Recently, a friend of mine was suddenly fired. Moreover, he was a major first-line Internet company and met with me over the weekend. After drinking a little wine and chatting a lot, he said that I could post his experience because he had already taken it lightly. As long as he didn't mention his name, he would give it to him if anyone gave a reward.
I was not good at writing this kind of article, so I asked him to write his mental journey again. After writing it, I found that it was simply impossible to read it. After being revised by me in the past two days, I felt that it was even more impossible to read it. Let's just make do with it.
Call him Lao Wang in the article. In fact, his surname is not Wang.
Lao Wang graduated from a 985 school in Sichuan in 2009. As a Sichuanese, he knew that he would return to Sichuan sooner or later, so he planned to come to Beijing to visit first and go back in a year or two. After all, he had never left Sichuan since he was a child, and he would not go out and see it would be too late.
He also chose Beijing because he felt that Beijing had heritage and was suitable for a stuffy young man like him who had no literary and artistic talents.
After arriving in Beijing, he found a job randomly and thought that the company was not bad. In Sichuan, the school recruited only more than 4000 yuan, but the Beijing company directly gave more than 7000 yuan. He was shocked and joined. The job content was Android development. He said with trepidation that he didn't know how to Android either. His supervisor said he wanted to learn? Want to learn from me?
He didn't expect that Android development, which was quite unpopular at the time, would shine in the next few years. Soon, in his third year of work, the bonus was not as high as that of his colleagues, so he prepared to change jobs. There was another small company that had just won the venture capital. There was a line written on the job notice,"As long as you specialize in Android, we can afford any amount of money."
Then he went for an interview, and the other person was not HR, but a business supervisor. He asked a little about his previous work, looked at the code he wrote (the routine operation at that time, directly flipped through the engineering documents), and asked him about his blood pressure, whether he had a history of genetic diseases, and then said if there was nothing wrong, why not come to work in the afternoon with a monthly salary of 30,000 yuan. This was 2012.
He was scared at that time. He didn't expect it to be so exaggerated. Could it be that a fraud company was going to cut off his kidney? Later, when he inquired, he learned that a person like him with three years of Android experience and a strong educational background was at this price in Internet companies. Standing on the overpass covered with "rent advertisements" in Beijing's Xi 'er Banner and buying a bag of sugar-fried chestnuts, he felt that he might have a bright future.
So he joined the job happily. After more than a year, he found that he had changed. He bought himself Jordan shoes, alien notebooks, mechanical keyboards, extremely expensive headphones, etc., which he had never imagined before. His biggest dream was to buy Tesla, and then continue to squeeze the subway to work every day. To add that Tesla already existed in 2013. At that time, although the car leaked from the rain, it was extremely expensive. Neither he nor I can remember how expensive it was.
Later, I met the girl who was conducting testing in the company. She was also from Sichuan. Her ideas were similar to him. She planned to return to Chengdu in the future. After chatting back and forth for more than half a year, I went to meet my parents on National Day. No one opposed the marriage, so it was basically confirmed and married in 2015.
The pre-marriage income was good, so I saved some money. I was going to go back to my hometown to buy a house. However, house prices rose sharply in 2016. As young people who knew about it later, they were going to go back to Chengdu to buy a house, but they never took it seriously. It was not until the second half of 2016 that they realized that they should visit Beijing. They wanted to buy it at a glance. They borrowed money from everywhere to make up the down payment. Unexpectedly, they bought a historically high house price and received a loan of 16,000 yuan a month. Later, Beijing introduced a purchase restriction. House prices are locked.
Five years after graduation, I didn't have a good time in a small company. After the products made by the company experienced crazy spending money, users were unable to get on, and investors lost patience and withdrew. The company began to go downhill obviously, and the leaders gradually began to become more and more abnormal. For example, they required a progress review at 10 p.m. and a regular meeting for all employees at 8:30 a.m.. He felt it was boring, so he went to the recruitment app to scan his resume.
