Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

If they could do it, there was no reason they couldn’t do it themselves!

At that moment, Chen Yongming of OPPO and Huang Zhang of Meizu were thinking the exact same thing.

One company was developing Color OS, the other Flyme OS. They had both felt good about their progress, but a comparison with Aurora OS immediately revealed a stark gap.

In 2011, smartphones had little memory, suffered from severe data fragmentation, and lagged easily. For young users, this was a fatal flaw, and it would remain a point of criticism for over a decade.

Even later, when Android smartphones no longer lagged thanks to both system and hardware upgrades, most people still held onto the stereotype that they would start to slow down after two years of use.

Just as domestic phone manufacturers were scrambling to catch up to Aurora OS’s cleaning algorithm, the trend of flashing phone ROMs spread from the online world to the offline one.

Whether in first- and second-tier cities or small fourth- and fifth-tier towns, many digital accessory shops had recently added a new service: flashing phone operating systems for customers.

The fee for flashing a phone was 10 yuan, though less scrupulous owners charged 20.

Some were even bolder, charging as much as 50 yuan.

Although flashing tutorials were available on the official Orange website and the Orange Community forums, an information gap and a technical barrier still existed for many people, giving rise to a large number of flashers-for-hire.

Once Aurora OS downloads surpassed 10 million, Chen Yansen stopped paying attention to the numbers.

In mid-June, he spent all his days on the third floor of the new office, deeply involved in the exterior and structural design of the Orange Mobile Phone.

Cao Dahua was away overseeing work and had not yet returned.

He and Zuo Hongyu were old partners. After more than twenty days of running around, they had purchased most of the necessary equipment for the production lines, including assembly, packaging, and testing machinery.

With eight production lines running at full capacity, the annual output could reach 4.8 to 6 million phones.

The two were busy assembling the production lines, and they had also asked Zhou Jinling to bring the former HR manager from Ouhan Mobile Phone into the Orange Technology phone factory to prepare for the next phase of recruitment.

After all, this manager knew Huaqiang North like the back of her hand and had contact information for numerous recruitment agencies. While it might take others two or three months to hire 500 workers, she could get it done in a week.

When Chen Yansen heard Zuo Hongyu’s report, he didn’t question Zhou Jinling joining Orange Technology, since it was just for an ordinary worker’s position.

However, when the new HR manager planned to recruit workers through agencies, he immediately rejected the idea.

In any case, the hardware design for the Orange Mobile Phone wasn’t even finished yet, so there was plenty of time to hire directly. There was no need to use agency channels.

These days, some agencies signed contracts with factories where wages were first paid to the agency’s account before being distributed to the workers.

’The contracts for agency and outsourced employees aren’t under my company’s name. Can I still receive Human Dao Fire from them?’ Chen Yansen wondered.

’Most likely not!’

This was the main reason for his refusal!

Although Zuo Hongyu thought it would be troublesome after hearing Chen Yansen’s instructions, he still nodded in agreement.

”Oh, and one more thing. The factory’s daily working hours should be the same as yours—an eight-hour workday. Overtime pay must be calculated strictly according to labor laws,” Chen Yansen added just before hanging up.

”Huh!?” Zuo Hongyu was stunned for a moment. In his ten-plus years of working in Shencheng City, this was the first time he had ever encountered a boss like this.

The base salary for workers was 1,980 yuan a month for an eight-hour day (which included a two-hour lunch break). Weekday overtime would be paid at 1.5 times the hourly rate, with double pay on weekends and triple pay on public holidays.

”Boss, if we do this, some workers might literally work themselves to death for the overtime and refuse to go home,” Zuo Hongyu cautioned.

”Just set daily, weekly, and monthly caps on overtime hours. A good policy is only as good as its implementation.”

With that simple instruction, Chen Yansen hung up the phone.