Xi'an bus drivers strike over unpaid wages!! Reflections after three years of work: the root cause is having no way to survive, anyone would feel desperate! Qiqi Baba TALK Episode 1025, 20261109

This episode first focuses on the strike and protest triggered by the Xi'an public transport system's suspension of salary payments for as long as half a year, and then delves into contemporary young people's reflections on the workplace after working for three years, analyzing the survival plight faced by ordinary people under the pressure of tech giant involution, high pressure, AI intervention, age anxiety, and economic downturn.

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Hello everyone, welcome to Qiqi Baba, I am Qiqi.

Actually, it's not just the bus system. Although it is official and governmental, there are actually many companies inside the Great Firewall nowadays that suspend your social insurance without telling you personally. So you might not even be aware that your insurance has been cut, salaries are unpaid, and insurances are unilaterally suspended. I want to ask: in any other civilized country, if a company dared to do this for half a year or even over a year, and could still manage to stay put without any issues arising, is there any company that could pull that off? That only happens in state-owned enterprises within the Great Firewall. The most absurd thing is that this driver, well, this elder also said that they only stopped running the buses and resisted after their wages had been suspended for half a year. That means for the first half year, they didn't get a single cent and worked purely for free. I really feel like so many Chinese friends are just too enthusiastic about public welfare; they do this work driven purely by love, or even subsidizing it out of their own pockets. Moreover, I still saw most people inside the Great Firewall saying they hope the relevant departments will take a look and manage this for us. Such comments really make my head spin. Does anyone still not understand who is bullying you? Isn't this equivalent to begging the robber, saying "stop robbing, please stop robbing"? Is that even possible? Don't robbers make a living by robbing? Right? How could they possibly stop robbing? That's how they make a living. So really, when you look back and examine this carefully, the only one you can rely on is yourself. Don't count on those officials anymore.

In the year 2026, is it still worth fighting tooth and nail to get into a tech giant? Unawares, I have already been working for three years, and I'm surprised I'm still alive. Let's talk about the points you might care about and the shift in my genuine feelings. When you enter the internet industry, what kind of job do you get? It is a job that exchanges extremely long working hours, immense psychological pressure, and terrible physical health for slightly higher income and a life that is almost completely lost. You are required to be efficient, on call, capable of arguing, proficient in AI, able to hold the fort, willing to undergo involution, good at aligning, capable of multi-threading, willing to work overtime voluntarily, and carrying your computer wherever you go. What kind of people will you meet here? In the beginning, everyone is actually the kind of smart, polite, proactive, and resilient good student.

What that actually means is: no matter how much pressure you put on me, I will eventually get the work done. This place is simply like farming and caging a group of the smartest and most usable people in the world, and then having them do long-term and difficult tasks of little significance. The company is also very smart; it will quickly squeeze this group of the most usable people dry, and then replace them with a batch of even more usable and cheaper newcomers. As people undergo involution through work, those who emerge from it also become aggressive, efficient, harsh, and impatient with stupidity.

At 9:00 PM, people here start leaving work one after another. That doesn't sound too good. But first of all, the internet industry indeed still has parts worth yearning for.

That is money. For those from disadvantaged backgrounds, big tech companies are a visible path to rapidly accumulating wealth. If you are in a technical role, that might be your ultimate solution. And I was just in a minor operations role. When I graduated in 2023, my monthly take-home pay was 12,000, totaling 200,000 for the year. Although this is considered very low in the Shanghai internet industry, at that time, I firmly believed that I would definitely earn more and more money, and that my hard work would surely be rewarded. How naive.

My consumption level increased a hundredfold immediately.

Sometimes, standing under these magnificent office buildings, I always feel like an ant in the city of Shanghai. The ground is sprinkled with honey, but in the end, you are just an ant. Returning to our suburbs, the suburbs are more comfortable after all.

