Chapter 102 – Algorithm

This time, Qin Qing agreed—the hacker wasn’t just powerful, but also had a fascinating approach.

She was intrigued.

She wondered if those rejection messages were personally written by the hacker.

If she really found them this time, Qin Qing would genuinely like to meet them.

Qianli Technology’s headquarters was in Beifu. As soon as she agreed, the company arranged flights and hotels overnight.

Qin Qing declined.

Her main reason for going to Beifu was that Zhang Yao had informed her the central bureau needed her in person.

Taking Qianli Technology’s commission was just a side task.

Whether it succeeded or not didn’t matter.

Upon arriving in Beifu, Qin Qing’s direct superior had an unexpected scheduling conflict and couldn’t meet her for now.

Zhang Yao arranged for her to have free time, so Qin Qing took the chance to visit Qianli Technology first.

It was 8 PM. From outside the building, all floors belonging to Qianli Technology were brightly lit.

She called the liaison.

The person rushed down to meet her.

“Ms. Qin, we’ve been eagerly awaiting you. I’m Fang Wei—we’ve been speaking on the phone. I’m also the company’s Director of Public Relations.”

Fang Wei was a capable woman with short hair.

Surprisingly, she was also an expectant mother.

A glance at the System Panel: 36 weeks pregnant.

Quite committed—still working overtime with a belly that size.

Fang Wei said, “Pardon the sight—can’t be helped. Nearly the whole company has been working overtime these past two weeks.”

Qin Qing expressed understanding.

Fang Wei added, “Apologies, but I need to say this up front—I have a friend who’s interacted with your team and gave you very high praise. I personally recommended you to Director Long. Only he and I know your true identity. Officially, we’re saying you’re a technical consultant. You’ll need to visit our cybersecurity department later, and, well… they only trust hard skills.”

Qin Qing replied, “Understood. I won’t say anything that defies natural science.”

Qianli Technology occupied several floors of the building.

Fang Wei asked, “This is our first collaboration, so I’m not sure about your workflow. Do you want to head to the cybersecurity department first or…?”

Qin Qing said, “Let’s walk around a bit first.”

She wasn’t sure yet if she could find a breakthrough—might as well explore.

Qin Qing remarked, “You have quite a few female employees.”

The gender ratio was roughly 3:7.

Fang Wei explained, “This floor houses our data review and customer service departments. Women tend to be more meticulous and patient. We’ve had a spike in complaints lately, and the customer service team’s been working 12-hour shifts daily.”

It was clearly busy—apologetic voices filled the voice service area.

A female employee had just hung up, her smile relaxing as she rubbed her cheeks and reached for water.

The next call came in immediately. She had to put the cup down and paste on a smile again.

Suddenly, the System Panel prompted:

[Abnormal tag cluster detected within sensory radius. View?]

View.

A long summary table instantly appeared on the right side of Qin Qing’s System Panel.

Tag summary: [Promotion Lock Chain] [Performance Coefficient Downgrade] [Emotional Labor Requirement] [Care-Based Exclusion]

The summary included all present women.

In other words, every female employee at Qianli Technology carried these tags.

Not all tags were activated, but most were latent.

Under Fang Wei’s puzzled gaze, Qin Qing walked up and down the office aisles. After twenty minutes, she had figured out what the tags meant and their activation criteria.

Promotion Lock Chain: Activates for women who are pregnant, breastfeeding, or parenting children under age 7. Once active, promotion and raise opportunities are deprioritized beneath male employees.

Performance Coefficient Downgrade: Activates in late pregnancy, breastfeeding, or parenting under-7s. Original performance coefficient is reduced to 0.6–0.8.

Emotional Labor Requirement: Active for all women. Eligibility for raises, promotions, awards, and training includes an additional assessment of whether the woman maintains team atmosphere and emotional cohesion. This does not apply to men.

Care-Based Exclusion: A company benefit offers flexible work hours to women in menstruation, pregnancy, breastfeeding, and parenting. Popular among female staff. However, due to limited availability, they are subtly excluded from core projects.

At Qianli Technology, women made up the majority of the workforce, but most were frontline staff.

Only extraordinarily outstanding women made it to management or core roles.

