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.

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?

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.

> The culture leaned heavily toward 996: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week

Why stay there even ONE week, unless you were very senior?

Tell us more about silicon carbide batteries!

>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.”

The fapiao system has improved but still exists unfortunately.

How much of that internal tooling was related or shared with Oppo?

As someone who works/worked for all major Chinese smartphone brands (and some major vacuum cleaner brands) over years I can tell you this is no OnePlus specific, 996 is just Chinese standard.

I remember back when I lived in China some of my flatmates slept in work overnight since it was encouraged, you save time on commuting.

I worked also on OP project which was handled separately from O/Rm and V/IQ, but I find in general approach of these companies very amateurish when it comes down to providing reference materials, though it could be even worse, unnamed company selling mostly in India is disaster, now they use AI to localize their phones, you are suppose to check it with no screenshots, no description, so clearly can't even check it properly, so apparently AI is doing fine since you can't really report worries anyway. And if you will drive EV from the biggest CN EV company expect same, they are not better.

The most professional are H/H and X, no complaints there. They are at Nokia level professionalism from back in the days.

Signed sealed and delivered?

996 culture seems horrible. who the heck would want to actually work like that. shit is for NPCs

> 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?