10 ms·
Always-on Alibaba office app fuels backlash among Chinese workers
- gruez 8y ago>Like WhatsApp, DingTalk lets senders see if recipients have read messages, but it also has a "ding" feature that can bombard recipients with repeat notifications, text messages and phone-call reminders. “Sorry boss, you’re breaking up. “ hangs up phone and turn on airplane mode Either that or “accidentally” leave your phone on silent after a meeting.
- Waterluvian 8y agoI haven't had to turn my phone off in a long time on planes. It's like that problem went away. ...Is airplane mode going to be like the save icon where I have to explain to my kids why an airplane means shutting off all comms?
- downrightmike 8y agophones and tablets don't contribute an issue to the aircraft operation. Finally the industry got called on their BS and you can do what you want, and buy their in flight wifi.
- yzmtf2008 8y agoNot to defend ding, but how is that different from PagerDuty?
- chillydawg 8y agoPagerduty is specifically for on call staff who's job is to respond, immediately, to alerts.
- chaosite 8y agoAnd it's expected that they only respond when they're "carrying the pager", that is, on their on-call shift. One of PagerDuty's features is figuring out who's the right person to page right now.
- CodesInChaos 8y agoI think the main difference is psychological. A dedicated emergency pager application contacting whoever is on call at that moment will lead to quite different usage than a targeted super-buzz feature integrated into a normal messenger application.
- gorbot 8y agoPager duty is typically on a rotation shared between the team members, so ur on call like one week out of 8 or so. Not 24/7, no location tracking, only real issues that impact the product, etc.
- tetrep 8y agoAnd then your boss will ask you why your phone is on silent/in airplane mode. Don't think the app can't or won't track such juicey details ;)
- duxup 8y agoMan the setup in that first photo looks terrible office wise. >Instead, Wu's team sought another niche, tackling a common managerial complaint in China: workers who fail to reply to messages and later feign ignorance. So they built a messaging platform to hassle people... about other messages? That seems brutal.
- exabrial 8y agoYep. And 90 degree office temps are not uncommon.
- shabda 8y agoAnyone else getting a 404 on this page now?
- Boulth 8y agoOnly if it redirects you to your local business insider, that's pretty bad I would say.
- exabrial 8y agoAfter working for that company for awhile... The entire goal is to look busy, so people create work and don't accomplish a whole lot. 10-12 hour days are expected whether or not you have work to do, or if your work efficiently. The Chinese are also very suspicious of anyone that is not Chinese, and you're very much considered an outsider and will be informed on a need to know basis if that's the case. They're wildly successful inside China, but that's likely more do to government protected Monopoly than actually having a product that works. The best part of working there is when I pointed out builds with failing tests were making it to production, and the architect in charge told me that they can still release, it just decreases the 'quality score'.
- cup-of-tea 8y ago> The entire goal is to look busy, so people create work and don't accomplish a whole lot. That's been my experience working for a large financial company. Except the part about 10 hour days. That wasn't expected.
- Pica_soO 8y agoThe irony, being that the app is build by a team suffering from the same problem, the app promised to solve by adding importance levels to messages.
- donttrack 8y agoIf it works, it works. I remember standing at the base of the new Tencent double tower, when it was being constructed. They were almost done with the concrete skeleton and the beams looked all crooked standing there looking up at the structure - each column on each floor was slightly misplaced compared to the previous one. I am no construction engineer, but I believe they should have been placed in a straight line, but maybe I am wrong..
- geezerjay 8y agoAll structural elements have geometrical flaws, and in concrete structures tolerances are measured in centimetets/inches. Alignment issues may result in problems if they are not addressed in design time (i.e. buckling) but that sort of scenario is very basic. Even european construction standards directly address geometrical flaws. They may look ugly but they're not exactly a problem. Breaking a build, however, is a major problem.
- walrus01 8y agoConsidering where it's from, I wonder to what degree all of the messages are funneled in plaintext through a centralized censorship engine. What happens if you start pasting excerpts of the wikipedia article for Tiennamen square to your coworkers?
- junnan 8y agoThis seems to be allowed in WeChat. But such text will be blocked if you try to send it in a group chat. I guess CPP allows you to talk privately but not publicly in a 300 people group.
