Xiaohongshu’s cancellation of employee non-compete agreements has attracted the attention of the Internet industry. This move is seen as a relaxation of talent flow, but other major manufacturers have not followed up and canceled due to fierce competition for AI talents and other reasons.
“Xiaohongshu canceled the competition, and it is expected that no one in the big factories will dare to follow.”
Fang Shu (pseudonym), a senior headhunter focusing on Internet giants and AI, told Alphabet List that following the recent announcement of the cancellation of all employee non-compete agreements from May 1 in Xiaohongshu’s all-staff letter, the rest of the Internet giants, except for the hot chat in the private employee group, the big factories have not followed up.
The reason is obvious, “It doesn’t hurt to shrink the competition of ordinary employees, but when it comes to AI talents that headhunters are scrambling to dig, I am afraid that no one will be willing to cancel the competition at this juncture.” ”Fang Shu added.
In contrast to the general silence of large factories, Xiaohongshu’s cancellation of competition once rushed to the hot search, and Wang Peng, a researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, commented that this move was “an epic loosening of the flow of talents”.
Caption: Letter from all members of Xiaohongshu
Although Xiaohongshu wrote in the letter to all employees: “We hope to light a small lamp and send a different signal to the environment.” But there is a hidden divide behind this “loosening”.Behind the cancellation of conventional competition, whether there are still “special clauses” in core departments such as AI laboratories has not been displayed in the letter to all employees.
In fact, Fang Shu said frankly: “The competition for AI talents has entered the stage of ‘nuclear deterrence’, and the non-compete agreement is the button.” ”
Not to mention whether the AI laboratories of major companies will cancel competition, and even the AI Six Tigers will prohibit company employees from privately participating in various activities in the AI industry, HR will “patrol” in various activities and coffee chats, and once they are found to be involved, warnings will be triggered, and all this is just so that “these employees may be poached without being contacted by headhunters.” Fang Shu said. At present, the scope of firepower of the bombs dropped by Xiaohongshu’s all-staff letters is limited to conventional competition that frequently causes controversy.
Just at the end of last year, Alibaba officially sued Zhou Chang, the former head of Tongyi Qianwen large model technology, for violating the non-compete agreement and joining the competing company Byte. If Alibaba wins, Zhou Chang will face damages that could exceed one million (non-compete damages are usually 1 to 2 times the income of the 12 months before leaving, and higher for executive positions), and the lawsuit is still pending. Earlier, Kang Zeyu, who is currently the president of Douyin e-commerce, was found by the court to violate the non-compete agreement when he jumped from Baidu to Byte, and paid more than 800,000 yuan to his old club Baidu.
In the second half of the AI large model competition, new players such as Xiaomi are still entering the market, and the competition intensity of old players is constantly escalating.
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“How high the salary target of AI-related positions is now, how serious the competition is.”
Wang Ying (pseudonym), an employee of the AI business group of a leading Internet company, told Alphabet List that she had previously worked for one of the six AI tigers, and although she was not in a technical position, she also had to sign a non-compete agreement by default when joining the company.Non-compete agreements are often mixed in a large number of documents that need to be signed for entry, which is inconspicuous.
The length of the non-compete period and the flexibility of the agreement are often related to the salary and the core of the position. Wang Ying added.
“When joining the company, no one wants to cause more trouble, even if they notice that it is unreasonable, they can only choose to sign.” Wang Ying said that compared with the traditional Internet business,The AI business group originally had a higher level of confidentiality, and in addition to strict confidentiality agreements, it was often deterred by competition when joining the company.
In fact, Wang Zhen (pseudonym), who once docked with Wang Ying in the AI business group of a major factory, staged a thrilling adventure under a non-compete agreement.
As a technical post, Wang Zhen was also forced to sign a non-compete agreement when he joined the company. After resigning, Wang Zhen received only 50% of the monthly salary of his original position, considering the pressure of mortgages, and because of the rapid iteration of AI technology development, he was worried that “it would be easy to be eliminated if he did not contact the front line”, Wang Zhen quietly joined a competitive company.
