Thousands of employees are leaving China’s Big Tech giants and going their own ways
A growing number of technology workers in China are saying goodbye to Big Tech, leaving companies like Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent behind as they embark on their own entrepreneurial ventures.
The apparent large-scale departures come amid layoffs in the tech sector and underperforming stocks, with many workers fed up with long hours and high pressure, according to a report from the South China Morning Mail claims.
The move, which is also being mirrored around the world amid ongoing layoffs, signals a major shift from the previous perception that working in technology offers enormous wealth potential compared to the volume of work.
Chinese tech workers are leaving Big Tech
The S.C.M.P gives examples of some of the employees who represent the shift, including Zoe Du, who left TikTok parent company Byte Dance in 2020 at a time when the Chinese government was beginning to crack down on monopolistic practices in the tech sector.
Du noted that China’s Big Tech is “less flourishing than a few years ago,” adding that at least 70% of her former colleagues have copied her resignation to start their own ventures.
At the end of 2023, Baidu, Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings, collectively known as China’s ‘BAT’, had just under 365,000 employees, down about 25,000, or 6.4%.
Du’s new company, founded in 2021, generated annual income of about $1.4 million last year with just eight employees, indicating that startups are now more lucrative than Big Tech.
In addition to greater financial freedom, Du also noted the added flexibility that comes with no longer having to work long hours for six consecutive days as before.
More broadly, layoffs have affected about 80,000 tech workers so far this year (via fired.fyi), down from the 263,000 layoffs for all of 2023. While many of these workers have also begun exploring their own ventures, the figures do not take into account those who have decided to leave.