Here's what he did say (his full post is here [1], if anyone's curious), which I think indicate culture, area, and distance from where he considers home as the factors affecting his health:
But what I've realized is that the last few years of living in such a singular environment have taken a huge toll on my life and started affecting my health. My friends, what I consider to be my home, and my life are back in Silicon Valley, which is also much closer to my family. Seeing how much I've left behind these past few years, it is clear to me that the time has come to return.
Specifics or misquotes aside, if you meant that the offer from Facebook was his primary reason for leaving, I can see that too, so won't disagree with the notion.
That's amusing in that the LA basin had an infamous "smog cap" for a good stretch of the XX century. Helped a lot getting those seminal strict emission laws in California, I believe.
Yep. LA in the 70s and early 80s was pretty bad. The irony that I'm escaping to here for the clean air! It is really good now, and china can really turn a corner in the future if they work hard enough at their pollution problem. Unfortunately, I just can't wait for that.
As someone who faced a similar decision two years ago (whether to go to MSRA or Google in SV for my sabbatical), the air pollution was one of the top three factors. I'd love to spend a year in Beijing, and the food is a bonus. But we decided it wouldn't be appropriate or fun to have a 3 year old inhaling that for 365 days. This was from experience - we speak to a week when she was two, and she'd have a coughing spell every time we left the hotel. But yes - many stresses. Family, not speaking the language very well, etc. In the case of seanmcdirmid, though, he's fluent and seems to like the food. :-). (welcome back, btw)
None of those were deal breakers for me personally. It really came down to the air coupled with a pregnant wife and soon to be newborn who didn't need to suffer through that.
Not sure why you were downvoted so much. China can be very hard to integrate with moving from the US. I had several coworkers there for year-long projects and a couple of them were miserable the entire time because the culture was too different for them (smog didn't bother them because they were indoors with good air filtration).
Not many foreigners have problems with Chinese food (the opposite isn't true, Chinese don't like western food as much). Beijing also does well on western-style for when you want it. Cooking is more annoying, you have to be extra careful when grocery shopping due to food quality issues, but variety isn't much of a problem (well, no western style sausage).
I don't believe that this was faked excuse. It is grueling to work in Chinese startup. In one of the articles about Xioami, he had a meeting in evening then flew out for a business meeting tomorrow morning, which means red-eye for him. This is not unheard in China. Work-life balance doesn't exist. US executives can't keep up with this demanding nature in Chinese work culture.
But Hugo seems to leave in good terms. His hiring and Xiaomi's well-received exposure to other markets in China coincided so it benefited both, company and him.
