Tencent Employee Fired After Leaking $470,000 Bonus Details Online
A WeChat project manager was fired and blacklisted after a screenshot of his 3.17 million yuan compensation package was circulated on social media.
Chinese technology giant Tencent has fired a project manager who worked at the company WeChat, after a photo showing his annual compensation package was circulated on social media in China. According to the company, the leak caused a "serious negative impact" both inside and outside the organization, as reported by the South China Morning Post. The employee was fired, blacklisted, and the company is prohibited from rehiring him in the future.
The circulated screenshot showed a total compensation package of about 3.17 million yuan (approximately $470,000), including a cash bonus of more than 820,000 yuan (about $120,000) and stock incentives worth more than 2.35 million yuan (about $350,000). The disciplinary action followed an internal investigation by Tencent's anti-corruption unit, which determined that the employee photographed his annual bonus breakdown page and sent it to an acquaintance, from where the content was distributed on social media.
Investigators concluded that the employee shared sensitive corporate information with parties outside the company, leading to data leakage to external platforms. This violation is classified under the company's information security and confidentiality rules as "clause three," which prohibits, among other things, the disclosure of salary information. After the image was widely circulated, netizens noticed an internal Tencent watermark embedded in the photo, and the employee's internal meeting schedule was quickly deleted from the system.
Alongside Tencent's internal announcement, some claim that the employee had already left the company more than a year ago, and that the current announcement is effectively a delayed enforcement decision. The affair has reignited a public debate in China regarding how companies treat the disclosure of salary data and whether sharing information about payments can be considered a breach of contract.
A lawyer representing the career platform China Job Net stated that most companies in China prefer to keep pay slips private, and employees may face sanctions if internal rules prohibit the disclosure of this information or if they have signed non-disclosure agreements. However, the same lawyer added that it is illegal to punish an employee retroactively if the company did not communicate in advance a policy prohibiting the disclosure of salary data.
