Although Bilibili (BILI.O, 9626.HK, hereinafter referred to as Station B) has always denied layoffs to the outside world, there are endless voices about layoffs at Station B.
Recently, Wang Luobei, a well-known workplace blogger, broke the news on Weibo: A 2D factory was exposed to a 46-minute internal recording of a director's layoff mobilization meeting.Wang Luobei said that several employees of station B submitted the content to him, which was a recording of an internal meeting of station B.
In the recording, most of the leaders were present. The meeting mentioned how to "reasonably and formally" lay off and "clean" employees, so as to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and control costs, and mentioned many "layoff skills", such as: "Develop a If the goal of the PIP (Performance Improvement Program, commonly referred to as the performance improvement plan) cannot be completed, the PIP assessment will result in immediate resignation." "The hat of incompetence must be put on him, because he is incompetent."
The reporter of "Business School" should The recording incident was verified with the B station. As of press time, the B station has not responded positively.However, station B sent a Weibo profile to the reporter.In the Weibo profile, a Weibo user named "User 6168632663" claimed to be the recorder himself.He clarified that the recording was not a layoff mobilization, but a normal expected management after the annual performance appraisal.
In Weibo, he wrote: "This recording is the complete content of performance management on February 11, 2022 after the Chinese New Year. The person in the recording is the person in charge of game platform technology who has been in the company for many years and has managed hundreds of people. It is not a secret that the person in charge of each group is in charge, and I am also listed. The topic is not layoffs and mobilization, but the management of normal expectations after the annual performance appraisal, and how to plan for the turnover wave after the year and the management of personnel with poor performance. This is not a secret. All the big factories will do it.”
What made this blogger unacceptable were the words and actions of the person in charge of the platform.He wrote in the article, "At the beginning of the 13th minute of the meeting, the person in charge of this platform spoke fiercely, instigating the group leader to take the opportunity to get rid of the 'disobedient' people, and revealed that he used a year to get rid of some people, I disdain to communicate with technical personnel, despise technology, and have a very big prejudice against technical personnel from NetEase and Tencent..." The blogger also said in the article: "I feel uncomfortable for such misbehaving people in the company, please also All netizens can understand, don’t attack the company, the character of the person in charge is indeed a very rare phenomenon.”
Although there are clarifications from the parties, since 2022, there have been continuous rumors about layoffs at station B. First, in April, some media reported that, The live broadcast business department of Station B plans to lay off staff; in May, it was revealed that Station B has started a new round of layoffs. The layoffs involve multiple business lines, mainly in the game, overseas business, OGV and other departments.
Regarding these two layoffs, Station B responded to the reporter of "Business School" that the rumors were untrue and that some business adjustments have been made recently. Therefore, with personnel adjustments, there was no large-scale layoffs.
Zhang Yi, CEO of iiMedia Research, told the "Business School" reporter that most of the recent layoffs of large Internet companies are in two situations: one is strategic adjustment, layoffs brought about by the adjustment of business lines; the other is a situation It is true that the enterprise cannot raise funds, the existing funds are difficult to maintain normal operations, and the enterprise cannot make a profit.
Starting from
the second element, the culture dominated by the second element has made the users of station B more focused. The "Internet residents" of the Z generation have become its main users. people".
Back in time to 2011.In many media reports, Xu Yi, the 22-year-old founder of Station B at that time, met investor Chen Rui in a messy rental house in Hangzhou. lovers.According to media reports, Chen Rui has loved to read two-dimensional comics such as "Saint Seiya", "Dragon Ball" and "Slam Dunk" since he was a child. Station B is a gathering place for two-dimensional fans, and Chen Rui is the first 20,000 registered users of station B. .
Because of common hobbies, Station B, which was established in 2009, finally got Chen Rui's angel investment.Later, unlike other angel investors, after Chen Rui invested in Station B, he participated in the management of Station B as an investor and the No. 5 employee.In 2014, Chen Rui officially became the chairman and CEO of Station B.
The addition of Chen Rui accelerated the financing process of Station B.In 2014, IDG Capital exclusively invested in Station B in the A round, and continued to follow up in the A+ and B rounds.Legend Capital, Qiming Venture Capital, Huaxing Capital and other star venture capitals, as well as Tencent, also appeared on the list of investors at Station B.
In some media reports, with the addition of Chen Rui, the pace of development of station B has accelerated significantly.In order to increase competitiveness, he drastically improved the organizational structure internally, such as providing overtime meals after 8:30 pm, setting up hackathons, canceling some annual leave benefits, etc.
In terms of content, under the leadership of Chen Rui, Station B introduced the Japanese animation "Fate/Zero" in 2012, becoming the first domestic video site to update Japanese animations simultaneously.At the same time, Station B began to represent domestic and foreign mobile games, and laid out the game industry.The "game platform" followed, especially in the presence of game anchors. Games and anchors brought goods once became the main source of revenue for station B.
