"At my age, I cry every time I watch this farewell video." During the live broadcast, Zhang Bangxin, founder and CEO of Tal, played a video about the whole process from entering the company to leaving the company. After the video, he was holding a paper towel. His nose and eyes were red. He paused for nearly a minute before he recovered his usual calm tone. At 10 a.m. on December 22, more than 20000 tal employees saw Zhang Bangxin's rare true feelings. Zhang Bangxin, now 41, founded XRS (the predecessor of TAL) together with his graduate students at Peking University 18 years ago. Starting from teaching primary and Secondary School Students Mathematical Olympiad, he sent the company to the New York Stock Exchange for listing in eight years, and achieved a market value of US $58 billion in 11 years - nearly twice that of New Oriental, which was founded earlier. Then within six months, he watched the market value of the company fall by 95%. In this live conference with the theme of "gratitude", Zhang Bangxin said that "double reduction" is the "biggest challenge" he has encountered since he started his business for 18 years. The most painful thing is that he has to send away many colleagues. Before the "double reduction" on July 24, tal had nearly 100000 employees. After several rounds of layoffs, there will be only about 10000 by the end of the year. One employee said that on the issue of layoffs, Zhang Bangxin was "actually very soft hearted". It was often another Lianchuang who talked about layoffs mercilessly internally, while Zhang Bangxin would say "keep it and see". But today, "no matter how hesitant, I have to cut." Zhang Bangxin also reflected on the live broadcast. Talking about why he came to this step today, he said, "does it increase the financial burden of students and create anxiety? Ask yourself whether it exists more or less." When investors love to say "the end" comes in advance. Some organizations choose another way to avoid supervision, and some sell hundreds of millions of yuan of courses before the supervision requires the suspension of sales, although the company knows that it can't finish these courses. Others choose to exit with dignity. New Oriental chose to donate 160000 sets of tables and chairs to rural primary and secondary schools. Tal completed the courses for students in the last semester and refunded the fees unconditionally. As Zhang Bangxin said, when an organization retreats, its figure is very important. The more it runs out of water, the more it shows what an organization can really have left. 01:15 Repeated many times and hesitated for months This is not the first time Zhang Bangxin "said goodbye" to some employees internally. The last live broadcast to tens of thousands of employees was on July 27. On the third day after the implementation of the "double reduction" policy, he mentioned layoffs. He lowered his head and touched his nose with a little guilt. "Layoffs are bound to be layoffs." In the next two months, XRS online school abolished tens of thousands of tutors and closed many local centers. Some businesses not directly affected by the policy also began to shrink. For example, tal's little monkey enlightenment business abolished more than 80% of 3000 employees. Such courses are for preschool children and there are compliance risks in the future. After the dismissal of a large number of tutors, operators and other personnel, tal has always stressed the need to leave employees in core positions, such as lecturers, production and research. In an internal sharing meeting of production and research, a middle-level manager of the company mentioned that "if there are people and land, people and land will exist; if there are people and land, people and land will not exist." However, in the last week of September, many products and R & D of XRS Peiyou and XRS online school received layoffs. They were told that October 30 would be their last day in the company. At that time, the planning was that the offline training and excellence business department was mainly responsible for non-profit discipline business, with 1200 industries and 200 reserved. The online school business department is mainly responsible for literacy business and retains most of the production and research. But after the national day, the employees who received the layoff notice were told to stay first. But no one made it clear why they stayed. A research and development personnel of XRS Peiyou said that it was his "most confused week". The office station was empty. Many people had not left their jobs and no longer went to work. People who came to work did not want to work. Computers stayed on the recruitment website page. Before long, the company made clear the main transformation direction - literacy education. Different from art, music and other quality courses, quality courses focus on science, humanities, programming and other directions for children aged 3-12. A tal person said that what tal wants to find is a large-scale "cylindrical" market, not a "pushpin" market. The market of quality-oriented content such as art and music is pushpin type. Children's interests are not fixed at the age of 3-8, and they may try multiple directions. However, as they grow older, children's interests will tend to be specific, and literacy learning will also tend to be professional. This vertical market is difficult to scale; The market of literacy content such as scientific experiment and humanistic speculation is cylindrical, which always focuses on children's subject education, but does not directly cultivate test oriented subjects such as language and number. Like R & D personnel, the arrangement of keynote teachers has changed several times. Tal is ready to let them take non-profit subject courses in the middle of the week and literacy courses on the weekend, so they can barely keep pace with their previous income. According to the policy requirements, discipline institutions in the stage of compulsory education need to be transformed into non-profit institutions before December 31. In November, after tal left office, many lecturers of XRS Peiyou signed letters of intent with non-profit discipline institutions and began to prepare for the teaching and continuation of classes in the follow-up stage of compulsory education. According to the plan, many tal training institutions will maintain about 30% of the teacher team. However, in early December, tal began to circulate internally, and the application for non-profit school running license failed in some areas. On December 13, tal duodi branch informed that non-profit courses would be unified into large online classes. Because the main body of non-profit organizations is in Shanghai, full-time lecturers need to move to Shanghai to teach. Only 100 full-time teachers and 600-700 part-time teachers are needed. A Wuhan lecturer said that this means that thousands of teachers in hundreds of branches across the country need to compete for these 100 full-time positions. In the end, "it may be better to find a few familiar students and earn more in private classes." Five days later, many branches issued a notice urging teachers not to leave first. Next, small online classes in primary school will be opened, and some branches will retain about 40% of the keynote teachers. Tal has repeatedly hesitated for a long time on the fate of employees. Zhang Bangxin apologized for this. After the layoff of Peiyou online school was suspended, he said internally that "one general is incompetent and exhausts the three armed forces". However, when the industry comes to this stage, the fate of most people is not decided by large companies. The first one is to figure out how to do online education In 2002, when Zhang Bangxin and two graduate students and girlfriends rented a small classroom in the technical school in Haidian and spent 350 yuan to buy a set of old furniture to start a business, they were just catching up with the node that children under China's second wave of baby boomers went to primary and secondary schools. China's University expansion will gradually slow down in a few years. Going to universities, especially good universities, is still a single wooden bridge. In 1999, undergraduate enrollment in Colleges and universities increased by 43.41%. By 2008, the enrollment expansion of colleges and universities began to slow down. In 2011, the second year of XRS's listing, the growth rate of undergraduate enrollment in Chinese colleges and universities was lower than 5% for the first time, and remained below 5% for the next eight years. Zhang Bangxin summed up the growth of the bright future as, "in the great era, he made an attempt to follow the trend." Tal has expanded from a teaching point in Beijing to 129 cities in China in 18 years. In 2016, the first mock exam of double teachers was explored in a good future: a lecture teacher was taught live broadcast to thousands of students. In addition, tutors are arranged to tutor dozens of students' after-school homework. The double normal university class improved the effect of students' online learning and soon replaced the original recording and broadcasting teaching. After that, learn from who to further highlight the "famous teachers" and seize the traffic dividend, turning this model into the mainstream form of online education. Money poured in. In 2020, more than 100 billion yuan of funds will flow into the online education industry, which is better at product and operation guidance and homework help to catch up quickly. Marketing advertising is everywhere all the time After several years of polishing and hundreds of billions of investment, the most successful companies have made online education a large-scale business that is expected to make a lot of money. This is not only the starting point of the rapid expansion of the industry, but also its end point. On the gloomy live broadcast yesterday, a head of Tal business read Pushkin's "if life deceives you", "everything is an instant, everything will pass; and what has passed will become cordial nostalgia." (Xinhua News Agency)