In the welfare system of large Internet companies, free psychological consultation is being used as the "most humane" one, setting a buffer zone for the employees of large companies to change the times.
is like a painkiller for employees applying for this benefit. Some people describe its efficacy: "turning the pain like a needle tip into a more relaxed and long pain."
centrifugal sensation
employee Li Miaomiao was in a taxi that was rushing to work during the morning rush hour in Beijing. This is far from the ideal consulting environment - outside the window is the continuous traffic on the undulating viaduct, with a sharp whistle.
Li Miaomiao took the initiative to abandon some requirements of the consultation environment in order to complete 60 minutes of psychological counseling before arriving at the office. Close the window glass, the car became quieter, and a conversation that led to the deepest part of the heart unfolded in a tense rhythm.
provides her with consultation. She is a psychological counselor specially hired by the company for employees. She works in a large factory where Li Miaomiao works. Psychological counseling is set as an employee benefit. The subtle relationship between being employed by large factories made Li Miaomiao feel that this psychological consultation on the commuting road was like an overtime work with a clear division of labor.
In June 2021, Li Miaomiao jumped from a traditional company to this leading Internet manufacturer. The salary is half higher than the previous job, close to the level of the industry ceiling. Li Miaomiao is like a koi that has been replaced with a new water tank. What tested her at that time was whether she could adapt to the new waters.
adaptation results are not satisfactory. The new work task made her embarrassed. The past experience is not useful, and many things need to be learned again. Because she is not familiar with her new team and colleagues, she doesn't know who to ask for advice.
Even chatting between colleagues who originally made people relaxed also put pressure on her. The topic of chatting at dinner time is always related to money. XX bought luxury goods, XX bought how many months of performance, XX moved into a villa... Colleagues often talked about how to decorate the newly bought house, which made Li Miaomiao discover that many female colleagues in the team bought a house in Beijing, and some colleagues even paid 50 or 6 million yuan in full in one lump sum. Li Miaomiao had just worked, and she didn't dare to think about her 30-year-old so rich as her colleagues, and she couldn't even interfere.
All kinds of things in the workplace gradually swallowed Li Miaomiao, and she had the idea of self-doubt: Is it because I have no ability that I fall behind? In such self-questioning, she gradually fell into anxiety.
After being harassed by this anxiety for two months, she accidentally remembered the company's free benefits introduced to her by HR when she joined the company: psychological counseling.
China's major Internet companies provide employees with generous rewards, and the efficient and fast workplace has also delayed many emotional problems that need to be resolved. The psychological counseling in the welfare of large factories is like a buffer belt. When the large factory machine is running at high speed, it accepts employees who are eager to escape for a short time and breathe a little.
A considerable number of the questions consulted by employees come from the workplace, and some employees will also consult intimate relationships, original families, etc. that are not related to work. But no matter what purpose, walking into the consultation room, everyone expects to get a breath in a high-pressure environment.
Before making a psychological consultation for the first time, Li Miaomiao found the corresponding mini program on the intranet. The information above shows that the company has hired more than 50 psychological counselors from all over the country to provide consulting services to employees. The introduction page of each psychological counselor can find the other party's consultation duration, professional certificate, main focus direction and historical score. Li Miaomiao chose the direction of "workplace consultation" and selected several consultants with high scores and rich cases among the corresponding consultants.
However, she soon discovered that within the dates available, these consultants had completed appointments from 8 am to 6 pm. In the end, she had to lower her requirements for the counselor. Seeing that a psychological counselor had free time, she quickly made an appointment. "It turns out that everyone is not happy." This is Li Miaomiao's intuitive feeling after making an appointment for psychological counseling.
In a large factory, psychological counseling benefits are adapted to the efficient work rhythm and can communicate online. But the more ideal situation is to take some time to go to the psychological counseling room specially arranged by the company to communicate with the consultant face-to-face.
Taking advantage of the lunch break, Zhang Jing thought of going to the company's psychological counseling room. She called a taxi in advance and waited downstairs. The psychological counseling room was in another building of the company and took 5 minutes to take a taxi. In the elevator hall, Zhang Jing pressed the downstairs button, and the smart elevator prompted the elevator she should take. Even after working in a large factory for two years, Zhang Jing still needs to look at the signs to find the direction in this maze-like building.