The culture based on the second element makes the users of station B more focused.The "Internet residents" of Generation Z have become their main users. In terms of content, they are mainly based on user creation and free distribution. Users can be transformed into UP masters, and a community form can be established through bullet screen interaction. The three are closely related to the platform, users, and UP masters. .This determines that Station B has become an independent circle - a two-dimensional circle. Users call themselves "inner circles", and people outside Bilibili users are called "non-inner circles".
In fact, although Station B gathered like-minded people with "feelings" at the beginning of its establishment, the commercialization of Station B has never been absent.The listing of Station B became a watershed.On March 28, 2018, Station B landed on Nasdaq in the United States with an issue price of US$11.5/ADS, but it suffered a break on the first day of listing and opened at US$9.8, down 14.8% from the issue price.Since then, the stock price of Station B has been tepid, and "breaking the circle" is imminent.
On March 29, 2021, Station B was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for the second time at an issue price of HK$808 per share.On the first day of listing, the opening price of Station B was HK$790, down 2.23% from the issue price of HK$808.As of the press release on June 1, the Hong Kong stock price of Station B (9626.HK) was HK$182 per share.
Adjusting the game business
The end of the second dimension is the game, and what station B wants is this ultimate universe.Previously, Bilibili Games proposed to "de-gamify" in order to get rid of the simplification of the business model, but "de-gamification" does not mean to weaken the game's revenue. As a cash cow, the game is the best conversion direction for users of Bilibili.
For a long time, games, advertising, e-commerce, and value-added services have been the main sources of revenue for Station B.
In 2021, the advertising business revenue of station B will reach 4.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 145%, and the revenue will account for more than a quarter.In the same period in 2020, the advertising business accounted for only 13%.The growth of the advertising business has benefited from the business transformation after the Bilibili broke the circle.By supporting and incentivizing high-quality content to attract traffic and obtain advertising revenue, it has now become an important measure to stabilize the basic disk of Station B.
There is an increase and a decrease.Since entering 2022, station B has been repeatedly reported to be laying off staff, involving the previous big revenue generator - the game department.
According to the financial report data of Station B in the past three years, in 2019 and 2020, its game business revenue accounted for 53% and 40% of its total revenue, respectively. 26%.Specific to each game project, no game business has more than 10% of the revenue.
Station B seems to have been trying to take off the hat of game companies.But in fact, there are indications that Station B just wants to change from an agency game to a self-developed game.
IT commentator Zhang Shule told the "Business School" reporter: "The end of the second dimension is the game, and what station B wants is the ultimate universe. Previously, the station B game proposed to 'de-gamify' to get rid of the simplification of the business model, but ' "De-gamification" does not mean that the revenue of the game will be weakened. As a cash cow, the game is the best conversion direction for users of station B. "
Exclusive agency, intermodal transportation and a small number of self-developed games are the main components of Bilibili's game business.From 2018 to 2020, the number of games operated by agents at Station B were 11, 29, and 43, respectively.Only the exclusive agency game "FGO", from 2018 to 2020, accounted for 54%, 30% and 11% of the revenue in the financial report respectively.At that time, the domestic game copyright number had not been tightened, and the game distribution of Douyin and Kuaishou was not yet mature.
However, with the gradual rise of competitors, the exclusive agency and intermodal transportation of Bilibili games began to gradually decrease.According to incomplete statistics, Bilibili will launch 13 new games in China in 2021, including 7 exclusive agency games.
The channel advantage that Bilibili is proud of is gradually weakening.Many voices believe that if station B wants to change the game pattern, it must develop itself.
"It's just that most of them were agency games or intermodal games before, and their game content was not native or exclusive from Bilibili. Now the rich Bilibili has acquired two-dimensional game companies to make its two-dimensional content more accessible. A good thing turns into a game, not just as a game promotion platform." Zhang Shule said.
As Zhang Shule said, station B has increased investment in self-developed games in the past two years.At the launch of new products at station B in August 2021, the company announced 16 new works in one go, including 6 self-developed games.At that time, Chen Rui said that game self-research is the company's focus. It is predicted that in a few years, half of the game business revenue will come from self-developed products.
In order to support self-developed games, Station B’s 2021 financial report shows that it has invested in at least 18 game companies throughout the year. According to public information, 14 of the investment target companies are companies with secondary IP or secondary game research and development capabilities, and 15 Companies are established within five years.
But a problem that cannot be ignored is the loss of station B.In its released 2021 financial report, it shows that the annual revenue is about 19.38 billion yuan, and the net loss is about 6.808 billion yuan.From 2018 to 2020, station B lost 600 million yuan, 1.289 billion yuan, and 3 billion yuan respectively.
