Chinese Smartphone Maker Huawei Demotes Employees Responsible for Tweeting From iPhone

[Veinticinco]

I get that the employee responsible was under pressure to send the tweet at a specific time and their desktop pc malfunctioned. We’ve all been there. Using an iPhone wasn’t some oversight, they obviously chose what they thought was the lesser of two evils.

But why someone given that responsibility didn’t have access to a company own/brand mobile is a bigger question. That’s not a employee or even a line manager issue but a much wider HR one I’d imagine.

The Chinese business culture when mistakes are made (we are all human) is all about blame and saving face. This is a perfect example of how unfair, anachronistic and indeed counterproductive it can be.

 

[partsofspeech]

Finally the long-waited iPhone User Re-Education Labor Camp.

 

[Veinticinco]

Apple sacks people for indiscretions all the time.

This example is not exactly the same as having your daughter upload a long video of you and her touring your Apple campus workplace and giving a long and detailed amateur product demo of an unreleased iPhone X

 

[chucker23n1]

It's funny to me that they said the initial tweet hurt their brand. To me punishing them for this just hurts their brand even more as it makes them look petty.

Yup. Sort of like a Streisand effect.

Promoting your phone while using a competitor's is amusing, but ultimately not important. Punishing someone over that, though? You've just made it a lot worse.

Yeah. That probably explains why Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak was still using a Motorola RAZR instead of the original iPhone...

There was even an article about this here on this website, but there are plenty of other articles about it stored in the looooong memory of the Internet:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-co-founder-woz-sometimes-i-use-a-moto-razr-instead-of-an-iphone/

That's… kind of interesting, but I don't see why it's relevant what Apple products Woz, who hasn't worked at Apple for 34 years, does or doesn't use.

 

[Shiro_Simba]

I’m going to assume you mean Woz. If so, what does he do at Apple these days?

What ever it is , it’s more productive than eddy cue.

Woz is still and employee with a pay check. Employee number one actually.
[doublepost=1546597578][/doublepost]

This example is not exactly the same as having your daughter upload a long video of you and her touring your Apple campus workplace and giving a long and detailed amateur product demo of an unreleased iPhone X

How about showing an iPad to Wozniak?

https://www.businessinsider.com/ste...ed-for-showing-me-an-ipad-3g-2010-4?r=US&IR=T

 

[chucker23n1]

What ever it is , it’s more productive that eddy cue.

"Oh boy! I really showed Eddy."

 

[Shiro_Simba]

"Oh boy! I really showed Eddy."

Good for you

 

[magicschoolbus]

Even the Chinese government can’t hide its secret love for the iPhone.

 

[beanbaguk]

Apple sacks people for indiscretions all the time.

All corporations do; But they don't brag about it.

 

[Morgenland]

It's China, a place they publicly spank poor performing bank employees on stage.

Sorry, that's 45 talk

 

[Shanghaichica]

Hahahaha. This is always hilarious. And these companies are focused on being stern and victim-minded (ie how this has "damaged" huawei brand) instead of making products that their own marketing people/agents want to use. I mean if you cannot even control your own ambassador to use your own product, you are doing something wrong.

To be fair you can work for a company and choose not to use its product. However that should only be for personal use. If you’re working then you need to use a company device.

 

[MoreRumors?]

You would think Huawei would have given their phones to employees, or upper management, to use as company phones. IMO, someone from upper management, maybe including the CEO, should be demoted and have their pay docked as well for this gaffe, oversight or plain being cheap.

 

[jm001]

This is all because of social media. Companies have been warning and reprimanding employees for slip ups like this way before social media, way before the internet went mainstream. My wife worked at Coca-Cola during the summers when she was in college and she was given a stern warning from someone in management when they caught her drinking a Pepsi owned product. It was a brand of juice that she didn't even know was owned by Pepsi. She didn't even know that Pepsi or Coke owned juice companies.

This Huawei/iPhone tweet was more blatant as it clearly promotes Twitter for iPhone. I can understand management's reaction, but I think they shouldn't have aired the punishments publicly. It does make them look bad.

 

[69Mustang]

In our zeal to excoriate Huawei and bathe in our schadenfreude, did we all overlook the fact that the tweet didn't come from a Huawei employee using an iPhone? I guess details don't matter when scoring points in fanboy wars.

For those who claim Huawei damaged their reputation... how exactly and with whom? Apple fans? No one cares. Just like no one cared when Apple tweeted from an Android phone.
https://www.cultofmac.com/597078/apple-uses-android/
Heck, MR didn't even mention it. Tempest in teapot amirite?

In both (Huawei and Apple) cases, it's most likely 3rd party marketing firms responsible for the tweets. So we should really save all of our "Huawei employees want iPhones" posts for another time.

 

[Lancetx]

Such pettiness over a quickly deleted tweet. All this episode does is give me another good reason to never buy any Huawei products, as if I didn't have plenty enough reasons already.

 

[tridley68]

To me this is a very harsh punishment for something so petty.

 

[rols]

This example is not exactly the same as having your daughter upload a long video of you and her touring your Apple campus workplace and giving a long and detailed amateur product demo of an unreleased iPhone X

I sometimes wonder what happened to him, and then I find something useful to do. In the absence of anything useful to do .. what happened to him?

 

[ZipZap]

Did they demote Gal Gadot?

I get that the subcontractor needs to face some blow-back, but the world does not need to know people were demoted, fired or had their salaries reduced.

 

[BaggieBoy]

I worked for Samsung for a couple of years. When I first started I hid my iPhone in case management saw it and were displeased. After a while I realised half the department also had iPhones.

 

[davester]

These employee-invoked sanctions are sad, pathetic and potentially criminal

 

[nwcs]

Huawei has also been caught cheating by using images from DLSRs and passing it off as images from their phones. This is just the most recent time:

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbre...lr-shots-smartphone-picture-nova-3-commercial

Clearly there are shenanigans going on.

 

[alpi123]

Apple Music also tweeted using an Android at the beginning of November.

 

[elpamyelhsa]

Yeah. That probably explains why Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak was still using a Motorola RAZR instead of the original iPhone...

There was even an article about this here on this website, but there are plenty of other articles about it stored in the looooong memory of the Internet:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-co-founder-woz-sometimes-i-use-a-moto-razr-instead-of-an-iphone/

FYI, this was 10 years ago for network support.

 

[iPhysicist]

These employee-invoked sanctions are sad, pathetic and potentially criminal

They are not. No one got fired for this ****. in Chinese terms its a pretty soft reaction. They did wrong by their company standards.
The reaction of Apple HQ with the premature video of the iPhone X was to fire the guy invoked.

 

[Brian Y]

They are not. No one got fired for this ****. in Chinese terms its a pretty soft reaction. They did wrong by their company standards.
The reaction of Apple HQ with the premature video of the iPhone X was to fire the guy invoked.

Because that was a leak of company secrets - i.e. gross misconduct.

In the UK (and most of the world) this would be completely illegal.