Understanding that having connections means nothing happens, and having no connections means things are miserable

Witnessing the downfall of a company. If you are thinking about applying for a position in Account Management, I sincerely recommend that you stop and think carefully about what kind of work environment you want. Work is supposed to support a better life, but a brutal work environment can destroy everything and affect your physical, mental, and spiritual well-being.

Ever since SHOPLINE officially became the Digital APP division, all of the qualities that once made it good have completely disappeared. In the past, SHOPLINE was a company with clearly divided responsibilities. Every department understood its own responsibilities and tasks. Although there was some friction during the process, everyone knew it was for the ultimate goal: making product features better aligned with the market and serving more people. The process used to be: collecting feedback from the front line → evaluation → research → development → launch → training → corrections → updates. The front end and back end worked together in this way continuously. The most important part was requirements gathering. A product conference was held every quarter, and this was an extremely important process for both the product and sales sides. The product side needed to understand feedback from the sales side and current market needs, incorporating them into product development. AMs needed to understand the feature development process and how features worked so they could explain them to customers and report back, thereby maintaining customer relationships. Therefore, both the sales and product sides had to be very familiar with the product’s features. After all, a system provider revolves around its features. This approach had been in place for many years—until the Digital APP team arrived..... Why call them a team? Because they came one after another, and they were happy partners with one another. “The salary here is pretty good, and I can become a manager as soon as I arrive. Who wouldn’t want such a great deal?” And so began an astonishing journey.....

Major changes to the bonus system: This is what everyone cares about most! After the happy team arrived, they began their so-called overhaul. They decided that SHOPLINE was in a state of disrepair and needed them to save it and bring new hope to SHOPLINE. They were the light of righteousness! Under the banner of saving SHOPLINE and improving the company’s profits and losses, they planned to change SHOPLINE with three arrows: layoffs, cutting bonuses, and raising prices. As mentioned in the previous article, after you worked yourself to the bone for an entire quarter and worked hard to meet your renewal-rate and performance targets, you might think you could use the bonus to ease your financial pressure and prove your efforts had paid off. BUT—this is the BUT everyone hates in life—the happy partners directly announced at the end of the quarter that they were changing the bonus system and cutting your bonus. You originally thought the changes would not be applied retroactively, but unexpectedly even the quarter you had just completed was affected. You would suddenly begin to doubt yourself: What exactly was I doing last quarter? Everything you had planned was overturned immediately! Fine, you might think—the system has changed, so surely they will announce the new bonus system. But the new system was delayed indefinitely. During the process of asking about it, you would feel as if you were dealing with a government office: the answers were always “We’re still drafting/discussing/evaluating/reviewing it.” Before the new bonus system was announced, they also changed the year-end bonus. Although the year-end bonus was not very large to begin with, it was still something to hope for. Then they directly announced that the worst performers under the “roast chicken” system would receive no year-end bonus—correct, zero. Everything was decided directly, without any announcement, in a situation with no fairness, openness, or transparency whatsoever. On top of that, the “roast chicken” system was completely unclear. Even if you believed you had met the criteria, if the emperor did not want to give it to you, you could not have it!

Layoffs: The light of righteousness was coming to save SHOPLINE, ushering in an era of mass layoffs. To evade regulations, people were laid off in batches, avoiding the need to report them. Some departments were completely wiped out; others lost more than a dozen people in two months. You might ask why. Sorry, but to this day, no one knows. The happy partners said that if you were no good, then you were no good, and worked with HR to force you out. Even when HR knew there was no suitable reason and no proper PIP process, they still carried out this conduct together with the happy partners. As many senior employees and managers left, SHOPLINE remained in a “we’re not afraid” state. There was no reflection on why these experienced people were leaving in such numbers, nor any thought about why the company had become a training ground for talent. They believed that staff could be replaced quickly: “It’s a small matter. We’re just replacing people; this is normal in the new era.” If you complained to HR about all these unreasonable behaviors—even if you opened your heart and spoke sincerely—HR would join you in saying, “Yes, I told them they can’t do this, you know. Ah, how could this happen?” In the end, the response you received was: “Thank you for your youth and dedication. END.”

Leadership style: As mentioned earlier, these happy partners were parachuted in, one after another. In meetings, they directly told everyone, “Don’t think about trying to manipulate me. Don’t think about opposing me. I’ll find a way to destroy you.” This kind of opening set the stage for the tragedies that followed. The happy partners’ work style was to dodge, evade, and pass the buck—just don’t interrupt them while they were looking at stocks during work hours. Their leadership style was authoritarian. Regarding all business matters, they would say, “We need to focus on increasing merchants’ performance. For everything else, each department should take responsibility.” If another department failed to act, they would simply bang on the table. So, great, AMs became very relaxed: when merchants had problems, they were told to ask the back office. After merchants asked questions in group chats, the final answer was, “Please redirect this inquiry and ask the back office, because we need to focus on increasing performance.” When merchants provided feedback or requested a feature, the happy partners would say, “That’s not something we handle. Send it to the PM for evaluation, because we need to focus on increasing performance.” As an aside, the happy partners remain completely unfamiliar with the company’s product features, but in their world, they believe AMs are the ones who do not understand the features. By using their managerial authority to first declare that AMs were unfamiliar with the features, no one ever went on to consider whether the managers themselves understood them. As a result, many basic courses were arranged for AMs, while the happy partners focused on increasing performance. At this point, you might wonder how performance was supposed to increase. This was something everyone was very curious about: Was there some powerful strategy they could deploy? The so-called powerful strategy was to go out constantly, find merchant owners to have coffee with, and talk about the future. Then they would report back, “I’m very close with this owner. Whatever I tell them, they’ll do. Even if prices increase in the future, they’ll accept it, because we’re buddies.” During these meetings, merchants might ask what features would be available in the future, such as a CDP. Unfortunately, what were the happy partners supposed to do? They needed to focus on increasing performance. They would not know about those things. Thus, the so-called roadshow was full of amusing episodes.

After all this, why could the happy partners continue behaving this way? Because having connections means nothing happens, and having no connections means things are miserable. The former GM was not stripped of their authority; recently, they even formally gained control over the company’s business and product sides. Their power kept growing, allowing these happy partners to thrive. This is the Digital APP division. If you have recently been looking at SHOPLINE job openings, do not celebrate too soon and think, “Great, there are so many openings to choose from!” You should first consider why so many positions are being posted.

You may need a job, but I believe what you want even more is a stable life and work. Please think carefully!