[HN Gopher] Ex-workers at Temu owner PDD suffer surveillance and...
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Ex-workers at Temu owner PDD suffer surveillance and ruin over non-
competes
Author : JumpCrisscross
Score : 51 points
Date : 2024-03-11 10:20 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ft.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ft.com)
| Element_ wrote:
| https://archive.is/qYnhE#selection-1583.0-1583.85
| jncfhnb wrote:
| > A few months after starting a new job, in November 2023, he
| received a summons for a Shanghai labour arbitration case.
| Pinduoduo had submitted video evidence of Yao walking in and out
| of a rival's office for a week.
|
| > Last month, the arbitrator ruled in Pinduoduo's favour,
| ordering Yao to pay his former company damages, lawyers' fees,
| and return the Rmb11,000 he had earned in gardening leave pay.
| Altogether he owes Pinduoduo Rmb438,000 ($61,000).
|
| Wild.
|
| I'm surprised people use temu at all. I was surprised to see it
| air ads on the Super Bowl.
| mint2 wrote:
| I'm not surprised most Americans or really any people use it.
|
| Most people stop thinking after they see a price. Quality and
| supply chain implications are ignored with willfulness.
| reaperman wrote:
| It's not like shipping at the mall means that I'm going to
| get higher quality or a more ethical supply chain. There's
| plenty of very low quality $200
| sweaters/shoes/belts/jeans/etc at established retailers. I'm
| not whattaboutism'ing -- it's just that people seem to
| criticize Temu far more than it earns.
|
| If you can afford to shop exclusively at Patagonia, that's
| wonderful! But I often feel like the western brands are mad
| at Temu primarily for giving consumers back all the middle-
| man markups, so billionaires like Lawrence Stroll stop
| getting their cut when people buy from Temu instead of Ralph
| Lauren (and just keep the extra money that those owners are
| used to capturing).
| woooooo wrote:
| Anything Chinese in the news gets pulled into the current
| zeitgeist of anti-China fear.
|
| If that's also useful for undercutting competition or
| scoring some other political/economic points, you can
| pretty much count on it.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It is not anti-chinese fear that these companies are
| using literal slave labor. Visit r/fucknestle to see that
| same disgust for non-chinese companies. There is actually
| an amount of this disgust for clothing brands in general,
| as they often routinely end up employing literal slaves
| as well, however it is unfocused, as the non-transparency
| of supply chains purposely makes it hard to know who is
| or isn't using slave labor, and how much plausible
| deniability they have implemented.
| woooooo wrote:
| Do we get calls to outlaw Nestle every time it's campaign
| season? Hershey would love it.
|
| Hating Nestle is niche. Hating the Russians is partisan.
| Hating the Chinese is mainstream consensus.
|
| Consider how confident you are in the slave labor
| accusation, for example. This was a thread about a non-
| compete dispute.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Apple used child slave labour.
| https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-knowingly-used-
| child-l...
|
| What's your point? As the great philosophy show house of
| cards suggested: when the tits that big, everybody gets
| in line.
|
| So all companies will use slave labour if it makes them
| more money. There is no moral high ground anywhere.
| Larrikin wrote:
| If I'm shopping at a retail store, even Walmart, there is a
| certain floor I expect to the quality of goods. If I move
| up to Target or a Ralph Lauren store that expectation goes
| up. Someone somewhere that cares about the brand has made
| some kind of attempt to vet the product. That's not always
| a guarantee of the best product but a brand that isn't in a
| death spiral has some incentive to protect their brand.
|
| I've significantly reduced my spending on Amazon, do not
| plan on renewing Prime this year, and would never use Temu
| because there is just too high a chance of getting bottom
| of the barrel crap from a nonsensically named Chinese
| company that will shut down and restart with a new name
| after it becomes obvious they sell only garbage.
|
| You get some companies like Anker that are rising above the
| crap but I don't have the time to learn about the few
| Chinese companies doing good by the consumers and don't
| want to have to spend hours vetting whether my tooth brush
| holder has lead or the brushes will tip over because it's
| not actually tall enough to properly hold a toothbrush.
| I'll just buy from Target.
