2026 was probably the hardest, and also the most clear-eyed, year for our little family.
In the first half of the year, I lost my job; in the second half, my wife — a nearly ten-year veteran employee — was forced out. One after the other we exited the workforce, and only then did we fully understand one thing: all the long-term wage delays and bottomless draining were never a temporary hardship; they were groundwork for walking away and letting things rot. Working to support a family is, at bottom, an equal exchange. Once the rules are broken, the optimal solution is always to cut your losses in time and never to consume yourself from within.
The Same Unemployment, Worlds Apart in Outcome
My wife and I worked at the same company seven or eight years ago. At that time the company was having financing trouble, and salaries were paid late half a month at a time. I quickly saw the decline coming and resigned on my own initiative without hesitation. Back then I wanted to buy a house and get married — I was desperately short of money and couldn’t afford to wait it out.
Although I lost my job this year too, at least I collected a bit over a hundred thousand in compensation and drew unemployment benefits steadily for half a year — a dignified exit, all things considered.
My wife, meanwhile, held fast for nearly ten years at the company that carried our youth and witnessed our meeting, and what she ended up with was a handsome separation agreement and an empty bank account.
The company owes her 130,000 in wages — nearly a year’s salary — plus 150,000 in compensation, 280,000 in total, not a cent of it paid. And that 150,000 in compensation was calculated on the basis of N.
How ironic.
Steep Late-Payment Interest: A Handsome Agreement Meant to Get You to Sign
The agreement reads loftily: full settlement on the day of separation, with interest at 5% per day for any delay.
To a layperson this looks like the ultimate protection, a clause tilted extremely in the employee’s favor. Only someone who knows the game sees through it at a glance: this is the workplace’s most despicable trick.
Five percent daily interest looks like maximum punishment, but in reality it’s a scrap of empty words written specifically to coax you into signing. The company knows better than anyone that this interest rate is absurdly high and long since far beyond the ceiling the law protects — if it really went to court or arbitration, it would absolutely not be upheld. They deliberately wrote down this seemingly extreme guarantee, using handsome wording to dissolve employees’ wariness, so that you sign obediently clinging to the fantasy that “the company wouldn’t dare breach the contract,” and in doing so smoothly give up all future claims and completely sever the labor relationship.
Put plainly: they trade a piece of waste paper for your total exit.
But a company whose boss is already under a consumption restriction and whose wages have gone unpaid for nearly a year — what good faith can you possibly expect from it? I know the boss doesn’t want it to be this way either. Honestly, the owner of this company is a decent person; otherwise it wouldn’t be possible for a whole group of people to keep working there with wages unpaid for so long. But no matter what, withholding employees’ wages has already fallen below even the most basic commercial bottom line — there’s no spinning that away.
The Decline Was Written into Its Bones; I Saw Through It Eight Years Ago
This small CDN company never had any real core strength from beginning to end. Industry involution was brutal, it couldn’t win the price war against giants like Alibaba and Tencent, and its scale was small with low barriers to entry. The decline was written into its bones long ago.
Back when I worked there, the company had already started delaying salaries because of financing problems. I’ve always been stubborn — I will never accept wage arrears in any form. The bottom line of working for a living is being paid for your labor. I have a family to support and a mortgage to repay; my time and my labor were never free charity.
This isn’t me being cynical; it’s that society has beaten me down too. Years ago I owed money on a China Merchants Bank credit card — interest at five ten-thousandths per day for overdue balances — and because I really was strapped, I ended up paying close to ten thousand in interest. The bank didn’t waive the interest just because it felt my life was hard. With my monthly mortgage, dare I default and drag it out for a year and still have somewhere to live? Even renting: fall behind one month and the landlord can throw you out onto the street.
Everyone’s life is hard.
You Can’t Wake Someone Who Still Holds Onto Hope
But she couldn’t bear to leave.
Hearts are made of flesh, and nearly ten years of youth invested had long since grown into attachment. She kept remembering the old boss’s kindness, remembering the raises she’d once been favored with, always believing the company was only in temporary difficulty and that if she just held on, it would get through. Even after the old boss jumped ship to Baidu and the company’s situation went from bad to worse, she still clung to the hope that it might turn around.
I think she was foolish. I would never invest emotion in any company — it isn’t worth it and it doesn’t deserve it. Even if you’re willing, the company’s boss isn’t, and the “enforcers” below — the HR people — aren’t either. They only want to squeeze you dry and then swap in a batch of fresh blood. At least that’s how most of the companies I’ve encountered operate.
