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Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

reuters.com

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Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#51

Post by fancl20 »

resolutebat wrote: post #26
throwaway4good wrote: post #10

I was listening to Nicolai Tangen's interview with Alibaba co-founder Joe Tsai: https://www.nbim.no/en/publications/podcast/alibaba-co-found... Alibaba co-founder and Chair: China, Jack Ma, AI and basketball And while smart and sympathetic, I cannot help to think that Alibaba is a company of the past belonging to a time of a certain US-China order that is no more. The future of Chinese tech belongs to companies that…

Alibaba was fast moving, fearless and aggressively deep tech, you don't survive the world of Chinese e-commerce if you aren't. They were decapitated and neutered by the Chinese state when they started to show signs of upending the existing order, specifically building a competing financial system (Alipay/Ant) and daring to call out Chinese economic orthodoxy.

From what I heard from engineers working for Alibaba, my understanding is that they are fighting with their own bureaucracy structure for quite long time to make any effective decision, at same time facing fierce compitition from JD and PDD. At some stage they released new prodect to compete with PDD every few months while still keep losing in their core e-commerce bussiness till now. All these were before government cracking down their financial business.

Most of the people I know in the industry think Alibaba is one of the least efficient big tech company in China compare to e.g Tencent, Baidu, Bytedance, Huawei. They all have somewhat similar bureaucracy burden as big corp but not at the level of Alibaba. Their problem is much complex than pointing the finger at Chinese government to explain everything.

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#52

Post by ametrau »

fancl20 wrote: post #51
resolutebat wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alibaba was fast moving, fearless and aggressively deep tech, you don't survive the world of Chinese e-commerce if you aren't. They were decapitated and neutered by the Chinese state when they started to show signs of upending the existing order, specifically building a competing financial system (Alipay/Ant) and daring to call out Chinese economic orthodoxy.

From what I heard from engineers working for Alibaba, my understanding is that they are fighting with their own bureaucracy structure for quite long time to make any effective decision, at same time facing fierce compitition from JD and PDD. At some stage they released new prodect to compete with PDD every few months while still keep losing in their core e-commerce bussiness till now. All these were before government…

Is that why the search has gone to absolute crap? I’ve switched to Amazon basically for everything I used to get from AE because of the anti search / advertising search. I’d rather pay more and not waste the time.

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#53

Post by ametrau »

slowmotiony wrote: post #17
jfim wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have examples of such companies? I'm curious to see which industries they were in.

The boss of ARM China was fired by the company board, decided he has a different opinion on the matter, changed the locks to the office and just stopped communicating with the rest of the company. The chinese courts sided with him, then when SoftBank acquired them, the company staff just left, took all the IP and started a new company. https://www.semianalysis.com/p/the-semiconductor-heist-of-th... https://www.datace…

To be fair it wasn’t actually retarded because no one could foresee China stealing arm’s IP.

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#54

Post by fancl20 »

ametrau wrote: post #52
fancl20 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I heard from engineers working for Alibaba, my understanding is that they are fighting with their own bureaucracy structure for quite long time to make any effective decision, at same time facing fierce compitition from JD and PDD. At some stage they released new prodect to compete with PDD every few months while still keep losing in their core e-commerce bussiness till now. All these were before government…

Is that why the search has gone to absolute crap? I’ve switched to Amazon basically for everything I used to get from AE because of the anti search / advertising search. I’d rather pay more and not waste the time.

I heard they switched to fully use a recommending system for search (don't know how it works today but feels like that's still the case), which means there is there is no real search happening and you query is used as a hint, not a search query (which relativeness matters more).

At that time PDD is promoting the idea you buy what they think you will buy. PDD's search is barely functioning at that time and their bussiness model is solely relying on recommending system.

Though I'm not sure how much Alibaba's decision is affected by PDD because the story I heard is more driven by their internal politics. I feel like that's really a weird product decision for Alibaba and to me doesn't make a lot of sense.

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#55

Post by red-iron-pine »

maxglute wrote: post #29
55555 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a phenomenon we see in the entire developed world, or possibly the entire world, including in the west and Japan (NEETs, Hikikomori).

Tanping is just slacking. Tanping kids still work. But it's still the same phenonmenon as the developed world, PRC single kids who grew up with silver spoon and high expectations realizing that they're pretty mid, and can't out compete their "betters". So they slack and take life easier. It's basically the normal distribution in every western workplace. Workers with prospects still grind to work their way up the (inv…

the difference is that there isn't 1 billion people in the west -- US (330M) + Europe (500M) still isn't close. lots of space in the US to move to, also.

and the ability to be extremely vocal about it -- which could get you sent to jail or otherwise ruin your life via social credit scores.

point is, the kids in China have it notably rough.

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#56

Post by red-iron-pine »

gmerc wrote: post #49
roenxi wrote: post #2

Just going by appearances, the story at the time looked a lot like Jack Ma fleeing the country for a bit. One minute he was disturbing the tranquillity in China then the next he was picking up some Zen among the cherry blossoms. It is interesting to compare-and-contrast Jack Ma and Elon Musk who seems to me the nearest analogue in the US. How their host countries treat them says a lot about the real cultural differen…

It’s safe to build wealth and become untouchable and unaccountable in the US, all the way to attempting a coup

sounds like the best possible endorsement to me

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#57

Post by red-iron-pine »

WrongAssumption wrote: post #34
maxglute wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is safe to build wealth in the US It's safe to build OBSCENE wealth in the states. It's safe to build wealth in PRC, plenty of 10-100 millionaires. It's also safe to build OBSCENE wealth in PRC, but it comes with more political caveats. Like not trying circumvent regulators by launching irresponsible fintech. Which system is better depends on how much you value checking billionaires.

There are over 100 billionaires in the Chinese parliament, the US congress has zero billionaires.

easier to just bribe them then have to show up and do congressional shit.

"why buy the cow for the milk?" etc. etc.

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#58

Post by red-iron-pine »

ametrau wrote: post #53
slowmotiony wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The boss of ARM China was fired by the company board, decided he has a different opinion on the matter, changed the locks to the office and just stopped communicating with the rest of the company. The chinese courts sided with him, then when SoftBank acquired them, the company staff just left, took all the IP and started a new company. https://www.semianalysis.com/p/the-semiconductor-heist-of-th... https://www.datace…

To be fair it wasn’t actually retarded because no one could foresee China stealing arm’s IP.

is that sarcasm? China and stealing IP are like cookies and milk

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#59

Post by appplication »

amou234 wrote: post #5

The last blurb in the article is the most damning part. "Ma spends much of his time abroad, especially in Japan where he is a visiting professor at Tokyo College, a research institute run by the University of Tokyo" Jack Ma has no hope for China, as evident by his action. The long internal post may have been requested by the Chinese government, or his staff, to somehow rally Alibaba's failing image. But Jack sees the…

Of course he has no hope. I recall he suddenly disappeared for a long time after criticizing the Chinese government. It seems entirely possible he was held against his will for forced reeducation. Hard to believe in the country that does that to you.

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#60

Post by em500 »

Dalewyn wrote: post #23
55555 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a phenomenon we see in the entire developed world, or possibly the entire world, including in the west and Japan (NEETs, Hikikomori).

No, NEET stands for "Not Employed, Educating, or Training" and Hikikomori translates literally to "Pulling Back In". Both phenomena result in the individual abdicating his productivity in deference to pursuits such as resolving crises and introspection. Tang Ping on the other hand is a phenomenon where the individual only produces as much as his environment demands of him. If he contracted with his employer to work 9…

This goes by many different names in many different countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule
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