Unexpectedly, he would soon receive news from a large factory and asked him if he was interested in joining their company. He was stunned.
As one of the top three Internet manufacturers in the country, this company had its nostrils turned upside down when it went to their school to recruit. The school recruited less than five people in total.
At that time, young Xiao Wang also went for the interview, but he went in for the reexamination. The examiner asked three questions, but he didn't even understand what the questions meant. The examiner said expressionlessly, go back and wait for our notice. He retreated dejectedly in the eyes of the other party's contempt, without any complaints in his heart. Instead, he lamented that it was indeed a big factory, that was awesome, and his admiration deepened.
Then I felt like I was so cheap.
During this phone interview, I originally thought there would be some super complex algorithm questions, but I didn't expect the other party to ask him about basic operations such as linked list inversion, insertion, and deletion. Isn't this not similar to the basic knowledge of the "Data Structure" course? Looking confused, he passed the interview and went to the big factory he was longing for.
The other party asked about the expected salary, but he said muddleheaded that you would pay it as you see fit, and even forgot what price the other party offered when hanging up the phone.
After entering the factory, he was scolded again, because even though he knew that he was about to lose his salary, he still successfully reversed the old classmate who had been recruited by the school to join the company. He happened to have no experience and spoke out-of-the-box. He accepted the old classmate's warm invitation for dinner. When he revealed his salary, the old classmate quickly resigned. Life is unpredictable.
Later, in the park, I met the examiner who went to school to recruit me many years ago and asked why there was such a big gap between school recruitment and social recruitment. Where did those questions recruited by the school come from?
That guy has already become a big leader and said with emotion, I am ashamed to say, but I also didn't know how to test your questions at that time.
But looking at all of you, it's really funny.
Xiao Wang was thoughtful. So that was it.
I originally thought that the work would involve some complex algorithms. After all, such a big factory was even lower-end than his in a small company. Everyone managed a responsibility field and couldn't write a few lines of code a month. They spent most of the day pulling with colleagues blindly.
However, what I didn't expect was that I was extremely busy. I had endless documents to submit, endless ppt to do, and endless requirements. For every requirement, each requirement only added a few lines of code to my own responsibility field, but there was no shortage of the process that should be followed, the documents that should be submitted, and the project meetings that should be attended.
Sometimes I had to pretend to be busy. After all, the leader didn't leave after work, nor did the leader's leader, and other students in the group seemed to be busy there. He ran away and was too eye-catching, so he read online texts in the company and later learned that other people also understood this problem in this way. He left after nine o'clock, and met a group of people with strange names such as Tang San, Mao Tong, and Angry Banana.
This state lasted for more than a year. He obviously felt that his skills had deteriorated. He suspected that he would never find a job again after staying in this place for five or six years. Later, when he communicated with his colleagues, his colleagues said that nothing was wrong, but all big factories were like this. He was a master of ACM at Beijing Institute of Technology, but he was still useless. He reassured him that the most important thing for big factories was to understand the business logic. They originally had code requirements. Not high, just stay here when you come in. As long as you don't get to the bottom 15%, you won't lay off employees. He breathed a sigh of relief.
Many years later, he looked back and found that it was at that time that his life had a turning point, his concepts had undergone major changes, and he lost his sense of risk.
Later, life passed quickly, because I bought a house and had to pay the loan with peace of mind. The child was born, and a large part of my life was occupied by the child.
More importantly, the biggest change for him when his child was born was that time completely lost control, and he unknowingly entered the "epidemic era" of 2020. Later, time accelerated. While at the company, he was promoted to two levels, but because he was not very talkative and had an average relationship with leaders, his rating was above average every year, and he was not worried about being fired.
Instead, he became a junior supervisor, but he had a very ordinary relationship with the big leader. The main reason why he was promoted was that he really did not do anything wrong. The two who were better than him thought it troublesome to be a leader, so it was his turn, and they were indeed quite familiar with the business.
