Welcome to the WeChat subscription number of “Sina Technology”: techsina
Text / Chen Fashan
Source/Leopard Change (ID: baobiannews)
At a time when many big factories are reducing costs and increasing efficiency and reducing welfare for the “winter”, the Metaverse seems to be ushering in “spring”.
It is reported that the Metaverse industry has recently started a recruitment wave. Not only will the recruitment scale be expanded several times in the next few years, but the salaries will also be considerable: generally 400,000-500,000 yuan for fresh graduates, and 1 million-200 yuan for senior engineers with 10 years of experience. It is not uncommon for an annual salary of 4 million to 5 million for particularly outstanding talents.
The concept of the metaverse originated from the science fiction novel “Avalanche” written by science fiction writer Stevenson in 1992. It refers to the shared online world where users can interact and even live and work in the virtual world.
With the rapid development of various types of technologies such as virtual reality and VR equipment, the Metaverse has been re-hyped as a concept, including Luo Yonghao who also announced his entry into VR. It is only logical that the talents of the Metaverse are sought after.
However, the controversy over the metaverse has never stopped. On the one hand, the Metaverse is considered to be the next sea of stars on the Internet, on the other hand, many people question the concept of “hype”.
In this context, is the entry into the Metaverse an outlet or a leek? Is the annual salary of 5 million sky-high?
Metaverse’s high salary is mostly a cake
Searching for “Metaverse Jobs” on social platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin, there are many high-paying temptations: “Industry with an annual salary of one million, Metaverse employment opportunities + corporate recommendation”, “Metaverse special recruitment, one million annual salary get basics” Knowledge”, “The Metaverse’s millions of annual salary positions are in urgent need of these three types of talents”, there is a feeling that the Metaverse is full of gold.
Is the actual situation as the social platform said, is the metaverse “average annual salary of one million”?
“There is a salary of millions, but it is an industry expert. Overall, the salary and recruitment needs are not so exaggerated.” A recruitment website headhunter described the current market situation of the Metaverse.
On the afternoon of August 19, on some recruitment websites, “Leopard Change” searched for “Metaverse”, and there were limited high-paying positions. For example, BOSS directly employs only 10 Metaverse jobs with a monthly salary of more than 50,000 yuan in Beijing, 5 of which show a monthly salary in the range of 30,000-55,000, and only 2 with a monthly salary of 100,000, which are R&D directors or technical leaders. .
In Liepin, there are nearly 30 Metaverse jobs released in Shanghai in the past week with a monthly salary of more than 60,000 yuan. From the perspective of job rank, they are mainly executives such as CEO, COO, technical director, and VP. In some second- and third-tier cities, there is not much demand for Metaverse development positions, and the monthly salary is not high.
On Lagou.com, the monthly salary of a back-end development engineer in a Metaverse company in Xiamen is 5,000-8,000 yuan.
In fact, high salaries are not the preserve of the Metaverse. In big Internet companies, the salary of IT engineers is generally higher than that of other positions. In the eyes of the outside world, it is a high-paying job, but in the eyes of IT brothers, it belongs to the “market situation”. A number of IT industry veterans said that the salaries of the above-mentioned Metaverse positions did not exceed the industry standard by much.
“Actually, at this price, traditional IT engineers of major companies can also get it.” Chen Yu, who has experience in many major companies and is now a byte R&D management post, told Leopard Change. “Kuishou and Byte engineer recruits have an annual salary of 300,000-400,000, and excellent SP offers can reach 500,000. Engineers with 10 years of work experience, such as Ali P7-level employees, can earn 800,000-1.3 million per year, which is better. can get 1.3 million to 2 million.”
Chen Yu said that if you want to get an annual salary of 5 million, you must be at the executive level, generally referring to CTO, technical VP, etc., or particularly outstanding talents.
“IT salary is relatively high, so it has been optimized recently.” Chen Yu said. “From what I know, I haven’t seen any news of large-scale recruitment of the metaverse in the circle, and there are not many practical applications.”
Xie Zhe, a senior headhunter of Liepin.com, told “Leopard Change” that some Metaverse companies did offer relatively high salaries to the outside world, but the actual situation was not as good as it seemed, with more options and less cash, and not many people actually got it.
“Many companies seek financing based on the concept of the Metaverse. Once the financing fails, or they run out of money, they declare bankruptcy. A Metaverse company I served before made seven or eight million or even several million annual salary offers. But in the end, no one got the money, it was all about making cakes.” Xie Zhe said: “The salary is just a cake, it attracts people, and the salary is low, how can it attract people to enter?”
Yang Wen, an engineer with senior IT product development experience, believes that the concept of the Metaverse is very popular, and the salary may be 30% higher than that of other industries, but the annual salary of millions should only be obtained by a few top people. He recommends opening your eyes and not staring at the Metaverse when applying for a job.
“The income of the game industry is already high, and the engine development talents are scarce. It is very popular. It is normal to have an annual salary of one million yuan with 10 years of work experience.” Yang Wen said.
High returns hide high risks
High-yield, high-risk, this famous investment adage applies to Metaverse recruiting as well.
In the comment area of Weibo posts discussing the high salary of Metaverse, many users left a message saying: Metaverse has no profit model yet, so the salary is so high, are you going to hollow out the company? Who pays the wages, and several months’ wages are prepared on the account? The bubble in the Internet era has burst for a few rounds, and I hope that there will be no chicken feathers in the end…
In May of this year, for a monthly salary of nearly 20,000 yuan, Ding Ling rejected an offer from an Internet company and chose to join a Metaverse company in Hangzhou. After joining the company, Ding Ling was entrusted with the “important task” to tackle the digital collection platform launched by the company at the end of June. After working overtime for more than a month, the preparatory work before the launch of the new platform was finally completed on June 24.
