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Meet a Shenzhen Maker: Mr. Chen

hoektronics.com

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Re: Meet a Shenzhen Maker: Mr. Chen

#31

Post by lifeisstillgood »

In the UK there is a show called "The Jeremy Kyle Show". where stupid ugly people come on stage to blame each other for various family squabbles in the name of entertainment.

I caught 30 secs of it just after watching the OP video and realised that the old refrain "stealing our jobs" is not true - the Jeremy Kyle show fodder did not and would never have a job as a short run PCB manufacturer.

I do not know how we will share the wealth that the next generation of technology will generate, but I do know that 100 years ago Britain nearly revolted against a social system where the upper classes "worked not nor did they sow" - and now we shall have a class of people who cannot work nor sow.

It's an old meme in HN it just hit me this morning a bit harder

Re: Meet a Shenzhen Maker: Mr. Chen

#32

Post by icelancer »

derleth wrote: post #30
icelancer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote an article on my blog about this very topic. A common theme amongst college graduates with no job is that they "want a fair shot." Not quite. They don't want a fair shot against Chinese nationals with their same skill set with an order of magnitude less in wage requests!

> They don't want a fair shot against Chinese nationals with their same skill set with an order of magnitude less in wage requests! That isn't a fair shot, though. The Chinese national has an unfair advantage due to the order of magnitude wage differential.

And the American has an order of magnitude of better living conditions.

Re: Meet a Shenzhen Maker: Mr. Chen

#33

Post by muyuu »

alaskamiller wrote: post #10
akiselev wrote: post #6

Reading stories about Shenzhen makes me terrified for the future of electrical engineering in the United States. Here in Silicon Valley I often have to wait a week to get a board fabbed and another week to get it assembled. I usually have to order the parts myself from Digikey, which takes a few days, and then manually build the kits. If something goes wrong during the bring up, I need to either spend boatloads of mo…

Imagine if the massive empty complexes along the 101 in Silicon Valley gets repurposed to be hacker spaces and dorms, imagine if RadioShack and Fry's makes a comeback and returns to their roots of supplying bare parts, imagine if 3D printers become affordable and everywhere, imagine if crowd funding sites can wire funds within a day, imagine if the distribution channels can also mail out products the next day. Imagin…

Silicon Valley rent prices and living costs make it impossible to ever be competitive with China in EE manufacturing. But not only China, also Taiwan, Korea, Japan and even parts of Europe and the rest of the US.

Nothing wrong with it though. This only sustains because there are more profitable industries there now.

Re: Meet a Shenzhen Maker: Mr. Chen

#34

Post by pm90 »

alaskamiller wrote: post #10
akiselev wrote: post #6

Reading stories about Shenzhen makes me terrified for the future of electrical engineering in the United States. Here in Silicon Valley I often have to wait a week to get a board fabbed and another week to get it assembled. I usually have to order the parts myself from Digikey, which takes a few days, and then manually build the kits. If something goes wrong during the bring up, I need to either spend boatloads of mo…

Imagine if the massive empty complexes along the 101 in Silicon Valley gets repurposed to be hacker spaces and dorms, imagine if RadioShack and Fry's makes a comeback and returns to their roots of supplying bare parts, imagine if 3D printers become affordable and everywhere, imagine if crowd funding sites can wire funds within a day, imagine if the distribution channels can also mail out products the next day. Imagin…

One of the biggest shocks for me when I came to the US for the first time was to see what Radio Shack had turned into. Especially because it is often cited as one of the reasons for technological progress in america (easy availability of electronics)

Re: Meet a Shenzhen Maker: Mr. Chen

#35

Post by _k »

It's not that unusual. Lots of companies start out the way this guy did. This happens all over the world, not just in China. In order to scale things up, you either rely on manual labor or automated machinery. And you can outsource both.

Re: Meet a Shenzhen Maker: Mr. Chen

#36

Post by AlexDanger »

coryrc wrote: post #21
akiselev wrote: post #6

Reading stories about Shenzhen makes me terrified for the future of electrical engineering in the United States. Here in Silicon Valley I often have to wait a week to get a board fabbed and another week to get it assembled. I usually have to order the parts myself from Digikey, which takes a few days, and then manually build the kits. If something goes wrong during the bring up, I need to either spend boatloads of mo…

If you are building a product, you don't really want to be using rare ICs. When you are making a decent number, you don't want to always be hunting for reliable suppliers (i.e. counterfeited SD cards http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=1022 ). I like that when I'm buying parts from Digikey, I get what I actually ordered. When or if I want to take my chances and cut costs, I have the option to have it built ove…

I'm sure consumer electronic companies had the same debate 20 years ago with the same arguments.

