4 ms·

This makes me think of an interesting experience I had in my first job, almost 20 years ago! I was working for a small company that was at the time pioneering o

by vidoc 10y ago

This makes me think of an interesting experience I had in my first job, almost 20 years ago! I was working for a small company that was at the time pioneering on-demand video systems. We were a software company but did sell our stuff as an appliances as we did need some control on the hardware. I was once flown to Ryad to deliver our best system to our client, a wealthy hotel resort with a cost-no-object kind of attitude in terms of what perks they supplied to their clients. Our marketing strategy was basically not putting too much emphasis on the hardware and we'd typically be very open in terms of what we had assembled and how much the components retailed for. We'd typically give them a 'dossier' (trendy these days uh?) with hardware details and the manuals of all the components we had assembled. Things went well, the engineers I was working with were super cool, first demos went without a hiss, we were just rolling the whole week! The night before I was flying back home, my boss called me from Europe in panic mode: someone had read those damn manuals and found out that our mpeg2 decoding hardware was made by an Israeli company and wanted us to cancel everything. What was interesting was how all engineers I talked to the next day went out of their way to apologize and tell me how completely stupid this whole matter was. Few months later, when the client found out there was basically all alternatives to this card basically sucked, the finally changed their mind :)

edblarney 10y ago
"I talked to the next day didn't apologize and tell me how completely stupid this whole matter was" I dare say you should not be so presumptuous to assume that local customs and values are 'stupid'. There can be lot of resentment between two groups of people, and not all of it is unwarranted. Would you buy software from a company that by de-facto policy did not hire Black people? Maybe not. Someone from another part of the world might consider that to be 'stupid' or 'irrelevant to the situation', because of a lack of understanding of the context (i.e. maybe it's a very segregated part of the world and such weird policies are reciprocated) I have no love for anti-Israeli antagonists, at the same time, issues such as very illegal Jewish settlements on land upon which Arabs are basically kicked off of at the point of a gun - are real. Anyhow - I take no sides on the issue, other than to point out how these things are very real problems, locally. It's good to see that 'sound states' such as Israel and Saudi can get along, despite historical antagonisms and despite some pretty big differences in ethos even outside of historical issues ... but I think it's important not to project our own cultural context (or rather dismiss theirs), and try to understand them in their respective situations.
- vidoc 10y ago
  > I dare say you should not be so presumptuous to assume that local customs and values are 'stupid'. Apologies for the misunderstanding, a long day for me, and perhaps too long a sentence. I edited it back the way it was supposed to be. What I meant, of course, is that all the tech guys I had been working with did apologize, and I'd say were event shameful about the whole matter.
  - Udik 10y ago
    How were they right in apologising? Would you have bought technology from apartheid South Africa? It's not a matter of what the people at the company that developed the product actually think or are, it's a matter of boycotting business with a country that it's doing deeply wrong things.
    - vidoc 10y ago
      > How were they right in apologising? It wasn't at all a question of being right or wrong, I was just happy to see that despite whatever their opinions could be, this didn't prevent them from finding that making the link between a company and a country was intellectually dishonest. > Would you have bought technology from apartheid South Africa? It's not a matter of what the people at the company that developed the product actually think or are, it's a matter of boycotting business with a country that it's doing deeply wrong things. To answer your question, I don't know. For the record, while I am personally hostile to a lot of things Israel is doing in the region, I don't think it's very intelligent or realistic to assume that all Israeli companies de-facto support all its most controversial policies. At the very least, a little bit of common sense could be used I think. If the technology you are talking about is sold by a company that obviously encourages and participates in something I disagree with (e.g: an arms manufacturer inherently part of the military industrial complex of Apartheid South Africa, or an Israel company located on illegal settlements in the West bank manufacturing products with prison labor). But in absence of such evidence, isn't it a sort of collective punishment? In our case btw, the whole project was in jeopardy because someone found that our infrastructure had one PCI card made by an Israeli/American company. When I think about it actually, I'm afraid that the concept of boycott is completely idiotic to begin with. Let me just give you a funny example: you see, I happen to be French, and I don't know if you remember but circa 2002-2003, there was a little bit of a disagreement between the government of my country and the government of the US with regards to a UN resolution for a regime change in Irak. Rapidly, a classic campaign of demonization and boycott of anything French was activated by some politicians and propagated by the media. I'm not going to remind you the grotesque Freedom Fries or the bottles of wine being poured on the sideways. I have been on the receiving end of this idiocy personally. During this period, I was on vacation on the east coast, and one evening in Boston, as I was having dinner with some buddies, the waiter who had just taken our order came back to the table, asked me where I was from, and informed us that he had just talked to the manager and had his agreement to not serve us because I happened to be French and that was his way to protest against the government of France. The waiter left the table, my friend and I stared at each other in disbelief and left shortly afterwards. Not doing the crybaby here and needless to say how little i cared about this pathetic incident. In the end, I remember how laughable I found that however noble the patriotic intentions of this waiter were, the only thing this poor soul really achieved was to piss me off, and embarrass my American friends. Politically speaking however, nada. In a way, I almost wish I had been equally as brainwashed, naive, and ignorant of the world at this guy, buying all sorts of nonsense such as links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda (lol) - In fact, since he didn't even bother asking me what I thought, he would have made even more of a fool of himself punishing a guy sharing his own opinion.

