
Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers - rdl
https://hackaday.com/2017/08/30/lu-bans-axe-and-working-with-your-chinese-suppliers/
======
aleyan
> Even now, engineers are not held in anywhere near the same regard in China
> as they are in the West.

I have to respectfully disagree with the author on the esteem of engineers in
China versus the West. I am not Chinese, nor an expert on their culture, but I
do live in the West so I understand half of the equation.

Current President of China, Xi Jinping was educated as a chemical engineer[1].
His predecessor Hu Jintao was a hydroelectric engineer[2]. His predecessor
Jiang Zemin was an electrical engineer[3].

Compare that with recent American presidents like Obama (JD), Bush(MBA),
Clinton(JD), Bush Sr(BA in Econ), Reagan (BA in Econ). These are only a few
points, but seems to me it is in China where engineers rise to the highest
echelons of power. We have lawyers.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Jinping#Early_life_and_educ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Jinping#Early_life_and_education)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hu_Jintao#Early_life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hu_Jintao#Early_life)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiang_Zemin#Background_and_asc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiang_Zemin#Background_and_ascendancy)

~~~
anovikov
This is because China is not a democracy. In a democracy, someone who speaks
well is likely to win - and lawyers by definition must be able to speak very
well. In China there is a merit-based system which as every merit-based
system, has a lot of flaws - so someone able to work through the top of it
must be a real hacker. Engineers win hands down over lawyers.

~~~
taway_1212
What? Communist party power dynamics are similar to ones in a gang - i.e. you
have someone from the party who managed to seize power and lots of other top
party members silently forming cliques and waiting for you to slip, so that
they can deliver the blow. The country's people are only chips in the game, if
that (often, rulers are toppled not over their policy but over some bullshit
doctrinal dispute).

~~~
ivanhoe
isn't that how any political party works?

~~~
rout39574
More or less; but I think the point is, that by denying the power-struggle
dynamic and punishing people who talk about it, communist structures in fact
amplify it.

So in a democracy, there's all that behind the scenes tussel, but there's also
an important aspect of public advocacy and decision testing. None of that in
China; the politburo says what it's going to say, and then does what it's
going to do.

~~~
justicezyx
> None of that in China; the politburo says what it's going to say, and then
> does what it's going to do.

Thats not what happened in China. In China government invest heavily in
propaganda and mind manipulation, they do not automatically push anything and
everyone just follow blindly.

------
rawnlq
Another interesting cultural bit from the same author on chinese
collaboration:

> You know how overseas Chinese students in America all copy each others work
> to get answers? This workflow scale. How we work when older too. So if I
> have a question I open up QQ and have a few hundred friends. We all help
> each other with whatever. Many are engineers or work in factories here in
> Shenzhen. Most of the electronics in the world are made here and a lot of
> them designed and engineered here also. So easy to get very very
> professional help. This network has been called gongkai. Also why so many
> hardware startup here.

Found from the author's comment history on reddit:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/3c9l2m/my_diy_underlit...](https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/3c9l2m/my_diy_underlit_led_hikaru_skirt_updated/cstmwmn/).

She seems to have a lot of (culturally) interesting opinions in general:
[https://www.reddit.com/user/SexyCyborg/comments/?sort=top](https://www.reddit.com/user/SexyCyborg/comments/?sort=top)

~~~
justicezyx
She was calling out common traits for people then trying to label them
Chinese, and readers, like you, suddenly feel "interesting"...

> how overseas Chinese students in America all copy each others work to get
> answers?

Student colluding is any special? I was college ta before, I do not think
there is ever a class students do not copy each other.

~~~
yorwba
I speak a bit of Chinese and have Chinese friends who were studying in Germany
and one time I got to sit in on their copying session. I was quite surprised
when a lot of Chinese showed up whom I'd never seen before.

Turns out some of them were seniors who had brought their homework from
previous years. It wasn't like everyone just copied the work either, there was
plenty of discussion about the points they had trouble understanding. (But my
Chinese wasn't quite good enough to pick up on most of it.)

So if I may generalize from my anecdote, I'd say that Chinese students
colluding is special in that they form a tightly knit community abroad,
helping each other out.

