
U.S. chip manufacturing in the age of the iPad - J3L2404
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20023920-64.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
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gregpilling
I have to disagree with this quote from the article "But not all manufacturing
is created equal. "The vast majority of manufacturing is destructive to the
environment. Like paint and toy manufacturing. And if you build more
manufacturing plants here like Foxconn--which build Apple's iPhone in China--
Americans wouldn't want to do those jobs. It's mindless, grunt work," he
said." (Vivek Wadhwa being quoted)

So about the comment on destructive manufacturing, I would refer to the Subaru
Zero Landfill manufacturing plants - see <a
href="[http://www.edmunds.com/advice/buying/articles/124147/article...](http://www.edmunds.com/advice/buying/articles/124147/article.html>Edmunds</a>);
and to the comment about mindless grunt work I offer a personal anecdote.

I had a company of 20 employees, and we did manufacturing here in Tucson. One
day I was expressing gratitude to the office assistant about her consistently
excellent work in keeping the mundane office chores under control (filing,
mailers, etc) and she replied "thanks, I am an office robot - it is what I
love to do". I was flabbergasted - she loved the work! Personally I hate
filing, mailers or any of the mundane things and I view it as torture, but she
loved it. So I did a little survey at the next company meeting and found out
that half the employees like closed ended work like filing or packing
inventory and half the company liked open ended work like sales or figuring
out how to make something. The closed ended group would finish their jobs on
Friday afternoon and not think a single thing about work until Monday morning.
The open ended crowd would send emails at odd times of the night and weekends,
obviously thinking about work all the time.

So my experience is that people like Kat (my office robot) love the closed
ended work because they know where the beginning, middle and end of the job
are and if they have done a good job or not. The people who like open ended
jobs like them because they are not the same every time - and I note that
Wadhwa (and programmers, salespeople and writers etc) have open ended jobs. It
should be hardly surprising that they don't understand the other point of
view. I think there are a lot of people that would like 'mindless'
manufacturing work, if they were given the opportunity.

PS. If anyone needs a great office person, Kat is now living in Portland OR.
Send me an email and I will pass it on to her.

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URSpider94
It's pretty disingenuous to suggest that Apple should artificially prop up
American technology manufacturers by giving them business that they don't win
fair and square. The companies mentioned in this article, like Toshiba and
Samsung, are manufacturing their products in first-world nations (Japan and
Korea). They are competing with the USA on features and support, not just
cost. Not to mention that Intel has never prioritized the mobile business --
they sold off their XScale division, which had sizable market share in the
space, less than five years ago.