Besides money, the internet industry does have its merits, but for me, they are just the icing on the cake. For example, freedom of dress, freedom of sexual orientation, many young people, holiday gift boxes, various benefits, gyms, office environments, information resources, and so on. Actually, I am quite interested in these information resources at big tech companies, especially when you are not under pressure; you think, wow, this is simply a paradise of human wisdom. Everyone is producing a massive amount of document crystallization every day, and then you can go panning for gold, and then you will be pleasantly surprised to find that one percent of it actually contributes to human society. But the time when you are not under pressure almost does not exist.

If you chose this job solely for the money, then the price you have to pay later is enormous. During the autumn recruitment, I didn't consider anything else at all. My family conditions were very poor, so I was single-minded; I just wanted to prove that I had the ability to make money. I wanted to prove that my degree and my ability could earn me a job at a big tech company. I don't know how many people this obsession has harmed. Once you get in, the real suffering begins. First, you discover that the cost-performance ratio is low; it seems like a lot of money, but the actual hourly wage is not high because your working hours are very long, the workload is huge, and the difficulty of the work is high. You almost have to exhaust all your energy to cope with this job. You might be doing the work of two or three people while getting paid for 1.5 people. Then you realize, in this internet industry,

why does it seem like every position is a piece of shit? It seems like no one is not miserable; everyone's face looks like they have been tortured. Then you realize, very quickly, that your degree has become a piece of waste paper. A Peking University PhD joined at the same time as me, and colleagues from SJTU and Fudan are my peers, but so what? Your performance reports, efficiency, working hours, output, the level of involution, attitude, and dedication—everyone is equally dragged into this diarrhea-like struggle. Next, your body starts to have problems first.

This long-term state of overwork makes one wonder, am I overdrawing my future life to earn money? If you have money to earn but no life to spend it! My physical examination report for this year just came out, with seventeen abnormal items. Why are there more and more? I feel like this abnormality doesn't decrease with the number of times I go to the gym, but increases with my years of service! Next, the whole life starts to have problems. That year we said goodbye to each other, saying happy graduation. It turns out that life after graduation can be so painful! By the second year of my work, I found that I couldn't see the life I wanted in my colleagues, and I couldn't see the life I wanted in my leaders either. To this day, I haven't found any reason to strive upward. I cannot become the owner of this company through promotion; I can only become a high-level beast of burden. Yes, I only want to be someone else's master. Are you my master? In internet work, if you want to climb up, you need to pay a huge price; if you don't want to climb up, you also need to pay a huge price, because you will be involuted to death by others. It's truly impossible to involute further, and impossible to lie flat. Finally, when you want to change jobs, you will be pleasantly surprised to find that this big platform springboard is not that useful either, because the positions in big tech companies are extremely subdivided. You are a screw with a very high degree of verticality, your ability improvement is limited, your difficulty in changing industries is high, and your job-hopping choices are narrow. I found that several colleagues from my previous company were also here after I changed jobs.

And we both thought we had made a niche choice. Uh, those problems mentioned above have always existed, but this year some problems that need priority consideration have emerged. First of all, it's this AI. The implementation of AI has caused a fundamental shift in my way of working, and also made the skills I once relied on meaningless, all meaningless, not a single one left behind.

With the intervention of AI, my work efficiency is getting higher and higher. The higher my efficiency, the more work I have; the more work I have, the higher my efficiency becomes. I am simply a mysterious machine! At this rate, I will be worked to death sooner or later. Ah, I really don't want to use AI anymore. Another complete change is that the headcount has really shrunk. Tasks that used to take interns half a day to finish can now be completed by AI in a single sentence. The difficulty of this year's campus recruitment is highly likely to be even more torturous than in 2023. Look on the bright side, everyone. The year you graduate might be more important than all your efforts. Just go with the flow, what else can you do? Another point is that the internet industry is really getting younger and younger, and there is more and more age anxiety. I've only been working for three years, and I'm already considered old.

I am already considering my career path after being optimized. I have some preferences now, and I've written them down: tour guide, consultant, gym group class instructor—I like this one; corporate culture trainer, pet-friendly ride-hailing driver—I don't have a driver's license yet; stand-up comedian suits me, or I could find a way to join the team of Wuqiongxiaoliang. That's my dream.

