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From blockbuster bonuses to pink slips: China’s tech industry nurses a hangover

  • The world’s second-largest economy is growing at its slowest pace in nearly three decades, adding to the gloom in the country’s once red-hot internet economy

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Jobseekers attend a job fair in Haikou, south China's Hainan Province, June 23, 2018. Nearly 100 enterprises took part in the job fair, offering more than 2,600 jobs. Photo: Xinhua

A long-waited promotion can make you feel on top of the world and an unexpected lay-off can take you to rock bottom. In China’s rapidly changing tech scene, this career roller-coaster can be ridden in days – not months or years.

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One ex-employee from Chinese internet major NetEase was promised a promotion ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday after several years at the Hangzhou-based company. But soon after she returned from the seven-day national holiday, NetEase laid her off as part of a companywide restructuring.

“It was sudden and unexpected,” said the ex-employee in her late 20s, who declined to be identified after losing her job. “Some new hires reported for work in mid-February, after the holidays, and just weeks later they were laid off too.”

NetEase, China’s second-biggest online games publisher with a growing e-commerce unit, is one of a wave of technology companies that are laying off employees amid a slowdown in China’s economy – and the retrenchment runs from “low-end” manufacturers to some of the country’s “high-end” tech darlings., including China’s second-largest e-commerce firm JD.com and ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing.

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The world’s second-largest economy is growing at its slowest pace in nearly three decades, adding to the gloom in the country’s once red-hot internet economy, which has also seen a pullback in venture capital funding, adding to the uncertainty for some of China’s most well paid office workers.

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