On June 12, Teng Yaxin (known by her alias “Yousu”), the former product manager for DingTalk’s ONE project and the mastermind behind the viral essay “Inside DingTalk,” dropped another massive post on her personal social media to address the ongoing public debate. This marks her first public statement since her staggering 75,000-word resignation letter on June 4 sent shockwaves across the internet.
In her new piece, aptly titled “The Cloud May Not Be Empty,” she explained that her original post upon leaving wasn’t just a rant, but a deep reflection on the common, systemic hurdles large organizations face when building AI. And let’s be clear—these issues aren’t just limited to DingTalk, Alibaba, or even China. Her most humble and genuine hope? To help her peers in the AI product space avoid the same painful detours.
As for why “Inside DingTalk” broke out of the tech bubble and grabbed everyone’s attention, she believes it struck a chord because it nailed the two biggest pain points in today’s AI industry. First up is the shared struggle of AI development. We’re currently in a chaotic, transitional phase for AI tech. New product formats aren’t set in stone yet, and the industry is caught in an awkward gap between the old and the new. Plenty of teams are just crossing the river by feeling the stones, which naturally leads to detours and mistakes along the way.
The second point is that AGI should ultimately mean fewer working hours. The industry talks about AGI every single day, yet so many miss its core value. From a scientific standpoint, it’s about amplifying our civilization’s capabilities to solve currently unsolvable problems. On a human level, it’s about freeing us from mechanical, repetitive, and dangerous tasks, giving us back our time for personalized aesthetics, emotions, exploration, and creation. “In the long run, there just won’t be that much repetitive work left for humans, and creative work isn’t about clocking in mindless hours. New work rhythms are the long-term trend. The pointless, performative working hours we see in organizations today not only drain human energy but completely contradict the original purpose of tech development.”
Looking back at how this whole saga unfolded, what started as a single resignation essay turned into a massive PR storm that escalated in just eight days, ultimately triggering a seismic shakeup in DingTalk’s leadership. On June 4, Teng Yaxin published her 75,000-word essay, “Inside DingTalk,” on Alibaba’s internal network. Writing from the trenches as a core product manager, she gave a brutally honest post-mortem of DingTalk’s flagship AI project, ONE. She detailed everything from its inception and closed-door development to its glory days of hitting 3 million daily active users, right down to the subsequent collapse in user reputation, strategic pivots, departmental splits, and the project’s ultimate demise.
After “Inside DingTalk” went live, the backlash snowballed. On June 8, Ma Ruila, a VP who had just left DingTalk in May this year, fired back with his own piece titled “Outside DingTalk.” He admitted that reading Teng’s essay left him “restless for a long time,” and he kept writing down one word: “Heartbreaking.” He was blunt about deeply understanding the high-pressure grind she described—the vicious cycle of working hard with zero results, endless reporting, and constant iterations that lead nowhere. “What breaks my heart is that such a brilliant young product mind had to write 70,000 words just to fish herself out of the system and seek liberation.”
Facing the escalating public outcry, the Alibaba Partnership Committee stepped in on June 10, posting an article on the company intranet titled “Empathy, Loyalty, and Growth: That’s the True Alibaba Culture,” marking their first official response to the “Inside DingTalk” debate. The committee didn’t hold back in criticizing the DingTalk team’s management style. “No matter the circumstances, and no matter how urgent the tasks are, the management style mentioned in the post should never happen. This has never been the direction advocated by Alibaba’s culture, nor is it what our culture should look like.” The committee emphasized that innovation in the AI era doesn’t rely on high pressure and robotic execution, but on the passion and creativity of the employees.
Just 24 hours later, on June 11, Alibaba Group announced a massive shakeup in DingTalk’s leadership: Chen Hang (alias “Wuzhao”) stepped down as DingTalk CEO, handing the reins to Chen Yusen, a tech geek born in 1992. Public records show that Chen Hang is the founder of DingTalk, having led the incubation team in 2014 and officially launched the product in 2015. In July 2021, he left Alibaba due to strategic differences over the “Cloud-DingTalk Integration” direction and founded his own company, H2O. In late March 2025, at the invitation of Alibaba CEO Wu Yongming, Chen Hang returned to take the helm as DingTalk CEO, pushing forward AI-native projects like ONE. By the time of this latest departure, his second stint as CEO had lasted just over a year.
Stepping into the CEO shoes, Chen Yusen is not only Alibaba’s youngest division CEO but also a prodigy in the tech world. He’s a multiple champion in top-tier domestic and international computer science competitions, and the cybersecurity firm Chaitin Tech, which he founded at just 22, was later acquired by Alibaba Cloud. In 2025, Chen Yusen launched an internal startup within Alibaba Cloud, leading the development of the AI Agent product MuleRun, which has earned widespread acclaim across the industry.
