
Chinese engineer commits suicide after losing a 4th generation iPhone prototype - noheartanthony
http://trueslant.com/marcflores/2009/07/21/chinese-engineer-commits-suicide-over-missing-iphone-prototype/
======
huherto
A guy who works at Foxconn here in Mexico told me that Chinese executives that
come here are surprised and somehow annoyed but the difference in cultures.
Here, people come to work, talk to each other, joke around, etc. In China,
people just stay in one place, do not talk to each other and just look
straight down even if the line is stopped and they don't have work to do. It
sounds like one of those futuristic movies where we are just robots doing the
same thing over and over. I do not know if they are repressed or if it is pure
fear. I guess that can make you crazy. I know that he (Sun) was an engineer
and it is not exactly the same, but still I can imagine a situation where he
was extremely scared.

~~~
startingup
You may be surprised to hear this: that part about "stay in one place, do not
talk to each other and look straight down" is true even in Japan and Korea,
even in many high tech office settings. My vivid recollection when I worked in
Japan was "These people are so nice outside the office, why do they become
such expressionless robots inside?" I have many close friends in Japan (and we
have done a lot of fun stuff outside the office), and so I would ask them
this. They would shrug and say "At work we have to wear a mask, that is just
the culture here, everyone has to conform to it." It felt oppressive to me,
but they seem to take it in their stride.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
China is historically the cultural juggernaut of east Asia. I don't know why
the culture has taken on this aspect, but yes, it is ubiquitous in these
nations.

~~~
mahmud
Perhaps an imperial history explains it? The early industrialists looked
around for a social model for the "factory" and the people gathered there in,
and the closest thing they found was the military and the warrior classes. The
industrialists often refer to themselves a "moguls" and their large businesses
as "empires"; you can see how their little ego might take on a whip and shape
people in the imperial master/server image.

You never see the same thing in ancient trades; agriculture, education,
restaurants, etc. specially in China. Family or community owned industries.
It's businesses operated by "forward looking" management that's learning and
applying this robo-militaristic attitude. Henry Ford did the same thing, the
man pretty much removed workers from society and built walled cities in the
jungle. Though I think Henry the Great might be shooting for a "benovelant
dictator" sort of title.

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ice5nake
We all support the Chinese way every time we buy a product made in China. A
business supports these methods every time they sign a contract with a company
that produces its goods in China. It's implicit. I am not sure how you can
feign having your head in the sand. Apple is absolutely part of the problem.
We are absolutely part of the problem. Yes, even myself. To say otherwise is
foolish. Apple should hold Foxconn to high standards not only in protecting
its secrets but how to properly treat human beings.

~~~
emmett
Claiming this is the "Chinese way" is stereotyping a country of 1 billion
people from the actions of a very few. Going further and suggesting we
boycott/avoid Chinese products is protectionism motivated by misguided
xenophobia, rather than any rational standard.

~~~
nailer
My wife was a producer for fashion labels for many years, and has many friends
who still are. Head to Shenyen sometime, and try and get 'off the rails' to
see some of the conditions at the factories they're not willing to show you up
front. Then try and find an alternative where that doesn't happen.

~~~
netsp
Boycotting China wholesale is counter productive if you want to achieve better
working conditions for Chinese workers.

~~~
MisterMerkin
Why don't you enlighten us then.

~~~
netsp
There are a few ideas that at least won't hurt, but the possibility exists
that the working conditions of Chinese factory workers is not within your
sphere of influence.

The obvious way to achieve minimum working conditions is legislation. Many
believe this would be counter productive. I'm not certain.

In any case, refusing to purchase from them and 'buying local' instead denies
those workers that job. Doing this does not improve their situation.

------
a2tech
I find it interesting that the article seems to be pointing the finger of
blame at Apple-however I can't Apple really being to blame here. This seems
like more a problem with an extremely stressed individual and an extremely
controlling corporation that is employing him. Something tells me that if the
guy had lost ANY secret product (not just Apple's) the pressure applied to him
would have been immense.

~~~
barredo
Disclaimer: i'm a Mac user and have nothing against Apple.

