1. This is not something 'hacking'. It is just a javascript running in chrome that checks the text on a button. If it changes to 'buy' then hits the button again and again. The unexpeced thing is, after hitting the buy button, the site does not jump to the payment page, instead, it just increases the item number! That's why four people can order more than a hundred mooncakes.
2. They didn't pay the abnormal orders. One of the four unlucky men said he had called the administration immediately after he found the problem and wanted to cancel the abnormal order. What happened next? He got an interview with a HR after 30 minutes, at 16:30. And at 18:30, he had been officially fired.
Here I do not want to judge if it is too tough to fire the four peoples so quickly. Let's see another old news of Alibaba
https://www.quora.com/unanswered/What-do-you-think-of-Alibab...
Last year, not that old. Can you guess the result? The HR who faked the exit interview just got an 'internal punish'. God knows what is an 'internal punish' but she was not fired. And the three developer who wrote the system got a 3.25 on his KPI which means 'just leave the company you rubbish' because the employee should not see the comment of the HR in the system.
See? No matter what happen, the coders are always the people who get punished in Alibaba.
Is Alibaba a great company? Yes, no doubt, it is a company with 250B USD market value. But as a coder, I do not want to join a company that lacks of respect for coders. Money is not everything.
That's all.
So HR are the guys that have the largest power in Alibaba and would not have any problems when them fucking engineers? Really interesting.
1. those users with much time who stay/wait there and click mouse in a stupid/crazy way, yes I saw that in reality.
2. those who write script to do it.
Alibaba leaders including Jack MA and HRs pretend that they don't know how game really works in which they don't have technical solution to block the 2nd type buyers, and they fire technicians with moral/culture problem reason which makes themselves great by humiliating employees.
My opinions:
1. Alibaba has right to fire guys, but the reason/excuse is ridicule, a public listed company should be shamed for that way they treat employees;
2. early bird mode promotion is imperfect game in a short supply market (which is not same for Kickstarter, who uses it to stimulate/warm weak demand at beginning while normal options exists), Alibaba(Taobao.com) uses this mode in a crazy way in China and waste users' time and passion, very inefficient.
