(Yicai Global) Jan. 11 -- Chinese e-retailing sensation Pinduoduo has been caught up in its third maelstrom in two weeks concerning staff members, this time for dismissing an employee for posting "malicious and extreme views" against the company and inciting the social media storm surrounding the deaths of two employees in the last 14 days, it said yesterday.

An engineer using the handle “Wang Taixu Wary” claimed that he had been fired by Pinduoduo for posting a photo of a colleague being carried out of the office on a stretcher on social networking platform Maimai on Jan. 8, he said in a clip posted on video sharing website Bilibili last night.

“Human resources called me in and asked me to resign voluntarily,” he said. “I refused and was fired.”

The employee has violated the company’s code of conduct and so the firm decided to terminate his contract, said Pinduoduo.

Wang’s post would have fueled concerns about the grueling 12-hour-day work week that might have led to the deaths of two of his colleagues in the last 14 days. A 22-year-old staff member at the company’s online grocery platform Duoduo Maicai appears to have collapsed from exhaustion at 1:30 a.m. on Dec. 29 at the company’s offices. Then on Jan. 9, a technology development engineer surnamed Tan committed suicide by jumping off a building when visiting his hometown Changsha, central Hunan province.

This has prompted Shanghai’s occupational health and safety agency to look into the notorious ‘996’ work system used by many of the country’s tech giants which refers to a nine a.m. start and nine p.m. finish six days a week. Staff at Pinduoduo reportedly start work at 11 a.m. and clock off at 11 p.m. Monday to Saturday.

Pinduoduo pays its staff higher salaries than similar positions at other tech giants, but it employs less people, Shanghai Securities News reported previously.

Pinduoduo employs just 7,000 staff, a fraction of fellow e-commerce giant JD.com’s 320,000 employees, Chief Executive Officer Chen Lei once said. Yet the e-retailer dispatches over 70 million parcels a day, one third of the packages sent across the country each day.

The ‘hard core’ work model put forth by founder Huang Zheng, while drawing controversy, appears to be paying dividends.

The online retailing sensation turned a profit for the first time in the third quarter, raking in CNY466.4 million (USD72 million), according to its latest earnings report. Revenue shot up 89 percent to CNY14.2 billion (USD2.2 billion).

Pinduoduo’s stock price [NASDAQ:PDD] hit a record high on Jan. 5 of USD187.20. On the last trading day, Jan. 8, it closed up 0.36 percent at USD180.77, giving it a market capitalization of USD221.7 billion.

Editor: Kim Taylor