It's graduation season again. This year, the number of college graduates reached 9.09 million, setting a new record.
But what worries graduates the most is whether they can successfully enter a large Internet company for work, because for them, entering a large Internet company means a generous salary and bright prospects.
According to a survey by China Youth University Media,
more than 80% of college students hope to work in Internet giants after graduation
. As the graduation season draws to a close, graduates who have not received offers are joining the campus recruitment sprint of giants with the mentality of not going anywhere but in giants.
That’s why Internet giants have become the first stop for young people who have just graduated. At the same time, in the past year, public opinion events such as “35-year-old crisis”, “timed toilet breaks”, and “sudden death from overtime work” have frequently occurred in large companies, and many old employees have chosen to leave the companies, including some core executives.
More than 30 senior executives have left large companies since 2020
According to incomplete statistics from Times Data, more than 30 senior executives have left 10 major Internet companies, including BAT and Huawei, since 2020. Among them, 9 people did not disclose their whereabouts after leaving, 3 retired, 3 started their own businesses and looked for new tracks in life, and 12 joined other Internet companies as senior executives.
Non-compete agreements become a "pain" for senior executives after leaving their jobs
Tencent has the most disputes
Some people say that leaving is for a better start, and that gold will shine wherever it goes, and there is no shortage of places to use your skills. However, for some employees in core positions, leaving is often the beginning of a nightmare.
Not long ago, a news report about a Tencent employee being sued by his former employer, iFlytek, became a hot topic. It is reported that iFlytek claimed more than 26.4 million yuan in liquidated damages on the grounds that the Tencent employee violated the non-compete agreement. In the end, the first instance court ordered the employee to compensate iFlytek 12 million yuan and resign from Tencent.
A non-compete agreement, whose full name is a restriction of non-compete agreement, is also known as a non-compete agreement. It usually stipulates that an employee will not work for a company that competes with the company within a certain period of time after leaving the company. The company will also pay a certain amount of compensation on a monthly basis. If the employee breaches the agreement, he or she must return the compensation and bear the compensation for breach of contract.
In today's Internet age, non-compete agreements are common, and the case of iFlytek suing Tencent employees for tens of millions of yuan is just the tip of the iceberg. In 2018, a former Tencent employee was sued by his former employer for violating a non-compete agreement and was ordered to pay more than 19.4 million yuan, setting a record for the highest compensation in a non-compete agreement dispute case; in 2020, a former Lenovo vice president jumped to Xiaomi and was ordered to pay Lenovo more than 5.25 million yuan in liquidated damages. Most of these huge lawsuits are between large companies and their former executives.
According to relevant laws and regulations, non-compete agreements are limited to senior managers, senior technical personnel and other personnel with confidentiality obligations.
However, at present, non-compete agreements have begun to "sink" from senior executives to ordinary programmers.
In March this year, the China Judgments Online website published two civil judgments. In addition to returning the compensation, Tencent’s former employees Sun and Ji were ordered to pay Tencent 976,400 yuan and 1,079,500 yuan in liquidated damages for non-competition clauses respectively.
A senior lawyer who has been working on non-compete agreement breach cases said that in the Internet industry, there is an "unspoken rule": "Don't mess with Tencent and Baidu, and be lenient with Alibaba." That is, Tencent and Baidu are the big suers, while Huawei and Alibaba are relatively lenient and rarely sue. Searching for "non-compete agreement + Alibaba/Tencent/Baidu" on CNKI yielded the following data: 17 articles on Tencent, 9 on Baidu, and 1 on Alibaba.
According to incomplete statistics from public information such as the China Judgments Online website,
the situations in which the four major companies BAT and Huawei filed lawsuits for breach of non-compete agreement are very different
: in the past six years, Tencent has initiated at least 17 lawsuits (including former employees who were dissatisfied with the verdict and Tencent actively sued employees), recovering 2.48 million yuan in non-compete compensation and 19.33 million yuan in non-compete breach of contract; Baidu has initiated six lawsuits, recovering 1.83 million yuan in compensation and 11.81 million yuan in breach of contract; Huawei has only one lawsuit, recovering 410,000 yuan in compensation and 830,000 yuan in breach of contract; Alibaba has zero.
According to an article titled "Investigation | Internet giants who are looking for employees across the Internet", in the non-compete agreements of Tencent and ByteDance, they basically fill in each other as competing companies in the first column; Taobao's non-compete agreements only include Pinduoduo and JD.com;
After Meituan started its ride-hailing business, Didi listed Meituan as a competitor; Pinduoduo and Tencent signed an agreement not to poach each other's employees; Baidu is very cautious about strategy, algorithms, advanced technology, and positions involving servers.
According to Maimai’s survey data, with the continued expansion of ByteDance, it has become the first choice for most employees of other Internet companies to change jobs; at the same time, Baidu continues to export talents for important positions to other major Internet companies.
As a poacher, it is natural to extend various olive branches, but in actual practice, the requirements for liquidated damages vary greatly from company to company. Employees (especially senior executives) must carefully read the terms of various agreements when they leave. Signing them means significant legal responsibilities.
According to incomplete statistics from Times Data, the non-compete period for departing employees at leading Internet companies is basically set at about one year, and the non-compete compensation is basically 30% to 50% of the average monthly salary before leaving.
As for breach of contract compensation, Meituan is the most hated, requiring departing employees to pay 10 times the total annual pre-tax salary before leaving; in addition, ByteDance and Pinduoduo have special requirements for option non-compete for two years, and Meituan has similar regulations.
When it comes to non-compete agreements, some people have a misconception that they help companies suppress employees. In fact, a reasonable non-compete agreement is a "double protection" for both companies and employees.
The white paper on breach of non-competition agreement cases issued by the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People's Court makes it very clear: non-competition agreement regulates and constrains the behavior of both parties, protecting the legitimate interests of employers while safeguarding workers' freedom of choice of employment.
It is necessary to avoid employers setting non-competition clauses that are too broad, and also to avoid employees arbitrarily breaching contracts. In particular, senior executives of a company must be careful to abide by their contracts when they leave, otherwise they will not be able to escape huge claims.
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