Comment by adamsmark
3 hours ago
I worked for OnePlus a few years ago, managing its Amazon account.
The culture leaned heavily toward 996: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. I was there during a particularly tumultuous period, and by that point a lot of the staffing had already been hollowed out.
That said, the OnePlus 11, 12, 13, and 15 are great phones. The 13 and 15 in particular have insane battery life. I have never managed to drain either one to zero in a single day.
As far as I know, OnePlus and Motorola are also the only major companies selling phones with silicon-carbon batteries in the United States. It is ridiculous that Samsung and Apple still have not adopted them.
One of my biggest frustrations at OnePlus was how much of the internal tooling remained in Chinese or used poor English translations. Most of the management was also based in China and often did not seem to understand the US market very well.
Probably the most ridiculous example was an internal invoice or payment-submission portal. It was awful to use, but the terminology was even stranger. A submission apparently needed to be “signed” and then “sealed.”
I never asked anyone what the original Chinese term was, but I assumed it referred to the use of a Chinese name chop or company seal. Name chops are stone stamps bearing a person’s or company’s name that are pressed into ink and applied to documents as a form of authorization.
It was a small thing, but it captured the broader problem pretty well: internal processes designed around Chinese business practices were translated literally and then handed to US employees with very little localization.
My Nothing Phone(3) is running pretty well with a sillicon-carbon battery. Bought it on Amazon, so not sure if it's a global model or US specific but it works great.
I worked in the OPPO and OnePlus HQ in Shenzhen. When I had contracts to sign, I wrote my own signature and then I had to go to some procurement person and get them to stamp it with a seal.
Appreciate the insight.
I'm really quite curious about the inverse of this from the US. HNers who don't live in the US but have worked for a US company trying to do business in local markets: what weird US-centric idiosyncrasies have you seen companies and US-based leadership foisting upon local markets?
Tangentially related, but I work for a New Zealand company that does civil engineering work, including some in the US. There's a lot of localization that we have to do around roads being much wider and different materials being used, but the main idiosyncrasy is that in New Zealand we can just call people up on the phone or via email and arrange contracts, but for large jurisdictions in the US there is a competitive bidding process that we (as a foreign company) can't just circumvent.
My boss wanted to investigate some sinkholes on the runway at LaGuardia to calibrate a device, and was confused that I (the token American) couldn't just call up the Port Authority of New York and get our truck of equipment onto a runway the same week. I tried to explain to a coworker that American airports and the Port Authority in particular are very sensitive about what they allow airside, and he said "oh, so we don't get hit by a plane." I had to explain the last 25 years of American history to him.
> the main idiosyncrasy is that in New Zealand we can just call people up on the phone or via email and arrange contracts,
That sounds pretty corrupt. I've recently commented that countries with lower corruption perceptions probably have more corruption, and New Zealand is one of the lowest.
Unless you're some kind of competitively approved supplier that's chosen by default because you consistently do good work.
Why are you randomly wanting to go to an airport to measure sinkholes to calibrate a device? Why can't you make an artificial calibration sinkhole for your sinkhole meter, why do US airports have sinkholes, and why do you expect the airport to pay you for calibrating your sinkhole meter?
Subway has ordering kiosks that barely work and take longer than telling the employee your order.
Thinking that they can fire people at will.
[dead]
Tell us more about silicon carbide batteries!
How much of that internal tooling was related or shared with Oppo?
Signed sealed and delivered?
I'm yours!
> A submission apparently needed to be “signed” and then “sealed.”
... and delivered?
That doesnt make sense as an example. Nearly everyone on HN would be aware of the great seal of the United States?
That all formal diplomatic letters are still sealed with to this very day, without exception.
Maybe it’s just a mental shock that HQ would demand that level of formality for more mundane things?
Nearly everyone on HN would be aware of the great seal of the United States?
That thing I see on podiums and backdrops?
That all formal diplomatic letters are still sealed with to this very day, without exception.
Why would anyone here know this?
We've probably all seen media depicting a medieval king pressing a seal into wax, but it doesn't mean we're familiar with it as a modern legal or procedural thing. Japan has what I assume is the same thing: hanko, a personalized, carved stamp. It's always a subject of surprise and novelty for North Americans who go there to teach English.
A hanko is specifically a stamp (for dipping into ink) not a seal (for pressing into wax) so it is a different thing than the ones diplomats still use. I assume the Chinese one mentioned in the ancestor post is a mistranslation and should have said “stamp” instead but maybe not—I mean, the historical large and small seal scripts are so named for their usage on signets so it’s not like there’s no precedent for seals in Chinese culture either.
Anecdotal counter example: I'm on HN and I have no idea what you're talking about.