
Foxconn to hire 3,000 to support Firefox OS and software development - robin_reala
http://www.itworld.com/361807/foxconn-hire-3000-support-firefox-os-and-software-development
======
lifeisstillgood
Firstly, FoxConn has 1m+ employees. 3,000 is a drop in the ocean. Secondly, of
those 3,000, "wastage" will whittle it down to an effective corps of maybe
100, plus 1,000 support staff.

In a year's time, the commit logs for Firefox will have @foxconn all over
weird and wonderful hardware compatibility bugs for Foxconn's big customers.

This is simply a marker, put down to say "if you are a handset manufacturer,
and thinking of trying this new OS, then make it with us, because we are
investing in it too"

Its a sensible move, covering their bets. And if FirefoxOS takes off (and I
hope it does) they can double down next year.

~~~
xyzzy123
EDIT: On second thought, I think what they're actually saying is: "Don't worry
sharemarket, our future revenue won't all depend on Apple". At this point the
mechanics aren't important.

Agree with your assessment that organizing a team like this _inside a hardware
company_ is going to waste a lot of human capital.

Because 3k ppl would be order-of-magnitude size of the _Windows 8_ team.
However Microsoft have decades of experience doing this stuff and frankly
they're still the giant that walks, e.g. their organisation is so large it's
frankly astounding they manage to ship things.

Ref: [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/08/17/introducing-
th...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/08/17/introducing-the-
team.aspx) (estimating as (40 devs + 45 testers/managers) * 35 feature groups
= 3k, plus tech writers, overhead, usability, localization, etc, etc = 10k?)

------
victorlin
This is a joke, these people are good at hardware OEM, but they don't
understand software. They are using hardware OEM thinking to build software.
Maybe they think crafting software is all like to pipeline components and make
cheap labor assemble them. Good try, but it won't work.

You never know how low IT salary it is in Taiwan, 20K USD is a pretty good
annual salary for a new graduate Computer Science student as Software Engineer
You can also see 8.8K USD annual salary for software engineer title everywhere
here. How can you find talent with that shitty payment? All they can find is
cheap labor.

Try to pay really good salary and find few but pretty top talents. It is
better to have a 10 members elite team rather than 3000 not-so-good
developers. Otherwise, go back and do your OEM.

~~~
bsaul
I'm pretty sure you don't realize that it's what people here in Europe have
been saying about China for the last 15 years, until they started competing
with us on the nuclear power plant and fast train businesses.

Then, we lost all our jobs in the industry (except for Germany, but for how
long ?), and Europe now faces the biggest economical crisis it has ever known.

US still reigns the software industry, but should China decides to make that a
top priority, you can be sure that it won't take long until we all start using
"made in china" OSes and softwares.

~~~
bebna
> (except for Germany, but for how long ?)

We just work together with china and not against it. We sell them fabrication
machines, together with services and skill around those.

(And in the end, we export enough weapons to not care.)

~~~
bsaul
I'm all for the liberal way of thinking. Making business with someone is
supposed to be good for both sides. But that works when you're making business
with a democracy that plays it "fair".

Working "together" with China is a pretty idealistic way of seeing it. They've
spent the last 20 years asking for european companies (both civilians and
military) to give them their industrial and technological secrets before they
buy anything, so that they could clone pretty much everything and sell goods
back to us for 10% of the price, thanks to a workforce that lives in barely
human conditions and no patent system or anything close to it (but also very
smart and education oriented people, to be honest). With software, my bet is
it's going to go even faster, since everything is pretty much open source
those days.

Now, I know things are slowly changing and i don't mean to be too hard on the
chinese regime, which managed to let that country grow tremendously, and
probably improve the life of many citizens. I just wanted to balance your
idealistic point of view a little bit.

------
thasmin
The biggest challenge will be for the HR team who needs to find 3,000
productive new employees. They're not hiring unskilled labor here. When you're
hiring that many people, you need to lower your standards and you're going to
wind up hiring people who will be a drain on productivity.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Please remember FoxConn has 1m+ employees.

Everything I know about data centres and SOA and uptime is laughable at google
or twitter scale. Likewise, everything I know about HR and culture and hiring
practises is laughable at "workforce bigger than some countries" scale.

~~~
tomkit
The vast majority of that 1m+ employees are low-skilled wage laborers. Finding
3000 high-skill engineers is definitely a monstrous task. Twitter is 7+ years
old and they're only at ~1600 employees about half of which are engineers.

------
janjongboom
A bizarre number considering that the total number of contributors on the
Firefox OS frontend is currently 249
([https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia](https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia)).
No clue on which part they're gonna put these people on.

