Cover: Graphic Creativity After 2018, with the impact of capital ebbing, traffic bottoming out, policy regulation, etc., the demand for programmers in the Internet industry has decreased sharply, and the talent market has returned to a calm period. The 30% increase in job hopping salary has become a thing of the past.
Author: Tian Jin
Introduction
I|| The development of Internet companies has entered a bottleneck period and the pace of business expansion has slowed down, which ultimately led to a sharp decrease in the demand for programmers in the Internet industry, and the talent market has returned to a calm period.
II|| From 2013 to 2018, graduates of computer related majors just encountered the explosive growth of mobile Internet, and their salaries soared. At that stage, programmers with several years of work experience in major Internet companies, 30% salary increase became the minimum threshold for job hopping, and 50% - 100% salary increase was also widespread. Internet companies were "crazy" to grab people.
III|| Excellent programmers have not yet been included in the list for traditional IT companies to choose at will. Excellent graduates and excellent programmers in the market are still scarce resources. Whether Internet companies or traditional IT companies, this pattern will not change in the short term.
In 2022, after graduating from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (958, 211 universities) with a master's degree, Chen Yu felt that the recruitment of Internet giants was getting colder.
When looking for a job last year, Internet giants also recruited many of Chen Yu's classmates. But this year, Chen Yu and his classmates' dozens and hundreds of resumes were "declined" by many Internet giants.
In the past few years, it has been considered that the most ideal career path for children of ordinary families is for graduates with high education such as Chen Yu to enter an Internet factory with an annual salary of 300000 yuan.
Cui Rui, who has six years of experience in leading Internet companies, became more and more anxious. The news of layoffs in big factories this year was extremely jittery. Among the company's nearly 10000 programmers, he could hardly see grass-roots R&D personnel over 35 years old. He did not know where the laid-off old employees could go to find jobs. He also has no answer to the questions of whether the Internet market can improve and whether it will be cut. The only sure thing is that I can't stay in Beijing for a long time.
A group of data provided by 51job to the Economic Observer Network shows the cautious attitude of enterprises in recruitment: from May 22 to June 5, 51job's survey of 142 enterprises in the field of Internet/computer software, hardware and systems showed that, under the impact of the epidemic in 2022, 23% of enterprises' recruitment declined sharply and 7% of enterprises froze recruitment.
This situation makes Cui Rui more and more nostalgic for the "golden age" of the previous few years. Programmers with a monthly salary of about 30000 yuan after four or five years of work are everywhere.
During the ten years of headhunting in the Internet and high-tech fields, Huang Xuyang, the director of the Internet industry of Kerui International and the expert consultant of the same profession in mathematics, also participated in the "competition" of Internet companies. He believes that after 2018, with the impact of capital ebbing, traffic bottoming out, policies and regulations, the demand for programmers in the Internet industry has sharply decreased, and the talent market has returned to a calm period. The 30% increase in job hopping salary has become a thing of the past.
Although the demand is still widespread and the average salary is higher than that of most industries, the programmer profession is slipping through the high light moment, changing from "golden legend" to "golden ordinary".
Just like the real estate and mobile Internet, the race track of biomedicine and new energy is becoming the new favorite of capital and releasing a strong demand for talents. No one can accurately predict how long this boom will last.
However, for tens of millions of graduates who have just completed the college entrance examination, they may have to observe the fluctuations of their careers to jump onto the "train of the times".
Stock game
After comprehensive consideration, Chen Yu finally chose a bank software research and development position in Chengdu, with an annual salary of more than 200000 yuan before tax and working hours from 8:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
If there is a chance to enter an Internet factory, Chen Yu frankly said that he would still consider job hopping. The key factor is that the salary of an Internet factory will be much higher than that of a bank. However, he also needs to screen whether the post is the core department, otherwise once the project is cut off within a few years, there will be unemployment risk. Bank posts are more stable and less overtime.
In concept, Chen Yu has already prepared for the "996 model" of Internet companies. He said: "Going to the Internet must often work overtime. After all, people pay so much. Our young people have the advantage of learning fast and staying up late."
But there are not many opportunities for Chen Yu. In 2022, layoffs in large factories caused widespread discussion. As an old employee of a big Internet factory, Cui Rui's intuitive feeling is that the new students are getting more and more involved. "The level of new graduates now is comparable to our technical knowledge reserves after two or three years of work, but even this is very difficult to enter the Internet factory. New employees need to be more prepared than old employees to find jobs. It may take several times of effort to copy our career path in the past few years."
