Chinese programmers work like slaves in Cambodia
Introduction
A few days ago, I lost my good buddy Jun for two years and he finally came back from Dubai. As soon as the plane landed, I received his WeChat message, “I have finally returned.”
Jun is an excellent programmer. Two years ago, a beautiful headhunter introduced him the opportunity of a “game company” in Sihanoukville, Cambodia. At that time, there’s a Cambodia gold rush that many Chinese programmers went to work at Cambodia and got much higher wages. So he said yes.
Before leaving for the Cambodia gold rush , he told me that this Cambodian company promised to give him a annual salary of 600k yuan(US$86k), which is more than twice as his salary in China.
After he left, his posts at Wechat were all about the sea view villas in Sihanohkville, the Filipino maids and the Chinese chefs’ meals. I and other programmers were so jealous and asked him about the opportunies in Cambodia, but he never replied us.
That day, he said with tears, “Xu, the contents of my posts at Wechat are all fake, you must write the Cambodian technology monsters den, don’t let the other Chinese brothers go to death!”.
So, there is this article. This article is the real experience of my buddy.
Part One
When it comes to Cambodia, everyone generally says that it is country with lots of tourist attractions, poverty and tons of Chinese. But few people know that behind the beautiful scenery, there are hidden world-famous gambling fraud centers and devil factories. Most bosses of those gambling fraud centers are Chinese compatriots.
Not everyone can be good luck like Jun and get out of the monsters den alive. High salary, beautiful scenery, tasteful food, pretty girls. This is a complete trap.
Jun had been hanging out its recruitment resume online to seek job-hopping opportunities.
The headhunter sold his resume to several online gambling companies in Cambodia, and one company named “AAA” selected him. After the “AAA” company obtained his personal information, the Chinese HR called Jun with Zhejiang province accent. Jun who grew up in Zhejiang felt at home because of their same accent.
What everyone doesn’t know is that the “AAA” company has HR recruiters from different provinces of China, so that they can talk to their applicants with same accents to gain trust.
A HR recruiter named Rong said that they were a Cambodian company specializing in games. Most of their colleagues were Chinese, so the working language wouldn’t not a problem. The annual salary of this position was 600k yuan.
At first Jun thought it’s super suspicious, because the normal salary based on his work experience should be 240k yuan. How come it’s double in Southeast Asia?
Soon he had a remote technical interview with a interviewer with Beijing accent. The entire interview process was highly professional with some difficult technical questions and even some business discussions.
At the end of the interview call, the doubts and uneasiness inside Jun’s heart were totally eliminated. He failed two questions during the remote interview, but the interviewer still gave him the offer.
This made Jun very excited, posting on social medias to celebrate that day. He said that it’s a lucky starting point of the path to freedom of wealth by his coding skill . Hardly imagine, he was about to become a slave of the 21st century Internet age.
Part Two
When the flight of Jun and serval other Chinese programmers landed in Sihanohkville, Cambodia, a black van waited to pick him up outside the airport. Their passports and ID cards were taken away on the excuse of completing the new employee on-boarding process.
This is the first step in limiting personal freedom. Then the second steps. Two Chinese brawny guys who sat on the back seats stood up and covered their heads with black blindfoled hoods.
One of the programmers did fierce resistance. This programmer took off the hood right away and wanted to escape, claiming to call the police. The car did stop immediately.
But what is ushered in is a sentence of one tattooed brawny guy, “If you die here, I burn your passport, your family can’t even find your dead body.” Then, the sound of loading the gun.
Jun and other programmers in the car were so scared, sweating on the head, and the programmer who was trying to run wet his pants. The car was quiet all the way, no one dared to speak.
This state of being shot at any time was the daily experience of this batch of programmers. The “AAA” company was hidden in a luxury hotel in Sihanohkville.
The entire 7th and 8th floors were all rented by the “AAA” company.
The 7th floor was the office space and the hotel staff came here everyday to serve food. The 8th floor was where the employees slept and rested. Developers’ work and rest routine were arranged in a unified manner. No one can leave his work desk without permission.
On both sides of the elevator, there were security guards day and night. In addition, only the company’s security captain had the elevator cards to the upper and lower floors .
