Life is like a box of mooncakes, you never know whether you will get an enhanced version of five kernels or quicksand custard. Some people from Baidu lost their jobs because their PPT was ugly, and some programmers from Alibaba lost their jobs because they grabbed a few boxes of company mooncakes.
Yes, this is not a weird joke. Four Alibaba Security Department engineers were really fired. The thing is, every Mid-Autumn Festival, all large and small factories have a fine tradition of feeding employees customized mooncakes to build a good employer brand image, and Alibaba is no exception. Originally, as a rule, every Alibaba employee would receive a box of internal mooncakes. But this year, because the mooncake packaging is particularly beautiful and cute, and comes in a variety of fresh flavors, many employees want to buy a few more boxes to give to their relatives and friends. Therefore, the company's administration also decided to sell the few remaining mooncakes to employees at cost price through the intranet, and temporarily developed an internal reservation page. However, there were too many buyers, and the first round of 900 boxes was sold out in 3 seconds. The rush-buying situation was severe. On the afternoon of September 12, 2016, four waiters from Alibaba’s security department tried to use their own JS programs to help with the flash sale. They obtained the right to purchase 124 more boxes of mooncakes in total, with a minimum of 9 boxes and a maximum of 66 boxes. As a result, the four people involved were fired on the same day, on the grounds that "it caused unfair distribution of benefits to other employees" and "as a defender of platform rules, using tools to cheat touched the red line of integrity."
Being clever meant losing their jobs. The fired engineers were a little confused themselves, not to mention that grabbing so many boxes was not their original intention. An employee suspected of being involved anonymously reviewed his resignation on Zhihu, which "can be ranked on the funny list". Although he reviewed his actions this time and went out of his way, he did not agree with Ali's attitude of elevating the matter to a question of values and character. According to him, because he wanted to grab a box of mooncakes to give to his relatives, he wrote a program similar to a ticket grabbing plug-in to book the next round of buying. However, he never expected that due to the page itself, he would not be redirected to the payment page after a successful purchase. By the time he found out, he had already grabbed 16 purchase rights with unlimited clicks. Although he quickly took the initiative to call the administration to explain the situation when payment was not made, he was eventually fired.
As soon as the news came out, netizens quickly exploded in comments, with different opinions on who was right and who was wrong.
Some people believe that employees grabbing the right to buy moon cakes does not cost nothing, but writing programs to do it for them is a manifestation of the geek spirit and should be appropriately encouraged. Criticism and ridicule of today's Alibaba for being too clichéd and political, too strict and too above-the-line. Some companies and headhunters even offered olive branches to these employees:
Some people believe that if the company has relevant regulations, it is understandable to impose certain penalties. However, the company's mooncake activity itself is also controversial. Even if the employees are at fault, they are not guilty. What's more, the person involved has no bad motives and has proactively reported the situation. The company's immediate dismissal is too harsh, and technical talents should not be given up so easily:
As for Alibaba's response, "We need to remind ourselves and every employee again that the game has rules, and accidents are inevitable. There is no choice because everything has a bottom line." It has also been supported by many people. Many people believe that the key to the problem is not whether mooncakes cost money to buy, or discussing specific values, but rather the lack of awareness of rules. Especially as employees of the security department, we should not rely on our talents to cause unfairness. In addition, the nature of different units is different. Considering that Alibaba’s employees’ mistakes may sometimes have a big impact on society, even though it is an internal incident, it is understandable that the company requires stricter requirements to prevent recurrence:
No matter what views netizens hold, Xu Yuling, director of the Labor Legal Affairs Department of Jingshi Law Firm, believes that from the perspective of labor management, this is a matter of compliance with rules and regulations and how to deal with violations of unit regulations. "From a legal perspective, if a company wants to terminate a labor contract, it must first look at the reasons and procedures to resolve the contract." Xu Yuling told Jiemian reporters that even if the employee himself committed dishonest behavior, he still needs to consider whether his wrong behavior is a serious violation of the company's rules and regulations. "According to Article 39 of the Labor Contract Law, the labor contract can be terminated if there is a serious violation of the unit's rules and regulations. But in fact, does the unit have such effective rules and regulations? Do these rules and regulations comply with legal provisions? Are they formulated through democratic procedures? Have workers been informed? There are also procedural requirements, such as the need to fulfillCertain procedures such as notification to the union. Once the termination is illegal, according to Article 48 of the Labor Law, the employee has the right to refuse to perform or require the unit to pay compensation, which should be twice the economic compensation. ”
"There is no right or wrong in this matter, it just breaks up if the two sides don't match up. "An Alibaba employee told reporters, "As for how delicious Alibaba mooncakes are that people are concerned about, I just want to say that the so-called durian, matcha and other flavored mooncakes are nothing more than that. "On September 13, reporters discovered on Maimai that the person involved, "Xiang Guo," had also changed his business card information and started looking for a new job.