~~~
Sacho
Again, is that special to the Chinese? Isn't US history filled with examples
of foreigners forming tight-knit communities based on nationality or
ethnicity?

~~~
yorwba
My only other experience with large groups of foreign students from the same
country was when I stayed in China as an exchange student and met a lot of
Pakistanis.

They definitely hung out with each other more often, but they didn't seem to
actually study much together. I had a few email me with questions on the same
exercise, so at least those three hadn't exchanged notes.

Of course there might have been some Pakistani-only homework sessions I was
simply never invited to, but I don't think that was the case.

------
booleandilemma
_Since we are on the topic of idiom, this one rings true: “The nail that
sticks out gets hammered down”. Unless you’re the boss of the company you
rarely stand to profit from problem solving or creative thinking — and usually
speaking up will be detrimental to you in some way._

Are American companies that different? The few places I've worked software
engineers didn't get bonuses, only the people in sales did. Software engineers
are seen as a resource.

~~~
bm1362
Two NYC startups I've worked at have bonuses in the contracts. 10/20% based on
performance with modifiers each way.

~~~
chris11
How is performance generally measured for dev positions though?

~~~
bm1362
Peer and management feedback was used for the perf reviews.

------
zangiku
Interesting to see the _very_ strong parallels to Japanese culture here.

For everyone arguing about whether this is true of all Chinese culture, of
course there is innovative thinking in China, Wu is simply pointing out that
in places where people aren't getting paid to innovate but rather are there to
do a 9-5 job, there is little (and, in many cases, negative) incentive
culturally to think outside the box and push the envelope. Don't expect that
your contractor is going to go the extra mile for you. Getting specifications
right and driving the production process are on you.

~~~
GuiA
I don't think people half assing 9-5 jobs they have no interest in is unique
to Chinese culture. It's actually a pretty universal thing in every country
I've lived in.

------
vinhboy
> If you’d showed your axe to Edison he’d either have stolen the design or
> declared it a menace and tried to run you out of business so he could sell
> more saws

LOL... best part of the article. Good writing in general.

------
bambax
On the subject of manufacturing in China, everyone seems to be saying the same
thing, namely that you get exactly what you ask for, without any input or
suggestion from the manufacturer, even in the presence of obvious flaws in
your original design.

This hasn't been my experience. I manufacture small metal objects in China,
that are not very complex (no electronics, etc.) but I get good inputs from
manufacturers. For the packaging for example, we designed cases and envelopes
with a manufacturer, and they came up with several ideas that we tested on
prototypes -- some good, some bad, but the point is, they did have ideas and
they did offer them for consideration.

More importantly, it differs from manufacturer to manufacturer. Some factories
will produce garbage and then try to explain to you that there is no other way
(after the fact); other factories correct mistakes before they even show you
the result, because they understand what you want and they iterate
autonomously, in order to get there.

What is true is that manufacturing is sloooow. The total duration quoted at
the beginning of a project should be at least doubled. But this is probably
not Chinese-specific.

------
forkLding
Naomi Wu has a youtube channel about hardware, electronics etc if anyone is
interested:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh_ugKacslKhsGGdXP0cRRA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh_ugKacslKhsGGdXP0cRRA)

~~~
gleb
NSFW in US - for better or worse

~~~
forkLding
Thats more her style, not doing it for attracting attention, more because shes
interested in modifying her body

EDIT: not sure where the downvote came from, you can read about it from her
own pastebin

~~~
adventured
> Thats more her style, not doing it for attracting attention, more because
> shes interested in modifying her body

You're probably getting downvoted for that premise. It's blatantly obvious
she's using it to drive views on YouTube (and there's absolutely nothing wrong
with that). Even her name is intentionally pointed toward that: SexyCyborg;
she's telling you right there what she's doing. It would be just as obvious if
it were some hot guy that did every video of his with his shirt off. It's no
different from Howard Stern shock-jocking for listeners, or the thousand times
Jenna Marbles leveraged her looks to push views, or Matthew McConaughey taking
his shirt off on camera. It's always obvious what they're doing and why.

~~~
forkLding
Then I dont mind haha, theres more clickbaity stuff happening on my fb feeds
everyday, at least she got the breasts done before the internet fame and not
the other way around from how I remember it.

