经济下行，加班文化再度兴起
2 天前
Yinsanity
Yinsanity
北京大学 翻译硕士
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金融时报
In a recent video conference with office staff, http://JD.com founder Richard Liu added a warning into his pep talk: his company did not have room for anyone who wanted work-life balance.
在近期的视频会议中，京东创始人刘强东在鼓舞人心的讲话中又加上了一条警告：他的公司容不下任何想要平衡工作与生活的人。
“We have employees who prefer to enjoy life, who put life first and work second. I can understand not wanting to work hard, everyone makes different choices . . . so I can only say that you are not our brother, you are a passer-by,” Liu told attendees, according to a recording posted on social media. “We should not be working together.”
“我们有一些喜欢享受生活的员工，他们把生活放在第一位，工作放在第二位。我能理解不想努力工作，每个人的选择都不一样……所以我只能说，你们不是我们的兄弟，你们只是个过客。我们不应该一起工作。”
Liu said the Chinese ecommerce group would step up efforts to weed out IT engineers who were not working hard and not delivering, while rewarding employees doing well.
他表示，将加大力度清除那些工作不努力、没有成果的员工，同时奖励表现出色的员工。
The warning was not unusual. As executives across China’s tech industry face a new reality of low growth, rising competition and investor apathy, many are cutting staff and making tougher demands of those they keep.
这并不罕见。随着中国科技行业面临增速放缓、竞争加剧和投资减少的新现实，许多企业都在裁员，并对留下的员工提出更严格的要求。
Engineers in China have never enjoyed the level of perks offered by peers in Silicon Valley, where employees have benefits such as onsite doctors and sushi bars. Jack Ma, founder of Chinese ecommerce company Alibaba, infamously told staff the tech industry’s standard 996 hours (9am to 9pm, six days a week) were “a blessing”.
中国的工程师从未享受过硅谷同行的福利，那里的员工拥有现场医生和寿司吧等福利。阿里巴巴创始人马云曾告诉员工，996是“福报”。
Now, as growth slows and share prices suffer — China’s top five publicly traded tech companies have collectively lost about $1.3tn in market value from their peak levels in 2021 — executives are returning to their leaner and meaner start-up days.
现在，随着增长放缓和股价下跌——五大上市科技公司市值已从2021年的峰值下跌约1.3万亿美元——高管们正回归更精简、更高效的创业时代。
Some in the industry view ecommerce group Pinduoduo as a model to emulate. Last year the Shanghai-based company generated Rmb60bn (£6.5bn) in profit — or Rmb3.4mn for each of its 17,000 employees — triple the productivity of Tencent and nine times that of Alibaba.
一些业内人士将拼多多视为值得效仿的典范。去年，这家总部位于上海的公司创造了600亿元利润，相当于17,000名员工每人创造了340万利润，是腾讯的三倍、阿里巴巴的九倍。
To do so, Pinduoduo staff work gruelling hours. One former employee said the hours were so long during her two years at the company that she basically stopped “social interactions, hobbies and even my romantic life”. “After I left, it was like reconnecting with society,” she said.
为了实现这一目标，拼多多工作时间非常长。一名前员工表示，她在公司的两年里，基本停止了“社交、爱好，甚至恋爱”。“离开后，我感觉自己重新融入了社会。”
Pinduoduo said it was a “dynamic and fast-paced company” and “committed to providing our employees with a positive and productive work environment”.
拼多多表示，自己是一家“充满活力、快节奏的公司”，“致力于为员工提供积极、高效的工作环境”。
To boost their own efficiency, industry pillars Alibaba and Tencent have shed tens of thousands of staff since 2021. Tencent executives admitted that when hiring, they were adding “lower-cost heads”, typically meaning younger workers.
为了提高自身效率，阿里和腾讯2021年以来已裁员数万人。腾讯高管承认，在招聘时，他们会增加“低成本员工”，通常意味着更年轻的员工。
Ding Wenhua*, who recently left ByteDance-owned TikTok, said dodging job losses felt like a game in which the platform they were standing on kept randomly shrinking, forcing them to jump around to avoid falling off. “The feeling of potential lay-offs is always there, and everyone is quite tense and worried about it.”
最近离开字节跳动旗下TikTok的丁文华表示，躲避失业就像一场游戏，他们的平台不断缩小，只能跳来跳去，以免掉下来。“随时都有可能被解雇，每个人都很紧张，很担心。”
The upheaval is most traumatic for older tech professionals, typically anyone over 35, who face the greatest threat of redundancy and the toughest job market. Bosses often see over-35s as expensive and less willing to put up with long working hours because of responsibilities at home. “It’s never been this hard to find a job,” said one infrastructure engineer approaching 40, who was recently made redundant from ride-hailing company DiDi.
这对年纪较大的科技专业人士来说最为痛苦，他们通常35岁以上，面临着最大的裁员风险和最艰难的就业市场。老板们通常认为 35 岁以上的人工资高，而且由于家庭责任，他们不愿长时间工作。“找工作从来没有这么难过，”一位年近40岁的基础设施工程师说，他最近被滴滴裁员。
Jenny Chan, associate professor of sociology at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, added that tech companies were “looking for young, unmarried talents who have time flexibility in megacities, while letting go of the older and ‘less competitive’ ones”. “Conflicts between work and household are acute for those with families,” she said.
香港理工大学社会学副教授陈洁妮补充道，科技公司“正在寻找大城市中时间灵活、未婚的年轻人才，同时放弃年龄较大、‘竞争力较弱’的人才”。“对于那些有家庭的人来说，工作和家庭之间的冲突非常严重。”
Last year job platform Lagou and counselling service Yixinli polled 2,200 professionals in China’s largest cities about their work. The survey showed 60 per cent felt anxious about unclear career development prospects and 44 per cent were worried about the lack of work-life balance.