In the workplace, cutting emotions and work are regarded as a manifestation of career. Only when he went to the psychological counseling room to talk to the counselor, Zhang Jing was able to open up the gaps in his work and return to his heart. He was no longer a work machine that only resulted.
passed through a whole work area, and Zhang Jing carefully pushed open the door of the consultation room. Close the door, and the keyboard sounds were isolated outside the door, Zhang Jing felt that the atmosphere around her suddenly relaxed. The consultant poured Zhang Jing a glass of water and pulled down the louver fan on the floor-to-ceiling window, so that the light shining into the house was much more gentle.
Today’s consultant is a woman in her forties. After meeting several times, Zhang Jing found that she always wore clothes with soft fabrics and liked to wear pearls, and had a kind of tenderness like a mother. The consultant didn't talk much and listened most of the time. The consultant occasionally comments, and he can always hit the problem with one word. Under her guidance, Zhang Jing would unconsciously reveal her thoughts.
As a depressed patient , Zhang Jing spent a lot of energy to adapt to the workplace environment of a large factory.
Zhang Jing is very sensitive to the outside world's evaluation. Under the pressure of fear of getting negative comments, she did not allow herself to make mistakes or not to work hard. Even if everyone has not completed a certain task, she will only keep a close eye on her shortcomings. Sometimes I found that I wrote a typo when I sent an email, and she might not even be able to eat and could not move in the face of frustration. She was afraid of being chased by work, but the more tired and anxious she was, the more she stared at her phone. During the treatment of
, it is inevitable to recall the painful experiences during the growth process. Zhang Jing often cried indoors because of this. But before she walked out of that door, she would carefully put her makeup and expressions into her face until she confirmed that she seemed like nothing had happened.
returns to the work area from the consultation room, and the employees improve their work efficiency, better serve the large factories, and form a perfect closed loop.
Anxious, lonely
The first consultation, Li Miaomiao hopes that the psychological counselor will give suggestions for his discomfort when he just arrived at the new company. She also asked the consultant: Should we buy a house in Beijing like our colleagues. However, because the appointment was only one hour and it was the first time to communicate, the psychological counselor could only roughly understand some of Li Miaomiao's basic situations, listen and record. Although
did not get a definite answer, that consultation was not completely lost. Just as Li Miaomiao talked about how a prosperous life displayed by his colleagues made him feel stressed, the consultant on the other end of the phone asked a brief question: Do you want to be them?
Li Miaomiao paused for a while, and the car rumbled forward. She held her phone and shook her head and said: I don’t want to.
hung up the phone, and the psychological counselor’s problem lingers in her mind. "Why don't I want to be them? What exactly do I want?" These self-questions pulled her out of the self-denial thought.
got off the car, and Li Miaomiao stood listlessly downstairs of the company. Near the large factory where Li Miaomiao works, there are a large number of universities and office buildings. In the past decade, as the mobile Internet industry has been soaring, entrepreneurial teams have rebirth or died here, and winners have become giants with hundreds of thousands of employees.
Two months after the first psychological counseling, Li Miaomiao made an appointment for a second consultation due to new problems. This time, she told the psychologist that she was knocked down by a strong sense of meaninglessness.The reason was that she was adjusted to a new team for some reason. When setting a bimonthly goal, she racked her brains, but couldn't find something truly valuable to do.
The psychological counselor's reply is: Don't treat emotions as enemies, treat them as signals from unmet needs, and take a step back to feel the causes behind them.
Under such a prompt, Li Miaomiao began to trace back his experience since joining a large factory and found that the sense of meaninglessness was born from learning that the project he had been working for four months was suddenly withdrawn.
Since she joined the company, she has been assigned to take charge of that project. Four months later, when the project finally improved slightly, Li Miaomiao suddenly received a notice from the leader that the project would be given to other teams and she could not follow. Not only that, because the project is removed and the team is idle, the team members will also be diverted to other teams. During that time, Li Miaomiao felt like she had run a marathon, and in the end she was exhausted and found that she was always at the origin. She fell into a anxious waiting, not knowing where she would go.