- ttflee 8y agoI have added a DingTalk line to my checklist for next job interview.
- llampx 8y agoAt this point if you are in the EU or the US, you will probably make them look it up more often than not, contributing to this app's growth.
- sk_hazratali 8y agoThanks for the info. https://www.sherekhudahazratali.com/2016/12/farman-quotes-shere-khuda-hazrat-ali.html https://www.sherekhudahazratali.com/2016/12/farman-quotes-sh...
- ulfw 8y agoThis is an app that will not work in the west. And frankly it shouldn't. It's an insult to the intellect of an employee.
- gaius 8y agoOh it absolutely would. Most chat clients let you “buzz” another user in the 90s. And Amazon times the movement of its warehouse workers down to the second already. You will see this at a least one major Western company by the end of the year, I’ll wager.
- Animats 8y agoIt will probably be a feature of Slack within a year.
- dasmoth 8y agoExcept perhaps (haven't checked the APIs recently) the "time read" feature, I'm pretty sure most of it can be done today with Slack apps. Certainly, "Standup" apps which replicate the "log what you did today" feature are two a penny (and, to be fair, if I'm on a project which needs fine-grained synchrononization, I find this infinitely preferable to physical standups...)
- brown9-2 8y agoHard to think of a feature that could destroy whatever good will Slack has with users (if it still does) then a feature that lets you “ping” and notify someone else endlessly.
- dictum 8y agoSlap some copy about empowering end users/workers and some illustrations of people with heads much smaller than the rest of their bodies, and it's ready to bring about a new VC round.
- Kagerjay 8y agoIt practically is a feature, you can see whos offline and who is not. Its just done manually now not automatically. But there's other alternatives to slack, such as Zulip
- EZ-E 8y agoMy office uses it in China. We use some of the features like the clock-in and the one to file expenses. My company fines you if you clock-in late on the app, but won't hesitate to use the "ding" feature to send you SMS/phone calls after 9PM that records the time seen/confirmed. Overall it's more a company/cultural issue, but the app certainly makes it easier to pressure employees to always be on.
- maimeowmeow 8y agoJust get a second phone?
- Kagerjay 8y agoChina is really weird. They already have the bigbrother level of social media in place (social media credit scores), this just takes it a whole another level now. They are really heading towards a dangerous unethical path right now, and with google's censorship engine that just brings more worry honestly. China is paving the future of George Orwell's 1984. When other countries see how successful China is at doing this, others will potentially follow suit
- projektfu 8y ago6079 Smith, W. Yes, you! Bend lower!
- zhte415 8y agoCould you suggest your China office to get a better manager? Because this seems terrible.
- BLanen 8y agoYour 'but' makes it seem likes there's going to be an argument against your first point, but it just enforces it. Should be an 'and'.
- dasmoth 8y agoOn top of this original feature, the company has added a wide range of functions that include automatic expense claims, a clock-in system to monitor the whereabouts of employees, as well as a "daily report" function that requires workers to list completed tasks. As DingTalk has grown, many Chinese office workers have vented their frustrations online about the service, saying it is inhumane and destroys trust. "Inhumane and destroys trust" doesn't sound too far off the mark to me. But it's not so very different from working in an open office with daily standups, and that's become pretty well-accepted in technical fields over the last few years. I hope we see some changes -- more trust and less demand for pervasive visibility -- but it's hard to be terribly optimistic on this point right now.
- tomtimtall 8y agoAlso, using gps to track on site time and a task tracker are things that myself and other do completely voluntarily, so I feel like it’s a stretch to call it inhumane to enforce this. Though I get there is a different sentiment towards it when it’s required compared to just being a personal choice of convinience.
- stephengillie 8y agoA lot of these have automated analogues in American companies. >automatic expense claims - Expense claims seem like a smart thing to automate. > a clock-in system to monitor the whereabouts of employees Zendesk, ServiceNow, and other issue tracking ticket systems provide numerous metrics about user activity, including a timer for each ticket. Many tech support shops use the total ticket time, divided by 40 hours, as your "utilization", and target an 80% utilization, or you're productive for 32 of 40 hours per week. > as well as a "daily report" function that requires workers to list completed tasks. This could be an automated report in the system above. Or it could be mandatory release notes, but daily is excessive for that. This sounds like a daily standup, over email.