~~~
thrownblown
Err...most people miss it but I don't talk about sex Just completely immodest
when it comes to skin, that's sexy for other people, not me

[https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/903441607709540352](https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/903441607709540352)

------
logicallee
This was an interesting article!

At the same time, there are innovations out of China (that surpass anything
which may have inspired it, or which they could have started out copying). So
judging by their output, whatever cultural issues surrounded:

>For Chinese, this means you think you know better than a professional, than
experts. It’s the act of seeing something and saying “why don’t they do this
instead?”. Traditionally, this is viewed as extremely arrogant and certainly
not something to be encouraged in children or anyone else.

does not seem to extend to the whole of their ecosystem. I realize the author
calls the above a "traditional" perspective.

Could anyone here who is current with current developments of Chinese IP and
innovation comment on the validity of this general characterization?

The author in the entirety of the article certainly paints the Chinese culture
with a very broad brush. But as would concern readers here on HN, the only
thing that matters is what engineers who might work with them think.

What do people here think of the perspective in the article? For Chinese
readers, do you agree with it?

~~~
yzmtf2008
As a Chinese reader, every sentence in this article rings true, even more so
in the historic perspectives.

Especially in the PRC, you're in general incentivized to be an "excellent cog
in the machine", and they teach this value to you in schools. "Being unique"
in your first 18 years of life is considered a bad thing, and respect for
hierarchy is enforced every day.

I wouldn't write everyone in China off to the type presented in the article --
most people in China know that this is not an efficient way of approaching
things. However, their hands are tied in a society that enforces hierarchy in
every possible way.

~~~
logicallee
Thank you. Especially since you write that "every sentence in the article
rings true" for you, can you expand on this from the article:

>engineers that you know to be otherwise reasonably competent simply choosing
not to bring up glaring and obvious problems.

What does it refer to? How would/should someone guard against it? Normally we
are usually used to being able to receive a bit of push-back (maybe polite) if
we propose something with a glaring and obvious problem. Does this mean
engineers would build something that doesn't work at all? (For some reason
that's completely obvious to them.) In point of fact, I'm not sure what the
article refers to, as it doesn't give an example. Could you give an example of
what you think they mean, and how someone might protect against this effect?
Thanks.

~~~
yzmtf2008
I think "glaring and obvious" is a little hyperbole, in the sense that most of
the decisions an engineer can make aren't really that influential, and more
often than not if the odds are right, nothing will break.

An example would be: I know this different schedule can probably save the
company $xxx money, but since it's my boss who proposed it I'll just let it
pass.

It really takes a village. The culture of standing up against higer-ups is
sometimes way out of the league for a single person to achieve.

~~~
logicallee
Thank you for the example. I also asked how someone can protect against this
effect, but you did not answer that portion of my question. By "someone" I
meant, in this case the boss - how can bosses counter this effect?

For instance, to continue with your example, suppose the boss certainly
_would_ like to save $xxx with a different schedule they hadn't considered,
but isn't even aware that the engineer is competent enough to propose it and
knows how to do so: so in this case what could the boss have said or done
differently that would have caused the engineer to propose it?

