February 16th, the first workday after the Spring Festival holiday.

Pei Qian quietly shut himself in his office to contemplate life.

What the hell happened?!

It was just one Spring Festival, yet so many things had occurred!

I had a perfectly fine back before the Spring Festival, so how did it end up full of knives?!

The most ridiculous part was that except for departments like internet cafes, food delivery, and logistics that couldn’t stop operations and needed rotating shifts, every department in Tenda that could take a holiday did so. The entire company had basically fallen into a state of suspended animation. Yet even so, one piece of bad news after another kept coming!

First, the popularity of “Ghost General 2” and “Bullet Hole 2” suddenly surged, with all metrics skyrocketing during the Spring Festival;

Then, when GOG and IOI’s New Year events clashed, IOI crumbled at the slightest touch, clearly looking like it was on its last legs;

Next, Dragon Yu Group shifted all their promotional resources toward “Bullet Hole 2,” causing IOI’s recommended resources to shrink dramatically, adding insult to injury;

Finally, the press conference held by Shenhua Group and Steffer Motors gave “Safe and Civilized Driving” another huge boost in popularity!

During the Spring Festival, almost every day brought new bad news when Pei Qian checked the headlines.

It was ridiculous!

And because everyone was on holiday, Pei Qian couldn’t do anything about it even if he wanted to!

For seven whole days, Pei Qian could only go with the flow and empty his mind.

But now came the problem.

Enjoying the Spring Festival break was momentary pleasure; returning to work was like entering a crematorium!

There was only half a month left until the end-of-month settlement, but with the sudden surge in revenue from so many projects, Pei Qian was under enormous pressure.

Although Pei Qian had prepared for some emergency spending, he never imagined the task would be so overwhelming!

However, Pei Qian was after all a battle-hardened veteran. After a brief moment of panic and confusion, he quickly regained his composure and even came up with new countermeasures.

It proved that human intelligence is like water in a sponge—if you squeeze hard enough, there’s always more to be found.

Under pressure, smart people always find new breakthroughs.

In the short term, he could use the emergency spending methods he had thought of before, such as opening a zoo, investing money in Tenda’s headquarters building, buying property, or launching promotional activities in games.

Although these emergency spending methods had certain side effects—for example, GOG spending more money would undoubtedly make IOI’s situation even worse—Pei Qian couldn’t worry about that now.

Focus on this cycle first, and worry about the next cycle when it comes…

As for IOI, sorry, but seeing that you’re almost finished, just make one final contribution.

Pei Qian had been going easy on IOI before because he thought it could still hold on, but now seeing IOI in such a sorry state, keeping it around wouldn’t serve much purpose. Since that was the case, no more pretending—GOG should continue burning money.

Besides this, Pei Qian had also schemed to come up with another long-term spending method and had notified the HR department.

As he was pondering this, there was a knock on the door.

“Mr. Pei, you were looking for me?”

It was Wu Bin. Although he wasn’t the head of the HR department anymore, he was still specifically responsible for Tenda’s recruitment exams.

Pei Qian nodded and handed over the new plan that he had hastily drafted just that morning.

“Take a look at this new recruitment plan. Implement it urgently—I want it completely finished before the end of this month!”

“Recruit as many people as you can. If you can’t get enough, that’s fine too. We’ll recruit more next time.”

Wu Bin took the plan and found that although it was written very simply, with only a rough framework and outline, the core points were clearly stated.

“Special recruitment?!”

Although Wu Bin had seen many surprising things while working in Tenda’s HR department, he was still genuinely shocked when he saw this plan!

Tenda’s original recruitment exams were held twice a year, in May and November.

According to this plan, Mr. Pei wanted to add two more recruitment exams in February and August, making it once every three months, for a total of four times a year!

This wasn’t just a simple increase in frequency and numbers—there were changes to the recruitment exam details as well. The most obvious difference was: the February and August exams had special requirements!

These exams would only recruit three types of people: First, people over 35 years old; Second, people who have plans to have children in the next two years or have recently had children, regardless of gender; Third, people who have won labor arbitration lawsuits against their former companies.

Candidates must meet at least one of these three conditions to be eligible to apply for the exam. Of course, whether they would pass the exam was another matter.

But one point had to be emphasized: since these special recruitments were staggered with the regular recruitment exams and both selected based on numbers, with this recruitment obviously having fewer participants than the regular recruitment, the chances of being accepted would be greatly increased.

Wu Bin felt a bit dumbfounded.

These three types of people were exactly the ones other companies wanted least!

First, people over 35 years old.

