Court Judgment on Illegal Termination of a Machine Vision Algorithm Engineer – Case Analysis

The piece begins by questioning whether the number of code lines written by a programmer can reflect their competence, citing a CSDN survey that most developers write about 200 lines per day.

It then presents a real labor dispute: Li, a machine‑vision algorithm engineer at Zhongke Shangyi Health Technology Co., was terminated during his probation for allegedly insufficient code output and other performance issues.

Key contract details: Li was hired on 2020‑11‑02 with a monthly salary of ¥36,000, a three‑month probation, and a standard work schedule. His duties included 3D point‑cloud processing, deep‑learning pose recognition, multi‑camera fusion, sample creation, documentation, and integration tasks.

The company claimed Li wrote only 422 lines of deep‑learning code over 72 days, averaging about 7 lines per day, far below the industry norm of 100‑200 lines. They also alleged repeated violations such as unapproved reporting, poor teamwork, and absenteeism.

Li contested the evaluations, denied the alleged absenteeism, and argued the termination was unlawful. Both parties submitted various documents and recordings, though the company did not provide forensic verification of the recordings.

The arbitration tribunal awarded Li ¥36,000 for illegal termination and ¥13,241.37 for unpaid wages (January 1‑12, 2021). The company complied with the wage payment but appealed the compensation claim.

The court affirmed that the company failed to establish clear probation standards and that its unilateral termination lacked factual and legal basis, thus deeming the dismissal illegal and ordering payment of the compensation.

Final judgment: the company must pay Li ¥36,000 compensation within ten days, confirm the wage payment, and its other claims were dismissed. The company’s appeal was rejected, upholding the original decision.