In the final analysis, this anxiety comes from a model called "horse racing" in the workplace of major Internet companies. Whenever I look at a popular track, the company will launch multiple similar projects at the same time and pursue them relentlessly. Spending a lot of money, the company hires a large number of employees to create similar products, such as sending several treasure hunting teams to fight in the blue ocean of gold everywhere. There will always be one or two teams that can win, and the "treasure hunting team" that fails or even falls behind will be quickly cut off. In the metabolism of large factories, killing a project is as fast as manufacturing a new project. The model of
can allow the company to efficiently seize the blue ocean market. But for employees in it, the "winner-takes all" whip makes everyone feel at stake.
"Horse Racing" brings inclination, making the entire work park contain hidden competition everywhere. Everyone is scrambling to show themselves - what matters is not what you do, but what your superiors see you do. Whether it can be recognized by superiors determines whether employees can receive core projects and even affects year-end performance. So some employees learn to do beautiful superficial articles, and each person has his own little plan, so it is difficult for colleagues to have real and sincere communication. The frequent business layoffs in
have caused the people around Li Miaomiao to come and go. Everyone is like duckweed floating between workstations, unable to control their own destiny. Every time a business line is changed, team members will be broken up and reorganized. Today I am still a comrade-in-arms working overtime and team building together, and there will be no intersection again after that. Sometimes when Li Miaomiao meets his original work partner on the road, he feels embarrassed and he is silent, just like the most familiar strangers.
A sense of loneliness arises naturally. My colleagues seem to have become accustomed to it. Everyone generally changes teams twice a year, and there are almost no one who has never changed business lines.
What is more terrifying than loneliness is that Li Miaomiao feels like a "screw" on the assembly line of a large factory. For example, if you do a questionnaire, you can complete it in three days by one person, but she is only responsible for training third-party research teams to use the system they developed. The placement, recycling and analysis of the questionnaire have nothing to do with her.
This made her feel that the work she did not have much technical content and was not worthy of the salary she received. The work on hand can be done by another graduate.
Li Miaomiao realized that due to the extremely subdivided position, the business scope he could access was extremely narrow, and even more closed than employees in small factories. Once he was laid off, it might be difficult to find the next stop because work skills could not be transferred.
Frequently change teams, superficial friendships among colleagues, and screwing brought by job segmentation. These together, bit by bit, wipe out Li Miaomiao's active impetus - no matter how hard he tries, he will not see the results, so just do what the superiors arrange.
After listening to Li Miaomiao’s story, the consultant asked her: Since she is not happy, why don’t she leave? Is high salary that important to you? The question of
surprised Li Miaomiao: Who wouldn’t like high salaries? Thinking of this, I couldn't continue talking about that consultation.
Li Miaomiao found that from some point on, she was reluctant to wake up every morning, "Oh my God, I'm going to work again." She always thought so. She remembered that before she switched to a large factory, she would automatically read the work she had to complete that day after waking up every day. At that time, she worked in an Internet e-commerce company. She had just graduated and received a low salary, but she was very motivated because she wanted to practice basic skills at work and strive to change jobs and increase salary. The consultant's question asked by
again hit her: Is high salary really that important to you?
In the past, colleagues were simple-minded and did not calculate each other like they are now. Everyone has a low salary, so it is easy to make friends. They usually talk about their hobbies and family. She couldn't understand why she got the high salary she had always dreamed of, but her sense of happiness was reduced.
She told the consultant that she was confused inside. The consultant affirmed her awareness and told Li Miaomiao: "You want to see the value that work brings to others. If you want to pursue professional achievements, it is not just about taking money and leaving." The words of the consultant,
, made Li Miaomiao start to think: What is the achievement and sense of value I want?
At the suggestion of a consultant, she did a career test, and the results showed that Li Miaomiao needed to focus and creative work. She remembered the old man who would play erhu every time she passed by the street, and fantasized that one day she would form an folk orchestra touring everywhere, or play the piano wherever she wanted, just to be happy, not to work for money. But she would choose this free and easy life condition after she achieved financial freedom.
According to Li Miaomiao's current needs and understanding, working for a large factory is the best choice. She was unwilling to enter state-owned enterprises and take the civil service exam. In her imagination, she did not understand human nature and could not adapt to the culture within the system. On the other hand, the job of a major Internet manufacturer is not so bad that she has to quit. At least the company is a leading company in the Internet industry. In the past, Li Miaomiao worked in a traditional enterprise, and people there may not be able to earn her current salary in their entire lives. Perhaps because the company's products are old, Li Miaomiao always feels that her colleagues are monks and beating the clock every day, and everyone is making a living. Compared with that, she felt that the big factory was much more dynamic.