After becoming a junior supervisor, he completely left his coding position. He felt that there was no problem. After all, the ultimate goal of every code farmer is not to be a code farmer. He can't write code all his life.
I met him during that time, because our two companies have business connections. He is the interface there, and I am the interface here.
Later, my leader gave me 1,200 yuan to find an important contact person in the cooperative company to reduce the cost of friction. So I went and got familiar with him. It happened that they both loved playing ancient games like dota and Crossing the Fire Line, and they both played terrible games. Later, they started to team up to play, but both played terrible games, and they both played terrible games. I was too embarrassed to criticize each other.
Overall, he is a person who goes with everything and feels that the money he makes has far exceeded his expectations and far exceeded those of his classmates who have not come out. It is good to keep doing this.
Because his income was good, his wife simply stopped working and gave birth to another child. The family had spare money and bought a small school district house that was not very suitable for living in. She also spent all her savings, and the mortgage reached more than 30,000 yuan.
Then at the beginning of the year, the storm came.
In fact, there were signs at the end of last year. At that time, China Stock Exchange had not been in good shape overseas. Many of his colleagues did not go bankrupt while their stocks fell, and they made up for bankruptcy. The domestic market is sluggish, and many of the company's profitable projects have also turned into losses. Big leaders talk about "shrinking the front line and concentrating superior troops on key battlefields" every day.
He later said that his sense of politics was too poor. It was not until he was notified that he was being laid off that he understood what "shrinking the front line" meant. It turned out that it was so shrinking that the company's shrinking would be a disaster for him.
However, I mainly feel that it is unlikely to be laid off because I have always been in the top 30%. Unless the layoff rate exceeds 70%, I will be safe.
Who would have thought that the entire team would be laid off?
When he was notified that there was no warning on that day, the senior leader asked him to go over and talk, saying that our department was not profitable and that we had to break our hands at this time. What we said today was not that you were not capable, but that our department had encountered a market downturn. There was nothing we could do about it. You see, I have been working here for more than ten years, and now there are risks. After working for so many years, I have never seen such great difficulties.
He is confused, leader, you might as well say it.
The leader said that you were on the layoff list, but I only saw it today. I didn't know before. It's easy to get together and break up. You were the first one I communicated with, and I didn't know how to say it. Basically, your team has been laid off. Not only your team, one-third of our department's project teams have been laid off, and very few people have been transferred. I don't understand this arrangement, but it has to be implemented.
Later, he learned that his leader had lied about one thing and had not lied about one thing.
The lie is that the layoff list is submitted by the leader, and of course they know in advance who will be laid off.
What's true is that leaders do have risks because he was quickly laid off.
When you stare at the abyss, the abyss also gazes at you.
The next thing was confused. I sat at the workstation until I got off work, found a McDonald's to swipe my mobile phone back and forth until past eleven o'clock, and sat in the car until twelve o'clock. After going upstairs, my wife and children fell asleep. He breathed a long sigh. Anyway, he had not figured out how to explain how to be so distracted today, so there was finally no need to explain.
Everything that followed was in a daze. The clearance, handover cards, and break-up meals were in an orderly manner. In order to efficiently carry out the clearance work, the company specially opened up a green channel. When he finished signing from hr and returned to his workstation, he found that the computer was no longer logged in. He shut down, disconnected, and sent it to the "Technical Department" for filing.
After leaving the company, I suddenly felt sad that I would never be able to enter this building in my life.
When he got home, he didn't tell his wife that he was fired. He went to work every day as before. His wife asked why he was in such a bad state recently. He said that the project was too stressful and everyone was like this. His wife asked him if he had encountered any difficulties. He said that the project progress was too tight and everyone was having a difficult time.
During that time, he applied for a person's license, registered for an online ride-hailing, and prepared to start running taxis because his car was an electric vehicle, the garage had charging piles, and he enjoyed subsidies from the State Grid. It was only a few cents per kilometer. Forget it, running an online booking is very cost-effective.
