Chapter 88 Big Hiring: That Last Straw

Around 2002, Song Ruhua's "TOP dream" seemed to be coming true. He started construction of 27 software parks across the country one after another. The Top Group, consisting of 150 subsidiaries, has become the largest high-tech company cluster in China. The total assets of the group claim to have exceeded 10 billion yuan. He was listed in the top 50 by "Forbes" "China Rich List".What is even more coveted is that in the software park project, he has amassed 12,000 mu of high-quality land in the best commercial locations in dozens of provinces and cities at an unimaginably low cost. In the 1980s, this huge land reserve was enough to bring him infinite wealth surges...

In July 2002, Toppo celebrated its 10th anniversary.Song Ruhua, who always likes to be lively, made it very lively. The celebration lasted for 12 days and cost tens of millions of yuan. The activities covered more than a dozen provinces and cities across the country, with no less than 100,000 participants.Song Ruhua also leased two small business jets for the company's senior executives to travel around.In these days, the headquarters building of Top Group in Supo Township, Chengdu was completed, the East Shanghai Software Park was opened, and the Jiaxing Information Industrial Park, which covers an area of ​​4,500 mu, was celebrated. The Agricultural Bank of China awarded Top the title of "Best Honest Customer". And signed a bank-enterprise comprehensive cooperation agreement with Top Group in the Beijing Hall of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing...

Everything seems to be a scene of prosperity.However, no one expected that the last "straw" that crushed Top fell at this moment. This "straw" was thrown down by Song Ruhua himself.He announced the "recruitment of 5,000 software engineers to the society". Many years later, Top's researchers still couldn't figure out why Song Ruhua implemented this exaggerated measure at this time.A senior vice president of Topp once speculated to a friend: "Boss Song's big recruitment is for the bank to see." This should be the closest possibility to the truth.At that time, Top's park continued to be built, but there were very few companies that settled there, and the group's cash was not enough to make ends meet. Song Ruhua wanted to use this sensational behavior to attract the attention of enterprises and financial institutions, so as to obtain bank loans and promote Investment promotion work in the park.

In fact, this unprecedented large-scale recruitment has never been seriously discussed at the company's decision-making level. On June 14, 2002, at the last high-level mobilization meeting of the 10th anniversary celebration, Song Ruhua published a report entitled "Top, Top Philosophy, and the Structure and Operation System for the Next 10 Years".At the end of the speech, he said in high spirits: "We plan to recruit 5,000 people this year. Some of them may have to leave. It doesn't matter if they leave, but the structure must be set up first. We will recruit 20,000 people within 4 years. There may be people coming in and out. There are only 100,000 people, and these people will establish very direct and real customer relationships and partnerships with us in the future.”

It was in such a passionate description of the blueprint that Song Ruhua was moved by himself, and he believed that "all great prophecies will be self-fulfilling".Therefore, "recruiting 5,000 people" became a gift project for the 10th anniversary celebration, and in the end, it evolved into "recruiting 5,000 software engineers". In July, just at the time of the celebration, an advertisement of "Top: Coming out of the wind and rain, sincerely recruiting 5,000 software engineers to create brilliance" appeared overwhelmingly in major media across the country.Song Ruhua also specially instructed that all highways along the southeast coast from Beijing to Guangzhou should be "packed up" and large recruitment light box billboards should be erected.

The sensational effect that Song Ruhua hoped for exploded immediately. After the recruitment advertisement was published, China's IT industry seemed to have encountered a tornado, and all companies were in jeopardy. They were afraid that their talents would be swept away by Top. However, at this moment, the absurdity of this recruitment notice was fully revealed.A person from Microsoft’s China region calculated an account in an interview: According to the management status of the domestic software industry, a team of 5,000 software engineers should create an output value of at least 100 million yuan for the company every month, plus With the huge investment of Top Company in 27 software parks across the country, Top Software needs to achieve at least 10 billion yuan in sales revenue a year to achieve a balance of payments, but the total output value of the national software industry in the previous year was only over 30 billion yuan.Moreover, the entire Top Group has only 1,500 technicians, and 5,000 software engineers are recruited at one time, which is impossible to manage and control.

One month after the big recruitment advertisement was released, on August 19, "21st Century Business Herald" published a long investigative report "Top Bubble", reporters Yang Ruifa and Mao Yining questioned the big recruitment.At the same time, they also visited several top software parks, and the facts they witnessed were quite surprising.In Changzhou Software Park, the reporter saw that except for an office building and a hotel where people were walking around, the rest of the buildings were empty; in the Nanhui Software Park, which was most widely publicized, among the 63 buildings that had been completed, only Top’s own family A joint venture company entered; in the software park in Shaoxing, the training center was contracted to become a hotel, and the small river section in the park was turned into a fish pond by local farmers.In addition, the reporter also raised doubts about the performance of some companies under Top. A company called Changzheng Network has a main business of only 32.27 million yuan, but its net profit is as high as 20.69 million yuan; ++Builder, no one in the national software industry knows what product it is.

This series of doubts pushed Top to the cusp of public opinion.What is puzzling is that Song Ruhua, who has always been eloquent, chose to remain silent this time.In the next three months, he has been "disappearing", playing hide and seek with the media.However, the follow-up reports of financial reporters swept in wave after wave, and Top was exposed to negative news such as guarantee scandal, industry hollow crisis, wage arrears for migrant workers, and cash chain breaks.By November, Song Ruhua had to come out to the public, but he still hadn't clarified even one of the allegations.His answer was so light and simple: "I now have 1.8 billion in bank deposits, and I still have equity in listed companies. I have so many park constructions, more than 10,000 mu of land, and more than 1 million square meters of houses. Empty, it doesn’t matter to the bank; I still have more than 1 billion other assets, such as tables, chairs, benches, computers, systems, and 500 million accounts receivable... Say Top’s assets are 10 billion , Is it a bit bragging? Let me tell you, my deposit in Sichuan is 1.2 billion, so why should I be nervous? Why should I be afraid?"

When the chairman of a group company with several listed companies answered media questions in this tone, everyone could hear the weakness and panic in it.When this answer to the reporter's question was truthfully published in the newspaper, Song Ruhua's entrepreneurial credit had actually gone bankrupt.