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

Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

abandonedspaces.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 215 posts

Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

#61

Post by jacquesm »

ipv6ipv4 wrote: post #26
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…

HR wall slogans are cringey when still drying on the wall. They are even cringier in a ruin.

The most cringey one to me is the Philips one "Let's make things better". Funny enough their slide down into relative obscurity started right after introducing that slogan. Up to that point they were one of the powerhouses of technology.

Today they are still active in Medical, TVs and light, a faint shadow of what they used to be.

Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

#62

Post by eigenvalue »

cestith wrote: post #49
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.

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,…

Yes, and even the legacy business (which makes radios for emergency responders among many other things) has been a great investment. If you bought MSI 10 years ago, you've made just under a 20% annualized return if you reinvested dividends. And ON Semi has been almost as good over the past decade. It's only in consumer cellphones where they did really badly.

Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

#65

Post by acheron »

ipv6ipv4 wrote: post #26
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…

HR wall slogans are cringey when still drying on the wall. They are even cringier in a ruin.

Always ask yourself: Is this good for the company? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA5rB63Mzc8

Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

#66

Post by DerekL »

AlbertCory wrote: post #45

It's amazing that neither the article nor any of the comments so far mention that Google bought part of Motorola, for its 10,000 patents. Then sold it a few years later. I was in Google Patents and I interviewed people for the position of "acquirer of patents." This was a period when they actually thought the "throw weight" of your patent portfolio really mattered in cross-licensing deals. Most of those patents were…

It's not relevant to the article, which is about real estate. Also, the article mentions the split into two companies. Google bought Motorola Mobility, but the headquarters went to Motorola Solutions.

Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

#68

Post by Jun8 »

The main building was known as IL02, this is where I had my first job interview (the Blue Conference Room!) and afterwards joined Motorola Labs in 2004. The tall building shown was called the Sector Tower, a lot of money was spent renovating it. My colleagues and I would walk up the 6 floors and down after lunch for exercise. Mot Labs had 1000+ people around the world when I joined, was down to ~30 in 2010. How the times change.
Post reply on HN