Losses are increasing year by year.Even if self-developed games are important, for station B at this time, it is urgent to reduce costs and increase efficiency and improve commercial monetization capabilities.
There are many voices who think that the adjustment of the game business of station B is to stop the loss in time.
"Making the two-dimensional content on your own platform into a game is the step to de-gamification of Station B. Layoffs are only to cut off some of the redundancy of trial and error during the expansion process, and will also add new trial and error points. It is more common in Internet companies to take out the old and bring in the new, and it should not be regarded as layoffs only.” Zhang Shule said.
Breaking the circle: The landmark event of "breaking the circle" in the content transformation
of station B is the New Year's Day party in 2019-2020.Several evening parties have given station B the label of "knowing young people best".The subsequent speech video "Back Wave" gave station B a new degree of recognition.
According to the "2021 Bilibili Creator Ecological Report" released by Bilibili, the number of Bilibili creators increased by 1512% in the ten years from 2011 to 2021.From September 2020 to August 2021, the views of UP’s main submission videos exceeded 450 billion.Behind the surge in content is the need for the transformation of Station B.
The transformation of Station B began in 2019.Station B first lowered its own membership entry threshold.Unlike other websites, you can only charge money to become a member. Station B requires users to complete 100 test questions from the platform within 60 minutes before they can pass the review to become a member.The test questions involve various subject knowledge and two-dimensional animation knowledge, and the content is known for its high difficulty.However, with the gradual opening of station B, the difficulty of the test questions is gradually decreasing.
The landmark event of "breaking the circle" at Station B is the New Year's Day party from 2019 to 2020. Several parties have given Station B the label of "knowing young people best".The subsequent speech video "Back Wave" gave station B a new degree of recognition."Breaking the circle" has become the keyword of station B.
In order to achieve business transformation, the video volume of station B has surged.According to the 2021 third quarter report of Station B, in terms of creators and content, the content of PUGV (Professional User Generated Video, that is, professional user generated video) content continued to develop in the third quarter of 2021, and the playback volume accounted for 93% of the total playback volume of the platform, and the average monthly active UP The number of masters reached 2.7 million, an increase of 61% year-on-year, and the average monthly video submissions exceeded 10 million, an increase of 80% year-on-year.With the proliferation of content, there has been a proliferation of moderators.Looking at the annual reports of station B, there were 637 content reviewers in 2018, 1220 content reviewers in 2019, and 2413 content reviewers in 2020.According to the "2021 Environmental, Social and Governance Report" released by Station B, the current community self-purification system established by Station B has continuously improved the community management mechanism, content review and customer service personnel totaling 3,160.
The above report shows that currently 198 million users are studying at Station B, and over 380,000 rural students have benefited from the courses at Station B.Among them, we insist on providing users with high-quality content with a sense of acquisition, and pan-knowledge videos account for 44% of the video playback on the entire platform.The report also shows that in terms of serving UP owners and creators to promote high-quality content creation, it provides UP owners with a variety of commercialization channels, and 1.3 million UP masters and subordinate platforms earn income.
The surge in the volume of videos means that the workload of content reviewers has increased, and it also means that employees are facing serious challenges to their physical and mental health.A public Weibo statement given to the "Business School" reporter from Station B showed: "The company will use its greatest efforts to expand the recruitment of reviewers, and recruit 1,000 more people this year. The increase in manpower can effectively reduce the per capita work pressure."
Layoffs and expansion At the same time,
relying on layoffs to achieve profitability is equivalent to breaking the arm to survive. A developing company will definitely not choose such a path, resulting in performance on the book and failure in the bones.
It is worth noting that while the B station is laying off staff, it is still continuing to recruit.On the recruitment website of Station B, many positions were released on May 19 and May 20. In May, there were more than 100 new positions posted on the recruitment website of Station B, most of which were technology development and business operations.
According to the financial reports of Station B over the years, there were 4,791 employees at Station B in 2019, 8,646 in 2020, and 12,281 in 2021, with an average annual increase of more than 3,500 employees.
In fact, since March 2022, the recruitment of station B has not stopped.On the external recruitment website, the company's content planning experts, game content event operations, live content operations leaders, and quality course producers have been recruiting positions, with monthly salaries ranging from 20K to 50K.
While optimizing, while recruiting.Some voices believe that Station B stopped losses in a timely manner in some loss-making businesses, and at the same time maintained profitable businesses through recruiting expansion.
