"Contradictory" of the automotive industry: a massive layoffs, while shouting hard to recruit

The word "layoffs" seems to have become a nightmare in the minds of every employee in the automotive industry.

Indeed, when we hear that even Tesla is going to lay off 10% of its employees globally, it is hard not to let people feel that the automotive industry is really "winter" is coming.

Before Tesla, the new car-making forces represented by Ideal, Xiaopeng, and so on, have been bursting into the news of "staff optimization", which has actually baked an atmosphere of sadness in the industry.

Generally speaking, "layoffs" refers to the elimination of specific people who are not suitable for the enterprise, which is due to two reasons: one is the enterprise's cash flow problems, and the other is the enterprise business needs to be adjusted.

As if Azalea had a large-scale layoff in 2019. At that time, Li Bin, the founder of Azure Automobile, sent an internal email saying that the company will reduce 1,200 jobs globally, in order to optimize and improve the company's operating results.

For the new car makers who are seeing their sales soar, even if few of them are still profitable, the need for layoffs due to financial pressures doesn't seem to be as urgent, after all, they still have plenty of cash flow on hand; for that reason, they're laying off people more out of staff restructuring needs.

kung fu car see, not only is Tesla China is still recruiting, and not affected by its global layoffs, at present, like ideal, small peng and azure under the software algorithms and other research and development positions continue to recruit, and the demand is not quite a lot.

One side of the reduction, one side of the increase in the car companies in this "staff optimization" adjustment, in the end, reflecting a new picture of what is a new "life"? In the end, the face of the future increasingly fierce competition, car companies in the end how to need the talent?

(1) "Optimization" of personnel, is the rapid expansion of the trouble?

June 3, because Musk's mouth said a "global layoffs 10%, and suspend global recruitment" news, so that its single-day share price fell sharply by more than 9%, the market value evaporated more than $ 70 billion.

Although this is not the first time Musk for his reckless statements "pay", but he then urgently tweeted "fire", said Tesla's overall number of employees will increase in the next year, only the number of regular workers will be "stabilized". "leveling off".

In fact, in the "layoffs" before the news came out, Musk has begun to use a variety of means to "force" employees to leave. For example, he asked all employees who work remotely to come in for 40 hours a week, or "leave Tesla".

So, is it really true that even Tesla can't keep up with layoffs?

By Musk's own account, the layoffs are focused on the mid-levels, not the grassroots, and don't apply to any employees who actually make cars, battery packs, or install solar products. At the same time, he said it would help flatten Tesla's corporate management.

Indeed, for Tesla, which is in a phase of rapid expansion, if it really wants to "lay off", it is not a wise choice to start with the grassroots, because building factories and putting them into production require a lot of human and material resources to complete.

The data show that from 2019 to 2021, Tesla's global workforce has grown by nearly 50,000 employees, and has been in a phase of rapid expansion.

For this reason, it is not difficult to see, too fast recruiting, will inevitably leave a series of "aftermath", for example, in which there must be a lot of "corpse" employees, thus affecting the efficiency of Tesla's internal work.

The same type of situation seems to exist with the new car makers, such as "UXI".

Over the past few years, the number of employees has increased dramatically. Some statistics show that the total number of employees of the three companies increased by nearly 18,000 last year compared to the previous year.

"In the last two or three years, as the new energy vehicle industry heats up, it makes sense for companies to expand their recruiting, but recently, the industry has seen a variety of 'black swan' events, and car companies are rethinking their corporate development strategies, so it follows that there is a series of staffing structure adjustments. " The industry insiders to kung fu automobile so analyze said.

kung fu car see, not only like tesla, "ah small reason" such as car enterprises to adjust the staff structure, in fact, in the traditional car companies are also constantly staged.

Take BYD for example, the number of BYD employees in 2021 from 224,000 in 2020, increased to nearly 290,000 by the end of the year. Among them, the number of production staff has grown most sharply, from nearly 150,000 to nearly 220,000 people.

In contrast, the number of administrative staff has seen a sharp decline, from 32,750 in 2020 to 14,264 in 2021, a cut of more than 50%.

Another similar example is Changan Automobile. Kung Fu Motors has seen that in 2021, Chang'an Auto has increased its recruitment efforts in production, sales and technology, but has reduced the number of managers by 447, which shows that Chang'an has made corresponding adjustments to its staffing structure in the past year.

