What this teaches us, is that Bush's "we don't negotiate with terrorists" is a valuable idea. Every company should have a bi-law which states it will not respond to public letters. This letter, even though it got the point across, is heavily damaging to the brand.
How do you think this response damages their brand exactly?
It's not that the response damages their brand. It's that the letter damages their brand, and their response only cues more people into it. It's a lose-lose situation for them once the letter is sent out - unless they had something witty planned and responded with a semi-troll comment such as "like this? present new product"
Most of us do this everytime we post to HN and let our logic stand for itself. I feel this is the most reasonable way to conduct ourselves, and I have come to hate browsing blog comments after being spoiled by HN.
It's definitely reasonable; but we are also not explicitly speaking for a corporation.
we are also not explicitly speaking for a corporation
I completely disagree. A company can be frank and honest without revealing anything. Of course they needed to release a press statement in immediate response. The press release could have been written much better as to not sound so nonchalant about the whole situation. For instance, they could have acknowledged the shortcomings of their current product and announced that their current roadmap's focus was on developin…
it's hard to be frank and honest without having investor confidence and stock prices drop. That's truly who the audience of the letter was.
Your point is murky. Usually investors are ahead of "the news." Some of the best examples of this are actually with Apple (go figure). The days after a major product launch the stock usually falls several percent. This can be attributed to the fact that people buy in leading up to the event and cash out afterwards. Analysts had moderate estimates for RIM's quarterly, they came in way under (making it extra funny they emphasized their "strong" earnings in their response) and their stock price fell 20% that day. They know their hurt, their investors now know they're hurting (they had an idea before, hence moderate estimates), the letter was aimed at convincing the public they're just fine. Honesty works, look at the recent Domino's PR campaign, sales are up after admitting their product was shitty.
There is a fundamental business reality however that following an extended period of hyper growth (during which RIM nearly quadrupled in size over the past 5 years alone), it has become necessary for the company to streamline its operations in order to allow it to grow its business profitably while pursuing newer strategic opportunities. So basically they're saying they're taking a break from innovating and will spen…
Think of it as a company refactoring to remove cruft and deal with accrued managerial debt.
I don't understand why they think they need to respond at all. And then they are not even responding to all the points. They just repeat their mantra that they knew what they are doing at it will all be good soon.
Because the people who run publicly traded companies have their compensation heavily tied to the short term share price of their organizations. Every mobile industry analyst is most definitely reading BGR.
Don't know about RIM, but yea I know, which is of course flawed for many reasons.
The complaint: but unfortunately the culture at RIM does not allow us to speak openly without having to worry about the career-limiting effects The response: it is particularly difficult to believe that a “high level employee” in good standing with the company would choose to anonymously publish a letter on the web rather than engage their fellow executives in a constructive manner
Since the merits to making anonymous public arguments are so obvious, that line is one in particular that stands out as defensive. It also confirms one of the points made in the original letter, that people are afraid to speak out. Is there any doubt that the author of the above quotation is someone to be feared? For a good example of a case where public anonymous argument had far more persuasive power than "engaging…
As I said before, the best thing to do would be to allow non-anonymous public arguments, but...
I completely disagree. A company can be frank and honest without revealing anything. Of course they needed to release a press statement in immediate response. The press release could have been written much better as to not sound so nonchalant about the whole situation. For instance, they could have acknowledged the shortcomings of their current product and announced that their current roadmap's focus was on developin…
it's hard to be frank and honest without having investor confidence and stock prices drop. That's truly who the audience of the letter was.
And?
Do you remember how Wall Street pundits jumped when Larry Page did some frank thinking? Nothing happened. They went on and silently released Google+ this week - its interesting to see market react to all this.
Market analysts want to hype up the stocks. And any amount of introspection on the company's sides negates their efforts. Thats why they are pissed when somebody stops shoveling the crap.
But markets themselves don't really care - if a company does good - it WILL reflect on its stock price.
I'm thinking about the response I'd choose if I were in one of the CEO seats at RIM, and I'm not sure I could have improved on this response. As noted, it's kind of content free and does not acknowledge any responsibility. But RIM had to make SOME short-term press release response that communicates the company strengths. No response would carry risk of a strong negative press and social media response. At the same ti…
Ed Colligan of Palm responded with more substance to Engadget during the Foleo debacle. That was one product. That RIM employee letter addresses systemic issues at a company about to slide into a Nokian abyss and in response they put out that? [typo edit]