|
| If I'm going to roll the dice or know of a trustworthy
| brand from China I'll just use AliExpress.
| gs17 wrote:
| >If I'm shopping at a retail store, even Walmart, there
| is a certain floor I expect to the quality of goods.
|
| You also get to inspect things a bit before you buy them.
| My girlfriend tried Temu, I explained what she was likely
| going to get, she insisted that the price was so good "we
| would be losing money by not buying it", the order
| arrived (late) and was the quality I expected, she
| realized it wasn't worth it and deleted the app. If we
| went to Walmart and saw the same things for the same
| price, she wouldn't have even wanted to touch them.
| There's no guarantee a shirt you get from Walmart will
| last, but you at least know the fabric is thicker than
| toilet paper before you buy.
| reaperman wrote:
| Temu has free returns and pays for return shipping.
| gs17 wrote:
| They do, but it was clear being in a loop of ordering
| garbage and sending it back was not a good use of time.
| dave333 wrote:
| I've ordered over 50 items from Temu and have generally
| been happy with the quality. There have been one or two
| complete duds, but I just write that off as you get what
| you pay for. Not worth sending anything back. The only
| things I still order from Amazon are consumables - coffee
| pods, vitamin gummies and cough syrup.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| >has free returns
|
| >pays for return shipping
|
| They're the same picture.
| reaperman wrote:
| You have WAY more confidence in Target/Walmart than I do.
| Most of it falls apart super fast. Even Christian Dior
| belts are made of some kind of "leather" that falls apart
| after a year.
| gs17 wrote:
| > some kind of "leather" that falls apart after a year
|
| It's vinyl and it's awful. That fake leather degrades
| really fast if you expose it to the sun. Thrift stores
| especially end up with a lot of second-hand products made
| of it already shedding. I'm not a huge fan of leather,
| but at least it lasts almost forever.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| In Aus, target is considered middle-low tier but not
| bottom of the barrel, Ralph lauren appear to sell $800
| sweaters.
|
| Is American target substantially different from
| Australian target?
| esafak wrote:
| Middle-low sounds about right in the US too. Better than
| Walmart.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Target is the same, definitely not on the level of Ralph
| Lauren, but definitely a step above Walmart. OP referred
| to Ralph Lauren like its easy to find equally quality
| good on Temu.
| verall wrote:
| Ralph Lauren does sell $800 sweaters, but in America most
| (not all though) of the "nice" brands have significantly
| diluted their quality, so in addition to the $800
| sweaters, Ralph Lauren also sells "$150" sweaters which
| are "marked down" to $80 and are really not very good
| quality, you could roll the dice and _maybe_ get
| something comparable on temu for like $15.
|
| The brands don't really do this dilution in other
| countries yet, and temu is still a diceroll, but I
| broadly agree with the GP
| Larrikin wrote:
| What you're referring to has been a thing for a very long
| time and exist outside of the US.
|
| The Nikes you get at a department store have always been
| terrible compared to what you get at Foot Locker for
| example. Nike won't even allow certain sneakers to be
| sold depending on the level they judge the store to be.
|
| The Ralph Lauren flagship store in Tokyo or NYC will
| generally have a better selection than the department
| store. A Macy's in Chicago will have a far better
| selection of a brand than a Macy's in a mid tier suburb.
| In college, I went to a mall serving an extremely rural
| community and a major college, and nearly everything in
| the casual section of the department store was extremely
| cheap and camo.
|
| Its just market segmentation.
|
| Online, the clothing brands I buy from directly tend to
| be of the quality I expect. Buying a polo from Amazon
| will be just as much of a crap shoot as buying from Temu,
| but the online store will generally have the quality
| shirt you've been buying.
| mint2 wrote:
| To be clear, I'm not just talking about temu. As you say,
| it's a problem with fast fashion and many retailers. It's a
| race to the bottom issue.
|
| But it's not a binary choice between "luxury" logos and
| sketchy random quality junk on temu and Amazon. Simple
| mindfulness when purchasing things would benefit everyone -
| including the person doing the buying.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| > giving consumers back all the middle-man markups
|
| Temu is often selling stuff to Americans at a _loss_ , to
| be fair, and even that bleeding is staunched by their
| access to low-cost shipping agreements. But yeah, even if
| you did factor in those costs, the final product would
| still be a fair bit cheaper than the same version sold in
| US retail stores.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Most people stop thinking after they see a price_
|
| The first time. Then they learn. Assuming the consumer is
| stupid is part of what downed Wish [1].
