Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

"Brother Sen, the front-end validation is flawless." Zhang Wenbo clacked away at his keyboard for a while. Five minutes later, he looked up and spoke.

"The code for the data request looks normal too. Hu Yun, are there any problems with the bargainer’s user ID and IP?" Xiang Pengfei asked, staring at his screen.

"The user IDs and IPs of the people who helped him bargain are all normal, but the numbers don’t add up. He only invited 17 existing users and 3 new users to the site."

Zhuang Rui delivered the news, a flash of panic in his eyes and his tone grave.

’There’s really a bug?’

Chen Yansen’s brow furrowed. He rubbed his temples, let out a long breath, and forced himself to calm down.

After organizing his thoughts, he said to Zhang Wenbo and Xiang Pengfei, "They probably exploited a loophole in the network transmission, replaying a normal bargain request multiple times to trick the server. Hurry up and add a timestamp for the bargain’s validity period, and set a random number. Fix this bug now!"

He had encountered this situation in his previous life, so he was very familiar with how to stop it.

"Okay, Brother Sen." Xiang Pengfei quickly agreed. His eyes were bloodshot, and he was simmering with anger, frustration, and regret.

The "Bargain for Free" event had only been online for two days, and already such a major design flaw had been exposed. As the head of the backend team, he couldn’t escape the blame.

"Should we take the event offline for now?"

Song Yuncheng’s face was filled with worry; she had clearly realized the gravity of the situation.

"No! User trust is actually very fragile. Even taking it offline temporarily will make them suspicious."

Chen Yansen stood up and said without a second thought.

Once the seeds of doubt were planted, uprooting them would be incredibly difficult.

Time ticked by, minute by minute. Even though it was already noon, no one thought about getting lunch.

Half an hour later, Xiang Pengfei finally shouted, "Brother Sen, the bug is fixed! The testing team and I have verified it. It’s enough to prevent vulnerability attacks like packet sniffing."

"Go live!"

Chen Yansen nodded without another word.

"Brother Sen, I’ve gone over the data again. Only this one user’s bargaining activity was abnormal," Hu Yun reported.

"Brother Sen, how should we handle this user who exploited the vulnerability to bargain?"

Having fixed the bug, Xiang Pengfei walked up to Chen Yansen with a grim face, looking as if he was ready to bear all the losses himself.

"Give him a call. Tell him that to thank him for helping FoxTao discover a system vulnerability, we’ll send him a brand new MP4 player. Then, ban his account."

Chen Yansen said after a moment of thought.

"What if he makes a scene?" Xiang Pengfei hesitated for a few seconds before asking.

"If he wants to do this the hard way, we’ll archive his bargain request data and send it straight to the Inspection Institute. Let him get a taste of prison food."

Chen Yansen’s expression was cold as he spoke, enunciating every word.

"Song Yuncheng, post an announcement later explaining that this user exploited a system vulnerability to steal the phone purchasing qualification that should have belonged to other users. State that we have already banned his account."

Chen Yansen turned and instructed Song Yuncheng.

"Okay." Song Yuncheng nodded in agreement and turned to walk toward the operations team. After all, Hu Li, a fourth-year student majoring in Chinese Language and Literature, was more skilled and precise when it came to writing announcements.

"Brother Sen, I’ll go call the user then," Xiang Pengfei said, starting to pull out his phone.

"Wait! You’re not the right person for it."

Chen Yansen held out a hand to stop him. Xiang Pengfei was still simmering with anger; there was no guarantee he wouldn’t get into an argument with the user and make things worse.

"Class President, let me make the call?"

Xu Xingxing, who had been standing to the side, suddenly spoke up and made the request.

"Are you confident you can handle it?" Chen Yansen looked straight at her. Seeing her confident expression, he chuckled and asked in return.

"Give me ten minutes. I guarantee I’ll get it done." Xu Xingxing made an "OK" gesture.

"Pengfei, send the phone number to Xu Xingxing."

Chen Yansen said to Xiang Pengfei. This call was meant to give the user a way out. If the guy didn’t want to be civil, then he couldn’t be blamed for getting nasty.

Xiang Pengfei had wanted to insist on making the call himself, but when he saw the displeasure on Chen Yansen’s face, he resentfully handed over the phone number and stood stiffly in front of Chen Yansen’s desk.

"What are you doing standing there like a statue? Get back to work."

Chen Yansen found it amusing and scolded him brusquely.

"Brother Sen, I’m the head of the backend team. I didn’t think through the underlying logic thoroughly enough..."

Xiang Pengfei gritted his teeth, took the initiative to admit his mistake, and accepted full responsibility, preparing to receive his punishment.

"Alright, your bonus for this month is gone." Chen Yansen said helplessly. Seeing Xiang Pengfei’s stubborn attitude—as if he wouldn’t leave until he was punished—he had no choice but to give a punishment that was neither too harsh nor too light.

"Thanks, Brother Sen! I’ll get back to work right now!" Xiang Pengfei grinned and scurried back to his workstation.

’Damn, what a glutton for punishment!’

Chen Yansen shook his head and couldn’t help but complain inwardly. He understood what Xiang Pengfei was thinking. At the end of the day, he still had too much of a student mentality, feeling that the vulnerability was entirely his fault and that he would lose face and be unable to continue at FoxTao if he didn’t receive a punishment.

He turned his head to look at Xu Xingxing. She was standing by the window, speaking with a smile on her face. It didn’t look like she was arguing with a user; it was more like she was sweetly talking to a lover.

A moment later, Xu Xingxing hung up the phone and strode over to Chen Yansen with a spring in her step. She smiled faintly and said, "All taken care of! He’s a college student too. A combination of threats and warnings, plus an MP4 player, was enough to make him apologize obediently."

