As early as the beginning of March this year, many domestic and foreign media reported that Pinduoduo took advantage of Android system vulnerabilities to wantonly obtain user privacy, collect information from competitor applications, and prevent itself from being uninstalled.
Plugins that implement such functions hide in legitimate filenames (such as Android system filenames) through potential malicious components to conceal the intent of potential malicious components. This is certainly not the first time Pinduoduo has used such methods. People close to Pinduoduo said that the BD (business development) promotion tools of multiple business lines also used similar methods, and the relevant APP icons were modified to other mainstream APP icons to deceive people.
Security researchers at Kaspersky Lab confirmed that the Pinduoduo App contains malicious code, and Google had previously removed it from the official app store, Play Store.
According to Big Factory Eating Melons, it is an interesting story that Pinduoduo was able to achieve a complete victory in the community group buying business (that is, a certain vegetable buying business) and occupy the first market share.
A year ago, Pinduoduo was in a fierce battle with other companies’ vegetable buying businesses in a county in northern China. Pinduoduo’s mysterious team of 100 people came up with a trick. Through the magical code in the app, they identified that users in the area were using other companies’ community group buying applications, and then forcibly consumed the mobile phone CPU, causing the mobile phone to freeze and making it difficult for users to use other companies’ community group buying, so that Pinduoduo gained “widespread praise” from users in the area. What’s even more bizarre is that its app also modified the power consumption data statistics of the mobile phone system, which not only avoided its own tricks from being discovered by ordinary users, but also framed other applications. To this day, the code that modifies the power consumption statistics data can still be seen in the malicious code of Pinduoduo publicly available by other big shots.
After the relevant issues were exposed, Pinduoduo has deleted these vulnerabilities in its updated version and disbanded the engineers and product teams who developed the vulnerabilities at the beginning of March. Most of them were transferred to the main site and Temu to work, retaining only a very few core backbones to continue to research and dig out more hidden and difficult-to-obtain vulnerabilities. According to internal sources, “the hacker team has a scale of more than 100 people, and now only 20 people are left to continue researching the mobile phone backdoor.”
Research shows that although the vulnerability has been deleted, the underlying code can still be reactivated at any time.
It is reported that Pinduoduo’s IT department has also carried out a large-scale data cleaning of company computers, including directly formatting company computers, and BYOD devices (devices that use personal computers for office work) only clean up company data. The estimated purpose is to clean up the evidence as much as possible before evidence collection and the implementation of penalties.
What factors have maintained the stability and silence of Pinduoduo’s technical team, which dares to build such a team that walks on the edge of danger?
Next, Big Factory Eating Melons will begin to deeply discuss Pinduoduo’s corporate culture “penetration”.
Silent employees
At the interview stage, interviewers at all levels will deliberately eliminate those who like to speak out. In addition to examining the interviewees’ job fit, they will also investigate whether the interviewees often post articles on public platforms such as Maimai, Weibo, and Zhihu to assess whether the interviewees will become potential opinion leaders.
For sensitive positions, interns are not recruited, and those with backgrounds in competing companies are not recruited, also because of concerns about commercial espionage.
These sensitive positions are more derived from fresh graduates or internal training and transformation. To a certain extent, it also ensures that employees’ social, family, and interpersonal resources are relatively clean.
High salary temptation
Money is the best tool to drive words.
The outside world knows very little about Pinduoduo’s salary and job level, and the benchmarking range on Maimai is also far from the actual situation. According to insiders, Pinduoduo’s social recruitment salary is about 1.5 to 2 times the market price, and the approximate job level and salary distribution are as follows:
D4-3, core backbone, salary range: 5 million +
D4-2, backbone, salary range: 3 million to 4.8 million
D4-1, supervisor, salary range: 2.3 million to 4 million
D3-3, team leader, salary range: 2 million to 2.8 million
D3-2, team leader, salary range: 1.4 million to 2 million
D2-2～3-1, working, salary range: 600,000 to 1.8 million
D2-1, fresh graduates, salary range: an average of 600,000, the highest can be close to 1 million
Mandatory single rest every week, performance is mandatory 271 distribution, annual promotion, twice salary increase, normal annual general increase of 30%, the bottom performance can also increase by about 10%. After the epidemic, it is difficult to meet such an increase even if you change jobs.
The voices of Pinduoduo employees forced by reality are also rising one after another.
This reflects the employees’ most direct thoughts, because the salary is high, other companies can’t take it, so employees generally have only three choices.
The first: they recognize the “duty” culture and also make money, so the turnover rate is naturally very low (“Congratulations, duty person, you have found your hometown”);
The second: they do not recognize the culture but value “money” more, then they succumb to the high salary and are also suppressed by this culture (either endure and be assimilated into the first type of people, or endure and erupt, these people may be the most dangerous and will erupt at certain times);
The third, those who really do not recognize the culture, find it difficult to accept after joining the company and will leave soon.
