Koshiro – stock.adobe.com
Recently, news of a layoff wave at Alibaba and Tencent landed on micro-blogging platform Weibo’s hot search list with unconfirmed information concerning potential redundancies over the coming weeks.
Although Tencent’s current decruitment rate is less than the alleged 30%, and Alibaba’s layoffs have occurred mostly at their community group-buying business unit (aka MMC), the discussion does reflect today’s shrinking employment in China’s technology companies. Over the past year, China’s enterprises in internet finance, online education, and online community service have cut large numbers of jobs.
Where do Chinese employees go after being laid off? Many compromise on lower pay to retain some sense of income while others seek stability and prepare themselves to become civil servants while they still fall into the required age range. There is also an increase in those turning to outsource companies that many employees previously never considered as an option for employment.
In China, people tend to have mixed feelings about outsourcing firms. While for some, hopping from a tech giant to an outsourcing agency usually means good payment, however the future of the agency is often more unpredictable due to the limited scale. With the outsourced decruitment wave in China and fewer employment opportunities, one needs to quickly decide what their next move is in order to stay one step ahead.
