
The Man Who Makes Your iPhone - nreece
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_38/b4195058423479.htm?campaign_id=rss_topStories
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mechanical_fish
It's like this guy has been stalking me my entire life:

 _... he bought a couple of plastic molding machines and started making
channel-changing knobs for black-and-white televisions. His first customer was
Chicago-based Admiral TV, and he soon got deals to supply RCA, Zenith, and
Philips (PHG)._

My family owned an RCA black-and-white TV in the seventies. This guy made the
knobs for my childhood TV.

 _Gou's first break came in 1980 when he started supplying Atari with
connectors that linked the joystick cable to its 2600 video-game console._

I remember that connector very well. What 2600 owner could forget them?

And the story just goes on like that, I'm sure. My iPhone is the spiritual
descendent of those old things.

~~~
elai
Was the connector memorable in a good or bad way?

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elai
So %0.0012 (11/920'000) of their workforce has committed suicide? What is the
average percentage of suicide deaths in that age range in china?

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Significantly higher than that, from what I understand. It's actually one of
those unfortunately 'uninteresting' headlines that will just never make
headlines: "Foxconn suicides significantly below national averages."

Remember: newspapers and blogs are in the selling eyeballs business, not in
the reporting news business.

~~~
nostromo
Well, to be fair, these people commited suicide _at work_ and sometimes left
notes pointing to their failures _at work_ while working 7 days a week for 15
hours a day. I don't personally think this story is just media hype.
[http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2010-05/25/c_133...](http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2010-05/25/c_13313857.htm)
[http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/malcolmmoore/100039883/wha...](http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/malcolmmoore/100039883/what-
has-triggered-the-suicide-cluster-at-foxconn/)

From the linked Telegraph article, "For those who believe the spate of
suicides is statistically in line, given how many people work at Foxconn,
consider this: the company says it has prevented a further 30 people from
trying to kill themselves in the past three weeks alone."

~~~
alexandros
Shall we tally up attempted suicides in the general population also?

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chaosmachine
_"When Apple's iPhone4 was nearing production, Foxconn and Apple discovered
that the metal frame was so specialized that it could be made only by an
expensive, low-volume machine usually reserved for prototypes. Apple's
designers wouldn't budge on their specs, so Gou ordered more than 1,000 of the
$20,000 machines from Tokyo-based Fanuc. Most companies have just one."_

~~~
patio11
You can count to twenty million very, very quickly in manufacturing. There are
individual buttons in and near Nagoya that cost more if you press them once.

~~~
mechanical_fish
I believe it was Intel that used to joke about the "million-dollar club". The
story I heard is that, as a fab engineer, you got admitted to the club by
accidentally spoiling one lot of wafers, each of which represented more than
one million dollars in gross revenue.

Since there are many, many potential process mistakes that can spoil an entire
lot at once, the implication was that you weren't going to remain outside the
club for very long.

~~~
patio11
Wait until someone forgets to tick off "Items to be returned to toolbox: ...
#32) Phillips Screwdriver (1)" prior to testing ignition on a prototype
aircraft engine. A million will sound cheap.

Have I mentioned that the engineering culture in this neck of the woods takes
checklists _very effing seriously_?

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hswolff
One page:
[http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/10_38/b41...](http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/10_38/b4195058423479.htm)

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jjcm
_"Foxconn founder Terry Gou might be regarded as Henry Ford reincarnated if
only a dozen of his workers hadn't killed themselves this year"_

Ouch, that's a cold way to start an article - odd considering they go into
detail his charitable works later on in the article.

~~~
eitally
If you knew him, or knew people who have had personal relationships with him,
you'd understand why this is a reasonable lead-in.

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Das_Bruce
What is a 'postmodern industrial empire'?

I'm not sure it makes any sense, like the gradient of a cow.

~~~
ugh
If you take ‘postmodern’ as denoting merely time (say, post-1980s) it does
make sense.

~~~
metageek
...yeah, but that's not what it means.

Although I suppose letting words mean whatever you want them to mean is fairly
postmodern.

~~~
Das_Bruce
Excellent point.

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theycallmemorty
> The two were married on July 26, 2008, at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Taipei.
> During the reception, Gou mounted the stage, shed his tuxedo jacket, and did
> 30 pushups to prove his virility. Nine months and four days later, Delia
> gave birth to a daughter, Hsiao-ru.

That gave me a chuckle.

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timruffles
Fascinating. Since it seems from the article that smaller companies are less
worker friendly, and people are literally desperate to work for Foxconn, it's
hard not to see Gou as a good thing for China & the Chinese.

A business epic...

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shadytrees
The link 404'd for me, but it works without the campaign_id:
[http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_38/b41950584...](http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_38/b4195058423479.htm)

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maukdaddy
For all the shit that MBAs get, one thing you will never hear is "hungry
people have especially clear minds"

That is absolutely awful.