“The day of completion was Friday, and the company also held a special launch meeting to assign tasks to the new platform. As a result, the next Monday, the company suddenly notified me that due to the epidemic, the company’s operations were under great pressure, and I was fired. Dare is to let me be here. After a period of time, I will solve the work needs of the company, and when the work is completed, I will not be needed.” Suddenly being “graduated” caught Ding Ling by surprise.
Ding Ling was then taken into a conference room by HR and told that she would not have to go to work the next day, and that the company would compensate her for one week’s salary as compensation. The two colleagues in charge of short videos who joined with Ding Ling were also dismissed together. The work of the three was handed over to the only remaining colleague, and this colleague’s salary was the lowest among the four.
In fact, the metaverse that has been hyped up in recent years is still in the initial stage of application, facing many uncertainties, and it is still unknown how long its life force will last. Ding Ling introduced that the company is doing some “edge” transactions: selling “mining machines” to people who speculate on coins; digital collections are not allowed to be traded twice, and users make money privately in the name of a second gift.
In February of this year, the once-popular Metaverse social app Jelly suddenly announced its withdrawal. Within a month of its launch, Jelly once overwhelmed WeChat, which has dominated Apple’s AppStore for many years, and reached the top spot. But soon after, Jelly was caught in a storm of leaking user privacy, and on the evening of February 13, it announced that it would be removed from the app store and suspend new users from entering.
From the perspective of practical application, games, VR, etc. are considered to be closely related to the metaverse. However, many employees of major Internet companies and game companies told “Leopard Change” that the company’s current products do not use the Metaverse very much.
People close to Tencent said that many regulatory authorities had previously issued documents to prevent Metaverse hype, so the company was very cautious about the concept of the Metaverse and almost never mentioned it.
“Some companies may speculate on the concept of Metaverse for financing or even preparing to go public. But now that the supervision of the Metaverse has been strengthened, investors who really know the business will be very cautious, and it is quite difficult to raise money.” The person said.
A number of game industry practitioners have confirmed that, except for the secret research, the games on the market have little to do with the metaverse. Zhou Yang, who has work experience in a number of leading game companies, said that many companies love to focus on hot spots. They used to talk about blockchain and now they talk about the Metaverse. The last time I visited the design exhibition, many figurines also began to say that they were the Metaverse, and they had a lot of water.
“After some game companies make money, they may invest in Metaverse-related technologies. I heard that “Genshin Impact” exploded last year, and Mihayou invested in brain-computer interfaces after making money. It may be that they intend to develop virtual games, but the current products do not use Metaverse. Cosmic.” Zhou Yang said.
There are many traps in the Metaverse for job hunting
Almost every outlet has a shadow named “scam”. So much so that some bloggers joked that the first wave of money made in the Metaverse must be a liar.
On June 29, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission issued the “Risk Warning on Preventing Illegal Fund Raising in the Name of “Metaverse” on its official website, saying that there have been recent hot spots for lawbreakers to use “Metaverse Investment Projects”, “Metaverse Chain Tour”, etc. Absorbing funds in name, suspected of illegal fundraising, fraud and other illegal and criminal activities.
These include fabricating fake Metaverse investment projects: stirring up concepts related to Metaverse game production, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, etc., fabricating high-tech investment projects with many packaging names, publicizing false publicity for high returns, and taking the opportunity to absorb public funds , with the characteristics of illegal fund-raising, fraud and other illegal activities.
Xie Zhe has been engaged in headhunting for many years, and he has also suffered a loss from the Metaverse for high commissions: he worked hard to recruit talents for the Metaverse Company, but the company collapsed soon after, the employees could not get wages, and he could not receive service fees.
Xie Zhe said that he had served a Metaverse company in Shenzhen before, with a high registered capital of tens of millions of yuan, but he did not pay it in real, and then recruited some industry experts as company consultants to beautify the company’s strength. The company claims to have a market value of several hundred million, and gives 1% of the shares to employees, and the annual salary is in the millions.
Xie Zhe said. “Actually, there are not many companies that have the strength to make the Metaverse, many of them are empty shells, and few really do things. After all, this thing is still immature. It was just a game scene at the beginning, but now many people have opened their minds and put the Yuan The universe empowers various industries to create a dream for you, and dreams have everything.”
According to Xie Zhe’s observation, shell companies have frequently changed their tracks in recent years. The first two years were chips and blockchain, and now it is the Metaverse. Next, they will start building rockets, interstellar space, and Starlink plans.
“The ideas are crazy one by one. When the capital does not pay the bill, it goes bankrupt. It is the employees who suffer. The salary options opened account for a large proportion, and the cash is relatively small.” Xie Zhe said.
In addition to the employees, Xie Zhe himself was hurt by the Metaverse: after a cycle, the company may not be there if it fails to raise money, and the convenience said that the recruited candidates were not suitable, so they immediately terminated the cooperation and “escaped” a service fee.
“Only when the people who helped them raise funds can they pay the service fee, but the process is also very bumpy.” Xie Zhe said. “I stayed away from this kind of company after I’ve been on it a few times. First, the candidates we recruited for them are not guaranteed, and the service fee is not received. This kind of company is always making money and has no money in its hands.”
When the Metaverse makes wealth a myth, job seekers should keep their eyes open to avoid becoming the leek in the air.
This article is reproduced from: http://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/csj/2022-08-23/doc-imizirav9376882.shtml
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.