Chinese engineer commits suicide after losing a 4th generation iPhone prototype | Hacker News Reader

Chinese engineer commits suicide after losing a 4th generation iPhone prototype

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109 pointsnoheartanthony71 comments

A guy who works at Foxconn here in Mexico told me that Chinese executives that come here are surprised and somehow annoyed but the difference in cultures. Here, people come to work, talk to each other, joke around, etc. In China, people just stay in one place, do not talk to each other and just look straight down even if the line is stopped and they don't have work to do. It sounds like one of those futuristic movies where we are just robots doing the same thing over and over. I do not know if they are repressed or if it is pure fear. I guess that can make you crazy. I know that he (Sun) was an engineer and it is not exactly the same, but still I can imagine a situation where he was extremely scared.

You may be surprised to hear this: that part about "stay in one place, do not talk to each other and look straight down" is true even in Japan and Korea, even in many high tech office settings. My vivid recollection when I worked in Japan was "These people are so nice outside the office, why do they become such expressionless robots inside?" I have many close friends in Japan (and we have done a lot of fun stuff outside the office), and so I would ask them this. They would shrug and say "At work we have to wear a mask, that is just the culture here, everyone has to conform to it." It felt oppressive to me, but they seem to take it in their stride.

China is historically the cultural juggernaut of east Asia. I don't know why the culture has taken on this aspect, but yes, it is ubiquitous in these nations.

Perhaps an imperial history explains it? The early industrialists looked around for a social model for the "factory" and the people gathered there in, and the closest thing they found was the military and the warrior classes. The industrialists often refer to themselves a "moguls" and their large businesses as "empires"; you can see how their little ego might take on a whip and shape people in the imperial master/server image.

You never see the same thing in ancient trades; agriculture, education, restaurants, etc. specially in China. Family or community owned industries. It's businesses operated by "forward looking" management that's learning and applying this robo-militaristic attitude. Henry Ford did the same thing, the man pretty much removed workers from society and built walled cities in the jungle. Though I think Henry the Great might be shooting for a "benovelant dictator" sort of title.

At our startup one of the main customers is a big Japanese company. They sent over a group of engineers for about a month once and the majority of the day they would just sit around the conference table, seemingly staring at their laptops in a trance, no typing, no mousing, no talking. When they weren't in the conference room and you'd talk to them they often seemed stressed out about getting the project completed, but then they seemed to sit around doing nothing (while maybe one guy was working with our engineers). That was always such a conflict in my mind, since we are all busy around the clock. But here these guys were worried, but not doing anything about it. It was one of those things I just chalked up to bizarre cultural differences.

Edit: we've also worked with a small Japanese startup company with maybe 4 employees, and they bust their asses all the time. So part of the culture is really a corporate culture difference as well.

I think it has something to do with the Confucian formalities. This is true of Taiwan and Singapore as well. Though ironically enough mainland China is probably the least Confucian of the bunch as a result of Communism.

I've read a lot about mainland Chinese office workers quitting Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, and Singaporean companies because of the "attitudes" and the office culture their superiors impose on them.

Foxconn is a Taiwanese company, so I'd expect some extra formalities involved in the offices. Interestingly enough, since the mainland companies are eager to emulate foreign corporate cultures, a good portions of them are adopting the formalities from its Asian neighbors. Though to balance things out many companies are also going for the more casual tones of western firms. It'd be interesting to see how it'll work out.

Assembly line workers are a different story. They are pretty much all treated like crap, since they are considered a lower social class because of their rural births and the lack of legal permits (and thus forfeiting many rights) to live in the cities. This is the major source of social unrest in China, it's mostly unreported in the west, and it's a much greater threat to the government than all the ethnic conflicts you hear in the media.

We all support the Chinese way every time we buy a product made in China. A business supports these methods every time they sign a contract with a company that produces its goods in China. It's implicit. I am not sure how you can feign having your head in the sand. Apple is absolutely part of the problem. We are absolutely part of the problem. Yes, even myself. To say otherwise is foolish. Apple should hold Foxconn to high standards not only in protecting its secrets but how to properly treat human beings.