She can also sit in the bright hall every day, waiting for the aunt to push the cart and deliver afternoon tea to the work station, including milk tea, chicken legs, and fruit. Li Miaomiao realized that he could not really leave the big factory.
To be precise, what she wants is a more comfortable workplace environment under the premise of maintaining her existing income. Thinking of this, she began to advise herself: Most jobs cannot provide both a sense of value and a high salary and benefits at the same time. She also suggested herself that "it may be a luxury to find meaning from work."
While convinced himself that there was no need to leave the big factory, Li Miaomiao was particularly envious of those who could jump out of the siege. For example, a former colleague of hers resigned from an e-commerce factory and returned to a second-tier city to open a small supermarket. Using past business operations and live broadcast skills, she also earned a good income.
efficacy
As the number of psychological counseling increases, Zhang Jing slowly feels the feeling of healing. When she noticed the nervousness, she was used to using the skills taught by the counselor - first relaxing her body, trying to observe what is behind the emotions, and then thinking about whether she had similar moments when she was a child, what did she want to say to herself at that time? Meditation like this, relax a little bit.
Zhang Jing learned to let herself go. She began to accept and learn to "suck fish". During the work process, she added some steps to comfort herself. For example, the prompt to stop and rest regularly is set, and the light green interface of the software will light up every 25 minutes, reminding her: "Thank you for your hard work, get up and have a cup of coffee." Her project has been launched recently, but the results are not good. In the past, she might not have the heart to have supper, but this time, she ordered a takeaway that she really wanted to give to herself.
Starting from the second half of last year, Zhang Jing tried to stop the medicine. After the drug break period, the body would have a tremor of reaction. This year, she also received a share in the company due to her excellent performance, and her salary increased one level.
Li Miaomiao is reserved about the "efficacy" of psychological counseling. Psychological consultation cannot completely solve Li Miaomiao's knot, so it can only help Li Miaomiao understand himself and relieve his mood through more in-depth sorting.
temporarily can't let go of the work of a big factory, so she can only adjust her mentality to adapt. The psychological counselor taught her some ways, such as regaining her hobbies. Li Miaomiao likes writing and playing the piano. There is a piano in the room she rented. She bought it after graduating from college, but after joining the new company, she didn't even have the strength to climb onto the piano stool. The consultant encouraged her to persevere.
Under the guidance of the consultant, she began to carefully observe the differences between her environment and others. When she thought of buying a house in Beijing, she felt more uneasy. According to media reports, four years ago, the year-end bonus of early employees was as high as more than 20 months' salary, and the person in charge of the main business line received a salary of 100 months, and it was not rare for colleagues to get a year-end bonus of 11 months.
is not as good as before. In recent years, the Internet industry has fluctuated frequently. Buying a house may not necessarily bring about the preservation of wealth, but will instead bring about greater uncertainty. She feels that the threat of shutting down the mortgage is more than the attractiveness of buying a house.
Starting this year, Li Miaomiao found that the trend of lunch topics has changed, and his colleagues also began to complain that the work is so boring and it is really boring.
This may be related to the decline in the year-end bonus. These signs are signals, and the era of high investment for high returns is disappearing. The Internet industry has begun to enter a period of slow growth, and the means of borderless expansion and saturation recruitment have begun to be outdated. At the same time, the confidence of "senior working people" has disappeared. They must start learning to lower expectations and accept reality.
Recently, Li Miaomiao discovered that colleagues began to quietly spread gossip, rumors flew around, what was the boss's tone, and which department laid off whom. The topic of money, my colleagues talk less and less. A tangible survival anxiety spreads in the office.
Whenever you feel uneasy, Li Miaomiao will follow the advice of the psychological counselor to use playing the piano to relieve your emotions. She would go home and find a new song to practice. Playing the piano is a matter of just one effort and you will gain something. Practice more and the melody will be smoother. This kind of progress can be seen and heard. Her hands flew between the black and white keys, as if she was trying to stick a broken life together.