Later, I felt that although I had almost forgotten about my coding ability, it should be similar to a bicycle. It should not be difficult to pick it up again after not riding it for many years, so I drove out every day to find a Simbak to learn, and submitted my resume.
I interviewed some companies and found that they could find jobs, but they did have objections to age. They were unwilling to recruit older middle-aged people with children, and felt that they could not maintain the intensity of their work.
Moreover, he does not recruit leaders, only grassroots code farmers. His work experience as a leader is a burden to him. He also has doubts about his coding ability. He thinks that if you haven't written code for so many years, can you still code? I am unwilling to pay too high wages because there is no shortage of talents in the talent market now.
In the end, all the companies he was willing to go to were laying off employees, and those who were unwilling to go even picked on him.
What's wrong with this world?
Later, he went to the library to study, but he had a bad mentality and couldn't read it. He looked around and found that there were many middle-aged people there like him pretending to study. The strange thing was that he could recognize them at a glance.
Until one day, he was preparing to go out to work when his daughter-in-law stopped him and told him that he could discuss anything at home and there was no need to fight it himself.
While he was struggling about whether to say anything, his daughter-in-law said that he had long known that he had been fired. Because he hadn't seen his work card for a long time, one day she used his mobile phone to log in to their company's internal management app and found that the permissions had been cancelled. She knew that she was being fired. Besides, the news is full of bad luck about their company every day, and he keeps silent about the company's affairs. It's obviously abnormal.
Oh, so I know, then why bother pretending?
Later, it was his daughter-in-law who enlightened him.
Didn't we agree to return to Chengdu? The environment in Beijing is not as good as Chengdu. Our family has pharyngitis, and the children also like Chengdu. Last time we went back, we didn't want to return to Beijing.
He said he was right, why didn't he think of it?
We don't have a hukou either. When we bought a school district house, we planned to go to school in Beijing if we settled the hukou. Now it seems unlikely, and we don't have to worry about the hukou. Don't we have a Chengdu hukou, but returning to Chengdu will save us peace of mind.
He said he was right, why didn't he think of it?
The daughter-in-law also said, after I go back to Chengdu, I will ask the elderly to help take care of the children. Both the couple will go to work and have savings over the years. If I sell my Beijing house and go back to Chengdu to buy it, life should not be too difficult.
He said he was right, why didn't he think of it?
So some time ago, he sold off the house in the primary school area, and with the money he had left in his hand, he finally no longer worried about the mortgage. Next, he planned to sell the apartment he lived in, and then the family returned to Chengdu. Before returning, he had a meal with his friends in Beijing. After asking around, he found that it would save trouble. In fact, there were not many left. He still left relatively late and his life was unpredictable.
After drinking a few glasses with me, he said,"Ten Years of Beijing Dream." He once thought that he was from the capital. He once thought that the days would continue like that in the future, but he didn't expect it to end unexpectedly.
After the end, I suddenly remembered that I had come to Beijing to see the profound cultural heritage of Beijing. Unexpectedly, after staying for more than ten years, I worked overtime to play games every day. I didn't even go to the Babaoshan Mountain of the Yuanmingyuan Zoo in the Summer Palace. So I took my family and drove around Beijing. I didn't feel it before, but this time I actually gave the whole family a sightseeing experience in Beijing. Some scenic spots that I had no feeling at all felt felt very tall and I couldn't reach it.
After making up his mind to leave, he had a new understanding of the capital:
How did I think I had the courage to leave before?
Now I think where did I get the courage to stay?
I also felt that I was actually no different from my former classmates. I just came to Beijing in an instant and caught up with a wave of Internet celebrities. In the past few years, I had unrealistic illusions and wanted to settle down in Beijing. Now that the dividends have faded, it's time for him to evacuate. Just withdraw, it's all good.
In short, life is unpredictable.
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