People kill themselves in "the West" over losing jobs or pressure at school, too. I've heard that students in Cambridge have a high suicide rate, for example.

Also the question is would the people be better off without the jobs from foreign companies? Surely they put up with pressure at their jobs because they don't have a better alternative?

The pressure people are under to work in the West is generally smaller than the pressure to work in second world countries including China.

And the Cambridge students chose to be under that pressure.

Or were pressured to be under that pressure - we're talking about seventeen-year-old kids here. But, still, it's nothing like this – and, flawed thought it is, there is support for students.

Not saying that I'd rather live in China, just thought that particular example was a bit off.

It's extremely difficult to avoid Chinese-made products when you buy electronics...

It's actually hard to avoid them no matter what you buy.

Claiming this is the "Chinese way" is stereotyping a country of 1 billion people from the actions of a very few. Going further and suggesting we boycott/avoid Chinese products is protectionism motivated by misguided xenophobia, rather than any rational standard.

My wife was a producer for fashion labels for many years, and has many friends who still are. Head to Shenyen sometime, and try and get 'off the rails' to see some of the conditions at the factories they're not willing to show you up front. Then try and find an alternative where that doesn't happen.

Boycotting China wholesale is counter productive if you want to achieve better working conditions for Chinese workers.

I don't see how - if more people stop buying Chinese goods (e.g. shitty plastic toys that you don't need), then they might do something different than feed the West's desire to spend and consume.

Why don't you enlighten us then.

There are a few ideas that at least won't hurt, but the possibility exists that the working conditions of Chinese factory workers is not within your sphere of influence.

The obvious way to achieve minimum working conditions is legislation. Many believe this would be counter productive. I'm not certain.

In any case, refusing to purchase from them and 'buying local' instead denies those workers that job. Doing this does not improve their situation.

There is such a thing as an American way. When I moved here, I knew I would be supporting it, and all that it entails. I haven't been to China, but I can speak for my home country and say that there is, indeed, an Indian way. Large and diverse as our nations might be, there are subtle but long-lasting cultural threads that bind nations together. These are not stereotypes - merely cultural markers and pre-dispositions. While they shouldn't guide our conduct towards individuals much, they are definitely useful in dealing with cultures/ nations as a whole.

@emmett I am disappointed by your comment. Xenophobia? Really? I am merely hoping for consumer and corporate accountability. I am using decades of observation that have brought me to a completely rational conclusion. I suspect you are reading things between the lines from my statement that aren't there. Stereotyping? Yes I grouped people together. And Yes I made a statement about that group. Trying to denigrate my point because of this is I hope seen as it should be, a superficial criticism.

I know a western family that lives in China working in import/export. They came to visit and said something that stuck with me. "China is a very big place. If you ever hear of something that happens in China, it's probably true somewhere."

I'm sure I've butchered their words, but the point is that because of how big China is, it is difficult to correctly assume that what you may believe is true for all or even most of China. I'm not saying that what you say isn't true, but I ask that we clarify and quantify our use of "the Chinese way" when making claims about it.

Agreed, the work ethic of Silicon Valley is definitely not representative of "the American way". Work ethic can vary vastly between states/provinces, cities and even companies. The work ethic I grew up with in the north of England is rather different than the one here in the Greater Toronto Area. However the work ethic of my wives family again is completely different, they come from the east coast where the work is either fishing or farming.

I can work like a dog from 9-5, once it's quitting time I'm done. I don't need lunch or breaks, that's how I was taught to work. I can't even approach office culture because from my point of view everyone is a slackass doing nothing because there's always some people who appear not to be working.