"The Internet employment market has changed from the incremental dividend model to the stock game era, and the maximum probability is an irreversible event." On February 25, when Lagou Recruitment released the 2022 Internet Industry Spring Recruitment Salary Report, Xu Dandan, the founder of Lagou, said.
Huang Xuyang believes that the change of this situation has initially appeared after 2018. At that time, Internet technology penetrated into social short videos, e-commerce, local life and other subdivisions, and companies at each track survived the fittest in the development process, with high market saturation; Secondly, under the supervision of policies, some industries such as Internet finance and online education press the pause button; Third, traffic growth has bottomed out, and APP popularity of all platforms has been very high. Three factors led to the development of Internet companies entering a bottleneck period, and the pace of business expansion slowed down. Finally, the Internet industry sharply reduced the demand for programmers, and the talent market returned to a calm period.
As the recruitment demand of Internet companies slows down, traditional IT companies such as Dingjia Technology will receive more resumes in 2022 than in previous years. However, this has not brought much change to the company's recruitment difficulties.
The first is that the company can not meet the high salary expectations of many new graduates. In the process of enrollment, Ma Like, CTO of Dingjia Technology, found that from 985 and 211 to an ordinary college, the salary target of this year's new graduates was further improved on the basis of the previous two years, up 10% or even 30% compared with the overall target of last year. "If we can't give them enough treatment, they will tend to go to graduate school or 'slow employment'. Such an increase deviates from the ups and downs of the industry and even the economy. We are also puzzled by this phenomenon."
This year's students' expectations of a continuous and stable programmer career are running counter to the reality.
Li Qiang, Executive Vice President of Zhaopin Recruitment, introduced to the Economic Observer Network that 55% of graduates lowered their expectations due to external factors such as the economic environment. The average expected monthly salary of graduates was 6295 yuan, down about 6% from 6711 yuan last year. However, the salary of graduates majoring in computer science and technology still ranks first among many professions, and the salary also keeps a positive growth compared with last year.
Golden age
Until now, Cui Rui is still glad that he filled in the computer major in 2012.
In that year, civil engineering and machinery were still the ideal majors in the minds of many students in Cuirui High School's science class, and architecture dominated the salary rankings of new graduates in major human resources institutions. He said: "Take Bohai University as an example. In that year, the computer enrollment score was lower than that of many science majors. Many students in the class were transferred, and the computer major was not warm."
When he graduated in 2016, beyond Cui Rui's expectation, programmers became more popular. Students who master algorithms to a certain extent like him can find a programmer job with a monthly salary of 10000 yuan at Beijing Internet Company at any time. Take his head Internet company as an example, programmers with a monthly salary of about 30000 after four or five years of work are everywhere. "At that time, there was no need for any background or educational background. We relied on our technical ability to speak. There were staff with junior college degrees but high rank in the company."
Cui Rui's high salary in his hometown Huludao, Liaoning, is almost unimaginable. He has also become the envy of elders and even peers in the same village.
Huang Xuyang said, "From 2013 to 2018, graduates of computer related majors just met the explosive growth of mobile Internet, and their salaries soared. At that stage, 30% salary increase became the minimum threshold for job hopping for programmers with several years of experience in major Internet companies, and 50% - 100% salary increase was also widely seen. Internet companies can be described as" crazy "to grab people."
Such "madness" comes from the rapid growth of mobile Internet since 2013. As new Internet companies continue to emerge and the number of users of the platform expands rapidly, the programmer competition is imminent.
"The R&D personnel of Internet companies are highly professional, while the existing talent pool in the market was relatively small at that time. When demand exploded for a period of time, it is bound to lead to a shortage of programmers. Internet companies are mostly entrepreneurial companies, and what can attract talent is nothing more than salaries and options. Therefore, it is very common for employees to change jobs and raise their salaries by 30%. Options also enable some people to achieve a wealth boom after the company goes public, "said Huang Xuyang.
Due to the lack of competitiveness in salary, traditional IT companies have been worried about competing with Internet companies in the past decade.
Ma Like said to the Economic Observer Network: "We mainly do research and development of data disaster recovery backup software. Based on business needs, the company has certain requirements for the education and knowledge reserves of new students. Ten years ago, we were able to recruit outstanding computer graduates from top universities. But later, the high salary of big Internet companies broke the market wage balance, and Internet companies became the first choice for new students. For this reason, we can only take the second place, and use equity incentive plans and independent training for more than one year to attract new students. "
In order to better attract new students, every spring and autumn, Dingjia Technology's human resources department will go deep into some of the top ranked universities in computer science to do propaganda and school recruitment. At the same time, it will also sign contracts with China University of Science and Technology and other universities for internship cooperation. These ways can contribute about ten new students in computer related majors to the company every year.
