For over a decade, Chen Hang—widely known by his alias 'Wuzhao'—was the spiritual and literal architect of DingTalk, Alibaba’s dominant enterprise collaboration platform. But on June 11, just 437 days after he was brought back to lead a strategic pivot into Artificial Intelligence, Chen was ousted. His departure marks the first time in Alibaba’s history that a senior executive has been removed following an internal whistleblower’s critique, signaling a profound shift in how the tech giant balances high-pressure productivity with the creative demands of the AI age.
The catalyst for this seismic change was a 75,000-word internal post titled 'Inside the Ding,' authored by product manager Yousu. The essay pulled back the curtain on a culture of 'organizational exhaustion,' where teams were subjected to extreme '9106' schedules (9 a.m. to 10 p.m., six days a week) and rituals like the 'Wangshu Action,' which prohibited staff from leaving the office until the lights at rival Feishu’s building went dark. This culture of 'upward management' and performative overtime resonated so deeply across the company that Alibaba’s partnership committee issued a rare public rebuke, stating that such management was 'not what Alibaba culture should be.'
Despite boasting 800 million users and 260 million organizational accounts, DingTalk has struggled to convert its massive scale into comparable revenue. While it remains the market leader in China, ByteDance’s rival platform, Feishu, has achieved significantly higher commercial efficiency. Feishu, with only 15% of DingTalk's user base, reportedly earns 70% of DingTalk's annual recurring revenue. This financial pressure, combined with the existential threat posed by AI Agents that could automate the very communication tasks DingTalk facilitates, created a sense of desperate urgency that ultimately turned toxic under Chen’s leadership.
Taking the helm is 32-year-old Chen Yusen, a technical prodigy and founder of a cybersecurity firm acquired by Alibaba. Unlike his predecessor, who relied on the 'wolf culture' of the early mobile internet era, Chen Yusen represents a new breed of leadership focused on 'AI-native' agility. His appointment suggests that Alibaba acknowledges a hard truth: winning the AI race requires intellectual exploration and aesthetic refinement, qualities that are often stifled by a management style that treats human engineers like parts in a high-speed assembly line.
This transition at DingTalk serves as a microcosm for the broader Chinese tech sector. As the era of rapid user acquisition ends and the era of AI-driven efficiency begins, the old '996' playbook is proving obsolete. The success of DingTalk’s next phase will likely depend on whether it can move beyond simply 'connecting people' to becoming an operating system for autonomous AI agents, a task that requires inspiration rather than just perspiration.