Said that I guess we (and the companies) should start thinking if this kind of
'collaboration' or contracts with Chinese companies are not only profitable
(that is the main -if not only- reason) but good for China, the Chinese
company, the Chinese workers, the non-Chinese company and the end user.

Because I guess, we are exploiting the workers in a country with a
dictatorship just to get cheap gadgets, toys and such.

And yes, I would say Apple is a bit to be blamed for this. Not that Apple were
aware or that Apple would approve these (I'm 100% sure it doesn't) actions.

But, if this Chinese company -and others- keep their contracts with American
or European companies although things like keep happening (At least we know
about this case! How many of them have happened?)... they (the 'first world
companies') will become (if they are not already) part of the problem.

ps. Sorry for my English (I'm from Spain and well...)

~~~
jacquesm
Apple is part of the problem here because they are positively anal about their
product releases being kept secret to the point where they will sue left right
and center if they suspect some kind of breach.

Why the cult of 'new' is so crazy about having the latest gadgets and how much
that drives sales is totally beyond me. If it works and I need it I'll buy it,
otherwise you can keep it.

I never realized how bad it really was until a good friend - who shall remain
nameless - vowed to queue to be one of the first to have an iphone. Seriously,
who cares. People think they're cool because they have cool stuff, not because
they _do_ cool stuff.

~~~
allenbrunson
When Apple announces a new product, it is almost always available for sale
that very day. Almost everybody is hearing about it for the first time. The
big wave of excitement hits, which probably leads to a big first few weeks of
sales.

Many (most?) other companies have talked a product to death by the time it is
actually for sale. There is no excitement at this point, it has all been
dissipated away. Consumers don't see much of a need to buy it right away.
Maybe they'll forget about it altogether before making the decision.

I'd say this works pretty well for Apple. You are trivializing their methods
in an ugly way.

~~~
geoka
"Many (most?) other companies have talked a product to death by the time it is
actually for sale. There is no excitement at this point, it has all been
dissipated away. Consumers don't see much of a need to buy it right away."

Are you saying that expo demos and previews for the media actually hurt sales?
I always thought manufacturers do it to build up interest and excitement; this
way when the product is released everybody is rushing to buy it. Look at the
games industry, for example. It seems to work.

Why Apple thinks it works the other way around, is beyond me.

~~~
electromagnetic
I saw advertisements for the new 2010 vehicles in January of 2009. The company
either lost a 2009 sale from me, or made me not care about the 2010 vehicle
_at all_ because it's old news long before it's out.

For some products a slow trickle of information helps, however it's generally
the exception than the rule (I'd say the movie industry is wholly an exception
to this). Windows 7 is faltering because it's the alternative to Vista and now
the bad scuff marks of Vista are appearing on 7, instead they could have had 7
appear suddenly and have sold millions of copies before anyone even heard a
bad word.

Apple has major flaws sometimes, the iPod Nano was a flat out disaster in
Europe, but it turned into a disaster _after_ they'd sold millions of copies
and not before they'd sold a single copy. If test versions of the Nano had
broken _en masse_ even the hardcore Apple fans wouldn't have touched it.

Apple thinks it works the other way around is because _it does_ work the other
way around. Announcing a product early can set it up for failure, especially
today when products can go from concept to market in less than six months. If
I announced in Q2 2008 that I had a product coming out at the start of Q4
2009, it gives nearly 18 months to challenge me. It doesn't help that there's
a nasty habit of identical products coming out at the same time and if you
announce a unique feature early, you're identical by release.

~~~
geoka
Well, now I see why it works in the gadgets industry, with so much competition
and Chinese replica manufacturers.

I still don't think that in software industry it works the same way. Most
people I know would not care about new version of Windows coming out of the
blue, unless there has been enough hype for long enough time.

And it is certainly so in the video games industry, where previews, trailers
and detailed media reports are released in abundance sometimes years before
the game is finished. Especially so for the more popular game franchises.

~~~
electromagnetic
I wholly disagree for video games, but then I worked as a reviewer so I admit
my view is likely very skewed from the average consumer. Near identical games
come out sometimes months apart in video games, but similar happens in the
film industry with Armageddon appearing 2 months after Deep Impact in cinemas
in '98.