去年，求职平台拉勾和咨询服务机构易心利对各大城市的2200名职场人士进行了调查。调查显示，60%对不明确的职业发展前景感到焦虑，44%担心工作与生活无法平衡。
“Many people in this industry experience some degree of depression, the pressure on us is very high,” said one China-based TikTok employee, who stated she was on and off medication for mental health issues. TikTok’s global presence meant work never ended, she said. “I often attend meetings in the middle of the night.”
“这个行业很多人都经历过某种程度的抑郁，我们的压力非常大，”一位驻中国的TikTok员工表示，她因心理健康问题断断续续地服用药物。TikTok的全球业务意味着工作永无休止，“我经常在半夜开会。”
The 31-year-old said the demanding culture at parent company ByteDance was more stressful than the long hours. She referred to it as neijuan, a term widely used in China to describe the relentless competition to outdo peers.
这位31岁的女性表示，字节的严苛文化比长时间的工作更让人有压力。她称之为“内卷”，这个词在中国被广泛使用，用来形容超越同行的无情竞争。
Biao Xiang, a social anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute, said the word, which translates as “involution”, had grown in popularity in China as workers linked their personal uncertainty to broader shifts. “The economy in general is not growing any more, so there is no absolute increase of opportunities,” Xiang said. “What do you do? You just have to squeeze more out of yourself, out of your workers, ever intensifying your effort without producing any real gains.”
普朗克研究所社会人类学家表示，随着工人将个人的不确定性与更广泛的变化联系起来，这个词在中国越来越受欢迎。“整体经济不再增长，机会总数没有增加。你会怎么做？你只能从自己和工人身上榨取更多的利润，不断加大努力，却没有产生任何实际收益。”
For many in China, comments from Baidu’s vice-president of public relations, Qu Jing, last month exemplified how neijuan plays out. In a series of short videos posted online, Qu ranted about her expectations for staff, such as being willing to accompany her for more than a month of business travel.
百度公关副总裁此前的言论就是一个典型。她在短视频中大肆宣扬对员工的期望，比如愿意出差一个多月。
“If you don’t want to travel with me for 50 days and you want to go home, don’t come asking me for a raise or a promotion,” she said in one video. Qu added that she expected staff to always be on call. Nor did she care if work affected their personal lives. “I’m not your mum,” she said. “I only care about results.”
“如果你不想跟我一起出差50天，想回家，就别来向我要求加薪或升职，”她希望员工随时待命。她也不关心工作是否影响个人生活。“我不是你的妈妈，我只关心结果。”
But tech workers who spoke with the Financial Times said they recognised Qu’s attitude in their own bosses, who expected work to always come first. Devotion, they said, was a prerequisite for getting ahead, and work hours were often enforced by requiring staff to swipe in and out.
但接受《金融时报》采访的科技工作者表示，他们也认同曲老板的态度，总是把工作放在第一位。奉献是取得进步的先决条件，而工作时间通常是通过要求员工打卡上下班来强制执行的。
“Even when you’re on leave, you basically still have to reply to messages,” said Ding. “Meetings you are supposed to attend, you better still attend, otherwise it can get very troublesome.”
“即使休假，你基本上还是要回复消息的，该开的会议，你最好还是去开，不然会很麻烦。”
A developer at Tencent Games agreed that work was often all-consuming. “Outwardly, I appear very calm,” he said. “But the pressure is intense, we’re like gears grinding until they break due to lack of lubrication. On weekends, if I don’t have to work overtime, I shut myself in for two days so I don’t have to talk.”
腾讯游戏的一名开发人员也承认，必须全身心投入工作。“表面上，我表现得很平静，但压力很大，我们就像齿轮一样，直到因缺乏润滑而断裂。周末，如果我不用加班，我就会把自己关在家里两天，这样就不用说话了。”
He blamed neijuan and the lack of independent worker unions for the situation.
他将这种情况归咎于内卷和独立工会的缺失。
Still, for many in China, tech remains the best sector to work in. Fresh graduates are attracted by companies’ relative meritocracy, where hard work and strong performance can lead to social mobility.
不过，对许多中国人来说，科技行业仍然是最好的行业。企业相对任人唯贤，勤奋工作、表现出色就能出人头地。
The industry has among the highest-paying jobs in the country, especially as Beijing put pressure on financial institutions to reduce staff salaries.
科技行业是国内薪酬最高的行业之一，尤其是在北京向金融机构施加压力，要求降低员工工资的情况下。
“The reason I stay is simple — the pay is high,” said the TikTok employee. “It’s a place where ordinary people can enjoy opportunity through hard work.” Companies also generally offer perks such as free meals and onsite gyms.
“我留下来的原因很简单——工资很高。在这里，普通人可以通过努力工作获得机会。公司通常还会提供免费餐食和健身房等福利。
Li Ming, a tech founder, said he was contemplating how to get his small team to work harder, adding he was unhappy some employees left before he did each evening.
科技公司创始人李明表示，他正在考虑如何让自己的小团队更加努力工作，每天晚上有些员工比他先离开，这让他很不高兴。
“On the one hand I understand my employees leaving at 7.30pm every night, they have families to get back to,” he said. “On the other hand, I want them to work to 9 or 10, that is what our competitors do. How can we survive if we don’t as well?”
“一方面，我理解员工每天晚上7:30下班，他们要回家照顾家人。另一方面，我希望他们能工作到晚上9-10点，我们的竞争对手也是这么做的。如果我们不这样做，怎么生存下去？”
