Unspoken rules abound. The "screw anxiety" of major Internet companies, "
too many levels, no way of feedback", and the unrestricted power of department leaders are some of the reasons for the sexual scandals of major companies.
"It's not just women who are sexually harassed. Both men harass women and women harass men." Xuemei (a pseudonym), a girl who works as a product manager at a major Internet company in Beijing, told Shell Finance reporter, "If you have power, you can harass."
Just like Ali in the "storm", "too many levels and no feedback" and the unrestricted power of department leaders are some of the reasons for the above tragedy in Dachang.
Up to now, affected by the "Alibaba employee assault case," existing iQiyi, Sina, and NetEase companies have updated the corresponding terms or employee manuals to maintain a clean workplace and resist sexual harassment, drinking and other bad habits.
Regardless of the case, what ordinary big factories "beating workers" is more concerned about is why Ali executives "cannot read back" the core demands of ordinary employees?
How far is the fast-growing Chinese Internet company from systematically protecting the interests of grassroots employees?
"Ordinary companies only have'delivery', and there is no'upload'. The sense of belonging of grassroots employees is low. Because of this, the turnover rate of grassroots employees in enterprises such as the Internet is extremely high." The grassroots managers of this company who have worked for many years told the Shell Finance reporter.
"The role of corporate culture, to put it bluntly, is the process of unifying everyone's thoughts, which is the process of transforming the'screws' for use by the enterprise," said an employee who once worked at ByteDance.
"To put it harshly, the grassroots employees are like the donkeys of pulling mills. Their job is to draw mills. At most, they are to report the situation to the person in charge of milling plates. Don't try to report beyond the level.” Another employee who has worked in Ali for four years said .
Many of the interviewed (former) employees from major companies such as Tencent, Baidu, Byte, Huawei, Pinduoduo, Station B, and Sina confirmed to Shell Finance reporters that there are varying degrees of poor information transmission in the company. Sutraism, performance to work, and malpractices for personal gains have also appeared.
At the same time, they also generally recognized that due to the "screw" mentality, the creativity of the grassroots employees of large factories is getting worse.
In the era of high growth, grassroots employees may be able to get wealth and freedom after ten years of hard work, and they accept the setting of being alienated as "screws".
But at the moment, there is little hope of achieving a surge in wealth by relying solely on “part-time work”, so how to reflect individual dignity and improve internal culture and systems has become a problem for Internet companies to think about.
1 "Profits": Directly lead the "cannibalization" of employee achievements
"After he'eats' the sports bonus that I left before leaving my job, he made the project'dead', and then he also resigned. I helped a well-known media to do a new robotic writing project and won First prize of the Press Association. After these two things happened, I started to tell people around me what happened that year." Zhang Kai (pseudonym) slowly told the Shell Finance reporter that he led and implemented it. The project was "stolen" by the direct leader and indirectly led to his resignation.
In the past few years, he has been unbearable.
According to Zhang Kai, the direct leader Chen Gang (pseudonym) who "possessed" the results of his project did not even know the technical path of robotic writing before (2015), nor did he have the ability to design writing templates, structure and implementation, and he himself was leaving. Qian has always been the leader of the project.
"He is my direct leader. I want to do this project, I must get his support." Zhang Kai said helplessly.
In the second half of 2015, the robot writing project began to publish manuscripts one after another, which was widely reported by the media, and was later used in the writing of manuscripts for the 2016 Olympic Games.
As the leader, Chen Gang began to gradually marginalize Zhang Kai and constantly strengthened his control over robotic writing projects.
At the same time, Chen Gang also often exported the concept of being the "only founder" and "father of robot writing" to the inside and outside of the robot writing project.
In subsequent media interviews, Chen Gang never even mentioned Zhang Kai's contribution to the project.
An interview with higher-level executives of this business line in April 2018 confirmed Zhang Kai's statement.
The leader stated that Zhang Kai originally proposed the idea of robot writing, but some internal leaders did not advance because of a lack of understanding of robot writing. However, he himself has been trying to make a writing template to find a technical path.
Later, as related projects such as the Associated Press were exposed, domestic portals began to try to compile manuscripts. The company also paid attention to this field, but Zhang Kai himself was exploring more.
After learning about Zhang Kai's experience, many colleagues and friends also shared with him similar experiences of being "occupied" and "cannibalized" by the direct leaders, but Zhang Kai felt that this kind of phenomenon could not be evaded from the root cause.
"There are always middle-level or even high-level people who do nothing and rely on the people below to do their jobs, and then report these (scores) as their own performance to the top. These people are called the'profit-making class'." Zhang Kai said .
A middle-level manager of Zhang Kaiyuan’s company also told Shell Finance reporters that under certain circumstances, the performance of subordinates can be reported as performance by the leader.
In some departments of this large factory, the projects and performance of the former employees are "shared" by other employees, which is even jokingly called "heritage inheritance."
