dhibooks Chapter 481 Salary Increase
Chapter 481 Salary Increase
At nine o'clock the next morning, a cardboard box appeared next to the time clock at the front desk of TUTU Technology's Shanghai headquarters.
The box wasn't big, made of brown corrugated cardboard. Inside, there were already a few employee badges, two boxes of unused business cards, a half-dead succulent, and a bag of opened cookies.
Next to the box stood a short boy wearing a gray windbreaker, holding a cell phone in his hand, looking down as he replied to a message.
The young woman at the front desk knew him.
He worked in the operations department for eight months. He was usually quiet, sat in the last row during meetings, and never spoke up.
After replying to the message, he put his phone in his pocket, bent down to straighten the succulent in the box, and then carried the box out.
He paused as he passed the front desk, as if he wanted to say something. He moved his lips but then closed them again. In the end, he just nodded and pushed the door open to leave.
The glass door swayed twice behind him and then closed automatically.
The young woman at the front desk glanced down at the potted green ivy next to the time clock that hadn't been taken away, wiped the leaves with a cloth, and said nothing.
This is the fifth one from yesterday to today.
The atmosphere in the break room was even more somber than before.
There were four people in front of the coffee machine. No one spoke; the only sounds were the gurgling of the water coming out of the machine and the soft clinking of the cups against the sides.
Standing at the front was a short-haired girl, holding a cup in her hand, staring blankly out the window.
The bespectacled boy behind her spoke first, his voice low as if afraid of being overheard: "When I went to complete the formalities just now, I saw another resignation form posted in HR. This is the sixth one this week."
"That's the seventh one," a tall, thin man in a plaid shirt chimed in. "This morning, one from the technical department also left. He arrived an hour earlier than us, packed his things, and left without even saying goodbye."
"How many people left?"
"Including today, that makes eleven. They're all entry-level staff: operations, customer service, testing, and one from the new media team. Two left from the tech department, but they were both new hires who had just been promoted not long ago."
The short-haired girl pulled the coffee cup from under the machine, but didn't drink it; she just held it to warm her hands. "Have you heard? President Lu said in a meeting the other day that he wants to expand recruitment. We're almost losing all our users, and the money in our accounts is dropping, yet he still wants to expand. I just don't understand, does he really have a trump card or is he just putting on an act?"
The bespectacled boy glanced around and lowered his voice even further: "I heard from Lao Feng's people that President Lu mentioned at the meeting that he has a project that's bigger than all the current products combined. He said it's something that could change the industry landscape. But when asked what it is, he wouldn't say, just that the timing isn't right."
"Isn't this just empty promises? My former boss always said the same thing when he was laying off people—'Hang in there a little longer, the light is just ahead.' Then the next day he would cut the entire department."
"It's hard to say. Lu Ran is different from our previous bosses. He has indeed accomplished many things that others thought were impossible. When League of Legends first came out, no one was optimistic about it. Before Minecraft was released, many people said it was a niche game. CrossFire was criticized for an entire page. But they all succeeded in the end, didn't they?"
"That was before. Now, Tencent, Shanda, NetEase, and Weibo are working together to block us. Before, it was one against one; now it's four. And Tencent is blocking the WeChat login interface, which is the channel through which 70% of our users come in. No matter how strong your technology or how good your product is, what's the use if users can't even log in?"
The man in the plaid shirt sighed and scratched the back of his head. "I just feel... if President Lu really had something up his sleeve, why didn't he bring it out sooner? Why wait until the company is in such a state before revealing his trump card? Isn't that just deliberately making us anxious and worried?"
"Maybe he himself isn't sure either. He's just making a boast to reassure the troops. Whether it will actually work out is another matter."
The discussion in the break room continued for a while, and the group exchanged a few more whispered words about the information they had gathered.
Some people have heard that Shanda has already started contacting several mid-level managers at TUTU, some have heard that NetEase has contacted headhunting firms to give priority to hiring former TUTU employees, and some have found a screenshot of a news article on their phones, saying that a new analysis article was published on Weibo's gaming section, titled "TUTU's Winter: The Atypical Collapse of a Star Company".
None of them clicked to read it, but just by looking at the title, they knew the content wouldn't be anything good.
The coffee gradually cooled down, and no one drank it. The short-haired girl poured the cold coffee from her cup into the sink, rinsed the cup, put it back on the shelf, and turned to leave the break room.
At 2 p.m. that day, another person left the operations department.
She's a young woman who's only been here for four months, doing data analysis. She usually performs well, her weekly reports are neat and tidy, and her colleagues have a good opinion of her.