- bb88 8y agoThose aren't terrible per se, but I think the relentless immediacy of you're manager's chat or request would get annoying, especially on a weekend or holiday as the article discussed.
- lordnacho 8y ago"If you come into Starbucks in the morning and you are told you can't buy coffee because their staff hasn't arrived, will you accept that? Even the Europeans won't accept tardiness." It's often done that someone appeals to examples from other cultures that might not be entirely accurate. Being a bit late, particularly if you live in a city with bad traffic, is absolutely accepted. Also, who in the UK hasn't heard the "we don't have train drivers" excuse? The thing to think about is why there's demand for this sort of corporate leash. I guess there's a lot of bosses who distrust their employees. A friend of mine works for a firm from home one or two days a week, and it turns out they check whether your mouse is moving. I run a tech team that's 100% work from home. I think if I insisted on GPS and face recognition it would quickly get miserable for everyone. There's something I call the "ghost rower" effect. If you've ever rowed a boat (think Oxford and Cambridge) it's possible to move the oar in such a way that you look like you're rowing, but you are not really contributing to the boat moving faster. It works because someone on the shore can only check that you're sliding back and forth, and your oar is in the water. Most modern desk jobs allow the same. You can show up, you can have Excel open, you can attend meetings. All without doing anything useful. If you want more ghost rowers, install DingChat.
- gaius 8y agoIf the staff haven’t arrived who is telling you this? The entire analogy makes no sense. That person has never been to Starbucks nor to The West. If they had been to France or Italy they would see things very differently! Countries with a relaxed way of life that nevertheless get things done and deliver a high standard of living to their citizens.
- baybal2 8y agoBelieve me or not, we installed a computer vision powered check in system at our office. They are surprisingly cheap.
- paulie_a 8y agoIt might be surprisingly cheap but seems incredibly miserable to work there. It shows that the company does not trust their own employees and is a sign of bad management.
- gagabity 8y agoBusinessInsider now redirects Tanzanian users to http://pulselive.co.tz http://pulselive.co.tz which doesnt resolve. This website is such garbage.
- pentae 8y agoSo let me get this straight, a new 'free' version of Slack that sends all your companies internal communications straight to Chinese government servers. Now they don't even have to hack us, we're giving it to them voluntarily.
- majewsky 8y agoFun fact: This is how Slack looks from a European perspective.
- yardie 8y agoThat is also how it looks when someone has a SaaS hosted in AWS. Then wonder why potential clients are asking for self-hosted.
- Assadi 8y agoAnd, that is how Slack looks from here in Russia ;-) Honestly, SaaS, even if it is operated in your own country, makes me feel gross. I try to stay away from anything I can't self-host as much as possible.
- pxtail 8y ago[...]"daily report" function that requires workers to list completed tasks [...] Despite the grumbling, Wu believes the service will translate across borders and cultures He is right, managers will love this - it's just daily standup (everyone loves it, so agile!) on steroids. I'm pretty sure that it will be added to "western" tools within months.
- jerrysievert 8y agowe had some good success with it, and it ended up spun out to its own project later: https://squashreports.com https://squashreports.com where it excelled was in keeping tangentially connected teams up to date with each other, since each team tended to have closer lines of communication - it helped for the overall direction. where it didn't help was to replace a standup directly.
- wincy 8y agoStatus Hero was used this way at my last job. My manager would have it opened at all times in his office. And I just got fired, so I guess it "worked". The only way to accomplish the tasks fast enough was to work weekends, and once I quit working on weekends (which I was told "of course you don't have to work weekends!), they got rid of me within a couple weeks. Really terrible place to work.
- msie 8y agoIt's good to remember we are all human. We all have the same limits as workers.
- JudasGoat 8y agoI feel grateful for my old age and limited future participation in the workforce when I read these stories. Anyone that thinks North American companies will have ethical problems with these technologies just isn't being honest.