I have had 3 Ecobee thermostats in my house for over 3 years. They have been extremely reliable and have an API, so I can do all sorts of fun stuff with them. Right now I'm working on hooking them up so my themostats change settings when the house is empty based on the presence of family member phones on our LAN.
We're hearing about troubles at Nest
71–80 of 267 posts
Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your comments are worrying, but match a disappointing number of other users. When I was ready to switch to a programmable thermostat to save money, I really, really wanted to like the Nest. It was cool, whizzbang, etc., etc. But then I started reading the 1-star reviews on Amazon, and the support forums. And it worried me. People came home to apartments that were 90* because their heaters were stuck on full blast dur…
>I expected very little from Honeywell, who I regard as a quaint, old-skool company. Honeywell has been in business for 110 years. If you are in business that long you gotta be doing something right! I would assume.
I often assume companies that old are succeeding in large part due to enterprise partnership inertia: the "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" outlook, applied to whatever enterprise customers they happen to serve. If the majority of their profits do turn out to come from individual consumers rather than enterprises, though, then I feel a bit more sanguine about age as a positive signifier.
Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest
#73I 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.
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Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest
#74> 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...
A great way to fix that is to add more managers to gain better control of your runaway teams. Microsoft Project might be a good solution to get them back on track too. Planning out every hour of the project at the beginning really helps developers focus and get things done. Oh, and you want to introduce daily status meetings, preferably in the morning. As a final step, it helps to let a few people go and put a hiring…
I was crying inside until I saw the saracasm tag...
Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a horrible experience. But, to be fair, many newer structures have all their smoke detectors wired together so when one goes off, they all go off. I experienced that in my house, built in '97, which was extremely disorienting and stressful when it first happened. Growing up in a house built in the 80s, only the kitchen's smoke detector would go off if you burned something. I understand the perceived safety enh…
This is why I like the FirstAlert wireless detectors: mesh network so they all go off, but you program each one to announce with a voice which room the trouble is in. They even announce which one has the low battery instead of chirping in the middle of the night.
Well much of that was the "dream" of the nest protects...
It announces where the "alert" is, you can wave to dismiss it, it has the app for your phone to alert you if you are away from home, and they all link together (without needing any wiring in the house, making it easy to retrofit).
Sadly in practice it's a mess, nothing works, so much so that I've lost all confidence in the product to do it's minimal function, detect smoke...
Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest
#76I 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.
[deleted]
Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest
#77I 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…
Thanks for sharing your experience. We, as a community, should point out these so-called "leaders" who build their fortune on the efforts of other people.
Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest
#78I didn't work at Nest, but for 2011 to 2012, I was a Systems Analyst for a similar company - selling smart thermostats to Quick Service Restaurants (Taco Bell's and McDonald's). One of the hidden problems we had was maintaining "smart" control when the end-user's thermal comfort level wasn't lining up. We turn on A/C to help dry up some humidity, but what we regard as ok the end-user was now "freezing". The biggest i…
> All the "micro-savings" you have by using PID controllers to 'ramp up' and 'coast down' did nothing for savings. If I can dig up the report, I'll post a link to it.
That would be an interesting read. I have a pretty simple Python script controlling a Z-Wave thermostat that I'm pretty satisfied with. I've been curious about how much more efficient I could make it with a PID scheme, with my suspicion being "probably not too much more".
Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest
#79I remember when Nest hired a VP of security after I reported 768-bit DHE on one of their servers to Google security.
Sorry to go OT[1], but is there a link to their general (encryption/integrity) policies? I was shocked they are sometimes delivering the android studio via http and providing only sha1 sums. If your IDE is compromised, then who knows what code you might be signing.. [1](Well I considered it a related matter, as I have trouble telling what googles actually policies are and whether my attempts at feedback will be filte…
Android? Security? Are you joking? In the past weeks, several independent exploit chains from "App with no permissions" to "Bootloader takeover" have been published.
Completely working on all versions except for Marshmallow, unpatchable on the older devices due to Android’s update model.
It doesn’t matter what code you sign when literally any app could be a rootkit.
Edit: Some of the chains are from the author of this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/42fxtg/android_medi...
Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest
#80I 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.
If you really want to know, this is the book I'd suggest you start with:
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-He-That-Controlling/dp/042519...
It's by a guy who was a counselor for abusive men, often ones attending therapy as part of a court order. It is the single most astute book I have read. He spent more than a decade listening to people's bullshit, and in this book he breaks it down brilliantly. Particularly relevant to you are the sections on how abusive relationships benefit abusers and why the abused stay so long.