Thread by @lillianmli

1) Ok, Chinese tech watercooler news - On 6th March, the Alibaba intranet got a ~5,000-word post from an employee who quit the next day.

His blistering and funny critique of Alibaba’s culture failings has been causing a ruckus. Zhihu, Mai Mai and intranets have been blowing up

2) Fractions are appearing inside Alibaba, taking different sides of the argument (there is a donkey fraction).

It is a really funny, post and here are some choice excerpts:

3) "When we joined Alibaba, we all had expectations. No matter what we thought about Alibaba afterwards. On the outside, we all had some admiration for the company. This caused my first confusion as I entered Alibaba. Such a sizable company, but why the constant anxiety?"

4) "My confusion in Alibaba is that for a company that publicise its authenticity every day, I’ve never heard a word of truth. I think it's amusing. I don't know whether the management is too old or too lazy to think. Why can't we talk about these things openly and fairly?"

5) "but we have to talk about helping you grow, helping you progress and even about transferring talents to society?
In short, you do 361. We don't object; we can’t object, right? Either we stay and accept, or we leave. I think everything is fine.

6) "The company just needs to come and say we’re looking for workaholics, and we’re an anxious company. Our goal is not to make employees comfortable because comfort will make the company lag behind. Our ideal is to surpass Amazon to become the fifth-largest economy globally"

7) "You may wonder, what the difference is? From your perspective, you’re deceiving me in order to exploit me, and I’m exploiting you. Aren't we all exploiting each other? There is still a big difference."

8) "Maybe most of the senior management is post-70s or post-80s and they don’t understand the post-90s and the coming 00s. These younger people grew up under the wind of free culture. We don't like this kind of official and polite manner. "

9) "You assume I am a donkey pulling the grinding mill. You whip me to keep me going. I think it is normal. No one thinks it is abnormal. I am a donkey. You are the master. I want to be lazy, that’s normal for a donkey. You don't want me to be lazy, that’s normal for a human."

10) "You keep me fed, so you are allowed to whip me to force me to work harder. That’s understandable. But the question is, you can’t whip me while asking me to love you at the same time right?"

11) "Twenty years ago, Ali was just starting. Then, Ali was an actual start-up. It faced all the risk of start-up companies such as not being able to pay wages. When the company started, it must have calculated the outflows for this month, the next month ad infinitum. "

12) "During then Ali recruited the type of person who would still work if they didn’t get paid for half a year. The type of person who Mr Ma refers to as ‘It’s ok if you don't approve of Mr Ma, but you must approve of what Mr Ma wants to do. You must approve of Alibaba.’"

13) "But the times have changed, the Qing Dynasty has died.

Ali has been developing for 20 years, and China's economy has been developing for 20 years. At that time, the people who worked for you had starving elders. Now 80% of people who work for you have well fed parents."

14)"Now if you ask a person, come work for a great company, they have a very strong culture and can help you reach your potential. But they wouldn’t be paying you any wages for half a year. Do you think you’ll get any response?"

15)"So 20 years ago, you bought a donkey. You must make sure that the donkey loves you. Because you can't make sure the donkey will be getting a stable meal, so if the donkey doesn't love you when you can’t feed the donkey, it’ll run away. "

16) "But 20 years later, you buy a donkey, all you need to do is feed it. All the donkeys in the market are smart, and there are many markets. It’ll go where there’s good food. All these places give the donkey the same food and the same whipping."

17) " But the difference is that you are forcing people to say they love you. The other places are straight forward, you don’t have to love me and I don’t have to love you. Just work for me and I’ll provide the meal. You are donkeys. Which mode is Alibaba doing?"

The rest of the post gets even more incredible as the guy goes on a diatribe against compensation, benefits and Jack Ma's obsession with elephants over his own employees.

Premium subscribers get first dibs on my translation lillianli.substack.com/p/premium-spec…