I assume ending each meeting with "We must now talk about anything that would
improve the proposal just made; even if it makes me look like an idiot. Zhang
Wei, do you know of any improvements?" and then going around pointing to each
person and making them tell you whether they do, does not sound like it would
"work". In this case Zhang Wei would say "no", as would the rest of the
engineers... so how can the manager learn that an alternative schedule which
Zhang Wei can propose could save them $xxx? (And maybe even complete
production sooner, etc.) Any concrete suggestions here?

~~~
bllguo
Maybe anonymity would help? The problem there is that people won't have as
much incentive to propose improvements, as they won't be recognized if their
proposals end up being good.

It just has to be ingrained in the company culture I guess. You'd really need
to emphasize, whenever possible, that improvements and suggestions and
corrections are welcome. You're fighting against upbringing.

------
boombip
Could some of this also result from the contractual nature of using Chinese
suppliers? I know that from my own experience with contracting, that proposing
an improvement can be difficult if you also want to attach a fee to the
improvement. How do you say, "I think your proposal is flawed, this way is
better, but it will cost you $X more" in a way that doesn't feel like a money
grab or an insult? It can be in your best interest to allow the flaw to stand,
let the client notice and propose the improvement during the next round of
contract negotiations. And so the only improvements a contractor can propose
are those that do not cost substantially more then the established price.

Of course this is more for fixed price for fixed work contracting. Contracts
with more variable pricing my be better. Maybe other contacting setups can
alleviate this issue, but I haven't seen many that could work and that clients
are willing to sign.

~~~
bittercynic
I think it depends on having good rapport with the other party, but how about
this: "If you'd like, we can do X for an additional $Y."

------
dis-sys
> Even now, engineers are not held in anywhere near the same regard in China
> as they are in the West.

what a joke. Three Chinese Presidents in a row all had engineering background,
yet this is still not enough?

President Jiang Zemin was an engineer for decades.

President Hu Jintao was an engineer for almost a decade.

President Xi Jinping majored in chemical engineering from Tsinghua.

Then you look at property prices in Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen, it almost
got a point that you can't afford to buy a home unless you work for some
Internet companies or some banks. That is still not enough? How about the fact
that most Software engineers got paid far more than lawyers and
doctors/dentists?

~~~
chippy
Reworded: Even now, presidents are held with the same regard in China as they
are in the West.

------
whack
> _For Chinese, this means you think you know better than a professional, than
> experts. It’s the act of seeing something and saying “why don’t they do this
> instead?”. Traditionally, this is viewed as extremely arrogant and certainly
> not something to be encouraged in children or anyone else._

> _Simply put, in a strictly hierarchical society, proposing a solution missed
> by your superiors is at the very least perceived as arrogant. You’re just as
> likely to be penalized in some way for making whoever is responsible for the
> current solution lose face as you are to benefit in any way from proposing a
> better way._

Is this generally true in other industries as well? How do Chinese companies
try to be innovative, if people are discouraged from suggesting ideas?

~~~
ajross
Surely it's not true everywhere. Most of us have known plenty of Chinese
engineers who are unafraid to report bugs and suggest solutions.

But in the broad sense you mean: yeah, kinda. Chinese companies (in the PRC in
particular of course, but also outfits the stem from Hong Kong and Taiwan)
tend _not_ to be particularly innovative. It's a lagging market, filled with
well-implemented but fundamentally cloned products first pioneered elsewhere.
China has products that can compete well against, say, Google and Samsung's
offerings, but there are no _chinese_ Googles or Samsungs.

~~~
owebmaster
> but there are no chinese Googles or Samsungs

There is no american or european WeChat.

~~~
ajross
I guess. There's no one app, but nothing that WeChat does is serving a market
that didn't exist in the west first. It's a triumph of integration, not so
much innovation.

So... sure. In some sense that makes it an exception that proves the rule. If
China can be successful with WeChat where is its Tesla or Pfizer or Intel or
Fujitsu or...

I mean, there are times where a single counterexample can disprove a point. I
don't know that this is one of them.

~~~
owebmaster
> It's a triumph of integration, not so much innovation.

So which system did they clone to become like this? Because if they are the
first, I guess it is a lot of innovation.

