Comment by hinkley | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hinkley | Hacker News Reader

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This still sounds nuts to me.

Two thoughts:

> they typically will not be thinking they are doing anything wrong. They are just testing if you notice and if you do not they will say it makes no difference for you but saves them costs.

This is how children behave. Still feels like you’re rewarding bad behavior. You’re enabling them.

I think it’s more that you’ve valued the low per unit price over having a healthy contract. Your vendor is incentivized to make all of their money off of externalities and your company think it’s cheaper to outwit them than to demand QC on their end. Whose brand will be sullied if you miss some of these units and a customer finds the spyware? Not theirs.

And second thought, shouldn’t serial numbers be coming off the line in ascending order? The kind of work they are doing would require taking parts off the line and putting them back later so odd lots of SNs are the ones you need to verify.

You could also be mandating how many boards are allowed or that the SNs go on early in the build process.

This is just how low trust societies function for hundreds if not thousands of years. This is also why families tend to be much stronger in these places. The American idea of a strong family is different from what I'm describing, since it just centers on immediate family. My definition of strong family bonds, implies both closeness and dependency not just on your immediate family, but even on your distant cousins on both sides. It's close if not the same to how Mediterranean and Hispanic cultures view families. I guess you can call it a clan mentality. I'm now wary of countries where families are really strong ie clans. It's not always the case, but it tends to mean the rule of law is weak and corruption is crazy.

When you can't even trust that food is real, and when you have to bribe even low level provincial government employees (can you imagine needing to bribe DMW workers or even police?) - what else is an average person to do except to treat it as the norm in order to survive? Unless you're an elite, the only other option is to leave, and not everyone has that choice. Very little is considered wrong over there, aside from criticizing the powers that be; as long as it helps your clan. It doesn't help when Western companies and governments look the other way, as we see in past news stories and even the comments here.

I'm not condoning the behavior; just explaining.

Not much to add, but want to note that you're spot on. I've encountered this SO many times over the years and this is always the explanation I'm given. At first it just made me indignant, too, and to some degree I guess it still does, but now I just try to let it go.

It's not rewarding bad behavior when you take it into account in the deal. Moralization is useless when you do business with different cultures. When you notice something what would be out of ordinary in your culture, you estimate the cost and find out how locals solve it. Different cultures have different kinks and people living there know to adjust to them. It can be fun to figure out how other cultures function.

From a naive Finnish perspective you could see American business culture as dishonest. People lie all the time and promise things that are false and you need massive amount of legalese or they fuck you over. When they say something, you can't trust it as much as you can trust a Finn (or Swede). American way is to lie to your face in pre-negotiation but then be truthful to the legally binding agreement. Germans or Belgians are more truthful beforehand and they stick to deals better without legal enforcement looming over them, but require more detailed written deals than Finns. Who is right? Should we punish Americans for their behavior or adopt their culture?

Of course not. You must understand that that the level of acceptable exaggeration, overpromise and bullshit and trickery is strictly culture dependent and relative. Someone is dishonest if they "lie this amount above average" in their cultural context. After you make an adjustment, you know how to get the truth.

Chinese manufacturers have the capability to stick to standards, take responsibility and deliver high quality stuff. It's just more dependent on personal relationship. Just placing an order has less trust as default. Either you develop "quanxi" with your suppliers or work trough some third party that understands both worlds. Third party understands what you need and knows how to get it from the Chinese suppliers because they have a relationship.

Chinese pay the cost that comes with their business culture. They can't network as fast as you can in open western cultures with more default trust between strangers.

Altering components to something cheaper is common practice for every company that is willing to exploit the fuck out of their customers. Look at the food industry. In EU there is control, in US thare are sanctions. But it is up to the governments because companies are to opportunistic to change. As long you can (re)sell the junk you get, you're fine, if you can't you upgrade "QA".

Both the EU and US have internal controls on food quality and sanctions.

Contrary to the impression your post gives, the EU has much more "sanctions" against food (esp. imports) than the US does, and is generally taxing much heavier and restricting many more things. Importing essentially any milk product into the EU is only possible on an exception basis. Trump has a LOT more work before extra sanctions in the US will become comparable to the EU ones.

What is often not said is that the EU not only has sanctions on its borders against food products, it actually has internal sanctions and regulations that are purely political in nature.

For example "champagne" in the EU can only be made within a particular region in France. Which leads to funny, in a sad way, consequences:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/feb/15/eu-fears-in...

This applies to many products. Wines, cheeses, cakes, fruit, meat, potatoes, candy ... and is generally absolutely ridiculous:

https://www.foodmanufacture.co.uk/Article/2014/11/13/Interac...

For your other part of your comment, I am unwilling to give a real answer. Obviously the US checks it's food quality. It's made different choices than the EU, famously the US allows hormone "enhanced" meat, but it does check food quality and safety. There are heavy penalties for breaking them.

Champagne is literally the name of the area where the product comes from. It makes perfect sense that anything that doesn't come from the region Champagne, isn't champagne... Call it sparkling wine, it's fine, but not champagne. And it applies to most local products. Camembert? Comes from a specific town, which is called Camembert. Beaujolais? The name of the province. And the list goes on. It doesn't sound "absolutely ridiculous" to me.

"generally absolutely ridiculous"

Did you look at the map? It's nearly all things with a place name in the product name. For example, "Welsh Beef". Why is it reasonable for a consumer to buy Welsh Beef and for it to possibly have come from somewhere other than Wales?

It seems to me, more like generalising the concept of trademarks to place names rather than just company names and brand name.

and no kinder surprise in the us.

It is called business. The company's ONLY duty is to bring profit to its investors and management is legally bound to maximise it. Now, the definition of profit may differ as well as what is profitable and what is not, but the company is legally obligated to work to bring profit and if you throw a good deal because you don't like it you better explain it to your investors.

Whether you like what your supplier does or does not is of no concern. If couple of units can be detected and written off it is treated as cost and you move on to decide if it is still profitable and whether you can get better deal somewhere else.

You let you emotions rule and it just means you are not fit for the job.

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