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Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

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Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

#71

Post by olivermarks »

pfdietz wrote: post #20
jameshart wrote: post #17

I love the tone of this, it’s like the musings of an explorer who discovered a jungle city abandoned by a mysterious civilization. “there were old wall slogans inside that must have been added to motivate and inspire the employees” … “ the tall building had several brick structures on the lower main level. He suspected that those structures probably had plants and ferns in them so that important business clients and…

Archaeologists have found inscriptions referring to the cult of "Six Sigma", which is hypothesized to be a primitive form of ritual statistical magic.

@pfdietz the battered remnants of the cult of "Six Sigma" looks strangely like post Soviet abandoned building triumphalist wall writings, albeit with western typography

Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

#72

Post by yborg »

belval wrote: post #67
robertlagrant wrote: post #51

I feel a bit silly now that I always thought Motorola was an Asian company.

Glad I am not the only one, for some reason I assumed it was Japanese. I think it's because the name really doesn't sound American at all.

According to company legend, the name was a combination of "Motor" and "Victrola"; the company founder Paul Galvin made some of the earliest car radios, and the Victrola brand name was well-known at the time for its phonographs.

Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

#73

Post by blunte »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #31
blunte wrote: post #10

Fascinating. Motorola has been part of some very significant things in history (not just because I'm multi-Amiga owner). From my outsider view, it seems the companies who really invest in R&D make the best things happen. Unfortunately the best doesn't always mean the most long term successful (depends on many many more factors than just the quality of the product). I would love to see a world where it was fashionable…

For a commercial company the aim of R&D is to ship competitive products. You can spend a lot of R&D and do plenty of cool stuff but if you don't ship products you'll go under all the same. For instance Xerox was doing plenty of cool and innovative stuff with GUIs and the mouse but then it was someone like Jobs (and Bill Gates) that turned that into a hot product. Where's Xerox now? Where's Apple? In engineering we to…

This last point is key in the modem connected world.

Before internet, you marketed by being in the right places with the right people. Now you have to have a global internet strategy and compete with companies who have nothing but marketing (and funding).

Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

#74

Post by OldHand2018 »

walrus01 wrote: post #60
cestith wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Motorola wasn't just some cellphone company. The car radio went into production there after Galvin hired Wavering and Lear. He later changed the name of the company to name it after that product. The automotive alternator was invented there (by Wavering). They made the 6800, 6809, 68k, and POWER/PowerPC processor lines used in various lines of Apple, Tandy, Sun, Amiga (later Commodore Amiga), SGI, HP, IBM, Momentum,…

Iridium wasn't a sell-off. Motorola was one of the largest investors in Iridium, and lost a vast amount of money when it went bankrupt. Additionally they were deeply involved in its hardware. The second incarnation of the Iridium corporation we know now is the group of people who bought it at pennies on the dollar in the bankruptcy auction.

Iridium went under because the developing world installed mobile networks, and Motorola had a huge portion of that market.

Accounting tricks aside, they didn't lose money on the downfall.

Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

#75

Post by zeckalpha »

olivermarks wrote: post #71
pfdietz wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Archaeologists have found inscriptions referring to the cult of "Six Sigma", which is hypothesized to be a primitive form of ritual statistical magic.

@pfdietz the battered remnants of the cult of "Six Sigma" looks strangely like post Soviet abandoned building triumphalist wall writings, albeit with western typography

Back in the U6σR

Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

#76

Post by lephty »

harshreality wrote: post #30

Reminds me of Bell Labs. https://www.abandonedamerica.us/bell-labs

At least that building has been re-imagined and revived as an office, entertainment, housing, dining hub.

https://bell.works/new-jersey/explore/

Not to its full, old glory, but at least it is not abandoned anymore.

Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

#77

Post by OldHand2018 »

ansible wrote: post #43
pfdietz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Motorola couldn't do software very well. And software became increasingly important in all the fields they competed in. It turned out to be easier to take a company that was great at software, and turn it into a cellphone company, rather than trying to take a cellphone company and make it great at software.

Yes. Before the start of the smartphone revolution (circa 2005) the "smartphones" of the time are what we'd call flip-phones now. They were smart in the sense that they could run apps (J2ME, blech), take pictures and such. Moto had dozens of different models at any given point in time. All running various kinds of (what we'd call today) embedded operating systems, closer to what we'd class as a RTOS these days. Stuff…

I worked in the mobile network part of Motorola. We had smartphones in the lab for testing in 2001. We were all told that they would be on sale by 2003. But that never happened.

All of my interactions with the cellphone division were somewhat negative. You got the impression that they thought of themselves as the best of the best and nothing you could offer was worth their attention. The damned RAZR success probably doomed them for good. I was using the smartphones every single day and was making suggestions for UI improvements and software features. They ignored all of it. Oh well. Everything I suggested became obvious updates once the general public had used the iPhone for a year or two.

Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

#78

Post by davidf560 »

bfrog wrote: post #37

Motorola is maybe a telling of how complacency and pure business leadership can lead to a downfall. They became complacent, they abandoned their technical leadership for bean counters, and became dust. Intel was almost going down that road.

I suppose it depends on how you define "downfall", but Motorola stock this year is at an all-time high, even higher than its peak during late 90s during the run up to the dot-com boom and when Motorola cellphones were king.

There's been some very hard years in between and it's a smaller company now, but it's actually doing very well by many standards.

Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

#79

Post by BrandoElFollito »

Sorry for the expression but "holy shit!".

I worked in Motorola for 10 years from the late 90's. I was based in Europe but travelled to Schaumburg every two months or so (or to Phoenix).

It is really a shock to see this place abandoned - last time I was there (15 years ago) it was very much alive.

It has been a long time since I had such a nostalgic squeeze of heart.

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