|
| [1] https://ir.wish.com/news-releases/news-release-
| details/wish-...
| braiamp wrote:
| It took them _years_ to get that bad. Remember, these kinds
| of business are short lived, yes, but you are only for the
| short while, not long term.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > I'm surprised people use temu at all. I was surprised to see
| it air ads on the Super Bowl.
|
| Not surprised at all. The prices are too good to ignore for the
| average American. Amazon's quality is also a dumpster fire
| these days so there is no point paying higher prices.
|
| Shareholder-extraction-driven companies like Amazon just cannot
| compete with market-capture-driven companies. Amazon NEEDS to
| keep prices high to return value to shareholders. Temu doesn't
| need to yet.
| tomcar288 wrote:
| >>> Why surprised?
|
| How is the average consumer supposed to know that
| Shanghai/chinese labor laws are this incredibly abusive. and
| isn't that the fault of the legal system over there? I don't
| think any profit seeking western company would ever think twice
| about abusing the legal system if it can profit from it: just
| look at the entire industry of patent litigation, ISPs,
| insurance quoting, the list goes on, etc!
|
| As for cheap goods. I've ordered quite a bit from that
| platform. they have very very good return policy, i can assure
| you. You just need to be smart about only ordering things where
| quality isn't the highest concern. For example, garden labels.
| you can't mess those up. Electronics are a bit iffy. but
| irrigation supplies, i've had good luck with.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| I mean its just superior to Amazon in every way?
| _fat_santa wrote:
| PDD's strategy here is to get entry level workers in the door and
| have then sign a non-compete which would make it impossible for
| that person to survive if they left the company, once they are
| stuck there they work them to the bone with 996.
|
| Needless to say this is so so fucked up but it's China so go
| figure.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Sadly, it's a fairly common practice all over Asia, and a major
| reason decent talent will attempt to move to opportunities
| abroad.
| walterbell wrote:
| Techniques to constrain labor mobility are ever evolving.
|
| https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/apple-google-others-...
| Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe will shell out $415 million to
| put to rest an antipoaching civil lawsuit that accused the
| companies of conspiring not to hire each other's employees.
| ..Email exchanges among such top executives as late Apple co-
| founder and CEO Steve Jobs and former Google CEO and now
| executive chairman of Alphabet Eric Schmidt revealed how
| requests were made not to hire certain employees away from each
| other. One email exchange recounted how Jobs asked
| Schmidt to stop Google from trying to hire one of Apple's
| engineers. "I would be very pleased if your recruiting
| department would stop doing this," Jobs wrote to Schmidt on
| March 7, 2007. Schmidt then sent the request on,
| saying "I believe we have a policy of no recruiting from Apple
| and this is a direct inbound request. Can you get this stopped
| and let me know why this is happening? I will need to send a
| response back to Apple quickly so please let me know as soon as
| you can."
|
| https://www.financialadvisoriq.com/c/2042553/239943/morgan_s...
| ..defecting FAs must choose a strategic and nuanced path -- or
| otherwise face liabilities, Ichter warns. During their "garden
| leaves," he says, "they can only talk to the clients about the
| same thing they were talking about while they were employees of
| their old company. They cannot attempt to move the clients [or]
| solicit the clients" or they will risk triggering claims that
| they failed their duties of loyalty to their employe.. [but]
| ..retaining clients these days is not as hard as sometimes
| portrayed, since clients' personal loyalties frequently surpass
| their institutional ones
| soared wrote:
| Not great but incomparable to the above poster.
| janice1999 wrote:
| A more comparable situation is H1Bs (where being able to
| transfer is not guaranteed) and other foreign workers whose
| residence status and that of their family is tied to their
| employer. I pity those engineers trapped at companies like
| Twitter/X.
