Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

More letters to RIM; employees rally alongside anonymous exec

bgr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 54 posts

Re: More letters to RIM; employees rally alongside anonymous exec

#21

Post by scubzero »

Maro wrote: post #17
omouse wrote: post #9

A more democratic company structure would probably help with these issues. It seems that a dictatorial structure allows the top execs to ignore all the underlings, to ignore the little people who actually do much of the work.

That's a terrible idea. A company is not a democracy. The only solution is to have good leaders.

A good leader is more valuable than an good underling, but just as a body without a brain is useless, so a brain without a body is useless.

What is necessary isnt 'democracy' per se, but some means of a good body rejecting a bad brain, because bad leadership more than any other single thing is what kills companies, and typically there is nothing structurally in place to eliminate bad leaders.

Re: More letters to RIM; employees rally alongside anonymous exec

#22

Post by peterwwillis »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #14

Side thought: I've watched a lot of companies become horrible places to work because of process strangulation. The problem is a small, vocal group saying how much better life would be with one more piece of information... The way I combat that is by documenting what is working right and determining what I don't want to change. Your process requirements then become "Learn/Enable/Etc this" and "Leave that unaffected".…

The thing I love to see is how badly 'process' is implemented. In theory you should be able to get everyone who's approval you need in one room at one time, take 10 minutes to explain your requirements and answer questions, then have them all rubber stamp whatever it is you need and get going with doing your work. In practice people do exactly the opposite, trying to add distance to slow down the process. I'm wondering if what we all need is a more human communication method to speed up resolution of problems and process.

Re: More letters to RIM; employees rally alongside anonymous exec

#23

Post by allwein »

scubzero wrote: post #21
Maro wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a terrible idea. A company is not a democracy. The only solution is to have good leaders.

A good leader is more valuable than an good underling, but just as a body without a brain is useless, so a brain without a body is useless. What is necessary isnt 'democracy' per se, but some means of a good body rejecting a bad brain, because bad leadership more than any other single thing is what kills companies, and typically there is nothing structurally in place to eliminate bad leaders.

> just as a body without a brain is useless, so a brain without a body is useless

RIM's problem isn't a lack of a body or a brain, but rather a broken nervous system. RIM's fingers are slowly being burned in the fire and the brain is just happily looking on, since it's not feeling the danger from any nerve impulses.

Re: More letters to RIM; employees rally alongside anonymous exec

#24

Post by canistr »

blackboxxx wrote: post #8

I know a RIM exec personally (and leave it at that) and he mocked my iPhone for several years, calling it "fragile" and a "toy for children". It's been only in the past month or so that he muttered something about the competition getting tough lately. It just seems RIM leadership is extremely arrogant and proud. They see the train coming right at them, but are too afraid to make the radical blue ocean product that's…

An executive of one company isn't likely going to complement another company. They're going to do everything in their power to downgrade products of their competition. I really don't think it makes a difference whether your friend worked for RIM, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, or HP because all of Apple's competitors followed this exact train of thought for several years.

Re: More letters to RIM; employees rally alongside anonymous exec

#25

Post by gonehome »

canistr wrote: post #24
blackboxxx wrote: post #8

I know a RIM exec personally (and leave it at that) and he mocked my iPhone for several years, calling it "fragile" and a "toy for children". It's been only in the past month or so that he muttered something about the competition getting tough lately. It just seems RIM leadership is extremely arrogant and proud. They see the train coming right at them, but are too afraid to make the radical blue ocean product that's…

An executive of one company isn't likely going to complement another company. They're going to do everything in their power to downgrade products of their competition. I really don't think it makes a difference whether your friend worked for RIM, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, or HP because all of Apple's competitors followed this exact train of thought for several years.

With the notable exception being Google who immediately changed the direction android was going to account for the innovations Apple had developed. RIM and Microsoft laughed the iPhone off and now wonder why Google and Apple are so far ahead.

