Bingo! Google managed to “cross the creepy line” by calling their HR department “PeopleOps”. https://twitter.com/lookoutitsbbear/status/1319315926685286402

I really like Foxconn’s evil managers’ analogy of tech workers to lazy donkeys who need to be petted. “Donkey” has a mysterious etymology, probably from 18th-century English people who didn’t want to say “ass” any more to refer to the animal.

Donkeys are domesticated small horses. In Latin America, they’re called burros, which I think is a much more fun name.

I really enjoy the analogy of spoiled tech workers who think they’re kings but whose bosses think of them as beasts of mental burden.

It’s not that Terry Gou is some horrible representative of Chinese business culture. He’s actually a horrible representative of American tech business culture. It only looks like he’s being racist against American workers because he and the overseers he sent over were Chinese.

The toxic work environment described at the Potemkin Foxconn business offices and fake factories in Wisconsin reminded me of every tech CEO I saw in Silicon Valley (fortunately, from the distance of news reports and not a lot of direct, first hand experience). No differences.

Actually, there is one difference with the Foxconn factory that led to the whole thing falling apart: they didn’t actually have any plans for what to do with the land, or what sort of factory to build. So they had a toxic work environment with no work product to “justify” it.

If the Foxconn factory had actually been built (which in retrospect wasn’t possible because there simply weren’t any products they could have made in Wisconsin with the amount of money budgeted and lack of raw materials like glass panes), it would’ve still been a toxic workplace.

There are tech companies in SE Wisconsin, including Epic Systems Corp. of Verona (near Madison), who build the medical records software used by 54% of patients in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Systems

But I still wouldn’t want to move there. I bet *that* was a motivation for Foxconn.

I bet to the extent that Terry Gou thought through his grand scheme at all, he assumed that they would figure out something to build and that the poor saps stuck in Wisconsin would put up with a nightmare work environment because of NDAs they signed and lack of better options.

Oh, speaking of Epic Systems (not to be confused with Epic Games, the better-known “Epic” software company, if you’re not an MD), I’ve heard that they have a somewhat cult-like corporate culture, which makes sense because there’s probably not as much to do in Madison?

When I’m complaining about unhealthy and cult-like tech campuses, I’m speaking specifically of a few big tech companies with giant, cult-like campuses that aim to keep their employees coddled (like donkeys) so they’ll be loyal to the zookeeper & don’t wander (to other employers).

It’s a unidirectional loyalty. The company wants you to pledge your loyalty to its goals, and to solidarity with your coworkers to the extent that it comes to the products and services the company is building, or else your opportunities for promotion will be very limited.

But the company doesn’t have any loyalty to its employees. The friendship doesn’t extend in the other direction. Not at all. It’s all smoke and mirrors and cult psychology tactics. No different from how Scientology recruits people into the Sea Org or their other thankless jobs.