After knocking on the door, Li Renshu entered the CEO's office.

However, this time Su Xiuqin didn't seem to hear the knock. She was standing by the large floor-to-ceiling windows in the CEO's office, somewhat lost in thought as she gazed outside.

The CEO's office offered an excellent view of the entire venue, so the scene that could be seen from the corridor outside was even clearer from inside the office.

"Xiaoli? Is there something you need? I got a bit lost in thought." Su Xiuqin sat back down at the large CEO desk.

Li Renshu also sat down in the chair across from the desk.

"Aunt Su, I'm here to report on the last round of the game.

"Although we completed the market research and earned 50,000 minutes of visa time, considering the current reduction in company revenue, we still need to lay off staff.

"This is also to further verify the game mechanics: we need to see if the frequency of employees reporting data changes after layoffs."

Li Renshu was somewhat worried that Su Xiuqin would be resistant to any form of layoffs.

So, after quickly explaining, she added a sentence: "Aunt Su, these employees are all virtual, just game data."

Su Xiuqin wasn't as resistant as she thought, but she clearly had opinions.

"If you really think it's necessary to lay off staff, I will agree.

"But think again, have we really reached a point where it's absolutely necessary?"

Su Xiuqin turned over her badge on her chest: "It clearly says here that we are role-playing."

Li Renshu nodded: "That's right, we are just role-playing, not really becoming CEOs and executives, and not actually laying off staff, making them unable to support their families."

Su Xiuqin shook her head: "No, no, I don't think that's the point.

"Since we're role-playing, we need to play the role seriously.

"Now it's an economic winter outside. If you lay off these employees, it will be hard for them to find work again.

"Isn't there an option for salary cuts? To reduce expenses, salary cuts and layoffs aren't too different, right?

"Let's all take a pay cut first, everyone cuts a little, so no one loses their job, okay?"

Li Renshu thought about it, and Su Xiuqin's words made sense.

Whether laying off four people or cutting everyone's salary, the savings are the same, but from a moral standpoint, not laying off staff is better.

From Su Xiuqin's stance, if Li Renshu were particularly insistent on layoffs, she would most likely agree.

But after thinking about it, Li Renshu said: "Alright, let's cut everyone's salary first.

"But Aunt Su, you need to understand that the pay cut isn't unlimited. According to the game mechanics, we can reduce the salary by at most 30% of these employees' original salary.

"If at some point in the future, cutting everyone's salary by 30% still can't maintain the company's cash flow, we'll still have to lay off staff."

Su Xiuqin sighed: "Fine, if it really comes to that, I'll agree to the layoffs."

The time was running out, so Li Renshu quickly left the CEO's office and headed to the venue with Xu Tong.

...

Fu Chen stared at the computer screen, trying his best to memorize every piece of pop-up information.

After discussing with Su Xiuqin, Li Renshu decided to temporarily replace the original layoff plan with salary cuts for everyone.

So the number of employees this month remained unchanged, but everyone had an across-the-board pay cut of 10% for an initial test.

[No. 17 Limited Liability Company]

[March company account balance: 90,000 minutes of visa time]

[April estimated income: 70,000 minutes of visa time]

[April estimated employee salary expenditure: 72,000 minutes of visa time]

Currently, there is no obvious impact of the pay cuts on the company mechanisms.

This is reasonable, after all, since it's an economic winter now, as long as they don't lose their job, a pay cut is not something particularly hard for most people to accept.

But Fu Chen also needed to pay special attention to whether the probability of virtual employees providing data decreases after the pay cut.

If it decreases, for example, from producing 3~4 pieces of data each round to 2~3 pieces, directly leading to failures in market research activities, then it needs to be seriously considered whether the savings from pay cuts are really worth it.

Finally, sounds of a door opening and swiping badges came from outside, which meant Li Renshu and Xu Tong were back.

Fu Chen went over the three pieces of data he had just seen in his mind again, reinforcing his memory, then got up to greet them.

"I memorized three pieces of data, and compared to before, it's still hard to tell if there's any significant probability change.

"How did things go on your end?"

Li Renshu sighed: "Failed. But fortunately, we used a relatively safe plan and didn't make any additional investments, so there was no bigger loss.

"On the contrary, the other party invested an additional 20,000, meaning they earned an extra 20,000."

Fu Chen was taken aback: "Wasn't this supposed to be in the field of sociology? What kind of question was asked?"

Li Renshu recalled briefly: "The question was about how many working people in a city with a population of 3 million might order takeout through their phones daily."

Fu Chen was puzzled: "This question doesn't seem fundamentally different from the previous ones."

Li Renshu nodded: "It's no different, because regardless of which field you choose, the game is all about breaking down logic and estimating scales to identify unknown data.

"Although these four fields seem to have different focuses, they're all within this set of game rules.

"Currently, we can roughly distinguish the differences among the four types of questions:

"Scientific questions may involve basic scientific knowledge and slightly larger calculations;

"Social questions may be directly linked to socio-economic activities;

"Artistic questions mainly focus on the arts and entertainment industry;

"Livelihood questions, compared to social questions, are closer to everyday life and can be better determined using common sense."

Fu Chen considered this for a moment: "But such a question shouldn't be easy for the No. 8 Community either, right?

"Did they just happen to get this data?"

"Then in the upcoming game, we may need to rely on luck; whichever side has more employees winning bets will have an advantage."

Li Renshu looked at him: "Or maybe...it's not about luck.

"I suspect there might be a possibility:

"This game divides data directly related to the questions into two halves, one for each company.

"If it were purely random, and the lucky side always hits the question, then this game would be very unfair."

Xu Tong was puzzled: "Haven't we been told not to think about fairness in these games?"

Li Renshu shook her head: "No, no, we need to consider it from the perspective of the Imitator, the game goals differ, so does the fairness.

"If it's about completing a judgment on someone, it definitely wouldn't be fair, because you need to exploit certain human weaknesses to create necessary information inequalities.

"But for competitive games like this, that involve logical data estimation mechanisms, basic fairness must be ensured.

"Otherwise, wouldn't the designers just have us and the No. 8 Community play rock-paper-scissors to decide the winner? Why go through the trouble of these estimates?"

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