We're hearing about troubles at Nest • Hacker News Board

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#51

Post by ecopoesis » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 9:16 PM UTC

brandon272 wrote: post #10

demian0311 wrote: post #7

I have Nest thermostat and a Nest camera. Thermostat is in the hallway and regularly thinks nobody is home. Camera knows I'm home because of movement (or I should be able to show it how to tell). But the Camera doesn't talk to the thermostat. You create a dependency when devices connect to the Internet and you may give up some privacy. In return I assume you'd get some intelligence and integration.

My #1 issue my Nest is that my house is always freezing in the winter because it always thinks I'm not home as I might be home but not necessarily walk in front of the thermostat routinely. Hence it switches to "Auto Away" mode. It would be nice if the Nest app I had on my phone could identify that I'm home (i.e. am I connected to my home WiFi network, or check my location via GPS) and then communicate that to my the…

We gave up on the auto-away stuff and use the Skylark app on our phones, which does geo-fencing. I agree that this should be a built in function of the Nest app, but a five dollar app as a workaround isn't too bad.

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#52

Post by w1ntermute » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 9:16 PM UTC

asdfologist wrote: post #47

dboreham wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because behaving like this is moderately correlated with success. You don't have to be an asshole to succeed in business, but it can help.

Yes but I'm asking how. If you piss off your employees and they leave, how do you grow your business into a multibillion-dollar company?

Because not that many employees actually left, despite being pissed off. There was no way the Valley élite would let one of their own (Tony Fadell) have a hard fall, so at least a semi-successful exit was guaranteed from the beginning.

The reason why Jobs and Fadell could be assholes and still succeed is because they were/are Jobs/Fadell. That doesn't mean you or I can act like assholes and still succeed. Perhaps we could be assholes after we succeed, but that's a highly unlikely hypothetical.

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#53

Post by city41 » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 9:16 PM UTC

dperfect wrote: post #40

atonse wrote: post #8

I have a nest and it is a real piece of shit. I usually don't curse on HN but I can barely contain my hate for this product. My absolutely ugly, crappy old thermostat with a needle on it works WAY better than the nest (thankfully we have it upstairs where we sleep). When it's cold, we turn that needle up, and we get warm. With the nest, which is downstairs, when we're cold, we turn the nest up, we get weird "+2 hour"…

Not sure if it's the same problem, but a few months after getting my Nest it started ignoring my adjustments as well. After some investigation, I found that it had automatically set up a bunch of temperature schedules without my knowledge (I guess it thought it was smart and could learn my weekly patterns from my past usage). That's all fine if it actually cared to take my manual adjustments more seriously than trust…

In my experience it will re-add those schedules. I've cleared them out several times now.

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#54

Post by pinewurst » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 9:16 PM UTC

TTPrograms wrote: post #13

sjs382 wrote: post #6

> Three former Nest employees independently brought up this same anecdote when describing how Nest had an internal culture where it was "always crunch time" because of unrealistic deadlines and a hierarchical management structure. Oh man, that sounds familiar...

"He has a 68% approval rating on anonymous data-sharing site Glassdoor, but the several ex-employees Business Insider spoke to highlighted an atmosphere of "fear" and said that sitting near Fadell's office meant hearing a constant barrage of shouting." I really hope the people working there have opportunities elsewhere and are aware of their options. Nobody should feel obligated to work in an environment like that. I…

The problem with Glassdoor CEO approval ratings is that they often don't reflect a really bad CEO lacking direct exposure to a lot of employees. In large organizations, perceived business success drives approval more than anything else. Look at Jeff Bezos with 81% - his success and that of the organization are very decoupled in this measure from personal experience of him. On the other hand, I know another Seattle organization with a CEO approval rate of 13% - it's small enough that all employees have (mostly negative) CEO contact.

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#55

Post by VikingCoder » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 9:17 PM UTC

jarek wrote: post #24

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #12

Inevitablities from the Internet of things: Software glitches, personal data sold or served to the government, personal data stolen by a foreign government, hackers that freeze your house or crank up the heater till it breaks, hackers that spy on your kids with the cameras you installed, automated customer support lines. For some reason I get the feeling that adopting all of these "smart" devices actually makes me mo…

> For some reason I get the feeling that adopting all of these "smart" devices actually makes me more vulnerable to risk and gives me less control over my life. Oh, of course it does. Consider: when are you more in control, when you know the city you're in inside-out, or when you're depending on Google Maps?

You're considering only one dimension.

Consider: When you are in a new city, when are you more likely to learn the city inside-out, when you don't have Google Maps, or when you do?