【Related reading: Heavyweight revelations, my three years in Pinduoduo】
Strictly prevent and control
Even if they pass the screening, Pinduoduo cannot fully trust its employees. His strong pressure management of employees is also well-known, and he prevents employees as if they were thieves. Let’s talk about some general methods first.
In order to ensure link security, Pinduoduo has strengthened the barriers between departments to a certain extent. All employees use nicknames, the internal IM does not have an organizational structure, and you need to be introduced by acquaintances to find the interface person; internal horizontal communication is also very rare, and meetings with more than 10 people will be criticized.
Actions are also restricted. Employees only have access to the floor card of their floor and cannot enter other floors; the office area has 360-degree surveillance cameras.
In addition, private social interaction is also strictly controlled. Employees are not allowed to build WeChat groups privately. Once found, HR will supervise the deletion and disbandment; they are not allowed to send any files on WeChat. If they do, HR will directly inquire and deduct their mobile phones; once suspected of leaking, HR will directly check employees’ WeChat and Maimai.
Maimai often has HR fishing posts. If they find any leaks, they will take them to talk and marginalize the employees.
According to insiders who broke the news to Big Factory Eating Melons, “Since the Wang Taixu incident, Maimai has been monitored by Pinduoduo. Any employee’s real-name or anonymous speech will be reported to supervisors at all levels, and inappropriate words will be given low performance ratings”. “HR will play the role of whistleblower on Maimai and contaminate the timeline with invalid information and fishing questions all year round. Now, except for discussing renting a house, selling second-hand goods, and asking when re (review, performance evaluation salary adjustment season), there is no valuable information on Maimai. Everyone knows it, and they won’t say anything important here.”
Leaving peels off a layer of skin
Those who are not adapted to Pinduoduo’s corporate culture and want to escape, it is not easy to get in, and it is also necessary to peel off a layer of skin to get out.
According to another insider, “Pinduoduo almost competes with the entire network. Those who look for opportunities are basically resigning or not planning to mix in the Internet.” In the case of competition lawsuits, Pinduoduo basically has no failures, and “former employees” will also be burdened with high liquidated damages.
Civil judgment of the first instance of the civil dispute between Zheng and Shanghai Xunduo Information Technology Co., Ltd.
Plaintiff: Zheng Defendant: Shanghai Xunduo Information Technology Co., Ltd.
Judgment: The plaintiff shall pay the defendant a competition restriction breach of contract penalty of 712,000 yuan within seven days from the date the judgment takes effect.
https://wenshu.court.gov.cn/website/wenshu/181107ANFZ0BXSK4/index.html?docId=atoDsMcIm6e3ESJZ4tPKASQnes/HOAr1OXZ+oxxMk0NyPlCBXm2y3vUKq3u+IEo4nBq7C8zRrkLuS1WOPVTrhfXfcglnjnPmoJbmuG6X/IsFUGoCoxEDhL1RcMq5aG8T
For all employees, HR supervises the withdrawal of all WeChat groups before they can leave; after initiating the resignation process, they must be desensitized for at least 2 weeks, and special positions even have a desensitization period of up to 3 months, and the internal system permissions are closed, and no salary is paid during this period. For employees with loans or family burdens, leaving is undoubtedly fatal.
For sensitive positions (including business analysis, products, and R&D), competition will be initiated; for highly sensitive personnel, HR will track the next company to be employed and determine that it is a non-competing enterprise before giving a certificate of resignation. Let the departing personnel move from “competition” to “unemployment”.
At the same time, Pinduoduo publicly announced the list of personnel who went to competitors internally, reminding employees to pay attention to prevention; externally, it uses the headhunters and HR resources and contacts in the industry to provide information on employees’ whereabouts and strictly investigate the competition personnel who go to competing companies.
Those who are suspected may be tracked and investigated by a third-party company by Pinduoduo. According to Big Factory Eating Melons, after a certain purchasing supervisor went to a competitor and was discovered by the company, the company arranged an investigation of competition and was strictly investigated for corruption by internal supervision. In the end, not only did he pay the competition breach of contract penalty, but he was also sent to prison.
Related cases are repeatedly publicized internally. According to internal employees, the purpose is to intimidate employees to be loyal to the company, otherwise, they will not hesitate to ruin your reputation.
In summary, the stability and silence of employees are the result of the management’s high-pressure management, binding high-salary incentives, and continuously screening cultural recognizers in daily work; the emphasis on the “duty” strong corporate culture continues to help business achieve its goals, which also confirms the effect of high-pressure management, thereby strengthening cognition and forming a closed loop.
The philosopher Hume once said: “Reason is the slave of emotion, and can have no other function than to serve and obey emotion.” Pinduoduo was able to rise rapidly in the gap between e-commerce giants, relying on “viral” fission and “extreme cost-effectiveness” of goods. People are complaining about its various “side doors”, while enjoying the lowest price in the entire network of “billions of subsidies”. The author believes that Pinduoduo will always be unable to resist the temptation to benefit from “side doors”, and will only practice more secretly and resolutely, just as Pinduoduo deeply understands that people cannot resist human nature.
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