Inside Pinduoduo: A Glimpse into the High-Pressure Management and Temptations of a Chinese E-commerce Giant

about Pinduoduo's corporate culture

In September last year, TEMU, a product developed by Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo, was launched in the United States. Since then, TEMU has consistently topped the charts of daily downloads in the US Android App Store and Google Play Store, surpassing Amazon and SHEIN. To date, TEMU has dominated the US app charts for 170 days, Canada for 120 days, Australia for 20 days, and New Zealand for 39 days.

In contrast to TEMU's performance, Pinduoduo, its parent company, was removed from Google's official Play Store in early March. Multiple media outlets reported that Pinduoduo exploited Android system vulnerabilities to obtain user privacy information, collect competitor app data, and prevent its own app from being uninstalled. The plugins enabling these features were hidden in seemingly legitimate files, such as those with Android system file names, to conceal their potentially malicious intentions.

This is not the first time Pinduoduo has been accused of using such tactics. Insiders claim that several business development (BD) promotional tools across different lines of business have also used similar methods, with related app icons altered to resemble those of mainstream apps, making them difficult to detect.

Pinduoduo has previously employed similar strategies in the community group buying market（allows a group of residents within the same apartment compound to get discounts by buying together in bulk）, where it emerged victorious and secured the largest market share.

About a year ago, in a county in northern China, Pinduoduo's secretive team of a hundred people implemented a cunning strategy. By using magical code within the app, they identified users who utilized competitors' community group buying apps and forced those phones to consume CPU resources, causing them to lag and preventing users from using competitors' services. Pinduoduo was able to win widespread praise in the region.

Even more bizarrely, the app also modified the phone's system statistics on power consumption to avoid detection and frame other apps. To this day, the code to modify power consumption statistics can still be found in Pinduoduo's malicious code revealed by industry experts.

After the exposure of these issues, Pinduoduo removed the vulnerabilities in its updated app version and disbanded the engineering and product teams responsible for developing them in early March. Most of the team members were transferred to the main site and TEMU, with only a few core members remaining to research more covert and difficult-to-prove vulnerabilities. According to insider leaks, the "hacker team," which once consisted of over a hundred people, has now been reduced to just 20 individuals focused on researching mobile backdoors.

Researchers claim that although the vulnerabilities have been removed, the underlying code still exists and can be reactivated at any time.

It is reported that Pinduoduo's IT department also carried out extensive data cleanups on company computers, with company computers being formatted directly and BYOD devices (personal computers used for work) having only company data removed. The suspected purpose of these measures is to eliminate as much evidence as possible before legal action and penalties can be enforced.

So, what factors have contributed to the stability and silence of such a dangerously edgy tech team? Pinduoduo's corporate culture plays a significant role.

1. Interviewers at all levels deliberately weed out those who like to speak out.

In addition to assessing the applicant's suitability for the position, interviewers also investigate whether the applicant frequently posts on public platforms like Maimai(like linkedin), Weibo(like twitter), and Zhihu(like quora) to evaluate whether the applicant could become a potential opinion leader.

For sensitive positions, they do not hire interns and, due to concerns about industrial espionage, do not hire those with backgrounds in competing companies. These sensitive positions are mostly filled by recent graduates or through internal training and promotion. To some extent, this ensures that employees have relatively clean social, family, and interpersonal resources.

2. High salary temptation

Money is the best tool for driving discourse.

The outside world knows very little about Pinduoduo's salaries and job levels, and the benchmarks on Maimai are 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:

Core backbone, salary range: 5 million RMB+

Backbone, salary range: 3 to 4.8 million RMB

Supervisor, salary range: 2.3 to 4 million RMB

Team leader, salary range: 2 to 2.8 million RMB

Sub-team leader, salary range: 1.4 to 2 million RMB

Employees, salary range: 600,000 to 1.8 million RMB

Recent graduates, salary range: Average 600,000 RMB, up to nearly 1 million RMB

Employees are required to take one day off per week, performance evaluations are distributed with a forced 271 system, promotions are granted once a year, and raises are given twice a year. The normal annual increase is 30%, and even those at the bottom of the performance scale can expect a raise of about 10%. After the pandemic, even job-hopping may not result in such salary growth.

3. Guarding against employees as if guarding against thieves

For the sake of security, Pinduoduo has strengthened barriers between departments to some extent. All employees have pseudonyms, and the internal IM system does not display the organizational structure. Interface personnel must be introduced by acquaintances, and there is very little cross-departmental communication. If a meeting is called with more than ten people, it will be criticized.

Movement is also restricted. Employees only have access to the floor they work on, and other floors are inaccessible. The office area is monitored with 360-degree cameras.

In addition, private social interactions are strictly controlled. Employees are not allowed to create WeChat groups, and if discovered, HR will supervise the deletion and dissolution of the group. Employees are not allowed to send any documents via WeChat, and if they do, HR will question them and confiscate their phones. If an employee is suspected of leaking information, HR will directly check their WeChat and Maimai accounts. Maimai often has HR phishing posts to identify leakers, who will then be brought in for questioning and marginalized.

4. It's not easy to get in, and it's not easy to leave without being stripped of layers

According to another insider, "Pinduoduo has almost all employees under non-compete agreements, and those looking for opportunities are basically either quitting without another job lined up or no longer planning to work in the internet industry." Pinduoduo has almost never lost a non-compete lawsuit, and former employees will undoubtedly have to pay high breach of contract penalties.

For all employees, HR must supervise the complete withdrawal from WeChat groups before they can resign. After initiating the resignation process, employees must go through a desensitization period of at least two weeks, with some special positions even having a desensitization period of up to three months. During this time, internal system access is revoked, and no salary is paid. For employees with loans or family responsibilities, resigning is undoubtedly a devastating blow.

For sensitive positions (including commercial, product, and R&D), non-compete agreements will be initiated. For highly sensitive employees, HR will track the next company they plan to join and only provide a resignation certificate if the company is confirmed to be non-competitive. This forces resigning employees to go from "non-compete" to "unemployed."

Final Thoughts

Employee stability and silence are the results of the management team's high-pressure approach, which is combined with high salary incentives and a continuous selection of employees who identify with the company culture in their daily work. The strong corporate culture emphasizing "doing one's duty" helps the business achieve its goals, confirms the effectiveness of high-pressure management, and reinforces the closed-loop of perception.

The philosopher David Hume once said, "Reason is the slave of the passions and can pretend to no other office than to serve and obey them." PDD's rapid rise in the crowded e-commerce market relies on its "viral" growth and "extreme cost-performance" products. People complain about its various "tricks" while enjoying the "billion-dollar subsidies" and the lowest prices on the entire network. The author believes that PDD will never be able to resist the temptation of benefiting from these "side doors" and will only practice them more covertly and resolutely, just like PDD deeply understands people's inability to resist human nature.