Dota and CrossFire and were both terrible at them. We started playing together—too bad to criticize each other.
Overall, he was a go-with-the-flow kind of person. He felt his income had far exceeded his expectations and outstripped classmates who never left home. He thought life could just carry on like this.
With his good income, his wife quit her job and they had another child. They had some savings left, so they bought a tiny, barely livable school-district apartment, draining their savings. Now the monthly mortgage shot up to over 30,000 RMB.
Then came this year's beginning—the storm hit.
There were signs late last year. US-listed Chinese stocks were performing poorly. Many of his colleagues went broke trying to margin call their falling stocks. The domestic market was sluggish; many of the company's profitable projects turned to losses. Senior leaders constantly talked about "shrinking the front, concentrating advantages on key battlegrounds."
He later admitted his political instincts were terrible. He didn't understand what "shrinking the front" meant until he was notified of his layoff. It meant shrinking like that. When the company shrinks, it lands on you as a disaster.
Mainly, he thought it unlikely he'd be laid off. His performance was consistently in the top 30%. Unless the layoff rate exceeded 70%, he'd be safe.
Who would've thought the entire team would be cut?
The day he was notified, there was no warning. His boss called him in for a "chat" and said, "Our department isn't performing well. We have to take tough measures. This isn't about your ability—it's just the market downturn. We can't help it. Look, I've been here for over a decade, and now I'm at risk too. I've never seen such difficulty."
Old Wang was stunned. "Just tell me straight."
The boss said, "Your name is on the layoff list. I only saw it today; I didn't know before. Let's part amicably. You're the first I'm telling, and I'm not sure how to say it. Your whole team is basically laid off—not just your team, but a third of the project groups in our department. Very few people are transferring. I don't understand this arrangement, but I have to execute it."
Later, he found out his boss lied about one thing and told the truth about another.
The lie: the layoff list was submitted by the boss, so he knew who would be laid off beforehand.
The truth: the boss was indeed at risk too—he was soon laid off himself.
When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.
Everything after that was a blur. He sat at his desk until quitting time, went to a McDonald's and scrolled through his phone until 11 p.m., then sat in his car until midnight. When he went upstairs, his wife and kids were already asleep. He sighed with relief—he hadn't figured out how to explain his agitated state, and now he didn't have to.
The next days were a daze: clearance, handing in his badge, farewell dinners—all orderly and efficient. To streamline the process, the company set up a special fast track. After he signed the papers with HR and returned to his desk, he found his computer already locked out. He shut it down, unplugged it, and sent it to the tech department for archiving.
As he walked out of the building, a wave of sorrow hit him: he'd never enter this building again.
He didn't tell his wife about being laid off. He went to work as usual every day. When his wife asked why he looked so down, he said project pressure was too high—everyone was like that. When she asked if he was in trouble, he said the project schedule was too tight; everyone was struggling.
During that time, he got his driver's license and vehicle registration, signed up as a ride-hailing driver. His car was electric, with a charging station in the garage, benefiting from a national grid subsidy—just a few cents per kilometer. He calculated it would be very cost-effective.
He also thought that even though he'd forgotten most of his coding skills, they'd be like riding a bike—easy to pick up again. So every day, he'd drive to a Starbucks to study and send out resumes.
He interviewed at several companies and found he could get offers, but they had issues with his age. They didn't want to hire an older middle-aged guy with kids, doubtful he could handle the workload.
Moreover, they only wanted individual contributors, not managers. His management experience became a liability. They also doubted his coding ability—"You haven't written code in years—can you still do it?" They were unwilling to pay high salaries because the talent market was flooded.
The companies he was willing to join were all laying off; those he wasn't keen on nitpicked about him.
What's wrong with this world?
He went to the library to study, but his mindset was off—couldn't concentrate. Looking around, he noticed many middle-aged men similarly pretending to study. Oddly, he could immediately tell they were in the same boat.
One day, just as he was about to head out pretending to go to work, his wife stopped him and said, "You can discuss anything at home. You don't have to carry it alone."
As he hesitated, she said she'd known he was laid off for a while. She hadn't seen his badge in a long time. One day, she logged into the company's internal app on his phone and found his permissions revoked. Plus, the news was constantly covering his company's misfortunes, and he never mentioned work—obviously abnormal.
"Oh, you knew. What's the point of pretending?"
Later, it was his wife who talked him through it.
"Weren't we originally planning to return to Chengdu? Beijing's environment isn't as good as Chengdu's. The whole family has pharyngitis, and the kids love Chengdu—last time they didn't want to come back."
He said, "Right, why didn't I think of that?"
"We don't have Beijing residency anyway. We bought that school-district apartment hoping if we got residency, the kids could go to school here. Now it's impossible, so we don't have to worry about residency. We have Chengdu residency—it'll be easier when we go back."
He said, "Right, why didn't I think of that?"
She added, "I've calculated. When we go back to Chengdu, the grandparents can help with the kids. We'll both work. We have savings. Sell the Beijing house, buy one in Chengdu—life shouldn't be too hard."
He said, "Right, why didn't I think of that?"
So, a while ago, he sold the small school-district apartment. With the remaining savings, he no longer worried about the mortgage. Next, he plans to sell their main residence and move the whole family back to Chengdu. Before leaving, he wants to have dinner with all his Beijing buddies. He checked around and found surprisingly few left—he was actually one of the last to go. Life is unpredictable.
Over a few drinks with me, he said, "Ten years of a Beijing dream." He once thought he'd become a true Beijinger, that life would go on like that forever. Then, out of nowhere, it ended.
After it ended, he suddenly remembered that he originally came to Beijing to soak in its rich culture. But over a decade, he spent all his time working overtime and gaming, never even visiting the Summer Palace, the Old Summer Palace, the zoo, or even Babaoshan. So he took his family on a driving tour of Beijing. For the first time, it felt like they were tourists visiting the city. Sights he'd never noticed before suddenly seemed grand and unattainable.
Once he decided to leave, he gained a new understanding of the capital:
"Before, I wondered how I'd ever have the courage to leave?"
"Now, I wonder how I ever had the courage to stay?"
He also realized he wasn't much different from his old classmates. He just happened to come to Beijing on a whim, rode the wave of internet dividends, and indulged in unrealistic fantasies of settling down in the capital. Now that the dividends have faded, it's time for him to leave. So be it—it's all fine.
In short, life is unpredictable.
The end. If you've read this far and found it worthwhile, feel free to give a like and "watching" (thumbs up).
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