Sudden death of young girls "overtime culture" should reflect

  Our reporter Zhao Yuhan

  After returning from the New Year's Day holiday, a news about the sudden death of a Pinduoduo employee quickly occupied the hottest news.

The sudden disappearance of young lives is regrettable, and once again the "overtime culture" prevailing in Internet giants has been pushed into the air of public opinion.

In this regard, experts call for companies to break free from the profit model of reducing labor costs, and transform to a healthier model of profiting through innovation.

23-year-old girl died suddenly on the way to get off work early in the morning

  After the "full charge" during the New Year's Day holiday, when many people returned to work full of energy, the news of an employee's sudden death made people feel a little stunned.

"It was in 1998! Too young!" Many netizens wrote regretful messages.

  As the news went viral on the Internet, on the afternoon of January 4, Pinduoduo had to respond: At 1:30 am on December 29 last year, Zhang Moufei, born in 1998, was suddenly walking home with his colleagues. He fainted and fell to the ground.

The colleague immediately called 120 and was taken to the local hospital in Urumqi. After nearly 6 hours, the first aid was still ineffective and unfortunately passed away.

  After the incident, a netizen who was certified as an employee of Pinduoduo spoke on the workplace social platform Maimai, saying that the “overtime culture” prevailed in the grocery shopping department of the girl who died suddenly, and she often left work at two or three in the morning.

There are also employees who said that "with the intensity of buying food, people will die sooner or later."

In response, the Shanghai Changning District Labor Supervision Brigade stated that it has intervened in the investigation of the employment situation of Pinduoduo Company.

Internet industry "overtime culture" hotly discussed

  The occurrence of the Pinduoduo incident has once again made the "overtime culture" prevailing in Internet giants become a public opinion outlet.

  In March 2019, the Internet "996" work system was resisted by a large number of programmers.

The so-called 996 means going to work at nine in the morning, leaving work at nine in the evening, and working six days a week. This is contrary to the five-day work week and eight-hour work day stipulated by my country's labor law.

However, among Internet bigwigs, only Jack Ma gave a clear response: "Any company should not and cannot force employees to 996", but "996 is the blessing of Xiulai."

At that time, the statement that "996 is a blessing" was questioned by all parties. Jack Ma also quickly responded to amend his views, saying, "I do not defend 996, I pay tribute to the strugglers. Everyone has a choice of their own work and lifestyle. right."

  After this turmoil, the 996 of Internet giants is still the same, and even "small and small weeks" are replacing the "weekend" system.

The latest case is that Kuaishou convened an all-staff meeting to announce that starting from January 1, 2021, all-staff weeks will be opened, that is, six days in the major week and five days in the minor week.

Earlier, Bytedance, Pinduoduo, etc. were also exposed to have large and small weekly systems.

  At the end of 2020, Su Jiang left a well-known Internet game company where he had served for a year.

"The company 996 is the norm, sometimes even on weekends. I feel that even if the salary is relatively good, I have lost my basic family and entertainment life."

  More people choose to enter or stay.

Xiaonan, who graduated last year and joined a well-known social media company, admitted that although it is common to work overtime for a few months, she feels very lucky to be able to enter this Internet company under the employment situation last year.

"Let's do more while you are young!" Xiaonan said.

  On the one hand, problems such as "overtime culture" and "age anxiety" have forced many young people away. On the other hand, they have attracted batches of entrants because of generous salaries. This has become the norm for Internet companies in recent years.

According to the "Talent Attraction Report 2020" released recently, IT Internet has become the industry with the lowest happiness, but at the same time it has become the industry with the largest inflow of talents, presenting an absurd contradiction.

Enterprise profit model must shift to innovation

  "Without effective supervision, it is difficult to change the status quo of overtime work, not only in Internet companies, but also in all walks of life." Sun Ning once worked in an Internet company, and finally chose to leave because of excessive pressure.

But after taking a job at a well-known retail company, he found that overtime is still inevitable.

  Sun Liping, a professor in the Department of Sociology at Tsinghua University, when talking about the death of the Pinduoduo girl, believes that the incident reflects the absurdity of the world.

"Many people think that this should be the way to succeed? Some people even argue that only in this way can the economy develop rapidly and the country can become more prosperous... Some things may be the time we need to seriously reflect."

  "In fact, the overtime culture does not only exist in Internet companies, but the performance of Internet companies is particularly outstanding." Professor Yu Ze of the School of Economics of Renmin University of China analyzed that this is determined by the characteristics of Internet companies.

First of all, the digital industry has the characteristics of rapid product change and rapid response, so it has higher requirements for employees' work efficiency.

At the same time, the profit model of Internet companies pays great attention to cutting costs, and there is also a situation of excessive commercialization. Some companies pursue maximum output effects while ignoring humanized management.

  In Yuze's view, "overtime work culture" actually exists not only in China, but also in East Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea.

"As the chasers in the market economy, East Asian countries once used the low cost of personnel as an important development model. However, as the wages of employees continue to increase, in order to maintain low costs, companies have formed an "overtime culture" for employees to hedge against labor costs. "Increase." Yu Ze believes that to fundamentally solve the problem of overtime, on the one hand, we must pay more attention to the protection of workers, and on the other hand, we must also guide enterprises to transform from a profitable model of reducing labor costs to a healthier model of profiting through technological innovation.