Internet giants, the name of the flower can not stop

In “The Annual Meeting Can’t Stop”, every employee has his or her own nickname, so why do large companies have to have a nickname?

Netizen Xia Jizhi shared on Douyin his difficult experience of picking a nickname after joining Alibaba: "I was stuck in the onboarding process of picking a nickname for two days. I tried all kinds of normal and abnormal names, but still couldn't come up with one."

As the first company to create the nickname culture, Alibaba still retains the tradition of requiring employees to take nicknames when joining the company. Today, Alibaba has more than 200,000 employees. Those well-known martial arts masters are no longer available to ordinary employees, and even a relatively common nickname may have been taken by someone else.

Someone shared his own trick in the comment section of the video: "Just pick two words at random in the dictionary, then make up a meaning and submit it for review." The implication is that for words that already have relatively fixed meanings, 80% of the time "the nickname has been taken." Only relatively unfamiliar word combinations can break away from the wisdom of our predecessors and create a unique name.

In fact, in addition to Alibaba, many Internet companies including Pinduoduo, Xiaohongshu, and NetEase have requirements for employees to take nicknames when they join the company. Although some large companies do not have nicknames, they also require employees to take an English name, which also needs to avoid repetition.

In some relatively strict companies, nicknames have replaced employees' real names and become their new code names. If colleagues don't know your nickname, they can't even contact you. In some companies, even if the requirements are not strict, nicknames can become a hindrance and constraint.

In 2024, how do flower names still affect employees of large companies? As a form of corporate culture, how do flower names change and reshape people? We always think that a person's name is just a symbol, but a symbol may constitute all the cognition of others about you.

1. Is it that difficult to come up with a flower name?

In the comedy film "The Annual Meeting Can't Stop" released last year, Dapeng's character "Hu Jianlin" was transferred to the headquarters by accident. The first step after joining the company was to choose an English name under the guidance of HR, and finally got the name Jonny. However, the simple Hu Jianlin mistakenly understood it as "Johnny", which triggered a series of misunderstandings and jokes.

The absurdity in the movie comes from coincidence and misunderstanding to a certain extent, but the absurdity in reality is inevitable. Hu Jianlin can easily transform into "Johnny Hu", but for employees of large factories in reality, it is not so easy to choose a nickname/English name for work.

On the one hand, large companies generally require that nicknames or English names cannot be repeated, which makes new employees who join the company later have to rack their brains to avoid having the same name as their predecessors. Take Alibaba as an example. There is also a requirement that new employees can only have two-character nicknames and the unspoken rule that the meaning must be positive. (It is said that when Gao Xiaosong joined Alibaba, he wanted to be named Tian Boguang and Shou Tou Tuo, but both were rejected.)

Moreover, the nicknames of former employees will also be taken, which makes it more difficult for new employees to come up with nicknames. Xia Jizhi's experience is a typical case.

In order to come up with a suitable nickname, some people would choose relatively obscure words or relatively unpopular combinations, while others would start with their original online names and change individual words to avoid repetition. As time goes by, new employees in large companies who now have nicknames will most likely have a new name that is difficult to pronounce.

The combination of Chinese characters may be relatively easier. Although it is difficult to think of, there are infinite possibilities for the arrangement and combination of rare characters in the dictionary. As long as you spend more time, you can always find the right word. However, the capacity of English names is limited.

Take Tencent as an example. Despite the relaxed requirement that a single name can be repeated and only the surname + first name cannot be repeated, a former Tencent employee said that he still spent a lot of effort on it. He told Hedgehog Commune: "Even obscure English names are used by people, and foreign names in other languages ​​are also used by many people." In fact, in the business line where this former employee worked, colleagues almost never called each other by English names. English names were just a necessary formality requirement when joining the company and sending emails.

Of course, in order to achieve this form, employees in different business lines all came up with a similar solution, that is, adding a Chinese name to the original English name to form an English name with Chinese characteristics. For example, Pony Ma was changed to Pony htMa, Martin Lau was changed to Martin cpLau, etc. In this way, the probability of having the same name can be greatly reduced.

In "The Annual Party Can't Stop", the protagonists each have a simple English name. In reality, they may have to follow suit and become Magic jkMa and Jonny jlHu.

2. Flower names, another level of value

Why do big companies use flower names?

At the beginning, Alibaba implemented a flower-name system, using the names of people and places in martial arts novels to name Alibaba's internal organizational structure, offices and executives. This was somewhat in line with Jack Ma's personal martial arts sentiments.

