Alibaba

• Amazing company culture.
• Great communication from high-level leadership, and especially the CEO, Daniel Zhang.
• Hangzhou HQ campus is very, very nice.
• Plenty of work opportunities inside the company, spanning various industries (e-commerce, cloud, automotive, social media, etc).
• Competitive packages and welfare.
• Very helpful with immigration-related processes.

Very competitive, hard-working company environment. This can be a net positive for younger folks eager to climb the ladder, but can be challenging for those with families.

KPI system, while effective for businesses that focus on performance-driven targets, can be counterproductive for tech-related endeavors. Note that the company has been slowly shifting some of its BUs to OKR, which is a net positive.

Experience may vary vastly between business units. It falls on the employee to find the right team and the right leader to follow within Alibaba to truly appreciate the experience.

• Moving from KPI to OKR for some BUs is the right move and should be actively promoted.

• Transfer locks can be harmful and create resentment from within. I think each BU / team should compete to retain its team and/or attract new people. There are many factors that can help retain or attract staff, be it a great leader, an amazing project, or an exciting team culture. Any combination of these factors will create tremendous tailwind that will help with the success of the project, and that usually will occur naturally. Therefore, I don't think that enforcing transfer locks is long-term productive.