Are Chinese companies hiring "developer cheerleaders"?

Question

I think the source for this is this Trending In China Facebook post:

Internet companies across China are embracing programming cheerleaders, pretty, talented girls that help create a fun work environment. Their job includes buying programmers breakfast, chitchatting and playing ping-pong with them. According to the HR manager of an Internet company that hired three such cheerleaders, its programmers are mostly male and terrible at socializing, and the presence of these girls have greatly improved their job efficiency and motivation.

But this claim has been reprinted by more mainstream media including. Daily Mail, seems to only have a Facebook post as a source.

Are there any better sources to this claim?

-1 because my company doesn't hire cheerleaders and I'm jealous :( — user5341, Jun 06 '18 at 00:28
If the Daily Mail printed it then it's probably untrue, or at best a massive exaggeration and highly misleading. — dont_shog_me_bro, Jun 07 '18 at 10:09
@dont_shog_me_bro which means that it’s a good thing he asked about it here. — Andrew Grimm, Jun 07 '18 at 11:37
As a developer, I'm hoping for developer-groupies..... and my standards for "acceptable" are pretty low, so someone get on that. — PoloHoleSet, Jun 07 '18 at 20:40

score 16 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 06 '18 at 04:48

16

Probably as true as "American companies hire massagers for developers". As in very few do it (Google). As for your question on better sources, I found https://gizmodo.com/startups-in-china-are-hiring-women-as-programmer-motiv-1825529335

It remains to be seen how widespread programmer motivators are in China, but the Times noted that a job search site run by Chinese tech company Baidu showed seven companies with job ads for such a position.

answered Jun 06 '18 at 04:48

Fizz

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The Google one comes with much better PR (of course): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZASRmfUMOk – Fizz Jun 06 '18 at 05:05
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Someone that gives a massage is a masseuse or masseur, not massager. A massager is an object. – Andy Jun 16 '18 at 20:19

Are Chinese companies hiring "developer cheerleaders"?

1 Answers1