A thousand HTC engineers sound off to their boss in a letter

Taiwan media is reporting that a thousand of HTC's engineers have written an open letter to HTC CEO Peter Chou. No, it wasn't a letter thanking the executive for the wonderful time that had at HTC's Year-end party. That was the shindig where Mr. Chou held up prototypes of his company's upcoming new flagship model and led the crowd in a chant of "M7, M7". Actually, the letter was written to complain about the working conditions at HTC.


According to the letter, the engineers had to work 12 hour days without any overtime pay for more than a year. As a result, each engineer amassed more than 1,000 hours of unpaid overtime. In response, HTC said it followed Taiwan's labor laws and has always encouraged employees to take use of annual vacations. The company said that employees are always allowed to request overtime, which of course must be approved by a department head.

In a few short years, HTC went from being a contract manufacturer to becoming one of the bigger players in the big leagues, to its current status which actually is a bit unclear. Chinese smartphone producers like Huawei, ZTE and even Lenovo have leaped over HTC and while the company has had success with the HTC DROID DNA/HTC Butterfly and will even top the 441ppi pixel density on that device with the 468ppi HTC M7, Samsung is basically eating everyone's lunch when it comes to Android. If HTC doesn't really appeal to the masses with the next few devices, the next time we see Peter Chou chant a letter followed by a number, it could for his new job as a bingo caller.

source: MyDrivers.com (translated) via UnwiredView