However, the anxiety caused by layoffs cannot be easily resolved by psychological counseling alone. Li Miaomiao found that the mechanism of psychological counseling was more like painkillers, helping her to "turn the needle-like pain into longer dull pain." After eased her temporary emotions, she still had to cheer up and face the real pressure of survival.
35-year-old Wang Juan applied for free psychological counseling provided by the company, hoping that psychological counseling can relieve the workplace age anxiety she encountered.
A year ago, she joined the company in the cold winter. She was restless and excited to start a new journey when she was middle-aged. But with an in-depth understanding of the work, she quickly realized that it was difficult to get promoted to the director position in this department, and the excitement began to fade and anxiety gradually replaced it.
The anxiety of "35-year-old crisis" is constantly being exaggerated on social media, and Wang Juan felt in her heart when she heard it. All signs tell her that the factory does not welcome people over 35 years old. Among the employees at the same level, she could not find an employee over 40 years old. At the end of last year, Wang Juan heard from her leader that an old employee who had served the company for many years and a department head in her early 40s had a full contract but the company did not renew the contract with him. My husband, who is also a major Internet manufacturer, wanted to recruit a new employee, but the employer application was stuck with the HR. The other party refused to pass it, so he could not agree to the special approval, just because the candidate was 35 years old.
At the same time, new young people are constantly emerging in the work area. They are teenagers younger than Wang Juan and have a background in a prestigious school like her.She could always see her opposite in them, full of collagen , always looking indifferent, no one felt heavy as middle-aged.
All the information made her uneasy. She began to worry that if she stayed at the grassroots level, she would be replaced by a young man one day when she was 40 years old. Once she leaves a large factory, due to her age restrictions, it is estimated that it will be difficult for her to change jobs to another large factory.
As a senior manager, Wang Juan is also responsible for recruiting people. She has seen many interviewers over 35 years old in her email. They have excellent resumes, but most of them have more than half a year of gaps. She thought that during those gaps in her resume, it would be difficult for the other party to find a job.
However, she herself is not willing to recruit people older than herself as subordinates. Compared with young people, she thinks that middle-aged people need high salary and low cost performance. Moreover, she feels that she is too old and is still working in a basic position, which means she is not capable and may be an old fox in the workplace.
For a while, Wang Juan woke up at around 2 o'clock in the middle of the night for several nights and suffered from insomnia until dawn. When she was anxious, she watched " talk show conference ". In one of the shows, talk show actor Niaoniao said that when she graduated, she thought Peking University was the starting point of her life, but she didn't expect it to be the peak of her life. This hurts Wang Juan, a master's graduate from a well-known 211 university, but now she is experiencing an unsatisfactory career.
On a normal noon, Wang Juan opened the "Mind Worry Relieving Cave" on the intranet, showing that there were 5 consultants. The appointment status of three female consultants showed full service. She waited for two weeks. When she opened it again, she found that she still couldn't make an appointment, so she decided to try to meet another male consultant. One day after, she learned that the consultation was cancelled due to unknown reasons.
Wang Juan never made an appointment for psychological counseling and grabbed the straw that could help her relieve the "35-year-old crisis". What's worse is that she was laid off by the company. When she received the notice, she was working from home in quarantine. The leader informally reminded Wang Juan: You may be on the latest layoff list.
From then on, what Wang Juan needed was not psychological counseling. She turned to inquire about the layoffs from multiple sources and thought about how to deal with them. The entire department will lay off most of the employees, and the HR notified her by phone, and she will go through the resignation procedures in a week. She managed to deal with it, and only delayed her resignation until after the end of home quarantine.
The day when I returned to the company's office, most of the surrounding stations were empty. Wang Juan heard that on the day of the collective office resignation, her colleagues lined up until 11 o'clock in the evening. In the administrative hall at night, more than 100 people were waiting to go through the process.
The intern brought out by Wang Juan successfully passed the campus recruitment and transferred to another position. After knowing that she was laid off, the girl did not react at all, which made her feel cold in the workplace. It only took half a day to go through the resignation procedures. When entering the elevator, the leader hugged her and slowly closed the elevator.
She rarely had the chance to walk out of this building during the day. The sun was a little dazzling that day, shining on the blue glass, just like when she first stood downstairs of the company.
- END -
Written by | Yuan Yue
Edited by | Wen Lihong
