The first batch of big factory workers cut off by AI: high salary, high performance, high P

Interview｜Ren Cairu Lan Jie Peng Qian Text｜Ren Cairu Editor｜Qiao Qian Yang Xuan "630" attrition, is AI the culprit or the scapegoat? "Now the company has a list (of attrition), and you are on it." One day in mid-May, Lin Yue was called into the conference room by his team leader, who got straight to the point. Lin Yue's first reaction was calmness, as he had expected it. As early as March and April this year, there were rumors of layoffs within some Internet companies. Since the beginning of the new year, China's major Internet companies have aggressively launched token competitions, training sessions, invisible assessments, etc. around AI efficiency improvements, and they are everywhere. When everyone is involved in the "all in AI" movement, "layoffs will definitely happen" is the tacit consensus among everyone. But when he stood at the door of HR, he still experienced an emotional breakdown: his hands began to shake, and he hesitated for a long time, thinking about how to start and how to adjust his behavior and expression. "I never want to experience something like this again." Lin Yue earned a monthly salary of 25,000. He graduated from a bachelor's degree a year ago and joined Ctrip as a back-end engineer - at the time, he was an extremely lucky person. The Internet recruitment bonus is no longer available. Ctrip only accepted less than 500 people from thousands of resumes. However, he entered the company's most profitable hotel department and was responsible for writing code for commercial products. But looking at it now, if a junior programmer with a monthly salary of 25,000 yuan and only one year of experience is not laid off, who will be laid off? First, the compensation cost is low, and second, newcomers are often less efficient in using AI than older employees who are more familiar with the overall business. "Old employees with business experience know better what they want to use AI for and what impact it will have," Lin Yue said. In a paper titled "Canaries in the Coal Mine?", Stanford University used "canaries" as a metaphor for young people who have just entered the workplace. Its research shows that since the popularization of ChatGPT in 2022, the employment of the youngest workers has dropped significantly. By September 2025, the employment of software developers aged 22-25 has dropped by nearly 20% compared with its peak at the end of 2022. In the past year, AI has made everything more complicated. Ctrip was once a famous "Internet retirement factory": the programmer job starts at 10 a.m.