Chapter 219: A Series of Layoffs

Liu Xiaoping was a programmer with more than two years of experience in Android development. He worked in an IT outsourcing company and received a monthly salary of $8,000 to $9,000. It was at the higher end of the median salary in this second-tier city. He typically liked to wear plaid shirts, paired with a black backpack. He had no girlfriend. As such, he was the standard loser bachelor. However, he had his dreams! And that was to become trillionaire before he was 30! He wanted to have a villa of 300-plus square meters that had a garden attached to the front and back of the house. He wanted to buy a custom-made Audi A8. He also wanted to marry a kind-hearted, young, and gorgeous lady. Then, they would have two adorable daughters. He could reluctantly accept one son and one daughter too.

All the above were based on his own imaginative efforts!

In the house with a monthly rent of $600, he looked in the mirror at his receding hairline that was worsening with each day and clutched at the hair that was falling out faster and faster. His dream was so far away from him. Coding could only allow him to just barely scrape together a meager living and save a little bit of money. There was no future for him. Not to mention that he had joined an outsourcing company. Things were even more hopeless in such a place. The real nature of outsourcing was exploitation. Women were treated like men and men were treated like beasts of labor. Working overtime every day was the default. It would not be strange if someone suddenly died from working all night.

The only reason Liu Xiaoping stayed in this type of company for two whole years was because he wanted to accumulate technical experience and skills. When he had plenty of projects under his belt, he would jump ship. By then, he would be able to command a starting salary of $15,000. Recently, he felt that he had accumulated sufficient experiences. Hiding his actions from the company, he submitted his resume online and searched for suitable opportunities.

Perhaps the minimum salary of $18,000 that he posted was a little too high. There were only a few companies who called him. Others offered him a monthly salary that was lower than what he could accept. There were no gains for half a month. He could only continue to do his current job and continue to search for suitable opportunities. Moreover, he had plenty of free time to search.

He even used his weekends to learn the coding for Star Cloud apps in order to expand his skills. He installed the Star Cloud system on the Da Mi mobile phone that he had been using for two years and realized that the system provided a very good experience. Operations ran so smoothly that it felt like he was using a totally new phone. Many applications were available, including the mainstream WeChat, QQ, Iqiyi, UC, etc. Major apps like Taobao and Alipay could be easily added. Overall, all the applications ran very smoothly. Liu Xiaoping sighed in appreciation. “For someone like me who doesn’t play games all that often and could be completely satisfied with seven or eight apps, the Star Cloud system is 10 times better than Android.”

Seeing how much he enjoyed using the Star Cloud system, some of his colleagues also asked for his help in replacing their phone operating systems with the Star Cloud system. All of them told him that Star Cloud was very good.

There was an unlucky colleague whose phone was hit by the backdoor coding from Google. His phone stopped functioning the moment he tried to replace its system. He had no choice but to change it back to Android. Although Liu Xiaoping was an Android developer, he felt that Google was digging its own grave in this matter! By making this kind of muddle-headed move in the face of the strong competition from Star Cloud, Google was only weakening itself at a rapid pace.

If not for the small number of Star Cloud system users, Liu Xiaoping would even decide to quit the Android camp and go into Star Cloud app development instead. However, if he did that, the two years of work experience that he had accumulated would become irrelevant. He would enter an unfamiliar field with an uncertain future in the market. The risks were high.

Hence, he could not make up his mind. Up until now, there were more than a hundred Star Cloud programmers who had won the million dollar cash prize from Xing Hai Technologies. He was extremely attracted by the money but lacked the courage to change sides. After all, Android was obviously more mainstream than Star Cloud. It would be a few more years before Android was replaced. He was weighing all these details in his mind.

As the fruitless thoughts floated about in his mind, the boss was looking extremely displeased. Why are you not working overtime? Bunch of lazy programmers, why are you still not working overtime? An outsourcing company where you can have both weekends off? Are you dreaming?

Liu Xiaoping had not done any overtime for more than a month. He started work punctually at 9 am and clocked out on the dot at 6 pm. He would not stay in the company one second longer. Even if the boss yelled and cursed at him over the phone on the weekend, he still refused to go to the company to work overtime. Unless the company adhered to the labor law and paid 1.5 times the basic salary when the employee worked overtime on a weekday, 2 times on a weekend, and 3 times on public holidays. Otherwise, he would never accept working overtime!

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Even if this was an outsourcing company and the task was extremely urgent, he would never do overtime for free. This was the consensus that all programmers had arrived at and which they quietly adhered to. Why? The Work Assistant! Even if one only bought one measly speed package, his work efficiency could at the very least double after some practice. The programmers who had bought the packages of computing speed and had seen a dramatic increase in their work efficiency naturally rejected doing overtime for the company… Unless they got a pay raise or overtime fees.

Liu Xiaoping also used the Work Assistant. One set of computing speed was insufficient so he bought two sets. He paid $1,000 in user fees every month. If the boss refused to reimburse this $1,000 and raise his salary in an appropriate manner, he would continue to ignore his demands. But, of course, the boss could not tolerate such hard-liner attitudes. He was so angry that he fired a few “disobedient” programmers on the spot. He planned to hire “obedient” programmers who would sell their lives to work for him. However, he found that he could not hire anyone. His company’s reputation in the programming community had been totally trashed. Staff were leaving in droves and he could not get them to stay on even after he had sincerely apologized.

“The Work Assistant has returned our dignity to us. This has never happened before. We’re not menial peasants who have to work seven days a week. We’re programmers!” These words were like a rally and many cheered in response. For the first time, Liu Xiaoping was proud that he was a programmer.

By the 20th of May, it had been two months since the launch of the Work Assistant. Xing Hai Technologies, who had been roasted by countless mid to programmers, had finally made some reasonable adjustments.

Xing Hai Technologies announced, “As we are using a more powerful supercomputing algorithm, the Work Assistant’s computing speed will be doubled from today onwards. Its previous speed of 100 million hashes per second will be increased to 200 million hashes per second with the price unchanged.”

This meant that one could purchase a computing speed that was doubly faster with the same price. Liu Xiaoping immediately logged into the Work Assistant to try out this new feature. He entered his requirements and found out that the code generating speed of the Work Assistant was indeed twice as fast as before. This new experience was so good that he felt as if he were flying.

“It’s equivalent to a 100% increase for free. Very reasonable indeed!” Liu Xiaoping stuck up his thumb.

The next day, his boss called for a meeting of all the technicians and announced his big decision with a smile. Layoffs! The company would be conducting a massive layoff! Only a few key project staff from the technical department would be kept. Half of the remaining staff would be fired. Those who escaped the firing process would see their salaries increase by 80%. Who would be fired and who stayed; it would be decided by drawing lots. This decision caused a commotion amongst the programmers. Their hearts chilled as they understood the real calculations of the boss.

The performance of the Work Assistant had doubled, causing the layoffs to become a cost-effective measure. The boss would not make a loss even if he increased the salaries of the remaining staff by 100%. With fewer employees, the expenditures for social security, insurance packages, and other items would be reduced. Even the cost of utilities would be reduced.

“What a vile businessman!”

“Ugly capitalist.”

The staff who drew ‘fired’ threw down the paper and said, “I won’t miss this job anyway!”

Liu Xiaoping was cursed with bad luck and he also drew “fired,” thus becoming one of the layoffs.

Similar large-scale layoffs appeared in the various IT companies all over the country. Within a few short days, a series of layoffs appeared. In this wave of layoffs, there were at least millions of programmers who had lost their jobs with no chance of saving themselves. Thus, they joined the army of the unemployed.