Citrix to be acquired for $16.5B, will be merged with Tibco
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1) Contact Citrix support about some missing details in their SDK (Dynamic Virtual Channels were not loading properly on XenDesktop, and the SDK docs just said "Use the Microsoft APIs for registration")
2) Citrix ponders about the issue for a few months. I write a full DVC plugin for them to test things with, because they don't seem to have anyone in-house who knows their own tech stack
3) Citrix finally declares that dynamic virtual channels are currently broken. They might get fixed in a future release, but they're not on the active roadmap.
4) Citrix is still releasing frequent updates to the SDK, advertising DVC support. NB this is not just a small typo in the docs, they have a long chapter dedicated to the topic ( Citrix Dynamic Virtual Channel Protocol at https://github.com/citrix/receiver-for-windows-virtual-chann... ). The feature is very thoroughly documented, it's just...not actually implemented.
I can't imagine how many developer hours get wasted yearly with people trying to get virtual channels to work, when in reality they're just flat-out not supported.
Months of follow ups later and:
IBM: "this isn't a supported configuration."
Me: "But, it's documented as a supported configuration."
IBM: "It has been removed from the latest documentation."
Me: "And when was that published?"
IBM: "Tomorrow"
Even after getting a DB2 Connect install working, it was a nightmare then dealing with their compatibility flags, which changed with every fixpack. Want feature A to work? Set the flag for it...but, you'll lose features B & C if you do that...
(edit: formatting)
In my experience, contacting a 10-person company about a bug means that a dev is going to look at the issue in a day or two. Contacting a 10 000 person company about a bug means that a dev will never see the bug - unless they happen to be browsing Reddit and see someone complaining about it
This is why startups or VC backed things can explode, and innovate, but once you IPO, innovation is not what’s important - it’s about perspective I guess.
When the death spiral of anti-innovation starts, people such as talented developers start to drop off, and in the end you’ll have a slow, bureaucratic mess of an org, sustained by the inertia of an already existing customer base.
“How about we yank up them licensing fees?!”, or my favorite “Let’s rename a product suite!” (Citrix, as a case in point, is notorious for this…)
This be the enterprise IT lifecycle.
Ubuntu was to be introduced into the company. The team was 1 developer and 4 managers. When we asked for collaboration with the developer the manager kept saying "we don't do this" "it's not a supported configuration".
The developer defied his direct superior and offered collaboration and as a result was removed from the project.
Now the project staff was 4 managers and 0 developers.
The manager claimed he was doing this to protect his developer from overwork, but really it was just about his own ego.
A lot of the projects I saw there were basically 1 engineer and a couple of managers of some sort. Security manager, Project Manager, Portfolio Manager, some medium management and some other people. And then they would constantly say that they don't have resources to fix things. Well yeah, because you have 1 engineer for 10 projects, but 4 managers per project.
Nnnnnoooooooo -sales org
It's actually quite normal. Notice how most things posted on HackerNews are neither News, nor about Hacking.
It's normal, that things morph into some lowest common denominator 'thing' that makes people that have any taste shudder on the inside. It doesn't make most everyone else shudder, which is why it is almost inevitable, reduction to the lowest common denominator, of everything.
So many really middling memories just came flooding back.
Why a message queueing technology is branded under 'Websphere' I have nooo idea, but it turned out to be a nightmare of various configurations jammed together and not working well.
Tibco Enterprise Messaging (EMS) on the other hand is a dream to work with IME.
Maybe. Going fishing in thin air here.
Freudian slip of the year
20 years ago less likely.
https://lipperalpha.refinitiv.com/2021/09/breakingviews-elli...
I assume we'll see some big changes in the near future, and I'm not hopeful that it will be positive for the platform.
Twitter is this decade's AOL.
Usually what you'd do is pump the platform full of ads and then offer an ad-free option, or make it into a subscription service outright, but I don't think twitter has enough of a moat for the latter and won't be successful on the former.
Even the whole "they will be profitable once they have a monopoly" idea is overblown IMO. In Toronto were I'm located, we have a local taxi company (the largest one, Beck) who has an app that AFAICT has all the same features as Uber's core ride hailing app. Clearly Uber's core tech in ride hailing is not that much of an advantage...
So in conclusion, I'd wait before saying what has/doesn't have financial sense.
> In Toronto were I'm located, we have a local taxi company (the largest one, Beck) who has an app that AFAICT has all the same features as Uber's core ride hailing app.
Well, and where's the big difference? Why your local app can work and Uber can't?
Your local app won't work in Italy, whereas Uber does, and works consistently and with the same credit card I use at home. IMHO it's cool.
Edit: formerly? LogMeIn owns it now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoToMeeting
I think when set up properly, Virtual Apps and Desktops is killer for having good access to desktops and at the moment is a good extension of Azure Virtual Desktop. However, it did feel like we were running the product with a skeleton crew. As a result, documentation fell by the wayside along with other matters. I guess complete PE takeover of this sort of company is inevitable.
All the best to those working there and trying to figure out what next.
I've also used VDI setups that were miserable with heavily over-provisioned CPU resources and 2-vCPU's per VM. The experience really is dictated by the hardware you allocate.
The fully open source xcp-ng Xen based virtualization server is also based off their CitrixServer product.