Her lively and clever demeanor was very endearing to the tech guys. Before Chen Yansen could even speak, Xiang Pengfei shot up from his seat and yelled at the top of his lungs, "Junior, you’re awesome!"

"Brother Sen, Xu Xingxing’s talents are wasted in administration. We should put her in PR!" Zhuang Rui teased with a laugh.

"That’s a good suggestion! I’ll think about it. Pengfei, why don’t we give your docked bonus to Xu Xingxing?"

Chen Yansen smiled and said casually, then looked over at Xiang Pengfei.

"No problem! How could I have the nerve to accept that bonus anyway?" Seeing the matter resolved perfectly, Xiang Pengfei felt a huge weight lift from his shoulders, as if his body was half as light.

"Brother Sen, someone else just completed the bargain task for an Apple 4!"

Just then, Zhuang Rui suddenly let out a yell. Perhaps afraid everyone would misunderstand, he quickly added, "The data is completely normal! This person is a beast! They got a total of 379 existing users and 803 new customers to help them bargain. I have no idea how they did it!"

"Xu Xingxing, I have a task for you. Give this user a call for a simple follow-up interview. Wang Zihao, you’ll be in charge of following up. Use his experience to create a set of promotional materials and see how they perform when we release them."

Chen Yansen crossed his arms and beckoned to Wang Zihao. Once Wang Zihao came over, he gave instructions to the two of them.

Wang Zihao readily agreed. Without another word, he took the ad placement team to work with Xu Xingxing to confirm the script and procedure for the follow-up call. It was just that Xu Xingxing looked like she had something to say but ended up swallowing her words.

As the first free Apple 4 was shipped out, it greatly spurred user participation. Some users felt that the Apple phone was too high-value and required too many invitations, so they settled for the next best things, setting their sights on the Noaki 5230, the Mountain Star I8000, and the 1,000 yuan cash prize.

Items like fruit, tissues, and laundry detergent were also highly sought after.

Chen Xu and Hu Li were busy not only selecting products but also manually exporting user shipping addresses to place orders on platforms like Taobao and Jingdong. After the tracking numbers were generated, they had to manually import those numbers back into their own system.

Fortunately, the volume wasn’t too high yet, so the two of them could still manage.

It wasn’t until after 9:30 PM that the real-time user registration rate for the day finally began to slow down.

"Brother Sen, yesterday’s new customer growth was 27,000. As of right now, we have 71,000 new users who registered through the ’Bargain for Free’ event today. 4% of these new customers came from our ad channels." Hu Yun reported the past two days’ data to Chen Yansen, holding his laptop.

"Zhuang Rui, bring out your lottery proposal. A guaranteed ’double cashback card’ for new customers, and a full commission refund on their first order. Getting new customers in the door is just the first step; getting them to stay is what counts as success."

Chen Yansen patted Zhuang Rui on the shoulder and instructed him seriously.

Zhuang Rui acknowledged, "I’ll coordinate the requirements with Pengfei and Wenbo tomorrow. It’s just a small plugin anyway. I’ll aim to get it online within two days."

Chen Yansen raised his wrist to check the time. It was almost 10:00 PM. He stood up and urged everyone, "Let’s all head home early. Any later and we’ll have to sleep on the floor."

Looking at the twenty-plus young people in the room, he felt a pang of guilt for the first time. ’How much are they even making a month? Yet they’re working overtime every single day.’

Who said the post-90s generation is the ’beat generation’? That they don’t like working overtime?

’Pay them enough, give them respect, and if you try to stop them from working overtime, these bastards will get mad at you.’

"Brother Sen, our gross profit broke 30,000 today! The order volume is 6,109! Hehe, it’s almost 10,000! We’re only 40% away from our first small goal!"

Hu Yun laughed, his face flushed with excitement, completely ignoring Boss Chen’s suggestion to call it a day.

"Yeah, yeah! If the gross profit breaks 300,000, are you going to stop sleeping altogether?"

Chen Yansen walked up and gave him a light kick, scolding him with a laugh.

"I’d go a whole week without sleep if it meant our gross profit could break 300,000. It’d be totally worth it!" Hu Yun said with a grin, not bothered in the least.

"You guys can stay if you want, but I’m going home to sleep."

Chen Yansen ignored him, called Wang Zihao, and led the way downstairs.

"Brother Sen, you still haven’t told us the news you heard this morning!" As soon as they walked out of the Innovation Park, Wang Zihao, who had been holding it in all day, hurriedly asked.

"You’re still thinking about her?"

Chen Yansen stopped and gave him a strange look.

"Hurry up and tell me!" Wang Zihao urged.

"Sigh. The good news is, Teacher Liu doesn’t have a boyfriend." Chen Yansen sighed and trailed off.

"Then what’s the bad news?" Wang Zihao asked, his face lighting up with anticipation.

"The bad news is, Teacher Liu has a fiancé." After saying that, Chen Yansen took off running.

"You son of a bitch, Chen Yansen! You’re messing with me again!"

Wang Zihao’s smile froze instantly. He chased after him, cursing so loudly that the dogs on campus started barking.

In the nearby dormitory buildings, students, thinking a fight had broken out, stuck their heads out of their windows to watch the commotion.

"What class are you two in? Why are you making such a racket on campus this late at night instead of sleeping!"

A stern voice came from behind them.

’Shit!’

’Campus security!’

Chen Yansen glanced back, immediately bolted, and dashed back to the faculty apartments in a flash.

Wang Zihao was even more impressive. Having practiced running since he was a child, he ducked into the student dorms in the blink of an eye.