As you say, there are clear cases where this cheap overseas model isnt going to work. But to dismiss them completely is like saying Kickstarter is no good for video games because AAA publishing houses already exist.

Low volume cheap prototyping or niche manufacturing is an area ripe for disruption. Actually its not even disruption since AFAIK there are no established players (in the West at least).

People like the OP's Maker seem to be driving the way for low cost, low volume electronics. 3D printing seems to be slowly leading the way towards cheap custom molds for enclosures. Once the two meet....

Personally I welcome the revolution.

Re: Meet a Shenzhen Maker: Mr. Chen

#37

Post by rexreed »

dsrguru wrote: post #11
zyang wrote: post #3

花小钱,赚大钱 actually translates to, "you got to spend money to make money". Subtleties in the Chinese language.

Well, there's also the size nuance here -- that you need to spend far less than you'll end up earning. For the non-Chinese speakers out there, it literally means "Spend [a] small [amount of] money, make big money," with the same implication found in the techie epigram "Weeks of coding can save you hours of planning."

It roughly correlates to the expression, 'It takes a little bit of money to make a lot of money' -- implying the need to spend a little and also the contrast in relative quantities.

Re: Meet a Shenzhen Maker: Mr. Chen

#38

Post by alaskamiller »

pm90 wrote: post #34
alaskamiller wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if the massive empty complexes along the 101 in Silicon Valley gets repurposed to be hacker spaces and dorms, imagine if RadioShack and Fry's makes a comeback and returns to their roots of supplying bare parts, imagine if 3D printers become affordable and everywhere, imagine if crowd funding sites can wire funds within a day, imagine if the distribution channels can also mail out products the next day. Imagin…

One of the biggest shocks for me when I came to the US for the first time was to see what Radio Shack had turned into. Especially because it is often cited as one of the reasons for technological progress in america (easy availability of electronics)

They pull $4B a year from over 7,000 locations around the world, it's hard to turn a ship that size.

Especially when mobile phone subsidies is becoming a big part of their income stream. That's like crack to them now, hard to turn away from that.

But if this DIY/3DP movement is going mainstream in the coming generation then they need to make a big move. Imagine if Radio Shack makes a comeback consolidating the parts market by buying up the likes of Sparkfun, Quirky, and IndieGogo while partnering with Digikey for retail distribution.

Then imagine they developing mobile apps that can quickly identify and give contextual information to individual parts so the average consumer hobbyist can be empowered to chase their dreams.

I would bet on that instead because empowering others will always be a better purpose. Otherwise they're going down like Sharper Image or Best Buy because Amazon is here coming to eat their lunch.

Re: Meet a Shenzhen Maker: Mr. Chen

#39

Post by alaskamiller »

muyuu wrote: post #33
alaskamiller wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if the massive empty complexes along the 101 in Silicon Valley gets repurposed to be hacker spaces and dorms, imagine if RadioShack and Fry's makes a comeback and returns to their roots of supplying bare parts, imagine if 3D printers become affordable and everywhere, imagine if crowd funding sites can wire funds within a day, imagine if the distribution channels can also mail out products the next day. Imagin…

Silicon Valley rent prices and living costs make it impossible to ever be competitive with China in EE manufacturing. But not only China, also Taiwan, Korea, Japan and even parts of Europe and the rest of the US. Nothing wrong with it though. This only sustains because there are more profitable industries there now.

Bigger problem is that Americans don't understand high density living. That's going to take a few generations.

Re: Meet a Shenzhen Maker: Mr. Chen

#40

Post by batgaijin »

alaskamiller wrote: post #26
i386 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine if the massive empty complexes along the 101 in Silicon Valley gets repurposed to be hacker spaces and dorms I sympathise with your intent but that sounds like a sweatshop to me.

Those poor college aged kids and their sweaty dorms enjoying the benefits of youth, low overhead, access to information, and sharing knowledge.

Slaves, really.
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