A 75,000-word internal manifesto titled "Inside DingTalk" has sent shockwaves through Alibaba’s corporate headquarters, exposing a culture of grueling overtime and performative management. The document, authored by project member Teng Yaxin, deconstructs the rise and fall of DingTalk’s flagship AI project, "ONE," painting a harrowing picture of a team pushed to the brink of physical collapse for zero market gain.
Among the most damning revelations are descriptions of the "Wangshu Action," a directive where employees were forced to monitor the office lights of rival firm Feishu. Managers reportedly mandated that DingTalk staff could not leave their desks as long as the lights remained on at their competitor's headquarters. This fear-based management was further enforced by "Golden Snitch" patrols—supervisors who physically monitored workstations to penalize any employee seen using social media or non-work applications.
While employees were fainting from exhaustion—including the author herself, who was twice hospitalized—the actual product development was reportedly stagnant. Insiders described a environment where "acting" took precedence over ability, and where critical product decisions were dictated by the "chef-style" whims of executives rather than market feedback. The result was an endless loop of PPT revisions and visual tweaks that systematically drained the organization’s creative energy.
This crisis of management stands in stark contrast to the emerging "Hive Mind" model seen in Silicon Valley’s AI frontrunners like Anthropic. While DingTalk was obsessed with physical presence, Anthropic has streamlined its operations to allow products to move from conception to launch in as little as ten days. By leveraging AI to handle 90% of coding and routine tasks, these firms are out-iterating legacy giants with a fraction of the headcount and none of the bureaucratic friction.
The fallout has forced a rare public admission of failure from the Alibaba Partner Committee, which issued a statement criticizing the "Wangshu" style of management as a violation of the company’s core values. The committee emphasized that mutual respect and "treating people as humans" should be the foundation of their culture. However, the scandal suggests a deep-seated generational gap in management philosophy that may be difficult to bridge through internal memos alone.
Ultimately, the DingTalk saga serves as a cautionary tale for the AI era: when a company spends 80% of its energy on internal reporting and surveillance, it has already lost the innovation race. As AI-native startups replace middle management with automated workflows and mission-driven cultures, legacy tech giants like Alibaba risk becoming bloated bureaucracies that excel at checking boxes while failing to build the future.