On 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.
A 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.
Those 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.
At my last job, we were expected to monitor the Slack channel, and jump in to help - when we were off shift, at the store, day off, vacation - oncall was the first person paged, then whoever was awake. And this is to answer customer phone calls and emails needing cloud technical support, and the occasional 3am VPN tunnel rearchitecture.
On the other side, when the line laying union threatened to strike, they told us we'd be working 12 hour days and help out laying line during the strike.
Also, 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.
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.