Abstract: With employee dissatisfaction becoming increasingly prevalent in Chinese internet companies due to employment relation issues like extensive work effort, illegal dismissal etc., there is an increasing need for an empirical study that examine how employees cope with dissatisfaction at work. To address this need, we use qualitative data from six Chinese internet companies to present an integrative framework explaining how neoliberalism and internet industry characteristics combine to give rise to intensive boundaryless career orientation among internet company employees, which in turn drive a range of behavioral actions-passive compliance, exit, dissent expression and resistance. We build on this foundation to offer propositions on how boundaryless career orientation leads to employees' strategies:vast majority employees tend to remain in the current unsatisfactory job with underlying commitment to on-the-job learning and enhanced employability, then some of them choose to exit when acceptable alternatives arise. Employees are less likely to express dissent or resist due to the risk of employer retaliation and threat to their boundaryless career development. However, the possibility of employee resistance would increase once the workplace violation has substantially damaged employees' interests of boundaryless career development or when they perceive resistance wouldn't bring much harm to their boundaryless career development. We contribute by providing a theoretical framework that offers new boundaryless career orientation explanations for how internet company employees experience and cope with dissatisfaction at work, and we also highlight its theoretical value and practical implications in improving employment relations in internet companies.

Key words: employees' strategies, boundaryless career orientation, dissatisfaction at work, passive compliance, on-the-job learning