Perhaps my view of working is similar to those of the Chinese where the industry grew out of manual labour. In fact this so called "Chinese way" is indicative of Japan and South Korea (as mentioned elsewhere), where all of the money grew out of steel and ships. When you deal with extreme hazards like red-hot steel (the process of building ships included a lot of manually placed red-hot rivets, and in China still does) so I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of the CEO's and directors grew up from these industries and inherited the work ethic. In the west we turned to the service industries quite early, we're not agricultural or industry any more, so the 100% focus needed for work has likely diminished too.

One thing I was taught early, 'Never assume, just find out and then you'll know.' This advice has served me well from measuring cuts with materials to dealing with people. It's very ignorant to assume when it's simple to find out. Assumptions can easily kill and I've been witness to that; I saw a guy shot across the room because he assumed the power was turned off when we were working, finding out was merely asking a sentence (to us or his boss who was a foot away) but he didn't and he ended up in hospital (it wasn't negligence on our part, his boss asked us to turn a circuit on so they could run their power tools and the kid decided to run a jump off the live line at the same time).

I find it interesting that the article seems to be pointing the finger of blame at Apple-however I can't Apple really being to blame here. This seems like more a problem with an extremely stressed individual and an extremely controlling corporation that is employing him. Something tells me that if the guy had lost ANY secret product (not just Apple's) the pressure applied to him would have been immense.

The article first and foremost blames chinese society and government. Apple's secrecy is mentioned only as a side note without assigning any blame.

Disclaimer: i'm a Mac user and have nothing against Apple.

Said that I guess we (and the companies) should start thinking if this kind of 'collaboration' or contracts with Chinese companies are not only profitable (that is the main -if not only- reason) but good for China, the Chinese company, the Chinese workers, the non-Chinese company and the end user.

Because I guess, we are exploiting the workers in a country with a dictatorship just to get cheap gadgets, toys and such.

And yes, I would say Apple is a bit to be blamed for this. Not that Apple were aware or that Apple would approve these (I'm 100% sure it doesn't) actions.

But, if this Chinese company -and others- keep their contracts with American or European companies although things like keep happening (At least we know about this case! How many of them have happened?)... they (the 'first world companies') will become (if they are not already) part of the problem.

ps. Sorry for my English (I'm from Spain and well...)

Apple is part of the problem here because they are positively anal about their product releases being kept secret to the point where they will sue left right and center if they suspect some kind of breach.

Why the cult of 'new' is so crazy about having the latest gadgets and how much that drives sales is totally beyond me. If it works and I need it I'll buy it, otherwise you can keep it.

I never realized how bad it really was until a good friend - who shall remain nameless - vowed to queue to be one of the first to have an iphone. Seriously, who cares. People think they're cool because they have cool stuff, not because they do cool stuff.

"People think they're cool because they have cool stuff, not because they do cool stuff." Very succinct expression of an idea that has been rattling around in my head for a while but I couldn't express except very verbosely.

This is one of the reasons I read HN. People whose writing skill makes me think "I wish I could write as clearly as that".

When Apple announces a new product, it is almost always available for sale that very day. Almost everybody is hearing about it for the first time. The big wave of excitement hits, which probably leads to a big first few weeks of sales.

Many (most?) other companies have talked a product to death by the time it is actually for sale. There is no excitement at this point, it has all been dissipated away. Consumers don't see much of a need to buy it right away. Maybe they'll forget about it altogether before making the decision.

I'd say this works pretty well for Apple. You are trivializing their methods in an ugly way.

"Many (most?) other companies have talked a product to death by the time it is actually for sale. There is no excitement at this point, it has all been dissipated away. Consumers don't see much of a need to buy it right away."

Are you saying that expo demos and previews for the media actually hurt sales? I always thought manufacturers do it to build up interest and excitement; this way when the product is released everybody is rushing to buy it. Look at the games industry, for example. It seems to work.

Why Apple thinks it works the other way around, is beyond me.

I saw advertisements for the new 2010 vehicles in January of 2009. The company either lost a 2009 sale from me, or made me not care about the 2010 vehicle at all because it's old news long before it's out.

