A new employee of Tencent, the Chinese internet giant, caused a stir on local social media. He bravely protested the work system at Tencent which he thought was inhumane so that it was widely discussed by netizens.
A screenshot of the protest by the employee, Zhang, shows him protesting in a chat group for Tencent's 600 employees.
He also displayed a report from Tencent's management praising the hard work of the WeChat division employees. For example, being able to complete 200 tasks in just one week and launch a product after working 20 hours a day.
Zhang criticized that the company expects its employees to work overtime outside normal working hours. He considered Tencent to only see work and ignore the physical and mental health of the employees.
"If the project schedule is pushed back by a day, will WeChat go bankrupt? If the launch of the official website is delayed by a day, will users immediately switch to competitors?" he asked.
Zhang, who has decided to resign, questioned whether it was appropriate for developers at Tencent to work up to 20 hours to make a satisfactory product.
"Have you ever considered the life and death of your employees when assigning assignments? Does the thousands of yuan bonus correspond to high-intensity overtime of more than 20 hours over and over again?" he added as quoted by us from the Global Times.
This topic topped social media Weibo and has been viewed about 370 million times. Chinese technology companies are known for their crazy work system, known as 996, working from 9 am to 9 pm for 6 days a week.
Zhang's voice was heard by Tencent's management. Huang Tieming as Head of Wecom stated that it is true that working at Tencent is too intense and may not be good for the long term. He also promised to make evaluations and adjustments.