The Chaos and the Craftsmanship of Shenzhen
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The Chaos and the Craftsmanship of Shenzhen
1–10 of 43 posts
Re: The Chaos and the Craftsmanship of Shenzhen
#2The author mentioned DJI, creator of the phenomenally popular Phantom line of quadcopters, as a company which combined software and hardware to open new realms.
From my personal experience, their software is absolutely atrocious. Talk to anyone who has built more than a toy app using their SDK and you'll be regaled with stores of insane hacks. For example, at least in the Phantom 2 days, they didn't provide any method to determine the capabilities or model number of the quadcopter that you were controlling. As a result, my friend's company had a hack that would rotate the camera gimbal until it hit a limit stop and use that angle to determine the model.
On the flip side, their "range extender", a required component if you want to talk to a Phantom 2 from an Android/iOS device, is really just an OpenWRT router acting as a 802.11g bridge.
There's a lot to be said about improving quality of Chinese hardware and software, but it's definitely not up to western quality levels yet.
Re: The Chaos and the Craftsmanship of Shenzhen
#3"The innovation process always starts with copying and in Shenzhen they are copying systematically at a scale you can scarcely imagine. A student who copies Van Gogh relentlessly may not initially understand how Van Gogh undertook original works of art. After enough copying, that same student may grasp the underlying theories and extend them into new areas."
- China is often criticized for the copying as violating IP, but one could also argue that copying and adding new changes to the copy is the lifeblood of open-source innovation and the nature of decentralized systems as well as human biological evolution. A great book that explores these ideas is 'The Evolution of Everything' by Matt Ridley. I recommend it.
"much of the “Efficiency” America has traded for lower cost manufacturing has come at the cost of our ability to bring all of the key pieces together at home."
- There is likely much truth in this statement by Andy Grove and perhaps American companies and leaders should take pause. Labor cost arbitrage in foreign countries like China and Mexico might be like a balloon mortgage for America where the costs are low upfront for some years, but then the large bill comes later.
Re: The Chaos and the Craftsmanship of Shenzhen
#4The author mentioned DJI, creator of the phenomenally popular Phantom line of quadcopters, as a company which combined software and hardware to open new realms. From my personal experience, their software is absolutely atrocious. Talk to anyone who has built more than a toy app using their SDK and you'll be regaled with stores of insane hacks. For example, at least in the Phantom 2 days, they didn't provide any metho…
> There's a lot to be said about improving quality of Chinese hardware and software, but it's definitely not up to western quality levels yet.
Anecdotally, last year I worked for an Asian company which had an office in Shenzhen. They were not able to compete with western tech, in part because they didn't understand the benefits of cloud computing. They wanted to own all their own hardware and it really slowed down software development.
I also got the sense that most primary source programming resources are in English (stack overflow, etc.), and that unless your English was pretty good you might have a hard time keeping up with newer techniques. I think this will improve with time.
Re: The Chaos and the Craftsmanship of Shenzhen
#5> The next decade is going to be all about the relationship between China and the United States in technology, I want to be there to see it happen.
So does the author plan to move to Shenzhen, one of the world's most densely populated and polluted cities, in a country that doesn't have free speech?
I agree SZ has the best tech scene in China, perhaps due to its proximity to the freer Hong Kong, which has always been the major gateway to the west. I love SZ in many ways. But it takes a certain kind of person to want to live and work under those conditions and I doubt even the author himself plans to move there for the next 10 years.
Re: The Chaos and the Craftsmanship of Shenzhen
#6> The next decade is going to be all about the relationship between China and the United States in technology, I want to be there to see it happen. So does the author plan to move to Shenzhen, one of the world's most densely populated and polluted cities, in a country that doesn't have free speech? I agree SZ has the best tech scene in China, perhaps due to its proximity to the freer Hong Kong, which has always been…
> one of the world's most densely populated and polluted cities
Shenzhen is most polluted?
Re: The Chaos and the Craftsmanship of Shenzhen
#7> The next decade is going to be all about the relationship between China and the United States in technology, I want to be there to see it happen. So does the author plan to move to Shenzhen, one of the world's most densely populated and polluted cities, in a country that doesn't have free speech? I agree SZ has the best tech scene in China, perhaps due to its proximity to the freer Hong Kong, which has always been…
Honestly, the major cities in China are all seriously polluted, but still the degrees vary. Compared to Beijing, Shenzhen's pollution is light, as well to other cities with population at that scale.
Re: The Chaos and the Craftsmanship of Shenzhen
#8The author mentioned DJI, creator of the phenomenally popular Phantom line of quadcopters, as a company which combined software and hardware to open new realms. From my personal experience, their software is absolutely atrocious. Talk to anyone who has built more than a toy app using their SDK and you'll be regaled with stores of insane hacks. For example, at least in the Phantom 2 days, they didn't provide any metho…
> There's a lot to be said about improving quality of Chinese hardware and software, but it's definitely not up to western quality levels yet. Anecdotally, last year I worked for an Asian company which had an office in Shenzhen. They were not able to compete with western tech, in part because they didn't understand the benefits of cloud computing. They wanted to own all their own hardware and it really slowed down so…
Cloud computing in China is a total shit show:
1. Go with a foreign cloud provider which has horrible latency thanks to the Great Firewall, and could get permanently blocked any time at the whims of the government.
2. Go with one of the big Chinese tech companies (Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent), where it's almost guaranteed that they will steal your idea/code/data, clone your product, and rely on their massive size and network effect to destroy you. They didn't get big through innovation like Western tech companies; they got big by stealing and government-backed monopoly.
3. Go with a smaller Chinese tech company that has reliability problems and could go belly up at any time.
Re: The Chaos and the Craftsmanship of Shenzhen
#9> The next decade is going to be all about the relationship between China and the United States in technology, I want to be there to see it happen. So does the author plan to move to Shenzhen, one of the world's most densely populated and polluted cities, in a country that doesn't have free speech? I agree SZ has the best tech scene in China, perhaps due to its proximity to the freer Hong Kong, which has always been…
I worked for a big chinese telecom/networking company & went to SZ for about 6 months in 2008. I liked it a lot except for the language barrier but i was able manage with broken mandarin. At that time it was not that polluted when compared to Bangalore(India)
Re: The Chaos and the Craftsmanship of Shenzhen
#10A bit tangential, but something fantastic it mentions is electronic payment. In China it's already like living in the future. Most shops accept WeChat or Alipay. Everything from chain supermarkets down to the old lady selling vegetables on the side of the road. They've really penetrated the market from top to bottom.
If you find a shop that does require cash, you can stop a stranger in the street and trade cash for WeChat money. Or as the article said, the shop staff themselves can sell you cash using their personal accounts.
I'm sure these services have to deal with their share of fraud but the system is fundamentally more secure than credit cards which rely on trust. So there's the potential for lower costs and wider availability. Who needs the expense of PCI compliance when you never have access to your customer's payment credentials? It seems bizarre to think that in paying by credit card, you're effectively giving the merchant the username and password to your bank account and asking them to please not take any more money than they promised to.