Produced by Radar Finance and | Zhang Kaijing, editor| deep sea
On the afternoon of February 23, ByteDance issued a statement on the intranet confirming the sudden death of a 28-year-old employee that had been spread on the Internet. "At 13:43, I learned from the hospital that after 41 hours of rescue, Wu died tragically."
Previously, late at night on February 22, a news of the "sudden death of a ByteDance employee" was widely circulated on major social media platforms, and according to online news, the employee also had a wife who was 2 months pregnant.
After the incident, Byte disclosed the employee's experience before and after the incident through the intranet, and once said that it was still in the rescue. However, screenshots of chat records circulated on the Internet show that netizens who claimed to be Wu's wife announced the death of their lover as early as 9 p.m. on the 22nd; a netizen who called Wu a brother also said in the early morning of the 23rd, "The news we got is gone, and the company needs to give a proper placement."
Since 2021, driven by a number of incidents, the problem of overtime work in large factories has been pushed to the forefront of public opinion, and companies represented by Tencent, ByteDance and Kuaishou have also announced the cancellation of the 996, large and small week system, requiring employees to leave work on time and implement a healthy work and rest system.
However, the reality may not be so simple. Wei Ran (pseudonym), an employee of ByteDance, revealed to Radar Finance that after the implementation of the relevant system, the company only did not approve overtime, but the working hours remained at the previous level.
Sudden death of employees on the hot search, netizens: bytes and hearts only have one beat
"It's a shame to keep you up with this sad news." Radar Finance learned that ByteDance has updated its response to the sudden death of Wu on the intranet.
Combined with the timeline given by the company before, Wu went to the gym at 18:00 on February 21, and after about 1 hour, he developed dizziness and entered the pantry to rest. The gym instructor immediately poured him a glass of sugar water and notified the administrative front desk to activate the SOS duty number.
At 19:09, after measuring the blood pressure of Wu, the security manager suggested contacting colleagues to accompany him to the doctor, during which Wu vomited. About 10 minutes later, the coach dialed 120, and at the same time, two security personnel with first aid certificates were performing CPR first aid on Wu.
At about 19:30, 120 emergency personnel arrived at the scene to rescue Wu. At the same time, the company informed Wu's wife, who rushed to the company and sent Wu to the Third Hospital of Beijing Medical College with two colleagues from the company. The hospital uses ECMO for rescue at the request of the family.
As of 0:30 on the 23rd, the hospital reported that Wu was in a critical condition and was still in rescue. Now Mr. Wu has unfortunately passed away.
"Since joining the team for more than three years, Mr. Wu has worked conscientiously and responsibly and is a very trustworthy and good partner. The company has borne all the medical expenses and provided full logistical support. The company will also provide pensions and care to the family of Mr. Wu, assist in handling related matters, and try to help his family tide over the difficulties. ”
It is worth noting that Radar Finance noted that a screenshot of Wu's wife's self-described experience on the Internet was different from the company's statement.
At 9 p.m. on February 22, Wu's "wife" said that Wu is an image algorithm engineer in the video architecture department, and he has been in a long-distance relationship for 8 years, married for more than 3 years, and currently has a mortgage of more than 21,000 per month and a mortgage for 30 years.
He said that Wu was uncomfortable in the gym, and after reporting to the staff, the staff did not deal with it at the first time, but let Wu find a doctor by himself. After that, Wu began to spit acid, "There is no timely rescue in the back, the reply of the byte is vague, and he refuses to answer positively." Dragged around in the Byte Building for an hour before calling me to inform. ”
"He died of a heart attack and they delayed the best rescue time. I did not close my eyes in the hospital for a day and a night, ecomo up to now, the doctor judged that the brain is all dead, no spontaneous breathing, no autonomous heartbeat, all organ failure, inability to return to heaven. ”
It is worth mentioning that the "wife" also said that Wu usually works a lot of overtime, and the pressure is very high, almost four years. I can't afford to take on next month's mortgage.
A netizen who claimed that Wu was his classmate also stood up and said: "He is our classmate, as far as we know, it is a serious overtime, and there is no problem with health before entering the company." And the rescue failure has long been brain dead, the company said that it is still rescuing. The corpse spots are all out, and 48 hours is the key point of the work injury identification. ”
In addition, there are screenshots from the Internet showing that Wu has appeared in work records between 2 a.m. and 9 a.m. many times before his death, but the authenticity of the picture has not been confirmed.