"I was very uncomfortable at the time. If it weren't for this incident, I would most likely continue to stay in this company." Zhang Kai said regretfully that he also suffered a similar situation of no feedback in the "Alibaba employee infringement case".
"After the company has more levels, the middle level can monopolize the communication between the'superior and the subordinate'. If I pass him (Chen Gang), I will report the violation of the company's regulations. People who know too well will think that this project is led by him, and I am just an ordinary member of the project team. There are bound to be far more people supporting him than me, so I chose to forbear to leave." Zhang Kai said.
In Zhang Kai's view at the time, only when Chen Gang failed the project and he succeeded in a similar project again was the time to "uncover the truth."
He is undoubtedly lucky. A well-known media robot writing project he led again launched version 2.0 at the end of 2019, and generated more than 5,000 manuscripts in the following month, and won the first prize of the Press Association.
Although Zhang Kai is not an employee of the aforementioned media, his name is also engraved on the medal due to his outstanding contribution.
Chen Mu (pseudonym), who used to work in human resources at a large emerging Internet company, pointed out the crux of the poor reporting of problems by grassroots employees: "The company is like a high-speed machine, and each grassroots employee is just one of the screws. HR, corporate culture, rules and regulations are all tools for corporate management of screws. When a company finds that a screw has a work problem, it will repair or replace it in time, and problems that are not related to work are often not taken seriously. , The company will pay attention only when the screws collectively arise or report problems. At the same time, there are no unions and other organizations in private enterprises, which cannot protect the rights and interests of employees."
2 Unspoken rules of sexual harassment are not only directed at women?
In Zhang Kai's tragedy, "too many levels and no way to respond" is one of the reasons, the power of department leaders is not restricted, and the "rule of man" overwhelming the system is another major reason.
And this symptom seems to be very common among Internet companies.
Ye Li (pseudonym), who is engaged in commercialization of an emerging Internet company in Shanghai, told Shell Finance reporter that he did not feel too much "big company sickness" when working at BAT. "Big companies are sick" a lot more, many people have no sense of responsibility and can't move many things.
"The department head and the second-level head will greatly affect the work status of this department." Ye Li said, because the company's assessment of individuals still has to be carried out by the department.
In addition, whether the department is engaged in core business and whether the product is iterated quickly or not will also have a greater impact.
Zhao Na (pseudonym), who moved from a startup to a big factory not long ago, also feels this deeply.
Zhao Na told the Shell Finance reporter that when you arrive at a large factory, there are a lot more departments and levels, and the importance of department heads has also been highlighted.
"Of course, the power of department leaders also depends on many factors. In addition to whether the department is core business, whether department leaders are'favored' and trusted in front of higher-level leaders also determines their actual power." Zhao Na Pointed out.
Once power cannot be locked in the cage of the system, abuse may occur.
“It’s not just women who are sexually harassed. Both men harass women and women harass men.” Xuemei, a girl who works as a product manager at a major Internet company in Beijing, told Shell Finance reporter, “If you have power, you can harass.” In her own place In this company, female leaders at the grass-roots level often squeeze out little girls and prefer young boys: boys are more likely to get offers (admission) than girls, and at the same time they will be asked "Are there any candidates" during the interview; when they are promoted, female leaders Will give boys the quota that originally belonged to girls.
The female leader would ask the boys to move to sit next to her in the office area, act like a baby and let the other party treat guests, even flirt and speak in pornographic accents. These are the norms that Xuemei witnessed.
“Even deliberately or unintentionally rubbing a male colleague with her body parts.” Xuemei told reporters that the male colleague later stated that she was “accidentally and awkwardly”.
These practices also dissatisfied non-girl colleagues, including her.
However, there is no way to stop the actions of these grassroots leaders.
"We usually joked that going to work is the same as the previous dynasty-the grassroots leaders are like the emperor of the earth." Xuemei said.
Zhang Lin (pseudonym), who is engaged in the advertising business of another Internet company in Beijing, told reporters that there are two promotion places in the department every quarter, and the manager has a lot of recommendation and decision-making power. "But leaders prefer the kind of youthfulness. Zhuang, a boy who loves to work overtime and is also an obedient boy."
Zhang Lin does not expect to be promoted during this period, although she has overfulfilled the tasks in the first few quarters.
Because she rarely sees girls who are promoted in the department, and one who has been promoted has worked here for six years, and the maternity leave has not yet been taken.
There is also a female colleague who has been in this company for more than three years, but her level has always been below the normal level.
Leaders often promoted her to her ranks, but they never implemented it.
"The rules for promotion are not very clear. Most of them are based on the leadership's wishes. Unless you are an elderly person who has been in the company for more than five years, you will have a reluctant promotion opportunity, and it is in the case of very hard work." Zhang Lin I am also very indifferent to promotion.