Windows 10 seems to be not remotable at all due to the fact that everything is rendered in 3D space, so the only way to send data to the client is by sending bitmaps. Plus, there is added latency due to the fact that you have to cache a frame or two to optimize compression. This made it impossible to work, those dreaded delays in key presses, oh God. As I heard from a guy at the top, adding a GPU to the server helps a lot. But no corpo would do that en masse. It will for sure cause an exodus from this VDI setups in the nearest future. Maybe apart from the cheapest people in India.
I wonder if Citrix has any future at all.
I studied for 2 months and passed, ive literally never used citrix in my life
Ok, well back in the day, I would say X11 was actually far better than that. Over dialup, it would blow away RDP performance-wise.
Over the last few years they've also acquired a lot of Data Science companies, but it always felt like they were bargain shopping and acquiring companies nobody else wanted to buy.
Honestly, I pity Spotfire. IME it's the best out of all the products in that space (e.g. Tableau, PowerBI, etc) and is much better for actually Analyzing data in comparison to other products it competes with. But they got acquired by TIBCO, who basically did a great job of losing the mindshare race against Tableau. I feel like some other company would have done a better job with Spotfire.
A little off topic but good memories.
I worked for a Vista-owned company for about 8 years. We were a division of a larger company spun out and sold to Vista. We eventually merged with a couple of other Vista purchases.
The initial change I remember was that everyone had to take a combo personality/IQ test, the DPAT (dynamic personality assessment test?). It looks like they have replaced that with something called a CCAT now, but I'm sure it's essentially the same thing. The results of your test were not shared with you, and IIRC we were told that the results were available only to the CEO and their executive assistant. Candidates for hire had to take this test too, and if they didn't pass we couldn't hire them; it was challenging to hire people in our area. The general feeling was that no one applying to work with us was passing the DPAT, although I wasn't personally involved in any discussions where someone who would know that (CEO and EA only, remember...) told me so.
Some time after this test - maybe a few months? - we had a large layoff. I don't know how many people it was, or how many people we had, actually. I believe the entire company had less than 2500 people, and R&D was at most a few hundred. But they brought in security guards to patrol the office for a week or two during and after the layoff. Vista wanted us to hire "HPEL"s - high potential entry level. We seemed to have layoffs every 12-18 months after that. We were always told that change was a constant, things were looking up, we don't anticipate more layoffs, did you know we are hiring!, etc.
We were paid, and not tortured or anything. But pay was always below-market, and while my memory is fuzzy on the exact sequence of events, it seemed like we were changing 401k and health providers every couple of years. All hands meetings where people complained about compensation and such would get answers like "we continually evaluate industry conditions and remain competitive in the market etc. etc. etc." Leadership was not constant, and from my position it felt like we never remained committed to anything long enough to succeed. The meme where a baby runs down a hall, encounters something alarming at the corner, and then turns and starts to run back? It felt like that most of the time.
The other thing that I thought was fishy but not surprising is that we developed business relationships with other Vista companies. We used Tibco, BigMachines, Marketo, Ping Identity, and maybe WebSense. We had training stuff from SumTotal. I don't remember there being an official policy around this - although Vista had their 'Vista Operating Procedures' playbook for acquisitions to execute - but it did seem like the invisible hand was pressing its invisible thumb on the scale somewhere.
Morale was mostly terrible. I know it wasn't just me that felt that way, but I don't know how much of it was due to Vista vs. something else about our company. I do feel like PE acquiring you means you're not successful, that they think they're going to lean you out and flip you for a profit. So I would be worried if I were at Citrix, and if my own experience and observation is relevant I would suggest dusting off resumes and at least being prepared to move.
I was a manager and hired people, and I never had a candidate who didn't pass the CCAT. But I'd have to qualify that with "a native speaker of English" and "in the US." I never hired in India or elsewhere overseas, but I heard from other managers that this could be a challenge, which makes me think the CCAT was a convenient way of weeding out "non-culture fits."
As far as layoffs and CCATs, they layoff decisions were always a few steps above me in the org chart, but what I observed was that the last couple of rounds were very directly related to employee age. NOT tenure, although being there for 20 years meant you were on the chopping block to be replaced by a few HPELs. But I saw people who were 50+ and only around a few years get cut. Maybe it was due to salary, maybe not. Officially, it was due to "a formula" that included "several factors" because of course basing layoffs on age is illegal.
Annual reviews were a bit bogus, because they were 1-5, with 1 being you were actively involved in a felony against the company, 2 being you were on a PIP, and you couldn't give a 5 to anyone. I would give a scattering of 3s and 4s, and then my boss's boss would say I had too many 4s, so effectively everyone was a 3, which doesn't do much for the "several factors." (It did play well into massively underfunding the bonus pool, though.)
The only other part missing from your story is how between every layoff cycle, there would be a giant rumor that Broadcom or Oracle or someone was going to buy the company for the rolodex and real estate, and fire everyone they couldn't offshore.
To me the morale killer was the constant change. HR constantly opening positions and then freezing hiring before we could hire somebody, resulting in so much wasted time interviewing people. We'd work on big project for a while, and then leadership would change directions and all that was a waste. By the time the 5th person on my team left, it was hard to not feel like everyone was graduating but I was the only person who failed in my senior year and was left behind.
VDI should probably cost as much if not more than comparable workstations, but it’s so much more convenient in the best case.
Eventually started closing such tickets with “buy a real computer” or other snarky remarks.
VDI can die in a fire.
I have no idea what hardware was supporting it, but I just couldn't work with it. Too slow and lots of graphical issues.