~~~
ajross
Oh come on. I said it was good. It's just... not exactly the planar transistor
or a CRISPR-CAS editing therapy, or even Android or iOS. It's a good company
doing important but fundamentally simple stuff really well.

~~~
justicezyx
Wechat is more innovative than Android and iOS.

------
justicezyx
> Few Chinese companies promote engineering staff internally or even
> compensate them particularly well, so there’s little incentive to put an
> idea forward that may result in additional work and time away from their
> families.

Too much forced analogy. This one is just plain out of context. Even people
dont want to be educated in public, that does not translate who do the job
doesn't get paid.

~~~
gabeytani
Yeah...Baidu/Tencent/Alibaba pays engineers REALLY WELL, comparing to the
local standard.

Software engineering are already the best paid job category[1], outpacing
finance, for Chinese university graduates, as the best profession to go to. I
would say that is not the case here in US, where engineers are well paid, but
the still far from the envy of everyone, which would be lawyers and doctors.

1\.
[http://www.chinanews.com/sh/2016/05-16/7871331.shtml](http://www.chinanews.com/sh/2016/05-16/7871331.shtml)
(in Chinese though)

Side notes: It is pretty interesting to read those articles try to analyze
Chinese or East Asian people in general as they are machines from the same
factory tagged with serial number. I cannot see how that could give you really
insightful conclusions that generalize to 1.4 Billion people.

------
jjeremycai
This is fantastically well-written. Great insights.

~~~
justicezyx
I am not sure how did you draw this conclusion. The article is at best just
reaffirming stereotype, at worst plain dilkusional manipulation...

------
ptorrone
for some context.

the "community" on hacker news has said limor (ladyada) fried is not a "real
engineer" or she has help and doesn't really do engineering, or she is not a
real person, or she is just a marketer, or it's not really her code, amongst
other attacks anytime her work appears here on hacker news.

the same attacks on hacker news on naomi wu have been said to other women who
make things, share their projects, and are online, including limor, on hacker
news.

before you hit "add comment" \- what is the goal here hacker news community?

~~~
Yuffster
HN isn't always hostile to women.

The last time I made the front page under my real name,[0] I got a very
encouraging comment about how it was nice that I had just started programming
and was already thinking of hard problems.

Thankfully, it's simple enough to add an nginx rule to bounce anyone from
news.ycombinator.com right back to where they came from.

\--

[0] For some reason HN comments are much more respectful when I use a
pseudonym. I must have a silly name or something. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
ptorrone
perhaps "HN isn't always hostile to women" but it's enough times for every
woman i know to say it is.

hacker news community, what is your goal here?

------
exikyut
Avoiding the sentiment of the other comments here (which are not completely
confusing, but nonetheless a little over my head), I have a practical
question:

How does one relate to and incentivize the Chinese people, then? Where are
good places to start learning more?

Context/example:

I'm tentatively interested in approaching China from a "hobbyist with a tiny
bit of money" standpoint. I want to do limited runs (3 to 4 zeros, or if
circumstances allow, less!) of small handheld electronic devices - PCB, thin
removable enclosure, possibly some buttons/keys on the front.

Plastic caps directly over tactile buttons is cheap and compact, but rubber-
dome systems seem to have a higher-quality finish. The challenge here is that
rubber-dome "mats" are likely expensive to tool for, while sticking the dome
under a plastic cap means extra thickness. I'd need to find out what my
options are here (if I could achieve making a small _keyboard_ , with full
key-click - like the Psion Series 5 or HP palmtops - that would be amazing).

As a separate thing, I'm also really fascinated by the chip-on-board
techniques used to manufacture credit-card-thin solar calculators. It would be
amazingly fun to be able to play with those manufacturing techniques, but
going on the cheapness and sheer numbers of devices like this out in the wild
(and the fact that I'm seeing the same designs on eBay as I saw in electronics
catalogues from 1999!), it seems reasonable to think that the tooling to make
these is probably eye-watering, sadly. But I don't know.

