The death of a Pinduoduo Inc employee has renewed criticism of the long hours commonly practiced at China’s technology companies, which are already under scrutiny by regulators for anti-competitive business practices.
The e-commerce company yesterday confirmed that an employee died last week after working past midnight, without providing additional details.
That sparked a social media backlash against the company and the relentless working schedules expected of its employees.
The so-called “996” office schedule — 9am to 9pm, six days a week, plus overtime — has previously spurred criticism following complaints from employees and deaths.
Technology billionaires, such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd founder Jack Ma (馬雲) and JD.com Inc founder Richard Liu (劉強東), have endorsed the practice as necessary for survival in an intensely competitive industry and the key to accumulating personal wealth.
The online criticism adds to the challenges for China’s largest technology companies, which spent the past year fending off efforts by Washington to curb their growth, while navigating heightened regulatory scrutiny at home.
Despite that, Pinduoduo emerged relatively unscathed with its shares rising to a record high on Wednesday last week.
The shares ended last year up nearly 370 percent, helping to elevate founder Colin Huang (黃崢) to the position of China’s second-richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
RSS