Many companies have stated that they would “regularly provide society with talents over 35 years old” or “regularly eliminate employees who have lost their fighting spirit,” with this cut-off basically set around 35 years of age.

Beyond that, many companies wouldn’t dare say this out loud, but they all did it in practice.

The reasons were multifaceted, with one direct reason being: when employees renew their contracts with a company, after signing two fixed-term labor contracts consecutively, or after working continuously for ten years at the same employer, the next contract must be an open-ended labor contract.

This meant that, unless there were legal or agreed-upon conditions for terminating the labor contract, this contract would continue until the employee retired. It had a very strong stability.

Therefore, many companies viewed open-ended labor contracts as a kind of “lifetime burden” and would try every means to avoid them.

Many people graduated in their twenties and started working, and by the time they reached around thirty-five, they would need to sign these open-ended labor contracts with their companies.

As for the deeper reasons, they were more complex, but ultimately it came down to companies preferring younger workers who were in good physical condition, could work overtime, and had lower salary demands. They wanted to eliminate these older employees with heavier family responsibilities, who couldn’t withstand the pressure of overtime, and who had relatively higher wages, all to maximize company profits.

This was why many people talked about the “midlife crisis” and said “programmers can’t work past forty,” because in the eyes of many companies, employees were consumables, and after the age of thirty-five, the value of these consumables would drop sharply. Naturally, they would try every means to eliminate these people.

Most companies thought this way, and when people reached middle age, expenses for family, children, medical care, and other costs suddenly increased, which inevitably led to midlife crises.

The second type of people were those with plans to have children soon.

This didn’t need much explanation. Having a child required maternity leave, often for half a year, and taking care of a child would divert most of one’s energy, inevitably affecting work efficiency. Many companies, when interviewing women in their thirties, would ask whether they had plans to have children in the near future.

But Mr. Pei’s plan specified: regardless of gender. That meant men could also apply, as long as their spouses were planning to have children. The men could then take paternity leave together with their wives.

The third type of people were those who had won labor arbitration lawsuits against companies.

This group was also ostracized because many companies’ HR departments had formed a de facto alliance to better exploit their employees.

According to normal thinking, if an employee suffered unfair treatment, initiated labor arbitration, and won, wasn’t that perfectly justifiable?

But in the eyes of many companies and their HR departments, such people were troublemakers! If you could file arbitration against your former employer today, wouldn’t you do the same to me tomorrow?

So, many companies had formed a tacit understanding: when they didn’t like an employee, they would “encourage them to leave.” If you were sensible and left quietly without asking for compensation, then we could have a friendly conversation, and I might put in a few good words on your employment certificate.

But if you were not sensible and insisted on going to labor arbitration to demand compensation? Sorry, but you wouldn’t have any say in what I wrote on your employment certificate.

Moreover, if all companies tacitly agreed not to hire anyone with a history of labor arbitration, wouldn’t that make people afraid to apply for labor arbitration in the future?

The plan was working perfectly!

So now, more and more companies, without distinguishing right from wrong, would simply reject any applicant who had a history of applying for labor arbitration.

But Mr. Pei’s attitude was completely different: If other companies didn’t want these people, he would welcome them all! Not only would he welcome them, but he would also create a special recruitment process just for them, making it easier for them to join Tenda!

Wu Bin quickly read through the entire plan and after some consideration said, “Mr. Pei, regarding this plan…”

“Well… the plan itself is good, of course, but I don’t think we need to specifically create a separate exam.”

“This might make it easier to recruit some… well, employees of lower quality.”

“I think as long as we treat everyone equally and without discrimination, that should be enough.”

Wu Bin’s heart was actually a bit conflicted.

If it were an HR person from another company, their first priority would certainly be to consider the boss’s interests and the company’s profits. They would only think of ways to dismiss these three types of people to reduce costs for the company.

But having worked at Tenda for so long, Wu Bin knew very well what kind of person Mr. Pei was and what kind of company Tenda was.

And Wu Bin also knew in his heart that Tenda’s current state was how a company should be.

Treating these three types of people equally was something all normal companies should do.

But from a practical perspective, it would indeed reduce the company’s efficiency and revenue.

So Wu Bin felt that while they shouldn’t shut out these three types of people—that would violate Tenda’s spirit and values—they also didn’t need to sacrifice so much of the company’s interests, right?

Pei Qian shook his head, internally saying “hehe.”

Equal treatment? Normal recruitment?

Although that would also bring these three types of people into Tenda, the pace would be too slow!

How could it be as fast as targeted recruitment?

Tenda’s development was becoming faster and faster, its scale was getting bigger and bigger, and they couldn’t wait any longer!