In order to keep it confidential, he was active under a new nickname for the first three months of the probationary period, and always went around the back door of the company to check in.
But even with such caution,“The camera at the door of the house has captured people squatting several times after leaving the company, and the circle is so big, and there is a legend that I joined the competition,” Wang Zhen told the alphabet list, and then he found that someone used his name to order takeout from the companyThis means that once the takeaway is taken away, it is confirmed that he has violated the non-compete agreement.
Wang Zhen heard that a colleague had never been in contact with a key project, let alone mastered trade secrets, because there was a non-compete agreement in the labor contract, and he moved from Shenzhen to Beijing, but he was also given evidence because of the same trick, and finally faced 800,000 yuan in compensation, and had to return his income in the front company for a year.
In desperation, Wang Zhen could only apply to work remotely until the non-compete restrictions were lifted. “As long as you don’t go to the office to check in, it’s safe not to be photographed in the competition company.” Fortunately, Wang Zhen’s request was granted. Therefore, for more than a year, Wang Zhen has been working from home, and it was not until the recent lifting of non-compete restrictions that he officially joined the company.
“Now the competition of the AI group of the big factory is the strictest I have ever seen, almost limiting the possibility of resigning employees to join all upstream and downstream enterprises, so that all departing employees have entered Xiaohongshu as AI bloggers.”
According to Fang Shu, since new energy vehicles such as BYD and mobile phone manufacturers such as Xiaomi have set up their own AI business groups, these companies that were not originally related to AI large models have also been included in the competitive list.
As a result, the departing employees had nowhere to go, and they were almost unable to join any large factory, and eventually flocked to Xiaohongshu, “large factories are providing AI bloggers to Xiaohongshu in batches,” Fang Shu said with a smile.
However, “If you can earn a salary at work seriously, who wants to drop business orders from time to time in Xiaohongshu and other places?” An AI blogger bluntly said that while waiting for the non-compete restrictions to be lifted, self-media posting is the only way he can be active in the field of AI.
It can be seen that when competition becomes a sanction means for the AI track of large factories, employees of large factories cannot move according to their own wishes, and under flexible competition, employees of large factories have not yet ushered in true freedom.
“The moment you leave the front office, change the city, move, change your mobile phone number, and change all contact information to ensure temporary safety.” Wang Ying added.
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In fact, large factories have been struggling to compete for a long time.
“If you want to get compensation for resigning, you must sign a non-compete agreement, and even some people sign it when they join the company (non-compete agreement), and the resignation will automatically take effect. ”
She told Alphabet List that even if she was just the most ordinary executive employee when she left the previous company, in order to get compensation and not to provoke the legal department of the legendary big factory, she chose to work in an overseas company. It was not until the expiration of the non-compete that it returned to the big factory.
As a legal means used by large factories to protect their own trade secrets, non-compete agreements are a way for companies to restrict “two highs and one secret” personnel from changing to competitors within a time limit (not more than two years). That is, a special means for “senior managers, senior technical personnel, and other personnel with confidentiality obligations”. Because once an employee violates the non-compete agreement, colleagues who need to return all non-compete compensation can double the average salary of the past 12 months, which can play an effective deterrent role.
As compensation, enterprises pay a portion of the employee’s salary on a monthly basis, and the compensation standard is generally 30% of the average salary for the 12 months before the termination or termination of the labor contract.
However, in recent years,Competition is becoming more and more generalized。
According to research by Xiong Hui, associate professor of the School of Economics and Law of Southwest University of Political Science and Law, among the 556 judgments in the “Non-Litigation Case Database” (2015 – 2019), 77% of those subject to non-compete as “other personnel with confidentiality obligations” were grassroots employees, including even security guards, cleaners, front desks, etc. In addition to executives and technicians,Interns, labor dispatch, part-time, outsourcing and other personnel have also entered the strafing area of the non-compete agreement of large factories。
Vicious competition also occurs frequently.