"Byte beat, the heart can't beat." Some netizens sighed.
In this regard, Wang Zhiyan, a lawyer at the Shanghai branch of Beijing Lanpeng Law Firm, said that in this case, the family can usually take two paths to sue, the first is the traditional sense of overwork death, and the second is to pursue ByteDance's obligation to provide security for the gym. That is, according to whether the security manager found that Wu had discomfort, whether he diagnosed and sought medical treatment in time to judge whether the company should bear the corresponding responsibility.
However, Wang Zhiyan said that because Wu was in the process of fitness, even if there was a situation of illegal overtime byte, the possibility of the court finding it was low. "Determining overwork death may depend on the attendance records of employees before they die, and it is actually very difficult to prove that they die of overwork in practice."
Gu Pan, a lawyer at Beijing Dacheng (Xi'an) Law Firm, told Radar Finance that in general, the unit sets up a gym to allow employees to work better, and rest, activities and exercise in the unit gym should be related to work. If the information published on the Internet is true, and the employee goes to the unit gym for exercise due to overtime fatigue, it may be recognized as a work injury from the perspective of the purpose of exercise and the protection of the interests of the employee. Previously, some courts ruled that sudden death of an employee during a gym exercise set up by the employer or cooperated by the unit was regarded as a precedent for regarded as a work injury.
Gu Pan suggested that family members should now contact the hospital to obtain death certificates, including case materials such as the cause of death, and collect evidence of overtime work before employees; at the same time, they should also keep relevant surveillance videos at the time of the gym incident.
"The application for the recognition of work injury is generally applied to the work injury recognition department by the employer first, and it is recommended to actively communicate with the employer and urge it to initiate an application for the recognition of work injury and death." Regarding mortgages, it is recommended that family members negotiate as soon as possible to transfer the house to prevent default due to loan breaks. ”
1075 work system is useless?
Radar Finance noted that in 2021, ByteDance has repeatedly reformed working hours and related systems.
On July 9, ByteDance announced that the company will cancel the big and small weeks starting on August 1. However, this adjustment was regarded as "bad news" by many employees.
According to reports, on the first payday after ByteDance canceled the size of the week, employees exploded on the intranet, saying that their income was reduced by several thousand, and some employees in research and development posts were even less than tens of thousands of yuan due to high basic salaries.
"I didn't expect that the first general adjustment after coming to byte was a salary cut." An employee whose income was reduced by 17% after the cancellation of the size week said in an interview that in the past, the size of the week was added two days of work, and the byte would pay double the salary, and now after the cancellation, it is equivalent to 4 days less wages.
On this basis, on November 1, ByteDance's intranet updated a copy of the "Chinese mainland Overtime Management Regulations", which caused netizens to discuss the 1075 working system.
The "Provisions" mentioned that overtime work after 7 o'clock on the working day needs to submit an application, and it is necessary to have a reason to obtain the consent of the leader. Up to 3 hours of overtime per day and up to 36 hours per month. The Feishu also updated a document Chinese mainland overtime regulations, which clearly identified working hours: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
At the same time, some ByteDance employees revealed that the overtime wage on weekdays was 1.5 times the original, the overtime wage on rest days was 2 times, and the overtime wage on holidays was 3 times. ByteDance's overtime system has also updated the function of "working day overtime", and you can choose to apply for leave or overtime pay. In principle, overtime is not encouraged, and the overtime situation of each department will be reviewed bi-monthly.
However, compared with the previous official announcement on the cancellation of the big and small week, the attitude of byte is more ambiguous when it is rumored on the network that byte will become the first company in the Internet circle to move towards 1075.
To date, the company has not publicly responded to this statement, but CEO Liang Rubo released a full email the day after the "Regulations" was updated, saying that it would implement the business unit bubu and establish six business segments: Douyin, Vigorous Education, Feishu, Volcano Engine, Sunrise Lightyear and TikTok.
In fact, the company's internal work system has changed. Wei Ran told Radar Finance, "Internal will not approve, do not apply (overtime). Unless it is a special necessity, the reason is particularly sufficient, and the weekend overtime must be worked overtime, it can be applied. ”
The problem is that not applying does not mean that there is no overtime. Wei Ran said that the specific overtime time of employees should be discussed according to different departments, regions, and direct superiors.