It's really scary! I sometimes even have nightmares. I dream that if I don't achieve huge success before I'm thirty-five, then my life can just end, right? Should I jump? I've summarized the pros and cons of big tech companies myself. So, how do you make a decision? I think you can ask yourself these questions: First, are you extremely short of money? If you are, then come. If you have some money at home, then don't come. You can go learn other ways to upgrade your assets. If you don't know what you want, then come and experience it. If you have very clear life goals, don't come. Why not just go live the life you want? Are you naturally a fan of involution?

Ah, then come, let's fight! The doors here are open for you! Are you naturally physically weak and low in energy? Don't come, you can't beat anyone. Even someone like me, who has mental health issues every day, you can't beat. For friends who have chosen money, I think based on my experience, you must weigh in advance whether you can really complete your original accumulation on this path in the internet industry. Can the money you earn cover your living expenses in a big city? Can it pay for the permanent damage to your body? Can it pay for your retaliatory consumption under pressure? Can it pay for the decades of mortgage you took out when your mind wasn't clear?

If you calculate it this way, this job is not a positive-return choice for everyone in different situations. Not being able to get into a big tech company is not something you need to be unreconciled with for the rest of your life. No decision will ruin your life. I now have a new psychological methodology for surviving in the internet industry. First, the first point is to cherish more. I know myself very clearly; since I can work while making videos, exercising, learning English, learning piano, and keeping my home in perfect order.

Since I have swallowed countless pains and worked hard to get to where I am today, if I want to engage in involution, not many people can beat me. But I don't want to engage in involution with anyone. If someone wants to engage in involution with me, I won't take the bait. Ah, people are just borrowing a shell to experience the world. My time is my most precious wealth. Where time is, life is. I feel that this job has absolutely no life memories. In the three years since I graduated, I feel like every day is the same. This time and money, they all flow away like urine.

So, I decided to cherish my time, energy, and ability more. I must think clearly about where to spend them. The second is to be more peaceful. When I first started campus recruitment, I was still fresh, eager to learn, and proactive. Later, it was truly a struggle, confrontation, and pain. Now, it has been completely replaced by an endless, long, and peaceful feeling. I increasingly understand that apart from exchanging for income, work has no meaning at all. I cannot find any sense of mission or value in this job. Regarding my leaders, my interactions with them have also become more peaceful. I realize that they also eat, drink, and poop, no matter how they suppress you, coerce you, encourage you, or discipline you.

That is all to complete their master's tasks, just a management tool. Regarding this entire workplace, my attitude is also more peaceful. In the last six months, the frequency of me cursing the workplace has decreased significantly compared to last year. I am really a very kind person; I wake up laughing at my own kindness every morning.

Ah, for me, getting a degree.

Getting a job. I have already experienced this main storyline, and I don't want to climb arduously anymore. What is at the top of the mountain? I have already seen it. But now I want to know what is on the other side of the sea? The side quests of life have just begun.

I really think that if I were inside the Great Firewall right now, the situation I would be facing would be difficult. If you compete for jobs at big tech companies, it seems like all your time is spent on work. And if you don't compete for those jobs, it's hard to even survive. Uh, it seems like besides these, I think there is only one path left to take, friends, and that is to take the civil service exam. It sounds really bizarre that in a country, you can only feel like you can have enough to eat if you become a civil servant. But it seems that the current situation is really like this, ah, so this is truly a very terrifying situation! It means that apart from becoming a bloodsucker, you have no other means of survival.

It's scary, this, I think this environment is no longer suitable for ordinary people to survive in, it is no longer suitable for ordinary people to survive in. Alright, the above is all the content for this episode. If you would like to support me, please join the membership channel. And I also especially hope that if you have any questions, you can ask me during the member-only live streams, and I will answer them one by one seriously. That's all for this episode, see you next time.