Different cultures in China’s ‘Big Factories’

THEY may be alike in offering attractive benefits and salaries, but China’s ‘Big Factories’ – as their big tech firms are dubbed – differ in culture and work environment, creating vastly different experiences for employees and proving an important factor in jobseekers’ decisions.

Tech talent platform NodeFlair’s latest report showed that aside from salary packages, jobseekers’ decisions also take into account work environment, professional environment, and company culture. Some Chinese tech companies that have entered Singapore in recent years have adopted management styles that are closer to those of other multinationals, to become more attractive to talent.

Ye Jiahui (pseudonym), who left the public sector for a China tech firm, has experienced this keenly in her current position. Although her employer was a Chinese tech titan, its management and organisational structure was more global and localised to Singapore, resembling a global MNC in its operational model and company culture: “You don’t really feel you’re working in a Chinese company.”