Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

Late August, on the fourth floor of the Xuyuan library.

From the glass curtain wall, one could overlook most of Xucheng Academy.

Near Pearl Lake, Liu Xi, the basketball courts, and the gymnasium, freshmen gathered in twos and threes. They were filled with beautiful aspirations for university life, eagerly exploring the campus.

Chen Yansen put his phone away.

Five minutes earlier, he had made separate calls to Zhou Hongyi and Lei Yijun.

Both had readily agreed and promptly deleted their bill of materials cost calculations.

They could afford to slight Yu Chendong, but they truly didn’t dare to cross Chen Yansen.

Zhou Hongyi knew full well that both the hardware and software for the 360 Mobile Phone relied on support from Orange Technology. If he tried to go it alone without Chen Yansen, the 360 Mobile Phone wouldn’t be selling millions of units a year.

Lei Yijun, on the other hand, was wary of Senlian Capital’s overall strength. Faced with a rival who possessed sales channels, R&D, and production capabilities, he worried even in his sleep that Chen Yansen would come after him.

Moreover, Xiaomi had purchased patent licenses from Orange Technology for a memory-cleaning algorithm, a battery management system, and a speech analysis and voice development toolkit. Without Chen Yansen’s technical support, it was uncertain whether the Xiaomi 1S and Xiaomi MI2 could maintain their bestseller status.

Turning around, Chen Yansen returned to the reading room. He leaned back in his chair and casually picked up a copy of the *Handbook of Batteries*, absorbing specialized knowledge about the subject.

He flipped through the thousand-page reference book from cover to cover in just five minutes.

It wasn’t until noon that Chen Yansen stood up, returned the stack of books on batteries, materials, and packaging technology to their proper places, and casually departed from the library.

Strolling down Xue Lin Road, the lush plane tree branches overhead cast a cool shade on both sides of the street, where the various academic departments had set up their orientation booths.

As Chen Yansen passed the telecom company’s booth for campus SIM cards, Tang Zhenzhe’s English vocabulary progress was still stuck on the word ’abandon’.

Returning to the faculty apartment building, Chen Yansen got into the driver’s seat of his Aston Martin Rapide and sped off toward the Science and Technology Park.

’The food at the Xuyuan cafeteria is hard to stomach; I’d rather go to the Science and Technology Park for lunch.’

「Meanwhile.」

Yanjing, No. 6 Wangjing East Road, Meituan Headquarters.

Wang Xin sat at his desk, his eyes glued to the core metrics for Meituan’s delivery department. It had been twelve days since the takeout service went live.

The number of registered riders had grown from 0 to 3,270, with about 1,000 daily active users—less than a third of the total.

However, the performance of the part-time riders in terms of delivery speed, on-time rate, rider satisfaction, and capacity utilization was unsatisfactory.

Orders within a 3-kilometer radius usually took 45 minutes to deliver, with an overall average delivery time of about 55 minutes. The late delivery rate was 9.75%, close to one-tenth.

But the crucial problem was that Kuai Pao’s baseline for a late delivery was 29 minutes, while Meituan’s was 40 minutes. If they used the same standard, Meituan’s late delivery rate would exceed 50%.

As a result, most users who took advantage of the first-order discount on Meituan Takeout immediately uninstalled the app afterward.

Users might tolerate a slow delivery for a free meal, but when it was their own money on the line, they would naturally choose a platform with faster delivery and better service.

This showed that Meituan’s riders were unfamiliar with the road conditions, the order dispatch system was flawed, and their delivery capacity had not yet been fully unleashed.

”Huiwen, we need to tighten the penalties for rider management. Increase the security deposit and the deductions for late deliveries. If a rider repeatedly refuses orders, lower their account priority and reduce their order-taking limit. And for anyone with a bad customer service attitude, ban their account immediately!”

A cold glint flashed in Wang Xin’s eyes behind his glasses as he gave the order with a grim expression.

”Doing this will likely backfire and push all the experienced riders to Kuai Pao.”

Wang Huiwen’s brow furrowed as he voiced his opposition.

”There are at least thirty to forty thousand gig workers in Yanjing. If they don’t want to do it, plenty of others will!” Wang Xin said flatly.

This was identical to the ’human wave’ tactic used by the street promotion teams: build up numbers first, then win through an advantage of scale.

”Alright, I understand.” Wang Huiwen nodded, not continuing to argue.

’On important decisions, you can express a different opinion, but once the boss emphasizes it a second time, you can only offer unconditional support.’

Wang Huiwen understood the art of workplace survival. Since Wang Xin had made the final call, his job was simply to implement it.

At 3 p.m., after a mandatory update, several new penalties were added to the Meituan rider app, ranging from a minimum of 50 yuan to a maximum of 200 yuan.

”Fuck! I quit! Meituan’s GPS is inaccurate, and its route planning is garbage. You think we’re late on purpose?”

”Who gives a fuck! I’ll stick it out for another month to get familiar with the layouts of the nearby residential complexes and malls, then I’m going straight to Kuai Pao for an interview.”

”Hey guys, what are the benefits for Kuai Pao riders really like? I’ve only heard they have a base salary and social security, but isn’t the pay per order lower than Meituan’s?”

After the lunch rush, a few Meituan riders leaned against their Electric Vehicles, taking a short break, smoking and shooting the breeze.

”I interviewed there last week. They said I wasn’t familiar enough with the roads, but I made sure to ask about the salary, benefits, and welfare system,” a young man of seventeen or eighteen said with a grin.

Having just graduated from high school this year, he had only scored a little over 160 on his college entrance exams, not even meeting the threshold for a junior college. So, he had just gone to work at an electronics factory.

But life as a factory dog, with two rotating shifts and a minimum of 12 hours of work a day, made him realize how hard it was to earn money. He soon quit and ran, unhesitatingly joining the army of delivery riders.