At 45, My Company Was Gone

Chen Yuan, 45, is a vice president at Xunke Technology, an industry giant. With a million-yuan annual salary, he is full of confidence. He thinks the golden steps beneath his feet will stretch all the way to retirement, making his career a success story. But a cold notice announcing global layoffs instantly “optimizes” him and the entire Chinese branch out of the company. Yesterday, he was still calling the shots. Today, he leaves dejectedly with a cardboard box, under the complicated gazes of his younger subordinates. Mortgage payments, car payments, tuition at his child’s international school, his full-time homemaker wife’s panic... The polished shell of his middle-class life shatters in an instant. He swallows his pride and searches everywhere for work, only to keep running into the “age ceiling.” The impressive resume he once took pride in has become a stack of outdated paper. At the darkest point in his life, he and two equally disillusioned middle-aged colleagues, star salesperson Zhao Hui, who was also laid off, and technical whiz Old Wu, make the craziest decision of their lives in the depths of despair: they start a business! They swallow their pride and start from scratch. Crammed into a tiny shared office, they take on outsourced projects they once looked down on, compete with the younger generation, force smiles over drinks, and lie awake at night worrying about cash flow. It is an all-or-nothing fight for dignity, family, and self-worth. From “the company is gone” to “building a company,” from “unemployed vice president” to “startup boss,” can he carve out a way forward for himself and his partners on the fault line of a changing era? My Company Is Gone at 45 tells a true story of falling, struggling, and finding a way through, paying tribute to everyone who chooses to set out once more for themselves amid the trials of middle age!