~~~
qznc
These people are probably not working on the OS, but creating Apps and UI
customization.

~~~
bcks
Yeah, a good bit of internationalization and localization, I suspect, too.

------
peterwwillis
The phrase "HTML5 operating systems" made my brain explode.

Somebody please send me back to 1996, when the world made sense.

~~~
Sven7
WebRTC, WebGL, Web Speech et al. make today's browsers look like today's
operating systems.

So stop making silly jokes and get with the program :p

~~~
peterwwillis
Saying a web browser is an operating system is like saying a car is an engine.
Sure, you could put the car on a dynamometer, convert the dyno to an electric
generator and use the power to run your home entertainment system. It'd be
kind of ridiculous though.

~~~
Sven7
In software its all good.

And that will always be the flaw in this line of reasoning.

------
bornhuetter
> On Thursday, Foxconn said it was looking to hire between 2,000 and 3,000
> people in order to bolster its research into software.

Looks like those 2-3k people might be for a wider effort than just Firefox OS.

I think it is a smart move to make such a big move, as anyone wanted to get in
the market needs to do so now. If they continue on their current trajectory,
the market is looking very much like Windows/Apple in the 90s (except now it's
Google/Apple). If Android becomes the Windows 95/XP of the smartphone world,
then it will be very good for some and very bad for others - and it would
become increasingly hard to break into the market.

------
quackerhacker
I'm a FIRM believer in quality over quantity, and I feel this large number is
just to bolster investment into Foxconn.

I really do hope that this pushes further development into Firefox OS...I
remember seeing a demo of the Ubuntu Mobile OS running on an Atrix, that was
everything I pictured for the future of computing.

------
mtct
3000 are many people, I believe that not even google has all those people
working on Android.

~~~
swamp40
It's not a lot if most of them will be working on apps to get the
infrastructure competitive.

Here's their competition:

 _Google Play /Android is estimated to have 800,000 apps (Jan. 4, 2013)

Apple iOS App Store recently reported 775,000 apps (Jan. 7, 2013)

Windows Phone Marketplace is up to 125,000 apps (Oct. 25, 2012)

Blackberry World is now up to 70,000 apps (Jan. 30, 2013)_

Source: [http://www.pureoxygenmobile.com/how-many-apps-in-each-app-
st...](http://www.pureoxygenmobile.com/how-many-apps-in-each-app-store/)

------
mathattack
3000 people on a software project scares me. That's a LOT of coordination and
communication. What would Fred Brooks say?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-
Month](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month)

~~~
wtetzner
It might be that they will be working on different things, e.g., writing a
bunch of apps for FFOS's app store.

~~~
Raphael
It sure will be strange a year from now when we have Foxconn Chat, Foxconn
Photos, Foxconn Search, Foxconn Social, Foxconn Racing, Foxconn Music...

------
swamp40
Could someone please comment on Foxconn's overall strategy here?

They are trying to take on Apple AND Google/Android AND Amazon AND Microsoft?

With no previous experience in the field?

(I'm sure most of the 3000 hires are for app development - that makes much
more sense.)

~~~
chatmasta
No previous experience, except for manufacturing the iPhone.

~~~
jisaacstone
That and nearly every phone/computer. Anyway my guess is they will start by
tackling the low end - replacing all those candybar nokia's &c that are still
everywhere in Africa and Asia with a cheap, high-quality smartphone.

------
randomfool
Does Foxconn have any similar investment in other OSes? I've never heard of
Foxconn-developed apps or UIs, so I'm wondering what sort of software
experience they bring to the effort.

------
_progger_
Because if you put several thousand engineers on the project they got to do
something great, isn't?

------
adamconroy
This sounds like a plugin in disguise.

------
zerr
I hope there won't be any suicide software engineers...

EDIT: Regarding downvotes - I didn't know so many Foxconn recruiters were
sitting on HN...

~~~
yesplorer
Honest question: You know your comment and edit to it makes you really sound
stupid right?

~~~
zerr
Honest reply: You think it is stupid to remember foxconn employees who
committed suicide. What do you think you are after this?

~~~
igravious
So any time any company is mentioned we'll dig up the worst piece of
controversy they courted in their past? Or is there a specific reason you're
doing so now?