I'm not asking for solutions or answers to these problems/questions here
(although if anyone wants to comment...); they're just for context. My point
is that I have no idea how or where to start in terms of contacting people and
going through all the machinery; I know the volume I can promise is
effectively nil, and I read this article from the standpoint of knowing I have
an extra job of convincing to do because of that.

I also recently read
[https://lwn.net/Articles/504865/](https://lwn.net/Articles/504865/) (found in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15138028;](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15138028;)
replies say the main focus of the (2012) article is outdated; I'm curious if
the bits I'm quoting are relevant). It's a transcript of a talk about some
teething problems with trying to do runs of hardware to run KDE on. It reads

> _... the manufacturers are "all about volume" ..._

and

> _Because the volume of devices that [Make Play Live] could promise to sell
> was fairly low, the manufacturer had little interest in consulting or even
> notifying the company about the changes._

and

> _In the Q &A session, Seigo further explained some of the problems that MPL
> had run into. Unless it can promise a quarter of a million (or some other
> six-digit number) of units, MPL won't be able to get any input into the
> process._

This info will likely be old hat to some. But I begin to wonder that whoever
agrees to do small production runs will just be amusedly humoring me - because
if the speaker of the transcripted talk linked above said ' _" Our order is a
rounding error"_'... what does that make my run? (Would it even need a
receipt? :P)

So I'm interested to understand Chinese culture more - particularly with
manufacturing, and in terms of learning more about the tech scene - so I know
how and where and the best place(s) to jump in.

I read
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15138739](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15138739)
a couple of days ago; to quote:

> _... [T]he most impressive I 've seen were some calculators I saw in
> Shenzhen a few years ago which looked like simple solar-powered 4-function
> ones, but were actually programmable and had several tens of KB of memory.
> Trying to use that functionality with a 8-digit 7-segment display, however,
> was quite challenging._

That's awesome. That's the sort of thing I mean by "scene" and what I want to
learn tons more about.

~~~
bobjordan
"I know the volume I can promise is effectively nil, and I read this article
from the standpoint of knowing I have an extra job of convincing to do because
of that."

Convincing of what - people to work for effectively nothing? Because according
to your logic, that is what you are trying to accomplish. Convincing people to
work for nothing. But it's not just you, it is the majority, dare I say nearly
everyone, that comes to China. Nearly everyone is trying to get something for
nothing. People just seem to lose their ability to comprehend that people in
China have the same constraints on time, and particularly the value time, as
everyone else outside of China.

I own a factory in China and I see this all too often. For example, people
come to us with complicated electromechanical projects with half-baked
designs. Designs that would require at least 3 additional months of
prototyping before we'd even be ready for tooling. That means we are very
likely going to spend 6-12 months working on your project. Too often, they
don't have a dedicated engineering staff so there are a lot of gaps we must
cover. Verification and validation of designs. Resultant CAD changes. Circuit
design changes. Prototyping. Strategic sourcing. Lifecycle testing. Safety and
agency. Packaging, packout and shipping. More, much more. It can easily
consume 1000+ man-hours even 2000+ man-hours from a team of 8-10 professionals
working on it. And then, lets say I quote $35,000 USD nonrefundable
engineering fees or labor and overheads for 1000+ manhours. That's about the
cost of a secretary with an associates degree from my home state in WV. What
do I usually hear? Crickets. I hear nothing back because people are too busy
expecting that they are going to work with a factory here in China and get
something for nothing.

And in the end, they are all wondering "why didn't I get what I tried to buy
from China?"

~~~
exikyut
Thanks so much for this insight.

> _Convincing of what - people to work for effectively nothing?_

Not quite. Things cost money; trying to get something for less than it
honestly costs is delusional, disrespectful, wastes everyone's time, etc. I
don't want to do that. (I'll admit I didn't convey the sentiment I was getting
at in my last message particularly well.)