Qin Qing found this absurd.

Qianli Technology was famous for its algorithms—even its internal management relied on algorithmic models.

Employees believed algorithmic evaluation was fairer than human managers—free from bias, widely accepted.

But how would they know the unspoken rules had been written deep into the base logic of those models?

Even cloaked those nauseating rules in a shiny, candy-colored shell.

Though Qin Qing still didn’t know who the persistent hacker or hacker group was, judging from the ongoing uproar over Qianli Network’s “discrimination against male job seekers,” she could guess their motive.

Qin Qing stopped and called out to Fang Wei, who was massaging her legs while waiting at a workstation: “Let’s go take a look at your technical department.”

Fang Wei asked expectantly, “Did you find something?”

Facing Fang Wei, Qin Qing felt a pang of pity.

As a pregnant employee, all four tags were active on Fang Wei. As management, she also faced higher emotional labor expectations, with two additional sub-tags: [Aggressiveness Downgrade] and [Chaos Downgrade].

These sub-tags stereotypically assumed female leaders were naturally irritable and prone to illogical thinking.

If, in routine staff evaluations, any peer or subordinate described her as too harsh or unclear, the algorithm would penalize her for disrupting team cohesion and focus—impacting her raise and performance score.

Fang Wei was highly capable and had rarely triggered these hidden red lines.

She had no idea she was being evaluated under these implicit conditions.

She was pushing herself through late pregnancy just to contribute during this black swan incident and earn an “Outstanding” rating.

According to the company’s promotion system, combined with her previous two years of “Outstanding” ratings, it would be enough to win the title of “Senior Director” in the upcoming March promotion review—before her maternity leave.

That would boost her base maternity leave pay by 30%.

However, she didn’t know—

Eight months ago, when she submitted her pregnancy documentation, the system had already removed her from this promotion cycle.

All her hard-won “Outstanding” ratings since then wouldn’t count.

If she wanted to compete after returning from leave, she’d have to start over.

Fang Wei pushed herself up using the desk.

Qin Qing reached out to help.

Fang Wei was surprised and quickly thanked her.

Qin Qing asked gently, “Ever thought about changing jobs?”

Fang Wei wasn’t sure why the conversation turned this way, but answered seriously:

“Director Long changed my life. I joined his department right after graduation. He always looked after his team. This was before Qianli Network even existed, when we were still at another company. He clashed with the higher-ups and left in protest to start his own venture. Most of his team followed him out.

He tried several times before Qianli Technology succeeded. Many left during the struggle, but a few of us stayed. I’m one of them. Today, we’re all mid-to-senior level management.”

Qin Qing listened quietly.

Fang Wei spoke with genuine emotion, her face lighting up: “Back then, I was a clueless junior staffer. Director Long taught me everything step-by-step. I’m only 31 now, and already a director.”

Qin Qing said, “Forgive my boldness.”

Fang Wei clearly saw Qianli Technology and Director Long through rose-colored glasses.

So Qin Qing didn’t press the matter further.

It’s striking that even as a founding member of the company and a current member of upper management, she had no idea the company’s management algorithm contained a “maternal avoidance” logic targeting female employees.

Qin Qing turned to ask something else.

“Are the people responsible for your website architecture and cybersecurity the same team?”

“No, they’re two departments, but their workstations are right next to each other.”

When they arrived at the tech department floor, most of the employees were men. Female programmers were extremely rare, and they all had a tag labeled [Algorithm Confidential].

Before even stepping in, Qin Qing heard someone furiously slamming a keyboard.

“No good, still no good! Within ten minutes of restoring the code, it was swallowed and overwritten by the other side’s new algorithm. Unless we find and crack their core key, anything we do is pointless!”

The workspace was a mess, the no-smoking signs on the walls completely ignored.

The one who’d slammed the keyboard downed a huge cup of water and clawed at his hair in frustration, successfully giving himself a homeless-man hairstyle.

Then he crouched on the floor, crawling around searching for the keycaps that had flown off.

Fang Wei quietly said, “That’s one of the key tech experts from the cybersecurity department.”

Next to the irritable, disheveled expert sat two uniformed officers, both rubbing their temples, looking no more optimistic.

