Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

simonberens.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–427 of 427 posts

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#421

Post by lynguist »

I’m so jealous of you. You can just go and make a product as if it was software, with no “respect” to boundaries and restrictions, even though you’re not even in the lamp business. And then you have a China contact, and China can just manufacture anything as if it was software, but it’s a real life physical object. And the commitment, the fearlessness, the rudeness of just making it work.

I believe people like you will become very rich (because you’re so compatible with money making), but I have a prejudice that you lack depth in your understanding and intentions.

I almost never feel jealous but while reading your blog I could feel this feeling of freedom of creating that I seek and I couldn’t help but. Congratulations.

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#422

Post by nuancebydefault »

myst wrote: post #397
nuancebydefault wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'ja?' with a question mark means 'right?'. It just happens to be the same word as 'yes'. So no, not same as almost everywhere else.

And why do they say ‘right?’ every time? Because without it my ‘ja’ does not mean ‘yes, sir’, but rather ‘I hear you, go on’. So, same as everywhere else.

The answer to 'right?' usually is 'yeah', to indicate: yes, I agree.

So 'Ja? Ja.' in German can be translated as 'Right? Yeah.' in English.

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#423

Post by nomel »

pizzafeelsright wrote: post #417
nomel wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't fair, because it's misunderstanding the problem. It's not that they're lying, it's that, in their culture, the meaning of yes is something different, meaning "I hear you" rather than "I understand you". If they're not strong with english they might not have a grasp of this, so (in the case of Mandarin as primary language) you have to usually think of it as an empty "uh huh" type filler word, not a word wit…

I live in a different world than most where the expectation is we speak the truth, stand behind our word, and in the event of failure we maintain the relationship after resolving the conflict. As for saving face, I provide opportunities to walk back, restate, or take back something that was said. People get angry, misspeak, or respond with fear and that is understandable.

> we speak the truth

I get what you're saying, but you're ignoring intent here. They're, literally, using the wrong word, without meaning to. In their language they have multiple "yes" that mean very different things, but they incorrectly use our single "yes" for all of them which, as you're very correct to point out, has a very specific and STRONG meaning. This is a conceptual mapping mistake, not an intent.

They're trying, and slightly failing, to speak a language they took time to learn, but is still unfamiliar to them, my dude. The alternative is that you/I should learn mandarin. I applaud their efforts that allow me to be lazy, even if it means I have to understand some shortfalls in the communication.

If you learn a language, but accidentally use the wrong word in conversation, because maybe nobody has corrected you before, does that make you a liar? Of course not. That's what's going on here.

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#424

Post by pizzafeelsright »

nomel wrote: post #423
pizzafeelsright wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a different world than most where the expectation is we speak the truth, stand behind our word, and in the event of failure we maintain the relationship after resolving the conflict. As for saving face, I provide opportunities to walk back, restate, or take back something that was said. People get angry, misspeak, or respond with fear and that is understandable.

> we speak the truth I get what you're saying, but you're ignoring intent here. They're, literally, using the wrong word, without meaning to. In their language they have multiple "yes" that mean very different things, but they incorrectly use our single "yes" for all of them which, as you're very correct to point out, has a very specific and STRONG meaning. This is a conceptual mapping mistake, not an intent. They're…

I was ignoring the language translation with excessive simplification while speaking of a framework.

To your specific point: no, grace abounds for those who remain in conversation and continue to repair the situation.

As for having a single 'yes', we backwater Americans have multiple versions including yeah, okay, yup, ya, yessssss, hell yes, yuppers, uh huh, right, right-o, got it, absolutely, and I am sure a dozen more.

I am speaking of intent. The intent, regardless of the language used, commnunicate in a way that both parties have no assumptions and if there is a miscommunication on anyone's part, both parties work to resolve it without blame. And I thank you for your reply, my dude, which I take as a verbal suffix of casual frustration. English is not my first language mind you.

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#426

Post by rkangel »

ggm wrote: post #132

This is the second article about hardware supply from China I've read and it reads very much the same, albiet in a different niche (the other one was about SBC construction) -Anything you don't specify will be done least cost, and there is no amount of "least" which cannot be chased in manufacture. The other one noted if you don't specify the density of plastic for bags, or paper for bags and packing, you get clingfi…

It might be a little worse in China, but you get a lot of the same behaviour from contract manufacturers everywhere else. I've been working on a high volume consumer product (you've almost certainly heard of it) and the manufacturer has used any slight delay by any other party to shift the schedule back by weeks or months. Late in the process we realised that they'd switched a capacitor for a lower cost one - same capacitance but lacking in some other spec points that were important. There isn't a lot of room for them to build things to a lower spec because the specs are pretty thorough and nailed down, but anywhere there is room they have gone lower cost.

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#427

Post by rkangel »

jasonkester wrote: post #226
ggm wrote: post #132

This is the second article about hardware supply from China I've read and it reads very much the same, albiet in a different niche (the other one was about SBC construction) -Anything you don't specify will be done least cost, and there is no amount of "least" which cannot be chased in manufacture. The other one noted if you don't specify the density of plastic for bags, or paper for bags and packing, you get clingfi…

That's the thing that drives me nuts about buying stuff manufactured in China. They'll make this amazing Remote Control Car, with good suspension, a battery that lasts half an hour, plenty of power, and just all around amazing. But then it'll break after a day because somebody saved 1/20th of a penny by speccing this impossibly thin wire the thickness of a human hair to hook that powerful battery to the powerful moto…

There's an extra point here about how quickly home grown stuff can go from drawing board to manufacture. Because it takes us months or years, we go through multiple iterations of prototyping and discover a lot of design issues. They seem to go through much less iteration because they can get stuff manufactured quickly and so don't always discover longevity issues like a too-thin wire.
Post reply on HN