| walterbell wrote:
| Also foreign workers with limited English proficiency,
| serving large firms at arms length via contract agencies.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Lots of those employees have begun leaving to the home
| country for that reason.
|
| Working as an H1B is fine for a couple years, but if
| you're looking at multi-decade long backlogs for a chance
| at naturalization, it makes sense just to return after
| leveling up enough, especially because you can demand EU
| level salaries in most of Asia after a couple YoE in the
| US.
|
| Koreans, Japanese, and Taiwanese did this in the 90s and
| 2000s, Chinese in the 2000s and 2010s, and increasingly
| Indians post-pandemic.
|
| Most Indian H1Bs and F1 OPTs I know at Twitter and FAANG
| (from NCG to seniorish Eng and PM) have made amends with
| eventually returning to India in 5 years or becoming a
| Canadian citizen and using the TN backdoor, just like how
| a lot of Chinese talent began seriously considering
| starting their own startup back in China in the 2010s.
|
| -------------
|
| This is actually one of the major pluses of American soft
| power - a lot of talent will get mis-bucketed in
| hierarchical systems in Asia (there are plenty of
| diamonds in the rough in Tier 2/3/4/5 programs) but they
| won't get placed at top programs.
|
| As such, those kinds of people end up emigrating abroad
| and do fairly well in the US, or when they return to the
| old country.
|
| If you treat foreign workers well, when a portion of them
| inevitabely return to their home country, they will have
| decently pro-American views.
|
| Plenty of younger Chinese who returned to the Mainalnd
| from the US are strongly in favor of normalized
| relations, and even the elite like Xi Jingping still send
| their kids abroad (Xi's daughter is still in Cambridge MA
| for example and all his blood relatives in Australia)
| 33a wrote:
| In china an employer is required to pay something like 30% of
| your salary if it elects to enforce a non-compete. If the company
| doesn't pay you, then it's non-enforceable. Assuming you were at
| some decent compensation, this can actually be quite a bit of
| money. So if these workers took that pay cheque, they get to
| enjoy the timeoff during the non-compete and go party or start a
| family or whatever. The downside of the non-competes in China
| though is that because you are being paid to NOT work, if you
| start moonlighting or doing something sketchy the penalties are
| way more severe. I actually kind of like this approach to non-
| competes and it is in some ways better than how it works in many
| US states.
|
| https://goglobalgeo.com/blog/non-compete-clauses-in-china-re...
|
| The big problem with this system is not the penalties for
| breaking it, but the fact that it can sabotage you if you get hit
| too early in your career with a big gap. On the other hand, it
| gives you a nice opportunity to take a year or two off to start a
| family, spin up a new business or go back to school.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| FTA:
|
| "Yao's agreement prohibited him from working for rivals for
| nine months, during which time he would receive Rmb3,700 ($513)
| a month. It was too little to live on, Yao said."
| 33a wrote:
| Yeah, and it's very weird to bring a non-compete down on an
| entry level worker like this. Under what circumstances is it
| even worth it for PDD to spend the resources to enforce and
| monitor this kind of an agreement? I wonder if there's more
| to this story than the FTA?
|
| Also keep in mind this guy could have easily gotten a
| different job while still collecting the non-compete pay at a
| non-rival company, even still doing programming. Something
| about it doesn't quite add up to me.
| gs17 wrote:
| > Under what circumstances is it even worth it for PDD to
| spend the resources to enforce and monitor this kind of an
| agreement?
|
| Do you know that the marginal cost for monitoring an extra
| ex-employee is that large? If they catch someone like him,
| it seems like it has to pay for itself.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| 30% of an entry level job is not a living wage, let alone a lot
| of money.
|
| This guy was getting about $6k per year for his non compete,
| and has been sued for $60k. This has effectively destroyed the
| prospects of this guy's entire life. He couldn't mentally
| endure what they were demanding, and then they gave him a non
| living wage while simultaneously forbidding him from finding
| employment.
| gs17 wrote:
| > they get to enjoy the timeoff during the non-compete and go
| party or start a family
|
| On one hand, you have a guaranteed income for a few months, but
| I wouldn't be starting a family or partying if was living
| somewhere where I expected to make over 3x more. Here, rent
| alone is expected to a third of your income.
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