Last March, when the company had already owed her two months of wages, I urged her again to cut her losses, analyzing the pros and cons for her over and over — we even had a fight about it. I told her bluntly: long-term wage delays aren’t a predicament, they’re a signal of decline. Keep holding on and in the end you may not get a single cent; what looks like safe perseverance will only drag you down.
Unfortunately, you can’t wake up someone who still holds onto hope. She went on saying the company was only in temporary difficulty, got annoyed with me, and said I was always pushing her to be the one who sticks her neck out and files for arbitration. In the end I chose silence and stopped interfering.
The Prophecy Fulfilled: Through the Long Period of Arrears, Not One Person Stepped Forward First
Today, the prophecy has been fulfilled.
The boss has long been under consumption restrictions, the company is insolvent, and the former colleagues have finally banded together to prepare arbitration. What’s both laughable and heartbreaking is that throughout the long period of unpaid wages, no one ever stepped forward first to defend their rights. Everyone was watching and waiting — waiting for someone else to stick their neck out while they enjoyed the fruits, waiting for someone else to charge while they avoided the risk.
In that moment, I saw through a great deal of human nature.
Many highly educated young people and long-tenured employees who have gone deep in their careers have read ten thousand books and understand their profession and their technology — yet they alone fail to understand the underlying logic of workplace survival. They are kind, patient, reasonable; they habitually believe in rules, in personal bonds, in promises. But the reality is that capital doesn’t care about sentiment, and a company down on its luck doesn’t care about righteousness.
A degree from a 211 university can prop up professional ability, but it couldn’t teach her to seek benefit and avoid harm, to cut losses in time. The place where bookish people most easily get the short end of the deal is that they are too dignified, too considerate, too willing to believe others — and consequently lack the nerve to burn their bridges and the grit to fight to the end.
By contrast, people like us at the bottom have no halo and no fallback — the barefoot don’t fear the shod. I have always firmly believed: working to support a family is an equal exchange. You pay on time, I work steadily; the moment you withhold wages, you’ve broken the rules, and I cut my losses and leave immediately.
In 2026, Our Whole Family Learned the Most Expensive Lesson
The ups and downs of this year taught our family the most expensive lesson.
The most poisonous chicken soup of the workplace is “just hold on a bit longer and it’ll be fine”; the emptiest promise is a company’s “we’ll make it all up to you later” during hard times. So-called steep late-payment interest, so-called backstop guarantees — all of it is talk designed to keep employees steady. Real bankruptcy and real decline always happen silently; by the time you come to your senses, your youth is spent, your time is gone, and your wages and compensation have all become a scrap of paper.
Now we carry a fixed monthly mortgage, live through the low point of both being unemployed, and still have to spend time and energy defending our rights and chasing the money owed. The mortgage term has already been extended to 40 years — this really is a great era.
Because of AI’s impact and the economic downturn, I went from a job paying twenty thousand a month to barely scraping by at an outsourcing company for half that salary, and on top of it I have to sign a pile of unequal, tyrannical clauses and agreements. I didn’t want to go, but my situation now is very bad and I have no choice. Although I could be laid off and unemployed again at any time, and my partner is now unemployed too, I expect that going forward I’ll most likely have to sell the house at a loss and exit.
More than ten years of striving in this city, and this is the ending and the outcome I get. What a great era, what a great era.
In Closing
I really want to ask those lofty vested interests: treating people at the bottom this way, has it ever occurred to you that one day it will come back to bite you? Don’t squeeze too hard — one day you’ll be settled with.
As a kid I always believed that line, “endure the bitterest of the bitter, and you’ll become someone above others.” Now I know: when you swallow the bitterness, others don’t have to. Looking at those retired aunties dancing in the squares, those demolition-compensation households, those giants occupying the traffic gateways — they enjoy the dividends of the era while the price is carried by ordinary people.
I may not have the power to flip the table, but at least I can choose not to take part in the game you designed.
In the adult world, gentleness and tolerance should always be reserved for the people and things that deserve them. Toward the people and things that drain you and overdraw your life, the optimal solution is always to pull out in time and never consume yourself from within. Life’s rises and falls are all training; this hardship also woke us up completely: the workplace has no sentiment, only interests; no lucky escapes, only cutting your losses. Never pay for a company’s incompetence and broken faith with the money that feeds your family.
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