Even the cyber police called in for reinforcement were at their wits’ end.

Company leadership had taken over a meeting room nearby to oversee things. Long was there too.

Fang Wei originally intended to introduce Qin Qing, but she declined.

Given what she’d learned so far, she had no interest in getting caught in this mess.

“Who else are the tech leads?”

Fang Wei pointed them out one by one.

They were all gathered in one area.

The two walked over.

Someone glanced curiously at Qin Qing but didn’t say anything when they saw she was with Fang Wei, and went back to their work.

Qin Qing noted the people and left that area, finding a spot with less cigarette smoke so Fang Wei could sit.

She pulled up their activity logs.

As expected, the “maternal avoidance” algorithm’s application among female employees at Qianli Technology was just the tip of the iceberg.

Its application to the wider pool of job seekers on Qianli Network revealed its massive scale and complex reach.

Qianli Network’s reputation for being humane and user-friendly was, in part, due to the contribution of the “maternal avoidance” algorithm.

An employee came rushing over to Fang Wei.

“Bad news, Wei-jie.”

“Just spit it out!”

“Our web-monitoring crawler just picked up something—ten minutes ago, a feminist content creator posted an analysis video. It’s very damaging to us. She has a lot of followers and the exposure is climbing fast. I’ve contacted the platform to delete it, but there’s been no response yet.”

Fang Wei: “What’s the blogger’s name?”

“Voltage Sisterhood.”

While Fang Wei pulled out her phone to search, Qin Qing checked too.

She’d come across this blogger before. Her tagline was: Protecting sisters from becoming cannon fodder for patriarchy.

This time, Voltage Sisterhood dropped a bomb on Qianli Network in a video under 90 seconds.

The gist: In the two weeks the internet has been buzzing about Qianli Network’s male applicant discrimination scandal, the platform didn’t completely shut down. Data analysis over those two weeks revealed three simple points:

1. The hiring rate of women for management roles doubled compared to before, but even so, female managers still made up far less than males overall.

2. The average salary of newly hired women during these two weeks rose 30% compared to before, but was still lower than the average male salary.

3. Compared to other recruitment platforms, Qianli Network’s numbers were less favorable to women.

Voltage Sisterhood ended with a question: So, before Qianli Network’s algorithm “malfunctioned,” what exactly was it doing to female job seekers?

She didn’t offer an answer, but the comment section quickly filled with speculation.

Fang Wei: “Did the platform respond?”

“They said the video doesn’t violate any rules, so they can’t delete it.”

“Offer more money!”

“At most they’ll suppress the traffic.”

“Go do it. And have someone reach out to the blogger.”

“Got it, Wei-jie.”

The employee hurried off.

With a sigh, Qin Qing said apologetically, “Sorry, I can’t help with this. I won’t charge for this job, and I’ll have the company refund your travel expenses.”

“Please, Qin-laoshi, think of something,” Fang Wei pleaded.

Qin Qing made something up: “I drew a fate chart using your company’s founding date and President Long’s birthday. Qianli Technology is due for a calamity—this is its karmic debt. I’m limited in power, there’s nothing I can do.”

She knew her words wouldn’t help, but still, seeing Fang Wei’s exhaustion, she couldn’t help but say, “Please take care of your health. Don’t overwork yourself. The company has plenty of other people.”

Fang Wei sighed and stood up, supporting her back. “Either way, you’ve done enough. I’ll walk you out.”

“No need. I know the way. Your phone’s blowing up, go handle your work.”

Fang Wei was clearly overwhelmed.

“Even though I can’t be of help, I can leave you with one message. Pass it on to President Long. Whether he takes it or not is up to him—you’ll have done your duty as an advisor.” Qin Qing, seeing her like this, couldn’t help but say it before leaving.

“What is it?”

“To get through this hurdle, there’s one point you must hold firm to. Five words: ‘Take your beating like a man’.”

Fang Wei frowned.

It wasn’t clear if she didn’t understand or had some other concern.

She asked, “That’s enough?”

Qin Qing smiled. “Maybe. Depends on fate. But if he doesn’t do that, he definitely won’t make it through.”

Fang Wei: “Understood. We’ll still pay the consulting fee.”