She didn't take a cardboard box when she left; she just carried a backpack containing her laptop and some personal belongings.
She ran into Lao Feng in the corridor.
Old Feng had just come out of the meeting room with a document in his hand when he saw her walking towards the door with her bag on her back, and he paused slightly.
"Gone?" he asked.
The young woman stopped, hesitated for a moment, and said, "Brother Feng, I'm sorry. My family wants me to go back, saying it's not safe around here."
Old Feng looked at her, his expression neither angry nor disappointed, only silent for two or three seconds: "Your family is right. TUTU is indeed unstable right now. If you stay here and live in constant fear, it's better to leave sooner rather than later."
The young woman was taken aback, as if she hadn't expected him to say that.
She opened her mouth as if to say something, but in the end she just nodded, turned around and walked quickly towards the door.
The glass door opened and closed, and sunlight flashed across the strap of her backpack.
Old Feng stood there for two seconds, then turned around and continued walking towards the office.
He paused when he reached Lu Ran's office door and knocked on the open door.
Lu Ran was sitting behind his desk looking at his computer screen.
The screen displays an employee turnover statistics table, which lists the names, positions, length of service, and reasons for leaving the company.
Most people wrote "personal development" or "family reasons" in the reason column, with only a few checking "not optimistic about the company's prospects".
"Two more left today." Old Feng walked in and sat down opposite him. "Including the ones before, eleven have left in the past week. There are still three going through the process, and HR said it should be completed as early as tomorrow."
"Who are they?"
"Five people left from operations, two from customer service, one from testing, one from new media, and two from technical support. The two in the tech department were both new hires who had just been promoted and were still in their probation period. None of the core staff have left. On the R&D side, Lao Wang and Zhao Yiming are still overseeing the code, and no one from Chen Mo's channel team has submitted their resignations."
Lu Ran leaned back in his chair and closed the statistics table: "Eleven, all of them were entry-level employees. They're gone, which saves us the trouble of layoffs."
Old Feng looked at him: "Aren't you worried?"
"What are you worried about? Are you worried they'll take company secrets and defect to Tencent? They don't even know what company secrets look like."
"But the news doesn't sound good. Eleven people leaving in a week will soon lead people in the industry to say that TUTU is going to collapse. Those partners who were already hesitant will become even more hesitant, and core employees who didn't intend to leave will start to waver."
"So we need to do something to make those who want to stay even more determined to stay." Lu Ran closed his laptop, sat up straight, and said, "Old Feng, what do you think the effect would be if we gave everyone a raise right now?"
Old Feng was taken aback: "A raise? Now? The money in the account is enough to last for a while, but that's based on the current scale. If we add the new employees we've recruited, plus a raise for everyone, the monthly expenses will rise to a level that's almost beyond the capacity of our current cash reserves."
"So, at this critical juncture, what do you think would be most reassuring? Sending out a 10,000-word internal letter, holding a three-hour all-hands meeting, having department heads take turns giving speeches to mobilize everyone—we've done all of these things before. They only last for three days, and once they're done, everyone's worries remain. What could be more reassuring than simply depositing extra money into everyone's salary accounts?"
Old Feng paused for a moment, then tapped his fingers on the armrest of his chair: "That makes sense. But you have to think it through. If the user data doesn't improve for a long time, this increase will become a continuous financial burden, and you won't be able to reverse it later."
"If user data doesn't improve over a long period, then TUTU is already doomed, and this salary increase is irrelevant. Conversely, if this salary increase allows the remaining staff to hold on for a few more months until the situation turns around, then this money has been spent on the most crucial thing."
Old Feng sat in the chair for a while longer, then finally stood up and said, "Okay, I support it," before pushing open the door and leaving.
He paused at the door, then turned back and added, "If HR asks, just say it was me who agreed to sign."
Lu Ran watched him walk out, then turned the computer back on.
The resignation statistics table was still on the screen, with the top row showing the total number of resignations this week—eleven people.
He stopped looking at it, closed the spreadsheet, opened a new document, and typed a line: "Employee Salary Increase Plan - Implementation Version".
He wrote a key point below: the basic salary of all employees will be increased by 10%, effective this month, and the difference for the first three weeks will be paid retroactively.
A note was added afterward: No performance evaluation thresholds, no conditions attached. Everyone gets a raise, regardless of how much they work.
After finishing writing it, he reviewed it again, found no problems, saved the document, and sent it to the HR director, adding: "Send an email to all employees first thing tomorrow morning. Also, have each team leader give a verbal explanation at the morning meeting, so that employees don't feel that this is some kind of handout or a test."
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