Hacker News Reader

Comment by suprgeek | Hacker News Reader

If it is real, the letter is an impressive piece of soul searching at RIM. It bodes well for the company that within its ranks, a senior person is willing to put these thoughts to paper in the hopes of steering a change. How much follow-up will happen is anybody's guess. The whole Co-CEO deal is pretty strange to begin with...kinda defeats the "buck stops here" position of the Chief. Imagine two US presidents trying to run the country...

View on HN

If it's real, it doesn't bode well that they think the only way to try to steer the company is by anonymously airing the dirty laundry on a tech rumor blog. Can't get much more dysfunctional than that.

The letter reminds me of larger companies I've worked for, where it felt clear to us in the lower levels some of what needed to be done, that moral was sliding, and that plenty of people with ideas and talents were not being utilized. Its really hard to build a corporate culture that has really good feedback and involvement among the staff. My bosses in those companies would have found it equally difficult to really let all of these sentiments out, so I don't think its particularly unusual to feel the only recourse is anonymous airing on a tech blog.

Unfortunately I still remember being in the exact same position in days long past.. I had hoped that there could be a senior person who would come out and say this exact fact. There was none and soon after, said BigCo went under and laid-off everybody.

Personally, I'd allow it to be done non-anonymously together with allowing direct response to them.

I can say that the letter has truth in it. According to previous employees of RIM, both co-op and full-times, it's more businessman than techies. RIM really imposes ownership over their employees' ideas as well. I walk by the RIM buildings everyday on the way to school/work. Sometimes I take a look at the faces of people walking to their own RIM jobs. I can really see the lack of passion for their work.

This isn't a real senior person. This is some idiot with a senior title who doesn't have a clue about business. He sounds like an ancient engineer who got slowly promoted and wishes he worked for Apple.

It would have boded well for RIM if it had come before they were in the middle of layoffs and shareholder revolts, when they had growing profits to invest.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com