"Beijing is probably the most volume. Some people go at 8 o'clock, some people are still adding after 12 o'clock, the core business will be more than the non-core volume, the Chinese region is more than the non-Chinese volume, the average 10 points. ”
The working hours have not changed, but the overtime pay is gone, in Wei Ran's view, this is tantamount to a disguised salary cut. But the current situation is not something he can control.
The development is slightly tired, and it is difficult to find the "optimal solution" to the overtime problem.
In recent years, the development speed of ByteDance can be described as "sitting on a rocket". Since its establishment in 2012, ByteDance has transformed into one of the fastest growing technology companies in the world in its first decade, and currently covers today's headlines, douyin, TikTok, TopBuzz, watermelon video and other products covering more than 150 countries and regions around the world.
How long does it take for the number of employees of Internet companies to exceed 100,000? For this question, the Chinese and American technology giants have different answers. The answer from Microsoft and Apple is that it has been nearly 40 years, Ali has used it for 20 years, and before ByteDance came out, the shortest Jingdong will take 17 years. Tencent has not yet reached this scale.
It is worth noting that half of Apple's employees sell mobile phones and tablets in official retail stores, while JD.com and Amazon have invested a lot of manpower in logistics and distribution.
In contrast, ByteDance, which has no similar demand, has brushed this record to 8 years. Even in 2016, the number of ByteDance was only more than 5,000, which means that the company has increased the number of employees more than ten times in 4 years.
Radar Finance has learned that the surge in the number of employees is related to changes in the personnel structure. In recent years, ByteDance's content review, advertising sales, e-commerce, human resources and other teams have experienced rapid expansion, and Byte has always advocated the strategy of "vigorously making miracles", which allows it to set up multiple teams, invest a lot of resources, and promote multiple projects at the same time after entering a field.
Taking online education as an example, ByteDance expanded its product line to more than 20 within 2 years, and included nearly 20,000 employees for this purpose.
However, the giant ship has gradually shown fatigue at this point. According to late Post, in 2020, ByteDance will support an average of 2.2 million yuan per employee, which is basically at the bottom compared with the per capita contribution income of other technology giants when they reach 100,000 people, and with the growth of personnel, byte's per capita output has declined for three consecutive years.
In addition, ByteDance's attempts and investment in local life, education, games and other fields in the past two years have not been satisfactory. In the second half of 2021, the company has successively reported news of education, commercialization, and layoffs of game teams.
More important than the stagnation in performance is that the company is beginning to lose popularity. One phenomenon is that on the pulse, more and more byte employees are beginning to express their dissatisfaction.
Some content review staff said that the standard is becoming more stringent, the amount of review is constantly improving, and what cannot be completed in the normal working system can only be solved by overtime. But when he first joined the company, although the workload was saturated, he basically came on time and could leave after eating after work.
In mid-2021, there were also cases of ByteDance interns who did not go to bed before 12 p.m. and did not handle the work in time to "become famous overnight" in the entire department.
Some ByteDance people even said that there has been internal friction between teams, and some teams have done things that other teams have verified failures in order to pursue performance.
Industry insiders believe that ByteDance has encountered problems that Internet manufacturers will encounter, that is, while the business and scale are developing rapidly, the management level, organizational ability, and corporate culture construction have not been followed up in time.
Employees, in this context, have become "victims". ByteDance's Wu classmate is not alone, during the Spring Festival, a 25-year-old auditor of the Wuhan branch of Station B was asked to work overtime by the company, and suddenly died of cerebral hemorrhage in the early morning of the fifth morning of the first month. The deceased's cousin said that during the Spring Festival, the cousin worked very intensively, sometimes needing to work for nearly 12 hours continuously. Further back, in 2020, an employee of Pinduoduo also fell to the ground and died suddenly at one o'clock in the morning.
The government has regulated this. In August 2021, the Supreme People's Court of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security has made it clear that both 996 and 007 are illegal, and around this point in time, Kuaishou, Byte, Tencent Photonic Studio, Meituan Preferred, BOSS Direct Hire, vivo, Xiaopeng Automobile, etc. have successively announced the cancellation of the big and small weeks.
However, from the current situation, from shouting out no overtime, to implementing no overtime, it will go through a long process.
Note: This article is the original of Radar Finance (ID: leidacj). Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.