Alibaba Partnership Rebukes DingTalk Management
In a highly unusual move, the Alibaba Partnership Committee has posted an internal message directly criticizing the management style of the DingTalk team, stating that their approach “is not what Alibaba culture should be.” The rare rebuke from Alibaba’s highest leadership body signals deepening concern over workplace culture at the enterprise communication platform, following a viral 75,000-character resignation essay that exposed systemic issues of overwork, management dysfunction, and product failure.
The Partnership Committee’s Intervention
On June 10, the Alibaba Partnership Committee published a post on the company’s intranet titled “Affection, Growth, and Integrity: That Is Alibaba Culture,” according to The Paper. The committee stated that “no matter the circumstances, no matter how urgent the task, the management style mentioned in the post regarding the DingTalk team should never occur.”
The post emphasized that “mutual respect, treating people as people, affection and integrity” form Alibaba’s cultural foundation and “must never change.” The committee further declared that “Alibaba’s future lies in innovation, but innovation has never relied on high pressure and mechanical execution, especially in the AI era.”
The Trigger: A 75,000-Word Essay
The catalyst for the intervention was a lengthy resignation essay titled “Inside DingTalk” (置身钉内), written by Teng Yaxin (work name: Yousu), a former core product manager for DingTalk’s flagship AI project “ONE.” Posted on Alibaba’s internal network around June 4, the essay quickly went viral both inside and outside the company, resonating deeply with workers across China’s tech industry.
Teng’s essay provided a detailed, chronological account of the ONE project — an AI-native strategic initiative launched with DingTalk version 8.0 in August 2025. The project, championed by DingTalk founder Chen Hang (work name: Wuzhao) upon his return to the company, aimed to create an AI-powered “tasks find people” workflow model. At its peak, ONE reached approximately 3 million daily active users.
However, the project was ultimately scaled back and dismantled after about ten months, with resources shifted to the “Wukong Agent” project. Teng’s account described a litany of problems: positioning confusion, design logic disconnects, CEO-driven decision-making described as “chef-style aesthetics,” and a high-pressure “daily pack” iteration cycle that created widespread burnout.
A Vice President’s Departure
The controversy deepened on June 8 when DingTalk Vice President and AI Product Head Ma Ruila confirmed his departure from Alibaba after three years, publishing his own essay titled “Outside DingTalk” (置身钉外) on his personal public account. As TMTpost reported, Ma wrote that he “increasingly found it difficult to confirm whether I was creating products or just consuming my body chasing an ever-accelerating rhythm.”
Ma’s essay validated the experience of burnout described in Teng’s account, framing it not as an isolated incident but as a systemic issue within DingTalk’s high-pressure culture.
The ONE Project: A Case Study in AI Product Failure
The ONE project’s trajectory offers a cautionary tale for AI product development in large organizations. According to analysis from The Paper, the project suffered from mission creep, attempting to simultaneously serve user needs, product innovation, organizational symbolism, and commercialization. The product’s positioning shifted significantly in mid-November 2025 toward a broader “Agent OS” narrative, triggering strong internal backlash.
Perhaps most ironically, the AI tool designed to reduce workplace burden ended up intensifying surveillance. Features like read-status synchronization created what Teng described as a “panopticon” effect, enabling managers to monitor employee responsiveness around the clock and blurring the boundaries between work and rest.
Broader Implications for Alibaba and China’s Tech Industry
The Partnership Committee’s public intervention is unprecedented in its explicitness. Rather than handling the matter quietly, Alibaba’s top leadership chose to publicly affirm the validity of employee complaints and explicitly state that DingTalk’s management violated the company’s cultural values.
This incident taps into a broader societal discussion in China about “neijuan” (内卷/involution) — intense, often counterproductive competition and overwork prevalent in Chinese workplaces, particularly in tech companies. In 2025, the Chinese government included “comprehensively rectifying involution-style competition” in its Government Work Report.
Notably, on the same day as Ma’s departure announcement, Alibaba merged its Tongyi Qianwen large model division with the Future Life Lab to form the Token Foundry business unit, directly under Group CEO Wu Yongming. This restructuring reflects a broader industry trend of consolidating AI capabilities under direct CEO oversight.
What’s Next
As of now, Chen Hang has not publicly responded to the Partnership Committee’s criticism. The key question facing Alibaba is whether this intervention will lead to concrete cultural reforms at DingTalk and across the broader organization, or whether it will remain a symbolic gesture. The incident also raises questions about DingTalk’s competitive position against rivals like ByteDance’s Feishu (Lark) and Tencent’s WeCom, both of which are aggressively investing in AI capabilities.
For China’s tech industry, the DingTalk saga serves as a powerful reminder that sustainable innovation requires more than just ambitious product visions — it demands a workplace culture that values people as much as technology.