Overall, the news of "layoffs" is a bit of an overstatement. In the industry situation is becoming more and more serious at the moment, the enterprise initiative to make adjustments, far better than passive. After all, the closure of the enterprise on the impact of the impact of society and the impact is greater, and through the normal adjustment and optimization of personnel, so that the enterprise can survive, the majority of automotive practitioners is actually a good thing.

(2) Layoffs are difficult, and recruiting the right people is even more difficult

In the "layoff panic" that has been further intensified by Tesla, we have seen another aspect of the automotive industry that is "contradictory".

While Tesla has announced "global layoffs", it has not slowed down its recruitment in China.

In May, Tesla China launched a new round of recruitment program, with more than 100 new positions for "hot jobs" including vehicle hardware and software design engineering, power and energy engineering, and vehicle engineering.

In other words, Tesla doesn't need so many middle managers, but it prefers more engineers to fill these vacancies. And the "Ui Xiaoli" is obviously also playing this "calculation".

According to their current positions in the open recruitment platform, the proportion of technical labor is generally as high as 50% or more, in which the Peng car, for example, put out 1,113 jobs, technical positions for 642, accounting for about 58%.

However, at present, the industry has a relevant background of technical personnel, is facing an "imbalance between supply and demand" situation, some companies even offer millions of dollars a year to grab people.

According to BOSS Direct Recruitment statistics show that in 2021, the average monthly salary given by the new car-making forces is 15,367 yuan, compared with the same period in 2020, an increase of 21.6%. In particular, some positions related to autonomous driving algorithms can even reach more than a million dollars a year.

In fact, in the automotive industry's comprehensive transformation of intelligent electrification development, the relevant intellectual research talent is simply not enough. Because the competitors that car companies have to face when recruiting people are not limited to the automotive circle, they even have to compete with Google, Apple, Microsoft, Huawei, Ali, Tencent and other Internet giants.

"The shortage of talent in the automotive industry boils down to a lack of an overall 'talent pool'". Shen Hui, founder of Wilma Automobile, pointed out on the social platform.

"Traditional IT background talents do not have an in-depth understanding of the vehicle's systems engineering, and mechanical professionals are difficult to integrate information disciplines such as electronics and transmission, not to mention that we now need to be a composite demand for the in-depth integration of this knowledge." Wei brand CEO Li Ruifeng is a word out of the crux of the matter.

In the face of today's car companies in the recruitment of pain points, the industry is also thinking in the end what kind of talent easier to match with the rapid development of new energy vehicle enterprises.

Shen Hui said that the current demand for automotive industry talent is mainly in the field of intelligent aesthetics, intelligent cockpit, intelligent driving, intelligent three electric, especially the math talent gap is very large, 1 million can not recruit a good math big brother.

"In the face of this situation, in fact, our major domestic universities have put forward the concept of the deep integration of industry, academia and research, and set up projects to build artificial intelligence, big data technology and other specialties, to build a multidisciplinary integration of practice platform." Li Ruifeng said.

In Kung Fu Auto's view, in addition to attracting talent, how can car companies better retain talent is also a major issue to be overcome. This involves a series of changes to the internal structure of the car from the personnel to the management mechanism, and even to the salary system, incentives and so on.

At present, we see that Geely, Great Wall and other Chinese brands have been reformed from the internal mechanism, trying to become more "Internet thinking", from the inside out to stimulate the innovation vitality of the enterprise, so that the right talent can play its use.

(3) Kung Fu Shooting

Recently, the automotive industry has seen a lot of news about layoffs, which is a negative phenomenon under the industry's new round of adjustments.

In fact, if the enterprise to carry out large-scale "personnel optimization", is also in disguise that before the recruitment of too many people, which may be the rapid development of enterprises must bear the pain. This is probably the pain that the company has to endure in its rapid development. There is nothing wrong with taking advantage of the industry's window of opportunity to make adjustments nowadays.

However, in this round of personnel adjustments, we have seen the automotive industry on the occasion of the soaring demand for future talent, but also see the quality of the future of the automotive industry talent put forward a new requirement - they must be a composite, strategic, innovative talent.