Re: More letters to RIM; employees rally alongside anonymous exec

#26

Post by pradocchia »

staktrace wrote: post #19
Maro wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a terrible idea. A company is not a democracy. The only solution is to have good leaders.

Agreed. Generally speaking companies should be meritocracies, allowing the good leaders to rise up. The people at the bottom may do all the work, but probably can't make overall strategic decisions nearly as well.

People at the top only need to make a few big strategic decisions a year. Some of them, purely through dumb luck, will make the rights one and continue to rise. This is not meritocracy, it's a crap shoot.

People at the bottom make lots of little decisions every day. They may get lucky now and then, but over a year, the occasional bad luck will cancel that out. So you have more meritocracy at the bottom, and less the higher up you go.

In a large organization like RIM, the principle talent of senior management is not strategic decision making, or management, but rent seeking: appropriating the product of the lower ranks for their own glory. Other principle qualities: fine grooming and dress, a firm hand shake, politics, public speaking, and punctuality. These qualities are practiced daily. You can't fake it. Strategic decision making? A few times a year.

Add a little random luck in strategic decisions, and you have the CEO. There are enough contenders for his position that someone, somewhere will have a string of good enough fortune to land them there, regardless of merit.

[hat tip to Taleb re: executives and strategic decision making]

Re: More letters to RIM; employees rally alongside anonymous exec

#27

Post by KeyBoardG »

digamber_kamat wrote: post #7
corin_ wrote: post #3

One thing that struck me as interesting is in the second letter, section 6: There is so much secrecy in the company, no one knows anything about new things until we see it on the news. That means we’re not able to tell our friends and family anything about new things, and that reflects badly on RIM. Is the reason it works for Apple so well and not for RIM because people anticipate Apple products more (i.e. the produc…

Actually I feel all the opposite. RIM talks too much about its upcoming products that people dont feel like buying whats on offer right now.

Right. For the amount that RIM leaks and shows ahead of time, they should be delivering more complete products. Anything really new from them in the past 3-4 years have been really half-baked. I was a 9530 user (storm1). Woof that was rough in the begining.

Re: More letters to RIM; employees rally alongside anonymous exec

#28

Post by canistr »

gonehome wrote: post #25
canistr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An executive of one company isn't likely going to complement another company. They're going to do everything in their power to downgrade products of their competition. I really don't think it makes a difference whether your friend worked for RIM, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, or HP because all of Apple's competitors followed this exact train of thought for several years.

With the notable exception being Google who immediately changed the direction android was going to account for the innovations Apple had developed. RIM and Microsoft laughed the iPhone off and now wonder why Google and Apple are so far ahead.

I think it's more that Google was hovering around from the start with the G1. So the improvements they made were incremental on that brand new platform but Microsoft and RIM would need a revolution to be able to catch up to the iPhone and G1 at that point in the game.

The problem is that all the old players were left in the dust because they had too much momentum on their old platforms. It's like hitting the breaks when you are going 100 mph. For Google and Apple, they were going 0-60 pretty quickly and then just slowly came up and surpassed the incumbents.

Re: More letters to RIM; employees rally alongside anonymous exec

#30

Post by canistr »

ltamake wrote: post #13

This internal drama is blowing my mind. Here's what's wrong, RIM: you're not presenting your products right. Your business audience doesn't care that the PlayBook has true multitasking, nor do they care that there's Flash on-board. They want a device to manage their emails and make running their business easier. And the BlackBerry is really sad to see in my eyes. You buy this nice software company and their HTML5 bro…

Unfortunately I don't think they're poised to move very quickly within the next 2 years. Everyone knows that their QNX-based Blackberries are coming up for next year. But having friends inside the company working on QNX, they don't think the platform looks any different from the current BB OS. So I don't think the fruits of any management restructuring will pay off until a couple years from now. And that's the saddest part. The stuff they have in the pipeline right now isn't even good enough if it were launched today. Then you realize it will launch next year and the story just gets more depressing. I want them to succeed, but I don't think they'll be getting their shit together for a VERY long time.
Post reply on HN