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Comment by kalesh | Hacker News Reader

It's not about being advanced. It's about keeping promises & being honest. It might take a whole generation to fix this.

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Overpromising and underdelivering is what you do when you can't meet the expectations and you need to try and get the business anyway. What's the alternative? Honestly promise a product no one wants to buy. Once you've manufactured a billion widgets you no longer need to overpromise and underdeliver. It's very similar to the silicon valley "fake it till you make it" attitude.

Yeah or maybe you could just be honest and not cheat. That's a good option too.

as someone who has ran a machine shop, that's lovely -- but rare.

95 percent of the shops I have known in the past or worked with currently would sell you their ability to do something while simultaneous upgrading their equipment to match the moment the PO is signed off on.

If fab/machine/mfg shops didn't take on work that was beyond their capability then the smaller groups would starve to death immediately, being unable to use the larger contracts to facilitate upgrades.

The trick is to find a shop operator that is aware of their rate of capability upgrade and turn-around time, that way the delivery dates aren't inaccurate even if the shop capabilities need to be 'tuned' (new machines bought).

I've been burned by overpromising machine shops in Canada. They have eventually delivered but with absolutely unacceptable delays. How does one year sound?

Yes I am aware that lying and cheating is very common behavior

In those lines of work where it's especially common, ethical behavior can be a competitive advantage

I'm not sure it really is. Dial your time machine back to Victorian London and I bet you would find lots of similarly-run factories. As another poster pointed out, the choices are essentially 1) be honest that you are kind of a bad factory, and can't really produce anything that people want or 2) pretend that you are a great factory, get some business, learn and iterate. Eventually you can honestly promise high quality, but you have to survive that far first.

> Dial your time machine back to Victorian London

You may want to check with Ea-Nasir about his copper ingots... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir

I don't think it was intended to be the earliest example, just one that is more relatable to westerners.

Yes you are correct that lying and cheating does have a long history

When your competition is willing to lie and cheat, honesty is a liability that will result in bankruptcy. Worse, this attitude is endemic in all business sectors where I have worked, and I would be shocked to find a sector where this is not true.

Yes that is 1 way to justify compromising your ethics

That's part of what I mean by advanced as well. Yes, it might well take a generation, it took China a generation too.

Parent commenter is right, China was like that. The difference is in the root cause: attitude. Whole world is full of ridiculously hard working Chinese people rising up from being an immigrants with nothing and running like the half economies of countries after 50 years.

The root cause is more than attitude.

And Indian immigrants do that too and have risen to be CEOs and Vice Presidents and Prime Ministers and Ministers and in other leadership positions in other countries.

What’s your point?

No idea where “half the economies of countries” is coming from? Citation needed..

This remark applies to all IT outsourcing companies: more billable hours. Love to see how a Chinese IT outsourcing company fares in contrast with TCS, Wipro, Infosys of the world.

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