EAST BUY's high salaries have little to do with NEW ORIENTAL employees. Despite being under Yu Minhong's leadership, the average annual salaries differ by hundreds of thousands of yuan.
The fallout from the "Antarctica Letter" incident continues. On December 4, a course consultant from NEW ORIENTAL in Hangzhou posted a lengthy complaint on DingTalk, criticizing excessive overtime, unrealistic targets, and chaotic workloads.
"If a company continuously exploits you, it is not a good company," the consultant wrote, quoting Yu Minhong's words from his Antarctica letter. However, the post was swiftly deleted, and the account was blocked.
Just two days earlier, Yu Minhong had claimed, "NEW ORIENTAL has never lost its temper with ordinary employees." Meanwhile, EAST BUY's average annual salary of 830,000 yuan has been widely discussed, yet the reality of workplace tensions is becoming evident. The cycle of "disordered distribution—team instability" seems poised to repeat.
After 32 years, Yu Minhong still appears unable to effectively manage his team.
**Employee’s Long Post Criticizes Excessive Overtime** Titled *Don’t Let Educational Passion Be Wasted in Chaotic Overtime*, the post detailed the consultant’s grievances. Since autumn, the team has been trapped in a "996 single-day-off" cycle, with daily work hours stretching from 9:30 AM to 9:30 PM or later.
"The promised two-day weekends in the employment contract are rare, and the legally mandated eight-hour workday is now a distant dream," the employee lamented.
The letter outlined four major issues: unrealistic targets, institutionalized unpaid overtime, excessive workload planning, and constant last-minute changes to tasks.
For instance, in Hangzhou’s Binxiao District—one of the top-performing regions—half of the consultants still fail to meet targets despite relentless overtime.
Additionally, unfinished tasks require employees to arrive early the next day without pay. Weekday overtime neither qualifies for compensatory leave nor additional pay, while being one minute late incurs a 50-yuan fine and forfeits leave rights.
The most exhausting aspect is the chaotic scheduling: promises of "normal hours" or "resuming weekends" are frequently overturned the next day with demands for "urgent target pushes."
The employee cited Yu Minhong’s Antarctica email encouraging open criticism as motivation for writing the post. However, it was deleted within a day.
A NEW ORIENTAL representative stated that internal complaints should follow official channels, not mass emails, hence the removal.
This incident follows the controversial "Antarctica Letter" from 18 days prior, where Yu’s celebratory message for NEW ORIENTAL’s 32nd anniversary backfired. Employees mocked its tone-deafness, noting they were "working overtime while the boss was in Antarctica."
On November 23, Yu issued an apology letter titled *Let’s Work Together*, urging employees to address grievances internally and avoid airing extreme views publicly.
**Yu Minhong: The Only Executive Earning Millions** In a December 2 interview, Yu claimed he maintains an open-door policy with employees, rarely losing his temper except with top executives.
Historically, NEW ORIENTAL fostered a culture where employees freely challenged Yu. Co-founders Wang Qiang and Xu Xiaoping famously confronted him over equity and dividends, yet Yu responded with raises rather than reprimands.
Yu once admitted his personal decision-making accuracy is only 40%, but collective input boosts it to 80%.
Despite his "generous boss" reputation, EAST BUY’s lavish salaries starkly contrast with NEW ORIENTAL’s modest pay.
EAST BUY’s 2025 fiscal report showed a 32.7% revenue drop to 4.39 billion yuan, yet average salaries surged to 839,600 yuan due to a 500-employee reduction—four times the industry average and the highest among 18 education/e-commerce firms.
Meanwhile, NEW ORIENTAL’s average pay ranked near the bottom at 123,400 yuan.
The gap between executives and staff is even starker: Yu and former CEO Sun Dongxu earned over 200 million yuan combined from 2019 to 2024, accounting for 77.7% of executive pay. Now, Yu alone draws an eight-figure salary—87 times NEW ORIENTAL’s average and 13 times EAST BUY’s.
**High-Salary Hiring for Offline Expansion** Yu’s management struggles echo past equity disputes. The 1990s fallout with co-founders over profit-sharing resurfaced in 2023’s EAST BUY "essay incident," where star anchor Dong Yuhui left amid compensation disputes, and Sun was ousted.
With online growth stalling—EAST BUY’s 2025 GMV fell to 8.7 billion yuan from 14.3 billion, and Douyin orders halved—Yu is pivoting offline.
EAST BUY is offering 15,000–30,000 yuan monthly to hire a flagship store manager in Beijing, surpassing industry averages. The store, located in Zhongguancun, will sell groceries, snacks, and feature a café.
Yu envisions integrating NEW ORIENTAL’s 800 teaching centers into a hybrid offline-online retail model. But whether employees and the market will embrace this remains uncertain.
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