Top of the Great Era

Chapter 3101 Twenty Thousand People

The next morning, Boss Ma invited Boss Zhou out for tea.

I won’t talk about the meeting this time.

It was settled last night.

It is best to be restrained when inviting foreigners, and only invite the founder of Uber. As an international online car-hailing giant, Uber has also developed business in China and participated in the taxi war.

However, when it comes to the ability and determination to spend money, these foreign companies are far behind in competing with local companies.

This year's Internet conference is a grand event.

All the well-known domestic Internet entrepreneurs were present, and even many bigwigs from non-Internet industries came, such as Mr. Zhang from Haier and Mr. Li from Geely, who are also actively following the Internet and leading their companies to transform to the Internet.

Later on, it got worse and worse.

Apart from people like Lao Zhang who like to join in the fun, most of the well-known people didn't go, and some even resorted to inviting internet celebrities to speak. The foreigners who came to participate also changed from some real industry leaders to black brothers who were just filling in the numbers.

Zhou Buqi was not optimistic about such things.

"How's the micro-business thing going?"

Boss Ma said that he didn't care, but in fact he cared more than anyone else. In the past few years of e-commerce, WeChat business can be said to be the product that worries him the most.

Zhou Buqi said: "It has been conveyed in a meeting."

Boss Ma asked tentatively: "Are you really giving up?"

Zhou Buqi said with a smile: "That's what you meant. It's just a small matter, but you said it over and over again four hundred and eighty times."

"I'm mainly worried that you don't understand and might go the wrong way." Boss Ma shook his head, looking very serious. "I've heard that WeChat business is not only full of counterfeit goods, but also full of big scammers. This is not a good sign."

Zhou Buqi said calmly: "There is nothing to worry about. We will kill them all with one blow. From now on, no one can post WeChat business advertisements in WeChat Moments."

Boss Ma was very happy and said with a smile: "So, if you want to build a great company, you really can't do without a great pattern."

Zhou Buqi said unhappily: "It's too early for you to be happy! There are some things that even if I don't do them, someone else will do them!"

“There are some things you can do that others can’t do.”

Boss Ma is not worried about this at all. What he is afraid of is not the micro-businesses themselves, but the micro-businesses under Zhou Buqi.

Zhou Buqi waved his hand and said, "Forget it, let's not talk about this. I want to ask you something. How did you get through the 20,000-person mark?"

"what?"

Boss Ma was slightly stunned.

Zhou Buqi asked, "The total number of Alibaba employees has already exceeded 2, right?"

The more employees you have, the more complicated it is to manage.

This is not a linear increase, but an exponential increase. For large companies, 2 employees is a hurdle, and almost all companies will encounter some management crises when they reach this threshold.

For example, Baidu, in order to break through the bottleneck of 2 people, began to call for the wolf spirit; and Huawei, in order to improve work efficiency and fighting spirit, organized an activity in which people resigned and then re-competed for the jobs.

Alibaba has a sales and customer service team of several thousand people. As early as four or five years ago, the total number of employees exceeded 20,000.

Boss Ma nodded and said, "Well, this is really a troublesome matter."

Zhou Buqi asked: "How did you do it?"

Boss Ma was not ambiguous and pointed at himself, "Start with me."

"you?"

"When problems arise in the company, the first person to be punished is definitely the one with the most power. The greater the power, the greater the responsibility. I have already resigned, do you know that?"

"Is that all right?"

Zhou Buqi knew that he had resigned from the position of CEO of Alibaba long ago and gave it to the young people.

Boss Ma said: "The most important thing is to create an atmosphere of crisis within the company, and not let everyone have a comfortable and stable mentality. I fired all the 18 Arhats and re-employed them." "What's the use of this? It's just formalism."

Zhou Buqi did not agree with this.

After the dismissal, several people really lost their jobs. This was indeed very intimidating and could create a sense of crisis. After the dismissal, all the people were recruited back and made partners again. This was just a formality.

Boss Ma went on to say: “The dismissal or retirement of some key positions and senior executives should be done in a high-profile manner so that everyone can feel the sharpness of the knife. In addition, grassroots positions should be fully outsourced to create greater job uncertainty.”

Zhou Buqi laughed and said, "It's just the fear effect!"

"You can say that." Boss Ma looked at him strangely, "The total number of employees at Ziweixing is less than 2?"

"It will be here soon. It will probably be here in a few months."

Zhou Buqi is not facing any major internal management difficulties, but he has to prepare for a rainy day. His plan is to manage the division into sections, with one section being managed by the human resources department of the headquarters and the other section being managed by the human resources subsidiary.

Boss Ma was surprised and asked, "Why are there so few people in Ziweixing?"

The other three major BAT competitors had a total number of employees exceeding 2 several years ago.

Ziweixing has the largest business and the highest market value.

The number of people is the least?

  How did you do it?

Zhou Buqi smiled and said, "Improve business efficiency and reduce trial and error costs."

“How to reduce it?”

Boss Ma didn't understand this at all.

  People can not escape from doing wrong?

Especially for large companies, many correct decisions are drawn from countless trials and errors. Trial and error will incur costs, and will lead to a large waste of manpower and material resources. There are so many people in large companies, but in fact, only a few thousand people can really play a practical role in the business. Most of them are doing trial and error, and are following some wrong instructions issued by the top management.

In domestic companies, the salary expense ratio is actually very low.

No company has ever collapsed because of being dragged down by employee salaries, but rather because of wrong decisions that led to high trial and error costs.

Zhou Buqi said: "Be decisive! Just like WeChat business, there are many supporters in Ziweixing who think that we should take one step at a time and extend the time span. This is common logic, right? But if we listen to them, the cost of trial and error will increase immediately. In order to do WeChat business projects, we may have to recruit thousands of new people, and in the end, it will only be a mess. We have to lay off all these people."

"That's it..."

Boss Ma smiled.

However, another thing he said was correct, that is, if a company encounters operational or management difficulties, the first thing to change is to replace the CEO.

Zhou Buqi has already arranged everything.

Next summer, he will resign from the CEO positions of both Ziweixing and Ziweixing International, handing over to Zhang Yiming and Kurian.

Boss Ma said: "The huge trial and error costs are actually the biggest competitive advantage of the domestic Internet industry. Compared with Silicon Valley giants, the salary expenses of domestic technology companies are very low, and the trial and error costs are very high. Trial and error... is actually like doing experiments. Only by repeated experiments and repeated demonstrations can we polish out the most market-recognized products."

"Yes."

Zhou Buqi nodded.

I agree with this.

Previously, Ziweixing and Ziweixing International were actually taking shortcuts, relying on Boss Zhou to directly give the results, without the need for huge trial and error costs, and could directly get the best experimental results. This naturally allows you to spend the least money and use the least people to accomplish the biggest things.

This will no longer work in the future. The role of foresight is becoming less and less important, and both companies need to gradually move towards regular operations.

Zhou Buqi was also very self-aware.

The shortcut is almost over.

The bonus period is almost over.

The only business left for him to show his talents is the short video business.

Next, we can only adjust the position of the CEO and rely on them to experiment and move forward by trial and error.