CEO Chen Rui said in the financial report that revenue growth in 2022 will be the focus of the company's strategy, "In the past, we allocated energy between user growth and revenue growth at Qisankai, with user growth accounting for 70% and revenue growth accounting for 30%. In the plan for this year's work, we will adjust the distribution ratio, and it will be divided into five and five. Income growth will become a more important task this year than in the past."
Zhang Shule believes that relying on layoffs to achieve profitability is equivalent to breaking an arm to survive. The company will definitely not choose such a path, resulting in the performance on the book and the failure in the bones.Therefore, station B is optimized and recruited at the same time.
Zhang Yi told reporters that in the capital market, Bilibili has not yet given a better market value, which is a headache at present, and the other is that the market competition products are also developing very fast, so for Bilibili, stay There may not be a lot of time for it, which is the main pressure on station B.
In the 2021 financial report meeting, Chen Rui shouted that "growth is the focus of 2022", and there are various signs that the optimization and layoffs made by station B are moving in this direction.In Zhang Yi's view, the target of layoffs and business adjustment is of course for the future direction of profitability, so there is no doubt about this point.
In fact, the optimization of station B this time involves not only games, but also the live broadcast department.In Zhang Shule's view, live broadcasting is a general direction, but in terms of the details of the live broadcasting industry, there are various possible profit scenarios to explore. Obviously, live broadcasting is not suitable for station B, while game live broadcasting and more two The live content of dimensional attributes is the direction of the commercialization of station B.
Improving organizational efficiency is the long- term way.
Enterprises cannot measure the performance of their employees, so they use the method of working hours to allow employees to "stack time". This reflects the problem of poor organizational management foundation. Most companies with rapid business development are Similar problem exists.
The 2021 financial report shows that the revenue share of content creators at Station B will reach 7.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 77%.This is the incentive measure that Station B does to them in order to retain the up master.This part of the expenditure is also eating into the revenue of station B, but the main UP can attract traffic, and the traffic can bring advertising revenue.Station B is inseparable from them.
In fact, the number of users of station B is not small, but the users are not proportional to the income.Some voices attribute this status quo to operations.Many voices believe that managers should consider how to refine operations and then refine incentive rules.
This can also explain why a large number of operators are recruited on the official website of Station B, and it is fundamental to better operate high-quality content.
However, can the operation of high-quality content rely solely on personnel expansion?
Wang Peng, an associate professor at the Gao Ling Research Institute of Renmin University of China, believes that from the perspective of organizational change and organizational management, this is a completely new problem.Whether it is business management or public management, how to more effectively improve the efficiency of the organization, mobilize the enthusiasm of employees, reduce costs and increase efficiency, and improve the overall operational efficiency and the public value of the society, are all aspects of public management and enterprise management. problem to be solved.
From Wang Peng's point of view, the current company does not provide adequate protection for employees' daily life, employees are under too much pressure, and "996" even refers to sudden death. These are all problems in reality.All of your labor is clearly priced. It seems that as long as employees are given more equity incentives and wage incentives, companies can ask employees for more KPIs, and employees’ performance compensation guarantees are linked to job performance. In this case , it will cause invisible pressure to employees.
Wang Peng believes that at present, enterprises generally use simple traditional methods. One is to increase performance rewards, that is, there must be brave men under heavy rewards; the second is to expand the organization and let more people do it; The professionalism of employees will also lead to employees becoming so-called screws, and there will be a lot of simple repetitive work.
At the beginning, Internet companies shouted "slogans" such as subverting traditional institutions. In Wang Peng's view, when the company expands to a certain extent, and the marginal cost and marginal revenue reach a critical point, the company does not pay attention to the quality of the organization and employees, but uses some simple and rude To manage in a different way will cause great pressure on employees, intensify competition with each other, and then cause involution.
Lou Jun, a partner of Mu Sheng Enterprise Management Consulting Firm and a visiting scholar at New York University Stern School of Business, believes that, first of all, companies cannot measure the performance of employees, so they use the method of working hour measurement to let employees "stack time". The problem of the weak foundation of organization and management is similar to that of most fast-growing enterprises.
To create an organizational management that fits the VUCA era (that is, the Uka era, VUCA is the abbreviation of Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous, which means that we are in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world), we must create flexibility. The organizational structure of the company allows employees to have the opportunity to do it; secondly, a sensitive incentive mechanism must be formed to allow employees to do it;This is a systematic project, and there are no shortcuts.
In Wang Peng's view, enterprises should first have a sense of social responsibility, pay attention to employees' feelings, reduce levels of internal reform, provide more humane care, and understand employees' needs and needs.From the perspective of personal development and organizational development, we should consider new management methods, motivate employees to set their own indicators, and improve from the perspective of development, instead of memorizing KPIs every day, advocating an orderly organizational culture, mobilizing employees’ initiative, Instead of pure vicious competition, competing with each other to work overtime.
