On July 4th, it was exclusively learned by Phoenix.com Technology that Xiaohongshu has recently initiated a new round of layoff plans. An employee of Xiaohongshu said, 'The layoffs have just reached the stage of locking HC and are conducting personnel inventory, but there has been no official announcement yet, and everyone inside is waiting for the email.'
This round of personnel adjustment mainly focuses on employees with a performance of 3.5 or below, including 3.5- and 3.25, and this part of the employees accounts for about 30% of the total number of employees. This news has been confirmed by many internal employees of Xiaohongshu. According to another internal employee, the rumor going around inside is that 'the new senior management is not satisfied with the current human efficiency ratio of Xiaohongshu and believes that the current human efficiency ratio of Xiaohongshu can only reach half of that of Pinduoduo.'
Phoenix.com Technology verified this news with the Xiaohongshu side. As of the time of sending the manuscript, no response has been obtained.
Changing the organization is a key focus that the new management of Xiaohongshu is more concerned about at present.
Not only does it optimize low-performing employees, but it also involves adjustments and integrations to achieve the result of cost reduction and efficiency increase. Among them, the community department will face relatively large adjustments.
It is understood that the current primary departments of the entire Xiaohongshu mainly include the community department, the business department, and the trading department. Among them, the trading department is the youngest and was established at the end of last year, mainly covering the e-commerce and live streaming businesses of Xiaohongshu. This department is managed by Xiaohongshu COO Conan (account name). The business department mainly refers to the advertising business, which is currently led by Xiaohongshu CMO Zhiheng (account name). The community department is the most fundamental department of Xiaohongshu, which is directly in charge of by Xiaohongshu founder Xingzhi (account name), and includes community products, content operation, and marketing departments under it.
It is worth mentioning that since 2024, new leaders have been airborne to all these secondary departments. Currently, the community product is led by Paru (account name), the content operation is led by Yunfan (account name), and the community marketing department is led by Whiteboard (account name).
In the opinion of many Xiaohongshu employees, the recent personnel adjustments of Xiaohongshu are mostly related to the high-level shocks in the first quarter.
After the new department leaders are airborne, there are adjustments in each execution team. For example, the community ecological leader originally reported directly to Xingzhi, but now reports to Paru; the security product team originally belonging to the platform department is also led by Paru together with the ecological team.
With the stabilization of the new management team lineup, a new consensus has been reached in many aspects.
In particular, at the level of the primary large department such as the community, a core logical change is that Xiaohongshu hopes to solve the problems that could not be solved at the operational level in the past with product capabilities in the future, such as community ecological security and community growth.
'In fact, Xiaohongshu has not had major optimization iterations at the product level for a long time, just minor fixes,' an internal employee said, which leads to the fact that the current product capabilities have failed to meet the growth needs of Xiaohongshu.
According to people familiar with the matter disclosed to Phoenix.com Technology, this part will be fully in charge of by Xiaohongshu product leader Paru. Phoenix.com Technology has learned previously that Paru's real name is Ye Heng and he joined Xiaohongshu at the beginning of this year. He was the number one position in product of Kuaishou e-commerce before and reported directly to Cheng Yixiao. Some Kuaishou employees said that Ye Heng has strong product capabilities and has a good reputation inside Kuaishou. 'He is a very ambitious person.' After joining Xiaohongshu, his abilities have emerged. Currently, he is also in charge of the growth product, ecological product, and video product of Xiaohongshu.