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#56

Post by brown9-2 » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 9:18 PM UTC

asdfologist wrote: post #34

outside1234 wrote: post #11

I worked there. It was literally the worst experience of my career - and I have worked at all of the hardest charging blue chips and two successful startups - so it is not about high expectations - but abuse. I still wake up with something like PTSD occasionally from getting yelled at and bullied by Tony Fadell almost literally every day while I was there. I have a distance from it now -- and a way better job. It mad…

Honest question: how did someone with such an abusive management style lead his company to success? I'd think that his employees would just leave and go work elsewhere.

How are we defining success? As raising capital and being acquired?

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#57

Post by rm_-rf_slash » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 9:18 PM UTC

jarek wrote: post #50

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, lemme think... 2012, October. I, an American from upstate NY, am traveling on the Queen Elizabeth Way to visit a friend in Toronto, a city I last saw at the age of 3. There are at least 6 lanes on the highway, packed with drivers so cantankerous and forceful that save for the autumn gray I could swear I was in LA. I'm approaching the city and a display by the road says the route is closed for construction. My m…

Ah but I bet that the animations were beautiful and the icons all lined up perfectly

This was iOS6 Maps...

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#58

Post by potatolicious » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 9:19 PM UTC

asdfologist wrote: post #34

outside1234 wrote: post #11

I worked there. It was literally the worst experience of my career - and I have worked at all of the hardest charging blue chips and two successful startups - so it is not about high expectations - but abuse. I still wake up with something like PTSD occasionally from getting yelled at and bullied by Tony Fadell almost literally every day while I was there. I have a distance from it now -- and a way better job. It mad…

Honest question: how did someone with such an abusive management style lead his company to success? I'd think that his employees would just leave and go work elsewhere.

Most people (regardless of actual qualification) are bad at finding jobs, and for most people job-hunting is full of anxiety, dread, and in general just a thoroughly unpleasant process.

As an industry we're also pretty terrible at recruiting - people who've figured out how to network effectively and come through the side doors do pretty well, but the bulk of the industry still pursues the model of "see job ad, send resume through front door, quietly wait for call back". This adds to the frustration of job hunting.

Many people also find interviews extremely stressful - our industry makes this worse by sticking them through exhausting full-day marathons full of seemingly pointless trivia.

Not so long ago I was stuck in a horrible job with truly abusive managers. Everyone hated it and commiserated copiously after work (we drank a lot back then), and everyone talked about leaving. Out of the 20-odd people only 4 actually ended up leaving (including me).

When I asked people about it it was nearly universally about anxiety and fear. People loathe interviewing, applying, and all that, to a point where they're willing to put up with a lot of pain just to avoid it.

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#59

Post by dperfect » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 9:20 PM UTC

city41 wrote: post #53

dperfect wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if it's the same problem, but a few months after getting my Nest it started ignoring my adjustments as well. After some investigation, I found that it had automatically set up a bunch of temperature schedules without my knowledge (I guess it thought it was smart and could learn my weekly patterns from my past usage). That's all fine if it actually cared to take my manual adjustments more seriously than trust…

In my experience it will re-add those schedules. I've cleared them out several times now.

Looks like there's a setting (at least in the web interface) to turn off auto-schedule. Apparently I had turned it off for one of my Nest thermostats, but not the other one - turning it off now.

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#60

Post by magicalist » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 9:20 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #25

atonse wrote: post #8

I have a nest and it is a real piece of shit. I usually don't curse on HN but I can barely contain my hate for this product. My absolutely ugly, crappy old thermostat with a needle on it works WAY better than the nest (thankfully we have it upstairs where we sleep). When it's cold, we turn that needle up, and we get warm. With the nest, which is downstairs, when we're cold, we turn the nest up, we get weird "+2 hour"…

The Nest thermostat is a dream compared to the smoke detector. The smoke detector goes off all the time -- without rhyme or reason. With a normal detector, you can just pull the battery if it refuses to shut off. With Nest, you actually need a screw driver to open the battery compartment to turn it off. So, when it decides to wake up the entire house at 3am (yes, the entire house, since they all go off in unison) you…

> The one flippin' reason I bought a Nest Protect was so I could "wave to silence" an alarm. Well, every time it goes off, it tells me that "this alarm cannot be silenced." Not once have I been able to turn off an alarm without removing the batteries.

I'm surprised you were a protect owner and didn't hear about wave to silence being disabled completely: https://nest.com/support/article/Nest-Protect-Safety