Free Alibaba's World by Porter Erisman

bad
news was that it made our marketing team a bit obsolete. With the advertising budget eliminated, we began to focus on PR to gain free publicity. But with the web industry in a deep freeze, the
media lost all interest in Internet companies. Toward the end of 2001, Jack pulled me aside for a conversation.
    “Porter, I want to let you know about a decision that all of the senior managers in the company made together. Me, Joe, John, Savio—we all decided to cut our own salaries in
half.”
    Jack had a smile on his face but also a serious look.
    “So I want to let you know that you are now the highest-paid employee in the company. No one has complained about it. But I just wanted to let you know that.”
    I gulped as Jack walked away. I was now being paid even more than the CEO. Many of the founders of the company were living at a level that most Americans would have viewed as poverty. Not to
mention that I had just visited sales offices where my own colleagues were crammed into spartan quarters, scrimping by on instant noodles and making only a few hundred dollars a month. It just
didn’t feel right to be paid so much more than my colleagues when the company was still not even profitable.
    And of course I realized that Jack’s words were a friendly hint that my salary was unsustainable. Shortly after my conversation with Jack, at my next quarterly review with Savio, westarted talking about my future role at Alibaba. “Jack told me that I was the highest-paid person in the company, but I realize there’s not so much of a role
for marketing and PR right now,” I said.
    “Well, for marketing and PR, there’s not as much work as before,” Savio responded. “One idea we had was for you to move to the Hangzhou headquarters, where you could head
operations of the international website. But it’s hard to think of what you could do based in Shanghai.”
    I mulled it over. Hangzhou was a beautiful city that I loved to visit. But in the previous year I had already moved from Beijing to Hong Kong and then from Hong Kong to Shanghai. I wasn’t
quite ready for another move even further inland to a city with a tiny expat community. Plus, I had one unrelenting dream of my own that I had not yet fulfilled—to travel around the world for
a year.
    “I’ve always had this dream to travel around the world,” I said. “It’s something I’ve been wanting to do since I was a kid. Why don’t I take time off,
and once I’ve finished that, we can check back in to see if there is a greater role for me?”
    Savio seemed happy with the solution. It would save the company a large lump of money and would still give us the option of my coming back. He generously offered me the same severance options
he’d offered the others who’d been laid off. When I told him I’d take the three months of salary and leave the stock options on the table, he stood up from his chair and said,
“Wait here for a second—I just want to check with Jack on something,” before walking out of the office.
    He came back with a smile on his face and surprised me, saying, “I checked with Jack, and we’d like to let you keep allof your stock options, with the hope
you’ll come back to the company.”
    It was a nice goodwill gesture but one I didn’t pay much attention to. I assumed that Alibaba would at most be a $10 million company, making my options worthless, well below their strike
price. To be polite I smiled and thanked him, although my hopes of becoming an Alibaba millionaire had long since been dashed. “Thanks, but don’t worry about that,” I said
somewhat dismissively. “I hadn’t even thought about the stock options.”
    “No, really, we’d like you to keep them. And we hope you’ll come back.”
    I rode the train back to Shanghai, staring out the window at the rice fields, waterways, and small gray factories that dotted the countryside. I was excited to finally have the chance to realize
my dream of traveling around