If you work for Tencent, even if you are lucky enough to get promoted, don’t count on any more money.

An all-staff email on Tencent said the annual performance review, due in June, will be delayed by a month. But the more important message was that henceforth, compensation and promotion will be decoupled. This does not mean that salaries will be completely independent of the job description. Instead, compensation will be calculated based on a range of factors including how competitive the salary already is.

Talk of salary competitiveness raised some eyebrows, given recent layoffs. The “competition” could turn out to be between your current salary and no salary at all.

Even in boom years, the tech industry has always been cynically cost-conscious. The common saying is that job security declines precipitously at the age of 35. Senior employees are not as “competitive” (cheap) as younger ones, who complain less and do the same work for less pay.

Tencent did not go into detail about how compensation will be determined going forward.