by vidoc 10y ago

edblarney 10y ago

"I talked to the next day didn't apologize and tell me how completely stupid this whole matter was" I dare say you should not be so presumptuous to assume that local customs and values are 'stupid'. There can be lot of resentment between two groups of people, and not all of it is unwarranted. Would you buy software from a company that by de-facto policy did not hire Black people? Maybe not. Someone from another part of the world might consider that to be 'stupid' or 'irrelevant to the situation', because of a lack of understanding of the context (i.e. maybe it's a very segregated part of the world and such weird policies are reciprocated) I have no love for anti-Israeli antagonists, at the same time, issues such as very illegal Jewish settlements on land upon which Arabs are basically kicked off of at the point of a gun - are real. Anyhow - I take no sides on the issue, other than to point out how these things are very real problems, locally. It's good to see that 'sound states' such as Israel and Saudi can get along, despite historical antagonisms and despite some pretty big differences in ethos even outside of historical issues ... but I think it's important not to project our own cultural context (or rather dismiss theirs), and try to understand them in their respective situations.

vidoc 10y ago
> I dare say you should not be so presumptuous to assume that local customs and values are 'stupid'. Apologies for the misunderstanding, a long day for me, and perhaps too long a sentence. I edited it back the way it was supposed to be. What I meant, of course, is that all the tech guys I had been working with did apologize, and I'd say were event shameful about the whole matter.
- Udik 10y ago
  How were they right in apologising? Would you have bought technology from apartheid South Africa? It's not a matter of what the people at the company that developed the product actually think or are, it's a matter of boycotting business with a country that it's doing deeply wrong things.
  - vidoc 10y ago
    > How were they right in apologising? It wasn't at all a question of being right or wrong, I was just happy to see that despite whatever their opinions could be, this didn't prevent them from finding that making the link between a company and a country was intellectually dishonest. > Would you have bought technology from apartheid South Africa? It's not a matter of what the people at the company that developed the product actually think or are, it's a matter of boycotting business with a country that it's doing deeply wrong things. To answer your question, I don't know. For the record, while I am personally hostile to a lot of things Israel is doing in the region, I don't think it's very intelligent or realistic to assume that all Israeli companies de-facto support all its most controversial policies. At the very least, a little bit of common sense could be used I think. If the technology you are talking about is sold by a company that obviously encourages and participates in something I disagree with (e.g: an arms manufacturer inherently part of the military industrial complex of Apartheid South Africa, or an Israel company located on illegal settlements in the West bank manufacturing products with prison labor). But in absence of such evidence, isn't it a sort of collective punishment? In our case btw, the whole project was in jeopardy because someone found that our infrastructure had one PCI card made by an Israeli/American company. When I think about it actually, I'm afraid that the concept of boycott is completely idiotic to begin with. Let me just give you a funny example: you see, I happen to be French, and I don't know if you remember but circa 2002-2003, there was a little bit of a disagreement between the government of my country and the government of the US with regards to a UN resolution for a regime change in Irak. Rapidly, a classic campaign of demonization and boycott of anything French was activated by some politicians and propagated by the media. I'm not going to remind you the grotesque Freedom Fries or the bottles of wine being poured on the sideways. I have been on the receiving end of this idiocy personally. During this period, I was on vacation on the east coast, and one evening in Boston, as I was having dinner with some buddies, the waiter who had just taken our order came back to the table, asked me where I was from, and informed us that he had just talked to the manager and had his agreement to not serve us because I happened to be French and that was his way to protest against the government of France. The waiter left the table, my friend and I stared at each other in disbelief and left shortly afterwards. Not doing the crybaby here and needless to say how little i cared about this pathetic incident. In the end, I remember how laughable I found that however noble the patriotic intentions of this waiter were, the only thing this poor soul really achieved was to piss me off, and embarrass my American friends. Politically speaking however, nada. In a way, I almost wish I had been equally as brainwashed, naive, and ignorant of the world at this guy, buying all sorts of nonsense such as links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda (lol) - In fact, since he didn't even bother asking me what I thought, he would have made even more of a fool of himself punishing a guy sharing his own opinion.