ByteDance Cancels its “Big & Small Weeks” Work Schedule
A recent hot topic in the Internet industry is that Douyin and TikTok parent company ByteDance cancelled its big and small weeks work schedule. Big and small week work schedules are quite common at many internet companies in China. It means that two weeks of each month, employees have to work for 6 days a week.
While this news is not necessarily a consumer trend, a person’s job and work environment have a large impact on everything else in their life, from what they purchase, to what they do in their free time, and how much free time they have!
Working for Internet Giants Has Become Many People’s Goal
Working for these Internet big names such as Meituan, ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent is something that most people in China, especially young graduates, would love to have on their resumes. Even internship experience at these companies will make you stand out among the competition.
Not only job seekers, when it comes to blind dates, or when parents are rushing to introduce their children to other parents to seek potential marriage chances, working at these companies often impresses people.
Big Internet companies often offer better salaries, and they have all sorts of fancy facilities to please employees, such as canteens, gyms or leisure areas. They also have yummy afternoon tea to feed employees’ stomachs. These benefits often show up on social media, especially on Little Red Book, making viewers envious.
Yet Working for These Big Companies Like Bytedance Isn’t All Sunshine and Rainbows
Like the old saying says, every coin has two sides. Though working for these Internet giants does gain you glory and a higher salary, it has many downsides that smaller companies are doing better at. Working overtime every week is only one of the issues.
- Your Scope of Work is Very Limited
Because there are so many employees, you’re essentially h a cog in a wheel. It’s like a factory, only white collar. You are hired to do one thing, and just need to do that one thing well. For some people, this is a good thing as they will do less work and face less challenges.
But trust me, just because you finish your work doesn’t mean you can go home, especially if everyone else is still working. Plus sitting at the office not doing anything feels quite strange, and you may want to learn new skills and build up more personal connection through projects. But you won’t have the chance to be in charge of a whole project, and instead, you are only responsible for some paperwork.
Things could be worse for interns. Their daily tasks might just be ordering milk teas and booking meeting rooms. What they can gain from the internship is a nice title in their resumes.
- Lower chances to meet the management team
Because in those big companies, your supervisors have more supervisors above. It would be hard for you to meet them personally, not to mention the big boss of those Internet companies.
This is not a big issue for many people. But if employees get the chance to see the top management team, they may have more sense of belonging to the company, and they can directly express their needs without passing through several people.
- More bureaucratic
More employees tends to mean more processes. Something simple that should just be a short conversation on WeChat or Teams, must be filed with paperwork to get approved. Also, there are endless meetings. Daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly meetings. Sometimes, lunchtime is being converted into meetings.
Why Some of ByteDance’s Employees Are Not Happy About the Cancellation
Despite all of this, yes, there are people who want to work for extra hours, even on weekends.
Having this big and small weeks policy allows ByteDance’s employees to have subsidy, and it was a generous amount. If you earn 40k RMB a month, working an extra day on weekends will help you get 3,600 RMB. In small Internet companies, the amount is likely only a day’s salary at most.
Money is one thing, but the key and most important thing is that the workload is still there. If there is no decrease in the workload, that means employees still need to work extra hours to complete their tasks. And this time, it is without being paid for that extra time.
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