Ma Like said: "Mobile Internet has really played a huge role, but our traditional real industries also need to develop synchronously, especially in the background of neck jam. But more capital flows into the wind tunnel industry, and our traditional industries that have been deeply rooted in a certain field for a long time are not favored by capital, so they lack sufficient competitiveness in recruiting people."
The tuyere never sleeps
In 2016, after joining the head Internet company, Cui Rui learned what it means to "money never sleeps".
Cui Rui's life is normal, living in the company and working overtime for 1/4 of the time every year. Under the normal working rhythm, his working time is from 10:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. When a new project goes online or an emergency failure occurs, he needs to be on standby for 24 hours. Recently, he worked overtime continuously to update the delivery project of a convenience store. For this reason, he and his colleagues worked two shifts. He was responsible for watching the smooth operation of the project from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. the next day. This lifestyle has also brought him a salary of 30000 yuan per month.
Cui Rui said, "For people born in ordinary families like us, being a programmer is the fastest way to cash in. Otherwise, all they can think of is opening a shop to do business or taking the civil service exam. But there are many uncertainties in both. Seeing the high salary of programmers, a friend who majored in aquaculture in university also switched to training institutions to learn programming. Many people in the same industry also learned programming halfway, which is so realistic. There is no academic discrimination in this industry, and the salary with strong ability can be outrageous. "
Now, at the age of 29, he has begun to think about pursuing new hot spots because of the layoff crisis. He modified his ideal career path to wait until he was laid off or unable to work, and then returned to Dalian or Shenyang to find an outsourcing company to work as an ordinary programmer.
Because of constant introspection and anxiety, Cui Rui, an old employee in the industry, advised newcomers not to choose this industry as much as possible. He called his work "Faustian trading" - when he longed for high salary, he must pay the price.
Cui Rui said that the previous generation believed that it was good to earn more money. But to tell the truth that no one believes, money is definitely not a yardstick of happiness in life. If I were not engaged in the Internet, I might not earn as much as I do now, but I would be happier than I do now. Programmers themselves iterate quickly, and personal employment is even more precarious due to the pressure of enterprise operation in the past two years. "We just boarded the high-speed train in the Internet era, and now it's a bit difficult for newcomers to catch up."
Xiong Bingqi, president of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, believes that professional selection should not blindly pursue the hot spots and fall into the "hot trap".
Xiong Bingqi said that when filling in the application form, individuals should analyze themselves and choose suitable schools and majors according to their interests. The new college entrance examination reform being promoted is also aimed at guiding students to choose the appropriate combination of subjects according to their professional interests. Some examinees and parents think that the "hot" majors are those with a large number of enrollments and many schools of the specialty. These majors are actually the "cold door" of talent cultivation where supply exceeds demand. In recent years, Chinese universities have cancelled more majors, which are "hot" majors pursued by examinees and parents more than 10 years ago.
Excellent programmers are still in demand. Ma Like said that excellent programmers have not yet been included in the list for traditional IT companies to choose at will. Excellent graduates and excellent programmers in the market are still scarce resources. Whether it is Internet companies or traditional IT companies, this pattern will not change in the short term. At the same time, the growth of millions of graduates in the market every year does not mean the improvement of the overall level. Many candidates still fail to meet the company's business level requirements.
Nevertheless, in terms of data growth, some emerging industries are releasing stronger demand for talents. In June, the "potential industry research" project carried out by Zhilian recruitment showed that the growth rate of high-tech manufacturing and bioengineering recruitment positions was as high as 28.2% and 141% respectively, far higher than the growth rate of the whole industry, and the interviewed practitioners had better work experience. In addition, new energy, electronic semiconductor and other industries have become "potential industries" in the minds of most workers due to policy support and other factors.
Li Qiang said: "No matter what kind of level of college graduates, they should actively pay attention to the industry development trend and talent gap. For example, there is insufficient supply of talents for fast-growing emerging professions such as intelligent manufacturing, biomedicine, new energy and chip/semiconductor; In addition, there are also some new professions, such as integrated circuit engineering technicians, service robot application technicians, electronic data forensics analysts, carbon emission managers, intelligent hardware installers, etc., which also have talent gaps. Choosing potential industries will help you win a ticket for yourself in the growing track. "
(Cui Rui and Chen Yu are pseudonyms in the article at the request of the interviewer)