Rather, it seems that there are few options if want to make something that
isn't going to be superscalar in terms of volume demand. Instead of "we need
ten production samples of this design to judge tolerance, and then our plans
are to do a volume order of xxx,xxx items"; I want to do the minimum order
possible (for reasonable and non-irritating (!) values of "minimum").

Essentially I'm in the same part of the spectrum typically catered to by
hobbyist 3D printing, but I'm trying to do things that are tricky to manage
with just a 3D printer. I mentioned keyboards before as an example; I've
wondered about how much it would cost to tool for custom keyboards for a
while.

> _People just seem to lose their ability to comprehend that people in China
> have the same constraints on time, and particularly the value time, as
> everyone else outside of China._

FWIW, I think this is because China is viewed as a kind of magical place that
makes _so much_ of _everything_ with _such amazing prices_ that there must be
some superhuman magic in there somewhere. :P So all reason and logic kind of
goes out the window. Somehow stuff is being made for impossibly cheap, so
surely that must mean that the actual manufacturing cost is cheap too, right?
(It would seem that these people don't comprehend economies of scale. I get
the impression that the reason that (for example) a given cheap toy is only ~a
dollar is because some super-wholesaler did an order for ~a million and paid
~$8xx,xxx (?), and then forwarded their costs on to a bunch of toy stores.)

> _I own a factory in China and I see this all too often. For example, people
> come to us with complicated electromechanical projects with half-baked
> designs. Designs that would require at least 3 additional months of
> prototyping before we 'd even be ready for tooling. That means we are very
> likely going to spend 6-12 months working on your project. Too often, they
> don't have a dedicated engineering staff so there are a lot of gaps we must
> cover. Verification and validation of designs. Resultant CAD changes.
> Circuit design changes. Prototyping. Strategic sourcing. Lifecycle testing.
> Safety and agency. Packaging, packout and shipping. More, much more. It can
> easily consume 1000+ man-hours even 2000+ man-hours from a team of 8-10
> professionals working on it. And then, lets say I quote $35,000 USD
> nonrefundable engineering fees or labor and overheads for 1000+ manhours.
> That's about the cost of a secretary with an associates degree from my home
> state in WV. What do I usually hear? Crickets. I hear nothing back because
> people are too busy expecting that they are going to work with a factory
> here in China and get something for nothing._

I see I have a lot to learn about. (I'm very curious where I should start. On
the one hand I'm yet another confused tangle of dime-a-dozen ideas, but on the
other hand I do think I have the patience and determination to manage a couple
of them down the track a bit.)

Reading this makes me think of the line "Reproduced by (...) from camera-ready
copy supplied by the authors." at the front of one of the textbooks I have
upstairs. It sounds like I could eliminate significant cost by applying
similar diligence and aiming to deliver complete specifications that are
immediately usable. I presume it's possible to request that mistakes be
pointed out so I can do the work to correct them on my end. That said, I say
this 100% naively; I wouldn't be surprised if this is actually infeasible :)

> _And in the end, they are all wondering "why didn't I get what I tried to
> buy from China?"_

I remember having a brief conversation with someone selling kitchen supplies
at a kiosk in a local mall (IIRC) many years ago about manufacturing arbitrary
things in China versus elsewhere. That's when I learned that the main reason
"Made in China" has such a bad reputation is because it's the customers on the
non-China end that are always trying to "optimize" their costs - and that end
quality was judged acceptable by sampling at the receiving end, not the
source.

That's kinda saddening, but it seems that the prices people expect to pay for
different things have been pretty much been locked-in since the manufacturing
boom of the ~60s-80s, so anybody who wants to pay the factories a tiny bit
more for better output quality is going to have a very hard time competing.

The angle I've been coming from here is biased a bit towards manufacturing in
general - I've mentioned toys, everyday objects, etc, as I have little
awareness of the technical/industrial side of manufacturing at this point.

