51in, releasing a GoPro-likecameracalledtheOsmoAction.)
According to DroneIndustryInsightsUG,DJInowaccounts
for about 77% ofdronesalesintheU.S.Nootherrivalhas
more than 4% ofthemarket.
Some executivesmightusesuchdominanceasa reasonto
brag. Not Wang. TheCEO,whohasa thinbuildandlikesto
wear a newsboy capanddistinctiveroundglasses,hasn’tsat
for an interview since2016.Thoseclosetohim,includingmore
than two dozen currentandformeremployeeswhospokeon
condition of anonymitytoprotecttheirjobprospectsinthe
drone industry, describehimasanengineeringanddesign
obsessive with littleinterestinanythingelse.Theysaythathis
office is filled withobjectsheadmires—amotorcycle,a model
plane, a massive coffeetablethatlookslikepetrifiedwood—
and that his favorite movie is Real Steel, the 2011 Hugh Jackman
film about fighting robots. One former employee says Wang
“dreams of the day robots can do everything.”
DJI’s hiring standards are famously strict. To prepare for a
personality quiz, employees trying to get their friends hired
advise them to pick answers that sound analytical, not artsy.
A real stumper, people who’ve taken the test say, is whether
Leonardo da Vinci is a good role model, since he’s both an
artist and an engineer. Those who seem engineering-focused
enough eventually face a hands-on challenge: soldering drone
components together. Until recently, even potential sales and
marketing hires were asked to complete this task.
The tests don’t stop once an employee is hired. DJI has
become infamous for its competitive atmosphere. The com-
pany separates workers into groups and challenges them
to come up with rival takes on a new product. The winning
group gets the glory of seeing its ideas come to market; the
losers must help make that happen. Employeesareoften
asked to judge one another in surveys and to
rate the performance of other departments.
This data is then used to help decide sala-
ries.Therearemorearbitraryfactors,too.
Wangoncethreatenedtodockthepayofa
public-relations executive because Wanghad
received too much attention in the media.T
heintensityofDJI’scultureis partly
a reflectionofitshometown of
Shenzhen,wherethecompany’sfac-
toriescontinuetohum evenas the
coronavirus outbreak may delay deliv-
eries of key raw materials. People flock
from all over China to the city of 13 mil-
lion to try to get ahead in the tech industry.
WANG: IMAGECHINA LIMITED/ALAMY. DATA: DRONE INDUSTRY INSIGHTSWang found a way to tap into this vibe, giving
“IT USED TO BE MORE PEOPLE THAN
ROBOTS ON THE LINE, THEN IT BECAME
MORE ROBOTS THAN PEOPLE”
young engineers lots of freedom and responsibility. As one
former high-ranking executive puts it, “Frank doesn’t give
a shit about anything except technology. He wants the best
young engineers and people who are willing to get their hands
dirty and think up new ways to solve problems.” Among the
consequences of this ethos are infighting and crushed morale
for those who can’t keep up. DJI declined to comment.
Like many large Chinese companies, two people famil-
iar with the strategy say, DJI dabbles in so-called black ops,
tacticsusedtoattackcompetitorsorbuffitsownimage.In
onecase,thecompany’sagentssetup 50 fakeaccountsto
filla messageforumwithnegative comments about rival
EHang. The forum head saw that the comments were all
coming from a Shenzhen IP address, which pointed back to
DJI, and demanded that the company stop its behavior. The
company responded by telling its troll minions to keep bash-
ing, using software to cloak their locations. Pro-DJI trolls
allegedly attempted a similar operation on YouTube, where
they’ve been accused of smearing products from another
rival, Yuneec. DJI declined to comment.
Wang’s hostilities can carry over to DJI’s customers, too.
The company’s customer service is notoriously bad. Top
executives have been known to personally hop into customer
complaint email chains, according to one former employee,
where they engage in direct consumer combat, in multiple
cases using flight data to dispute the cause of crashes in bids
to quash refunds. Wang, according to this employee, takes
particular umbrage with resellers like Apple Inc., which offer
refunds with no questions asked, and vents his rage in emails
to top executives. DJI declined to comment.
About a 20-minute drive from the company’s headquar-
ters,itsfactoryhas the same boxy, bland look of any other
electronics plant. But on the inside, there are
multiple levels of automated assembly and
test lines. Robots put the drones together
and then set the aerial machines humming;
the drones take off on their own by the hun-
dreds, performing a series of maneuvers
over the course of two minutes, then land
andcontinue moving down the manufac-
turing line. “It used to be more peo-
ple than robots on the line, then it
became more robots than people,”
says Mario Rebello, DJI’s former
vicepresident for North America. Many
oftherobots used on the lines were built
in-house to perform highly specialized
operations. “There’s tooling on the line that
no one else in the world has,” Rebello says.U.S. HOBBYIST DRONE
MARKET SHAREIntel3.7%
Yuneec3.1%
Parrot2.2%
GoPro1.8%
3DR 1.5%
Other 10.9%DJI 76.8%