DingTalk is China's answer to Slack -- and the stuff of office nightmares

Alibaba’s office tool has been called a weapon of micromanagement, but China’s work culture plays into its unpopularity

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DingTalk is China's answer to Slack -- and the stuff of office nightmares

Masha Borak

Published: 11:05pm, 29 May 2020Updated: 11:05pm, 29 May 2020

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

“From its first day, DingTalk has been an iron thorn whip. It turns employees into instruments, it’s a tool of enslavement.”

Based on these harsh words alone, you might think DingTalk is a medieval torture device deployed by corporations to punish employees for missing deadlines. But this is actually one of many negative comments left on a local forum describing one of China’s most widely used work communication platforms. It’s used the same way in the country as Slack is in the West.

But just as Slack has been criticized for allowing work to invade all hours of your day, DingTalk’s position in China has made it something of a lightning rod for frustration over how these tools have been used both for work and education. But is DingTalk a product of China’s relentless work culture, or is it an enabler?

Made by ecommerce giant Alibaba, DingTalk describes itself as a tool for enhancing remote work efficiency, and it’s been around since 2014. But until this year, most people didn’t have much of a need for remote work tools. In 2019, less than 1% of China’s population telecommuted for work, according to analytics firm Qianzhan.

(Abacus is a unit of the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba.)

Usage only started to surge this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic, when millions of people across China started working from home during the country’s months-long shutdown. DingTalk quickly became part of daily life for many white-collar workers, who often found themselves hunched over their kitchen tables trying to avoid distractions from family, flatmates and pets.

In February, DingTalk usage surged 350%. By March, the platform had 155 million daily active users on workdays. But many of those users haven’t been pleased with the DingTalk experience.