For some products a slow trickle of information helps, however it's generally the exception than the rule (I'd say the movie industry is wholly an exception to this). Windows 7 is faltering because it's the alternative to Vista and now the bad scuff marks of Vista are appearing on 7, instead they could have had 7 appear suddenly and have sold millions of copies before anyone even heard a bad word.

Apple has major flaws sometimes, the iPod Nano was a flat out disaster in Europe, but it turned into a disaster after they'd sold millions of copies and not before they'd sold a single copy. If test versions of the Nano had broken en masse even the hardcore Apple fans wouldn't have touched it.

Apple thinks it works the other way around is because it does work the other way around. Announcing a product early can set it up for failure, especially today when products can go from concept to market in less than six months. If I announced in Q2 2008 that I had a product coming out at the start of Q4 2009, it gives nearly 18 months to challenge me. It doesn't help that there's a nasty habit of identical products coming out at the same time and if you announce a unique feature early, you're identical by release.

Well, now I see why it works in the gadgets industry, with so much competition and Chinese replica manufacturers.

I still don't think that in software industry it works the same way. Most people I know would not care about new version of Windows coming out of the blue, unless there has been enough hype for long enough time.

And it is certainly so in the video games industry, where previews, trailers and detailed media reports are released in abundance sometimes years before the game is finished. Especially so for the more popular game franchises.

I wholly disagree for video games, but then I worked as a reviewer so I admit my view is likely very skewed from the average consumer. Near identical games come out sometimes months apart in video games, but similar happens in the film industry with Armageddon appearing 2 months after Deep Impact in cinemas in '98.

The new Harry Potter was held off last year because the produces were afraid two competing fantasy series could kill each other near a Christmas recession. Twilight, which is basically swept up in the box office and with Harry Potter 6 due out literally like a week later and cost almost 7 times as much to make.

However cooincidences occur frequently with movies and games due to waiting for the right market attention. I mean a G.I. Joe movie or Transformers movie could have been made whenever, similar with a lot of movies, however it's been impossible up until late to make live action movies with quality animation.

I personally see little difference between a lot of video games and movies. I'm uninterested in 2012, because I already saw it with Knowing and its about as meaningful as a movie on the millennium bug would have been in 1997. Then there's the whole Bedtime Stories following Inkheart (Which was due out in March 2008, but was pulled back to December 12 at least in the UK), and Bedtime Stories looked like it was rushed into production following the sale of Inkhearts rights.

Again, I'm probably not the best person to ask as I had a movie pass at like 13 (the pass cost $20 a month, I easily got $40 worth of movies per weekend). So I'll say there is a need for hype in the movie and video game industry, however I still believe there's a big opportunity for companies to rush poor quality movies into production to steal the limelight from another. This is especially true when some movies can take 3 years to produce and others are done and finished in 9 months and may wait another 6 months for release, but if you group movies too closely you end up with two distinct groups of movies (like plays) Comedy or Tragedy and then all grouping is meaningless.

i was going to answer this, but electromagnetic already replied with everything i would have said. heh!

i'll add one thing. an enormous amount of work often goes into products that are killed before release. evidence exists that this has happened many times within apple. anticipated products that get cancelled leave a bad taste in people's mouths. if you don't announce until the product is for sale, you've automatically guarded against vaporware.

I'm of a torn mind on this subject. There is really a lot of tragedy in the living circumstances of the ordinary people creating so many of our mindless consumer products. But at the same time, the jobs creating such products are highly coveted because they beat the hell out of manual labor on a backcountry farm. When you've got such an enormous population bootstrapping into a modern industrialized economy there are huge disparities while the modernization process takes place.

I don't think that assigning blame to Apple is warranted here. Apple certainly is horrified at what has happened - not just due to bad PR, but because an engineer took his life over a consumer gadget.