"That's it for dissatisfaction. It's not bad if I don't be downgraded, and I don't want to be promoted. I can live through the past two years safely, and the job-hopping and salary increase will come faster." Zhang Lin said.
The above-mentioned Chen Mu, who had been engaged in human resources work in a large emerging Internet company, said that the leadership’s "rule of man" resulted in employees "managing upwards" or simply "laying flat", and "only performance theory" also indirectly promoted the "screws" of grassroots employees. Mentality"...all the phenomena indicate that employees have no sense of belonging to the company and are purely an employment relationship, so there will be frequent job-hopping, performances, and cheating for personal gains.
Chen Yu (pseudonym), who once served as the management post of an e-commerce company, pointed out sharply that the reason why many young people have not been able to rise in Internet companies is that they have been constantly looking for problems and faults, but have not been able to deliver key results. .
At the same time, there is no way to get stuck in a rapidly changing competitive environment.
In Chen Yu's view, the establishment of promotion channels, transfer mechanism and project opening of Internet companies are relatively reasonable, and they are also relatively friendly to young people.
In many emerging companies and even traditional industries, these rules are opaque.
Young people who want to improve themselves can actively align their goals with their leadership, and continue to deliver results and iterations.
3 Screw anxiety under the performance-only theory
The aforementioned Zhang Lin, who is engaged in the advertising business in a large factory, told the Shell Finance reporter that her work experience is relatively depressing and "very tight".
She said that her department is seriously performance-only.
The company has a special statistical data group that collects and calculates the performance data of each employee in real time, and then publishes it in the group several times a day, so that everyone can see their own year-on-year and month-on-month increase and decrease.
"Decline in performance will be pulled out and lash out, and there will be small material rewards when performance rises. In other words, whether performance is good, leadership attitude is good, and performance is not good, then you will sit on the bench."
For this reason, Zhang Lin is always afraid of being criticized.
And if the performance data cannot be restored, they will always be asked by the leader, "Anyway, the pressure is very tight, and each department will compete for position."
On the day when she talked to the Shell Finance reporter about her work, Zhang Lin was called to the office to criticize her because her performance had dropped a lot.
The pressure Zhang Lin feels is also related to the nature of the work of this department. Zhang Lin said that as Party B, advertising has to serve multiple Party A, and there will be such pressure on performance.
She maintains online communication with dozens of customers at the same time every day, and constantly communicates with them to connect with new solutions. “Customers are spending money all the time, and they definitely don’t want their money to be in vain.”
"There are reasonable places, and there are definitely unreasonable places, but I can't judge anything, so I can only do it according to it." Zhang Lin said.
Before entering this industry, Zhang Lin thought it would be very interesting, but now she feels that “there is only suffering and tiredness” after entering the industry.
She said that the reason for staying here is so that the big factory can endorse her resume.
The department’s turnover rate is quite high, and Zhang Lin plans to leave after staying for more than a year.
"I definitely can't stay there anymore. Under this kind of work intensity, staying forever will cause people to collapse."
As a "comer", Zhang Kai believed that he was a blessing in disguise. "Although I was forced to leave at the time, it was not necessarily a bad thing for me. I first joined a startup company and then joined the financial industry. I have great knowledge and ability. A big improvement, if I stay in the original company, in addition to the good treatment, I am just a "screw" in the industrial assembly line."
"Tencent and Alibaba still have some warm-hearted things, but like some companies that are in a catching up position, they can only rely on their performance to speak. Therefore, the feelings of the employees, even the feelings of the middle and senior management, are not important, and even the founders treat themselves The same is true of the requirements of the company. If the founder pays attention to the feelings of everyone, the company may not survive. But for young employees, it is still humanitarian. Therefore, the pursuit of performance and the focus on feelings are a matter of balance." Chen Yu, a former manager of an e-commerce company, said.
In fact, many interviewees told Shell Financial reporters that with the peaking of the mobile Internet dividend and increasing regulatory pressure, all Internet companies are facing the problem of no new business growth points and slowdown in traditional business growth. At the same time, "old employees" and "management" are still on duty, and the division of labor among newcomers is becoming more and more refined. The "screws" of big factories may become the new normal that young people must face.
Peng Jianfeng, a professor, doctoral supervisor, and management consulting expert at Renmin University of China, believes that the above-mentioned "screw anxiety" of grassroots employees is caused because some Internet companies are chasing a single flow and are profit-oriented, and their internal culture lacks true humanistic care.
Many companies have good values, but because they are kidnapped by capital's greed and pursuit of profits, core values have become fashionable slogans hung on the wall and shouted in their mouths.
Therefore, Internet companies must return to their original aspirations, return to long-term valueist thinking, make up for the lessons of cultural values that are inherently missing, implement cultural values into products and services, implement leadership and cadre team building, and implement performance evaluation and incentive mechanisms.
Beijing News Shell Finance reporter Bai Jinlei promises Sun Wenxuan