The new Harry Potter was held off last year because the produces were afraid
two competing fantasy series could kill each other near a Christmas recession.
Twilight, which is basically swept up in the box office and with Harry Potter
6 due out literally like a week later and cost almost 7 times as much to make.

However cooincidences occur frequently with movies and games due to waiting
for the right market attention. I mean a G.I. Joe movie or Transformers movie
could have been made whenever, similar with a lot of movies, however it's been
impossible up until late to make live action movies with quality animation.

I personally see little difference between a lot of video games and movies.
I'm uninterested in 2012, because I already saw it with Knowing and its about
as meaningful as a movie on the millennium bug would have been in 1997. Then
there's the whole Bedtime Stories following Inkheart (Which was due out in
March 2008, but was pulled back to December 12 at least in the UK), and
Bedtime Stories looked like it was rushed into production following the sale
of Inkhearts rights.

Again, I'm probably not the best person to ask as I had a movie pass at like
13 (the pass cost $20 a month, I easily got $40 worth of movies per weekend).
So I'll say there is a need for hype in the movie and video game industry,
however I still believe there's a big opportunity for companies to rush poor
quality movies into production to steal the limelight from another. This is
especially true when some movies can take 3 years to produce and others are
done and finished in 9 months and may wait another 6 months for release, but
if you group movies too closely you end up with two distinct groups of movies
(like plays) Comedy or Tragedy and then all grouping is meaningless.

------
ajg1977
Sad, but I wonder what really happened to it...

------
makecheck
I guess what I find interesting is that someone so young (25) would be
entrusted with such an important product, and entrusted alone. He could only
have been with the company a few years at most. If I were in charge of that, I
would at least send two people to pick up those phones, and they'd be people
with bigger stakes in the company (maybe upper management or even vice
presidents?).

~~~
danw
25 isn't so young, almost a decade after a person can join the workplace

It's strange to see how these days people in their twenties are expected to
behave like adolescents. There was a recent NYT article gushing about how
incredible it was that Obama's speech writer was only 27 whilst his peers
played video games all day. By that age Darwin was already back from a five
year voyage collecting samples and Einstein had written a paper on special
relativity.

Luckily the HN community expects us to do something worthwhile regardless of
age.

~~~
sriramk
I'm sad to say that this comment depressed me more (call me self-centered)
than the original article (since I'm 25 right now).

------
jrockway
This is why I like the OpenMoko phones. Open source hardware; nobody needs to
kill themselves over revealing the details.

~~~
yan
Is that really the reason you like OpenMoko phones?

"nobody needs to kill themselves over revealing the details"

I completely don't understand that statement. Like anyone associated with the
iPhone can say "someone needs to kill themselves over this project." Suicide
is _never_ the result of outside details, it's a personal disorder.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
_Suicide is never the result of outside details, it's a personal disorder._

I think in many cases suicide is an individual manifestation of a societal
disorder. There's a reason Japan and South Korea have some of the highest
suicide rates in the world. When death is seen as a tolerable or even
honorable method of saving face, people will exercise that option.

(edit: The numbers I was looking at came from
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_suici...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_suicide_rate)
which is more of the list of "developed" nations. Japan and South Korea are
comfortably in the lead there. If you go by all nations then the post-Soviet
countries do rank highest.)

~~~
tokenadult
_Japan and South Korea have some of the highest suicide rates in the world._

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate)

The World Health Organization figures on suicide rates around the world,
conveniently gathered in the linked Wikipedia article, provide more nuance on
this issue. Throughout our lifetimes, the top countries in the world for
suicide rates have been in Europe.

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bumbledraven
I wonder if it was actually suicide?

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RiderOfGiraffes
Similar comments here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=715920>

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Luyt
"Many Chinese died to bring you this iPhone".

------
polos
OK, sad, but the problem here is identifying yourself too much with your job
(which is always interchangeable and finite, as opposed to identifying
yourself with the real value of your person, which is always infinite).

~~~
freetard
No, that's not the problem. Did you read the article? The guy was going to be
tortured and beaten probably to death.

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trevelyan
N = 1.

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mattmichielsen
The article neglected to mention that the next generation iPhone will be a
current one with U2 colors and signatures.

