Once upon a time, when working in Alibaba, it didn’t matter what position you were in, or how many years you had been in the job. What mattered was your P number. If you can become Alibaba P8, it means an annual salary HE Tuber  of one million, becoming a

  ceiling among workers, and reaching the pinnacle of life.

But by the end of this year, Alibaba may personally cut off high-end products, and the high-end halo of big manufacturers will become a thing of the past.

On July 13, according to 36Kr, Taobao Tmall Group (hereinafter referred to as "Taotian") recently launched a human resources system reform plan, which is expected to be officially implemented after December this year. The plan is specifically as follows:

Cancel the P sequence, use levels 14-28 to correspond to the original P4-P8, and every three levels correspond to one P level, and the wages and bonuses of employees at levels 14-28 will not be linked only to the level;

The original employees above P8 will be appointed by the organization. There will no longer be promotions and downgrades. Salaries and bonuses will be determined based on business scale and team size;

There will only be three levels of performance scores: 3.75, 3.5, and 3.25. 3.5+ and 3.5- will be cancelled. Those with outstanding performance may achieve multiple levels of

  promotion within a year.

The core of all business competition is organizational competition, and the rank system consisting of promotion, salary increase and performance can best reflect where a company wants to take the organization. Nowadays, Alibaba is reforming its rank system, de-Political, and splitting the group from six to one and three ranks. A series of actions are regarded by the outside world as "cleaning up the old white rabbits" and "curing the disease of large companies."

The reasons behind it are not difficult to understand. Ali’s rank changes this time are reminiscent of Ali’s situation of being besieged by opponents and the pressure of performance growth. The “pampered” high-level P is no longer needed, replaced by the “do as much as you can” Take as much as you can” and “Make room for young people”.

Judging from Ali's series of group splits and actions this year to take responsibility for its own profits and losses, this rank system reform modeled by Taotian once again declared

  Ali's determination to change.

More people are curious, after Alibaba launches the reform of the rank system, how many major domestic Internet companies will choose to follow suit? At the expense of the high-P halo disappearing, can it be exchanged for another renewal in the Internet era?

1. Ali goes to P: performance determines bonuses, promotion may become difficult

Among Alibaba’s series of rank system reform actions, two aspects have attracted the most attention.

On the one hand, the P sequence is canceled and replaced by "one split into three" , with levels 14-28 corresponding to the original P4-P8, and every three levels corresponding to a P level. Employees above the original P8 are appointed by the organization.

On the other hand, the levels and bonuses of all employees are separated . Employees above the original P8 level determine their salaries and bonuses based on business scale and team size.

It can be expected that after this adjustment, Taotian will undergo two major changes: the difficulty of "promoting to P" will become more difficult, and the wages and bonuses received by employees will no longer be based on high ranks, but will depend on performance. Industry insiders said that this adjustment plan is expected to be switched after December, and the year-end bonus that employees are most concerned about will

 inevitably be affected.

Taotian's reform of the rank system is not surprising in terms of the timing and the group that was the first to be "operated".

Since March this year, Alibaba has successively completed the "biggest reform in its 24 years of existence", from the "1+6+N" organizational structure adjustment in March, to the announcement of the new board lineup of the six major business groups in May, to the Zhang Yong handed over the baton to Cai Chongxin and Wu Yongming. After a series of adjustments, as the six major business groups began to be responsible for their own profits and losses, independent BUs made independent accounting, and each small team divided the cake according to performance, the change in the rank system was an inevitable result.

Senior Alibaba employee Gao Gao said that in the past, regardless of the performance of each group, when it was time to divide the money at the end of the year, it was the group that paid, and the business leaders did not feel bad. Now they have to be responsible for their own profits and losses, and the business has to "pay out of their own pockets." The mentality is different. , the movements will naturally be different. As Alibaba's core group, Taotian has complex business lines and many stakeholders, so it is natural that it must take the lead in making changes.

From the perspective of group development, this attack is directed at the problems of large companies, with the purpose of enhancing the flexibility, flatness and practicality of the organization.

The biggest adjustment to the new rank promotion rules is to increase the number of levels for grassroots promotions and to increase the assessment of high-level P’s. Although Alibaba's internal website states that the increase in levels is to increase promotion opportunities, many people hold the opposite view and believe that the overall

  difficulty of promotion is increasing.

Grassroots employees now need to jump three levels to advance to P. The increase in levels does not mean that the difficulty will be reduced, because the assessment they face will increase; while the original employees above P8 are appointed by the organization and no longer enjoy the privilege of "ranks follow their years" , facing the risk of being dismissed due to unqualified performance.

"The fundamental reason behind this is that there are not enough 'holes'. After the group was split into six, the business integration brought about redundancy in middle-level positions such as P8 and P9. In fact, we don't need that many people. The higher you go up, the fewer the holes. , the higher the requirements." Senior product manager Judge said.

It is more difficult to get promoted, and the wages that workers are most concerned about have also changed. Employee wages are generally composed of wages + stocks + bonuses. In the context of the general depreciation of stocks in large companies and becoming a "salary recovery plan", how much money grassroots employees and high-ranking executives can receive each year mainly depends on bonuses. Nowadays, strict rules on rewards based on merit and performance have made senior managers begin to bear greater performance pressure, while grassroots employees have to rely on their actual contributions to speak for themselves.

The judge believes that decoupling high-ranking positions from high-salary means that senior executives with smaller business and smaller teams still have to perform well if they want to stay or move up. "The main purpose of the company is to avoid eating from the big pot, and the company cannot tolerate anyone making money on the side."

However, this change of Taotian is in line with one of Ali's very important values ​​- embracing change. The intensity and speed of the reform are somewhat "radical" in the eyes of the outside world. However, considering the current situation of Alibaba’s slowdown in growth, numerous competitors, and large companies suffering from illnesses in the past two years, this radical change seems understandable.

After large companies operate under the same organizational structure for too long, the ethos attached to this organizational structure will gradually become stale. In this regard, the judge made an analogy, "Instead of cleaning up the residue on the table one by one, it is better to overturn the table and start all over again."

2. How does a high-profile player step down from the altar?

As soon as the news of the change came out, the outside world was curious. Is there really no more high profile players in the world?

First, let’s briefly understand Alibaba High P. Alibaba’s internal career promotion system can be simply divided into P sequence (P5-P14) and M sequence (M1-M10). Among them, P represents the professional sequence, including technical positions such as programmers, products, operations, and marketing; M represents the management sequence, which mainly performs the responsibilities of the management team.

Picture source/network

Ali's original rank system form