By now, the names in martial arts novels may have been exhausted, and the nicknames of Alibaba's new employees no longer have any martial arts flavor. However, the nickname culture has spread and become a must-have form in many large companies. It is enough to show that in the eyes of many executives of large companies, nicknames are an effective form of management.

NetEase announced the launch of a nickname system (NetEase calls it a "nickname") in September 2020. The notice showed that the company encourages the use of nicknames in work communications, and also specifically reminds employees in the nickname rules to avoid using words with meanings of seniority or superior-subordinate relationships when choosing nicknames, such as "Boss", "Brother", "Sister", "Grandpa", etc.

"Yikesai", an employee of a large company, told Hedgehog Commune that in her opinion, this is a manifestation of flat management in the company. Avoiding the use of titles such as "Boss", "Brother" and "Sister" can eliminate the sense of hierarchy between employees at different levels to a certain extent and increase the efficiency of communication between employees. Of course, this also requires the internal office software of the large company to cooperate with the hiding of job levels.

However, judging from the actual situation of the domestic Internet, the nickname culture within large companies is often closely related to the preferences of the founders. Jack Ma likes martial arts culture, so Alibaba uses the names of people who appear in martial arts novels. Pinduoduo focuses on agriculture, and the nicknames of its executives are fruits and vegetables, including potatoes, winter dates, and grapes.

But this will also bring new problems. Although the new symbols replace the old symbols and eliminate the past class attributes, the new symbols may also have a sense of class themselves and establish a completely new hierarchical system within the company.

For example, Feng Qingyang and Xiaoyaozi, as long as you have a little knowledge of Jin Yong, you will know that these two are both top-level masters, and they themselves have a strong high-level connotation. From here, new symbols with hierarchical connotations have begun to replace the old symbols.

Let's make a simple assumption. If Alibaba did not have a two-character limit on the nicknames of new employees, and the existing martial arts names were not occupied, would ordinary grassroots employees dare to take a nickname like "The Condor Heroes" or "Dugu Qiubai" when they joined the company? Even if they are fearless, will the superiors who review them agree?

Even seemingly ordinary potatoes and winter dates can construct a value system that is completely different from the traditional context. When potatoes and winter dates are in high positions, and the early veteran team mostly uses fruits and vegetables as flower names, will ordinary new employees easily choose "mushroom" or "apple" as flower names?

Perhaps, whether or not to address employees as “Boss”, “Brother” or “Sister” cannot change the symbolic pressure brought by the management system itself. Establishing a nickname system is just another way for large companies to manage their employees.

3. Choose a flower name and forget your past self

Even in some large companies that don’t have a nickname culture, there are still some special people who need to use a nickname. An employee of JD.com gave an example to Hedgehog Community: when they poached a talent from a competitor, but the non-compete agreement signed by this person had not expired, in order to protect him, they would not use his real name in normal communication and internal systems, but would give him a nickname.

This reflects another function of flower names, poaching and preventing poaching among large companies. When everyone comes in, they have a virtual identity and code name, which blurs the outside world's understanding of the internal personnel configuration, and invisibly increases the difficulty of poaching by the outside world.

On another level, nicknames, as new identity codes, also blur employees' perception and judgment of themselves and their colleagues. In some companies with relatively strict implementation, ordinary employees can only address each other by nicknames. What's more, if you don't know your colleague's nickname, you can't contact him/her on office software.

Over time, the identity of a colleague becomes tied to a virtual online name, becoming an insignificant piece of information that can be forgotten at any time. It is difficult for employees to establish a truly reliable relationship, and when one party leaves, the connection is quickly cut off.

Just like a classic Internet joke: after joining the company, a person is assigned a computer and is given an English name tied to the computer because the previous owner of the computer had the same name. He seems to have become a tool, assigned to this computer to continue the work of his predecessor.

The nickname is like a tool name that has been assigned. In a new situation, we abandon the old name, obtain a new collective identity, and then exchange privacy with each other to form a new team, all for higher efficiency. Everything is just for efficiency.

Of course, in actual operation, efficiency is not the only result, and flower names as a means are difficult to completely solve the management dilemma of large companies. When power exists objectively and the level gap is inevitable, no matter how hard you try to cover it up with symbols, it is difficult to achieve the ideal result.

An employee of a large company who had spent a lot of effort to finally come up with an English nickname told Hedgehog Community: "Even if everyone has an English name, sometimes they will add "jie", "ge", or "zong" to the end of the English name."

If the time and space in "The Annual Meeting Can't Stop" continues, in a few years, Ma Jieke might be called "Magic President".

Author: Chen Shoucheng; Editor: Chen Meixi

Source: Hedgehog Commune (ID: ciweigongshe), observation and research on the Internet content industry.