For the sake of confidentiality, no one was allowed to take pictures of workspace with mobile phones. If you took a picture, you would be beaten or be tasered. The office environment was like the concentration camp.
They only had half-day off each week, with 12 hours working hours each day.
Only on this half-day can they be released from the hotel, but within 5 kilometers of the workspace. However, the nearest police station in Sihanohkville was 10 kilometers away.
If you are disobedient, you would be shot and killed. The security guards would transport the dead body downstairs and dispose of it in the middle of the night.
Calling the police is useless. The gambling industry and sex industry are legal in Cambodia. The local government only cares about taxes and bribes.
The Chinese and Cambodian police used to cooperate to combat illegal online gambling in Cambodia, but it almost destroyed the Cambodian economy. So later, Cambodia was blind to the gaming company.
All employees were hardworking, forced to write code, one line after another. This’s a real monsters den.
Part Three
After working for a month at AAA, Jun found that the entire company was doing online gambling and there was no game projects referred in the interview.
The salary was truly high, but it would always be deducted a lot by various reasons at the end of the month.
Those online gambling websites including various chess and poker gambling games needed to developed and maintained by a large number of software engineers.
Jun’s colleagues were often beaten because of company losses due to bugs.
No one dared to rebel, since passports were confiscated and electric shocks might happen at any time.
Jun’s manager, who worked in the “AAA” company for 8 years, was the company’s main force. Finally, he’s permitted to visit his families in China once a year.
Software engineers were high-paying talents after all. If you did a good job, they would occasionally offer extra benefits.
Because prostitution was legal in Sihanohkville, the CEO assistant would find a group of prostitutes to provide free services, every time a big project was done.
Jun was unexpectedly awarded a couple of times because of his outstanding coding performance. On the half-day leave every week, Jun spent an amount of money to enjoy prostitutes’ services.
However more often, what they faced was the beating of security guys after writing any coding bugs.
It was too difficult to escape from here. 24-hour surveillance, confiscating personal passports and a gun to your head any time.
Part Four
However, if there is a buyer’s market, there is a seller’s market.
There’s one kind of escort company dedicating to escort Chinese developers back to China in various ways, such as false identity and smuggling.
You have to pay the money first, or sign a arrears agreement if you don’t have any money. The commission is much higher than the redemption fee required by those online gambling companies.
Actually some escort companies were established by those online gambling companies themselves. Sometimes you thought you could flee back to China with the help of an escort company, you were sold to another online gambling companies.
One trap was after another one.
My friend Jun was one of the most fortunate slaves in Cambodia.
At that time, the “AAA” company opened a branch office in Dubai. Jun saw his colleagues being beaten here every day and thought it’s a good chance to escape by moving to Dubai office. And he got the opportunities of working in Dubai office.
At Dubai airport, he ran out of the team when the company’s security guards were carrying the employees’ luggages. He run as fast as he could.
Cambodian illegal guns are prevalent, but those security guards had no way to carry guns in another country.
Jun hid at the Dubai airport for a day and night, bought a ticket back to Beijing and finally escaped.
End
Search Cambodia or Philippines on Zhihu(a question-and-answer app). There’re many questions about whether they should accept the high-paying offers from those southeast Asian countries.
Many developers are on the way to the monsters den and they know nothing about it.
These online gambling companies have high staff turnover rates, so they set hight performance targets for HR recruiters. If the HR recruiters don’t achieve it, they have to be beaten and deducted wages. Therefore, recruiters will like to anything to find a new programmer employee.
A lot of programmers were sent private messages, asking wheter willing to come to Cambodia to develop games. There are also some HR who will buy some programmer’s resumes through headhunters and add them to WeChat or QQ contacts.
Among those online gambling companies’ HR recruiters, there’s a woman named Wang Meiling. Wang Meiling will sleep with the programmer if he accepted the offer. She can get a commission of 5k yuan for each new developer. Usually, she deceives more than 20 each month. According to insiders, she recently got AIDS.
In addition, some employees who have been deceived calls their friends in China in order to avoid being beaten and get a little free time. They will lie and ask their friends come to “make big money” together.
Most of the people who were deceived were young men. Some of them just had their own children, some were college students who had just graduated from computer science major.
They leave their homeland and wish a bright future. However what’s waiting them is a monsters den.