There are no easy answers here. My hope is that within a few generations the societal earthquakes will settle down with respect to modernization. Even then though, what does it take to overcome millennia of societal acceptance of suicide?

Indeed, progress is a float, not a bool. And the sign is dependent on the arbitrary selection of evaluative criteria.

To be a little picky, China is not a dictatorship. Rather, it is a one-party state, complete with internal dissent and power struggles. Chinese leadership experiences more turnover than, say, North Korea.

Edit: What, you don't believe me? Try this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_the_People%27s_Repu...

Hu Jintao has been President since 2004, succeeding Jiang Zemin who became President in 1993. Some dictatorship.

Not everything non-western is equivalent. That's just sloppy thinking.

While what you say is correct, it would be good if Apple did something about this.

Sometime back HP had employed an agency that used illegal means in the US to trap peoples phones etc. While the contract agency committed the crime, HP did take responsibility for this.

On similar lines Apple could investigate take action on their outsource partner. It should also see if its own staff gave such expectations to the outsource partner.

I'd put this a little more strongly: assuming what has been reported is true, Apple should step up and wield the power it has in this situation to strongly denounce and penalize Foxconn.

I think there would need to be proof that Foxconn did something, which I would imagine will be hard to get out of China.

The article doesn't blame Apple as much as it blames the Chinese government and how it handled the matter. The article does state that it might not have happened in another country.

Sad, but I wonder what really happened to it...

I guess what I find interesting is that someone so young (25) would be entrusted with such an important product, and entrusted alone. He could only have been with the company a few years at most. If I were in charge of that, I would at least send two people to pick up those phones, and they'd be people with bigger stakes in the company (maybe upper management or even vice presidents?).

25 isn't so young, almost a decade after a person can join the workplace

It's strange to see how these days people in their twenties are expected to behave like adolescents. There was a recent NYT article gushing about how incredible it was that Obama's speech writer was only 27 whilst his peers played video games all day. By that age Darwin was already back from a five year voyage collecting samples and Einstein had written a paper on special relativity.

Luckily the HN community expects us to do something worthwhile regardless of age.

offtopic: I'm with you, I'm tired of people at their 30-ish and saying 'I'm still young, bla bla bla' :-)

I'm sad to say that this comment depressed me more (call me self-centered) than the original article (since I'm 25 right now).

[I am 25, moved to US for BS so worked since 18]

I think work age is slightly different in Asia. Most people do not work till they have at least a BS Degree (21/22) or possibly even a Masters degree. And also, while they are in school/college they pretty much stay at home in the comforts of their family unless they go for an engineering college to a different city. So, indirectly they are pretty much protected from the real world issues for a major part of their youth. So, age/maturity also seems to have some cultural flavor to it as well.

@danw That is a damn good point. Of course, Gen Y is largely to blame because of its false sense of entitlement.

That's quite funny on a site mostly dealing with startups, where typical company is also not older than "a few years at most".

Also, I really don't understand why this should be a job for some _manager_, who doesn't even need to ever see the phone, and not the engineer who needs to work with them. Managers are more important and trusworthy than engineers? Oh. Why.

This is why I like the OpenMoko phones. Open source hardware; nobody needs to kill themselves over revealing the details.

They're a great idea, but sadly no where near as nice as the iPhone, or even the Palm Pre or G1 for that matter.

This is true and as much as I like the project and am with the original commenter in terms of enthusiasm the statement might be slightly going in the wrong direction as there could be secrecy about hardware features as well. I think what our fellow hacker wants to point out though is the fact that there is a completely different culture around the openmoko project where tragedies like this would be a lot less likely to happen. Openmoko has less of momentum simply because there isn't as much money behind but still I would dare to say it might be almost a duty for the open (source) minded hacker to own one (EDIT: device, like the Neo Freerunner "GTA02") and hack around. For the sake of a new culture.

Oh, I completely agree, I just don't think you could compare it, since the OpenMoko is just so subpar.