“Some large factories will compete flexibly. That is, in the first month of the first month of the competition, the compensation was delayed, and the evidence was counterclaimed when the employees relaxed their vigilance and joined the next family,” Fang Shu said, and some school enrollments were not clear when signing the non-compete agreement document when they joined the company, and as a result, they were restricted by the original company because they changed jobs, and faced sky-high compensation of hundreds of thousands and millions.
While the continuous generalization of competition by large factories has caused controversy, it has also derived a “chain of competitive contempt”.
The new BAT (Byte, Alibaba, Tencent) + MMP (Meituan, Xiaomi, Pinduoduo) replaced the old BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent), “The top companies on a certain track will generally limit the scope of competition to the same first echelon, for example, last year an old Internet company was still on the list of competitors, and this year it has been canceled because of the decline of business in a certain field.” Wang Ying added.
“Sometimes it is enough to look at a company’s industry ranking to see if it is a strictly regulated competitor.” In one aspect, non-compete agreements also provide workers with another dimension of screening perspective.
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In fact, when Internet giants have passed a period of rapid development, high turnover has become an inevitable problem. Whether it is canceling regular competition or canceling big and small weeks, it is a means to gather people’s hearts.
In this open letter of Xiaohongshu, there is not only the cancellation of non-competition, but also the cancellation of big and small weeks, as well as the opening of option repurchase projects, employee growth projects, etc. At a time when large factories are gradually becoming migrant workers besieged because of involution, this can be regarded as a new signal.
However, newcomers are still facing a new game.
As a student for the class of 2025, when Li Ran (pseudonym) got an offer from a large factory, he found that the contract added a new “AI special clause”: if he participates in the research and development of large models after joining the company, he is not allowed to join “any company using Transformer architecture” within 2 years after leaving the company. In this regard, HR explains that “to protect your occupational safety.” ”
After joining the company, he also faced measures such as a code monitoring system, that is, through the system to automatically identify sensitive operations and trigger the “professional behavior assessment”, whether it is a screenshot or screen recording, it will be monitored, “HR said that in order to prevent leakage, I only feel that every move will be recorded, which is very suffocating.” Li Ran said.
And more school enrollments, such as Li Ran, are facing “flexible competition”. Some large factories will even regard school enrollment and resignation as part of the KPI of directly subordinate management positions, which has become one of the assessment indicators for the stability of the management team. That is, although there is no written agreement, if the school enrollment resignation does not start competition, the direct management employees will be responsible.
For school admissions, after entering a large factory, it may be that the competition on the surface is no longer visible, but the elastic competition in the secret is “unstoppable”.
However, in the second half of the AI large model rolling up to a new height, the competition for talents has become more and more fierce. Under the trend of large factories offering high salaries to dig people, perhaps what big factories need to think about is how to dig people and let the poached people stay.
OpenAI experienced the departure of the previous batch of core researchers in 2022 and the recruitment trough, and in 2023, as OpenAI gets closer and closer to the next big tech company, the attractiveness of large factory employees has increased significantly. According to Latepost, more than 40% of contributors with experience working in major factories joined this year, far exceeding previous levels. Among them, the two companies that have deep accumulation in the field of AI but are slow in the field of large models, Google and Meta, have sent the most to OpenAI, with 119 and 103 people respectively, and these two alone account for nearly 40%.
For large manufacturers, while poaching people with an annual salary of tens of millions and millions of annual salaries, continuous technological iteration to ensure leadership is also a key factor in cohesion of the team.
From the non-compete agreement of the unlimited joint and several liability system to today’s flexible competition, the competition of large factories has undoubtedly entered a new stage, regardless of whether the large factories will follow up and cancel the non-compete, and truly retaining talents is the next compulsory course for the big factories.