Is that really the reason you like OpenMoko phones?

"nobody needs to kill themselves over revealing the details"

I completely don't understand that statement. Like anyone associated with the iPhone can say "someone needs to kill themselves over this project." Suicide is never the result of outside details, it's a personal disorder.

I concur on the criticism of the statement but I wouldn't be so sure as to call every suicide a personal disorder. Obviously his environment(/his mistake?) put him under a lot of pressure which has been clearly UNBEARABLE to him. This is not happening in the US this is happening in a different culture, there are factors to be counted in we might not even know about. Not every suicide is a personal disorder.

Suicide is never the result of outside details, it's a personal disorder.

I think in many cases suicide is an individual manifestation of a societal disorder. There's a reason Japan and South Korea have some of the highest suicide rates in the world. When death is seen as a tolerable or even honorable method of saving face, people will exercise that option.

(edit: The numbers I was looking at came from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_suici... which is more of the list of "developed" nations. Japan and South Korea are comfortably in the lead there. If you go by all nations then the post-Soviet countries do rank highest.)

Japan and South Korea have some of the highest suicide rates in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra...

The World Health Organization figures on suicide rates around the world, conveniently gathered in the linked Wikipedia article, provide more nuance on this issue. Throughout our lifetimes, the top countries in the world for suicide rates have been in Europe.

What??

One of the first books of sociology was about suicide: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_(book) .

A person is doing it of course, but all the circumstances and environment around count! Otherwise, exaggerating a little bit this kind of reasoning, one could say: "poverty is sometimes the result of outside details, but one can overcome them, so it's more a personal disorder."

"poverty is sometimes the result of outside details, but one can overcome them, so it's more a personal disorder."

Isn't it true in the most literal sense? I read somewhere that the #1 reason for the homelessness in the US phenomenon is the lack of socialized healthcare, specifically mental healthcare. There are much fewer homeless people in Europe, because they get treated.

Haven't you just proved the opposite point though? The poverty is caused by a lack of mental healthcare, which is _not_ a personal disorder. Well, _both_ share the blame because people have a problem that cannot be resolved without outside influence.

> Suicide is never the result of outside details, it's a personal disorder.

If you look at the Wikipedia link tokenadult posted, it's clear that there are huge variances both over time (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Hungarian...) and between different countries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra...).

That strongly suggests that some component of a society does influence the suicide rate. Of course, it's not the only factor, but it is surely a factor.

I'm sorry I didn't intend to mean it isn't a societal issue. The gist of what I was trying to get across is that in my opinion, no rational person would kill themselves regardless of their life situation.

"Rational person" is an oxymoron.

A sufficient amount of harassing and violence (both mental and physical) can lead someone to mental breakdown. The threshold may vary from one person to the next, of course, but it can be done.

Furthermore, some studies suggest that depressed people have a more objective assesment of reality (specifically, their estimation of what other people think of them is spot on, whereas non depressed people think that the others see them in a better light than they actually do).

We developed through evolution an optimist bias that keeps most people afloat and allowed humans to survive despite their part of rationality.

> Suicide is never the result of outside details, it's a personal disorder.

Did you read the article? It says the guy would have been tortured and beaten (to death?) if he hadn't committed suicide. Given that he actually did kill himself, we can assume he was indeed going to be tortured and beaten, probably to death. It doesn't seem like personal disorder to me, just a honest and smart (engineer) human being wanting to die with dignity and peacefully.

As other comments suggest, he might as well have been murdered.

I wonder if it was actually suicide?

Similar comments here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=715920

"Many Chinese died to bring you this iPhone".

OK, sad, but the problem here is identifying yourself too much with your job (which is always interchangeable and finite, as opposed to identifying yourself with the real value of your person, which is always infinite).

No, that's not the problem. Did you read the article? The guy was going to be tortured and beaten probably to death.

N = 1.

The article neglected to mention that the next generation iPhone will be a current one with U2 colors and signatures.

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