
Former Apple employees try a different management approach at Pearl Automation - hackuser
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/technology/pearl-automation-apple-alumni.html
======
Animats
The article is all Apple, Apple, Apple. That's not Pearl's problem. Pearl is
in the auto accessory business, selling through all those cheesy stores in the
auto-parts part of town. Their product is not novel. It's so not novel that
there's an Amazon Vehicle Backup Cameras Store.[1] Pearl is in it, at $499,
alongside comparable products starting at $32.99. That's Pearl's problem.

Not only that, the competing products come with a display. Pearl's product
assumes you have a phone on your dashboard, running their app. User comment:
"any time you backup, you need to manually launch the app and wait through a
3-5 second lag as the video feed loads."

Those guys are automotive noobs. Their recommended temperature range is -4°F
(-20°C) to 113°F (45°C). You can easily exceed those on a car body. Automotive
temperature range for components is usually considered to be -40°C to 125°C.
Their device is also battery powered, so it will need a recharge or a new
battery regularly. Everybody else wires into vehicle power, so it's install
and forget.

They say they're going to do self-parking next. As a retrofit. Right. Those
guys need to get out of Scotts Valley, move to Detroit or some place with auto
parts plants, and get their hands dirty.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Vehicle-Backup-
Cameras/b?ie=UTF8&node...](https://www.amazon.com/Vehicle-Backup-
Cameras/b?ie=UTF8&node=1253823011)

~~~
ghughes
The article makes a lot more sense if you look at it as an acquihire
solicitation.

~~~
Animats
You may be right. I don't see those guys ten years downstream with hundreds of
RetroDrive installation shops and a factory turning out many models of
steering box adapters. On the other hand, they're not MobilEye, which has
innovative vision processing technology. They're just a camera sales
operation.

------
IBM
Kind of feels like an ad for Pearl they agreed to publish in exchange for
anecdotes about working at Apple.

The Apple PR statement at the end made me laugh for some reason:

“Pearl Auto is a great example of the creativity and innovation driving the
iPhone ecosystem,” said Josh Rosenstock, an Apple spokesman. “We wish them
great success with their new product.”

~~~
Hydraulix989
Yes, this is obviously paid content marketing material.

EDIT: The Pearl team mass downvoted me. :(

~~~
theoh
No, but it may have come to them via a press release.

Paul Graham on PR from 2005:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

"PR is not dishonest. Not quite. In fact, the reason the best PR firms are so
effective is precisely that they aren't dishonest. They give reporters
genuinely valuable information. A good PR firm won't bug reporters just
because the client tells them to; they've worked hard to build their
credibility with reporters, and they don't want to destroy it by feeding them
mere propaganda.

If anyone is dishonest, it's the reporters. The main reason PR firms exist is
that reporters are lazy. Or, to put it more nicely, overworked. Really they
ought to be out there digging up stories for themselves. But it's so tempting
to sit in their offices and let PR firms bring the stories to them. After all,
they know good PR firms won't lie to them."

~~~
Hydraulix989
It's not dishonesty; it's just biased, and I wasn't necessarily pointing the
finger at Pearl either.

~~~
theoh
I didn't mean to comment on the honesty or otherwise, those were just the
paragraphs that contained the key info: PR firms feed valid facts to
journalists.

If a news outlet so much as carries an article about a given topic, they are
exercising discretion and leaving themselves open to accusations of bias...
Really it's NPoV that is the unachievable ideal.

~~~
Hydraulix989
I see, you did seem to imply that I implied that NYT/Pearl (pg favors the
former when it comes to possible "bad actors") were being dishonest.

I think it's an important lesson to learn how to discern whether articles are
"paid marketing" or "content marketing" (or biased in other ways). Not many
people know how to do this kind of critical thinking -- look at the "fake
news" debacle (if anything, there is a certain blind trust people place in
authority figures like the NYT).

The transparency (or lack thereof) of this particular article is an important
observation to note.

------
adriand
This is the most interesting part of the article for me:

> Apple, which has about 110,000 employees, breaks big projects down into
> smaller tasks. Those are assigned to small teams, and each subtask is given
> to a specific employee, who must get it done — what Apple calls the
> “directly responsible individual.”

> Pearl has copied this system. “In leading small teams, that’s very
> effective,” Mr. Gardner said.

Apparently this directly responsible individual (DRI) approach is famous, but
it's the first I've heard of it. Is anyone able to comment on how effective
this is?

Say you have a multi-disciplinary team of UX designers, a PM, front-end and
back-end devs - I'd be accustomed to seeing a team lead in charge of the
project who is the DRI for the whole thing, but do subtasks for the project
also get parcelled out in formal, DRI-fashion? E.g. user stories for a web app
like, "As a user I can log in securely", would this get a DRI assigned to it?
What happens when the DRI doesn't have time for that task, are they able to
pass it along to someone else, and would the decision to punt it over to
someone need to be run past someone, typically, or is the DRI empowered to
make decisions on delegation/task transferring?

~~~
gohrt
Isn't this how every organization in the world operates?

How can anything resembling non-hobby work get done without a "directly
responsible individual"?

~~~
lbotos
Implicitly, yes, some person is always doing the work. But in my experience a
"DRI" culture is one where at the end of a meeting it's 100% clear _what_
needs to be done and _who_ is doing it. That doesn't happen in a lot of
companies, because a lot of companies call meetings to brainstorm.

------
pkaye
$500 for the PearlVision product and you have to supply your own phone for the
display. That is some hefty markup. You can get some decent ones that include
a display in the range of $50-$150 on Amazon.

~~~
taco_emoji
Seems to me the main advantage is that you don't have to wire anything up (or
pay someone else to do that).

And personally I already mount my phone for navigation & music, so I wouldn't
WANT to have the extra display.

~~~
pkaye
I paid about $75 for a rear view camera setup on Amazon and another $75 for
someone to install it in an hour hooked into the existing entertainment
display. No worry about wires, charging, etc. Still better than a $500 product
which needs a phone that I need to mount and dismount, charge, etc.

------
azdle
> Apple, for its part, appears to hold no hard feelings toward Pearl, despite
> the steady poaching of employees.

This has made me wonder, why does offering people a better option for
employment than what they currently have get described with the word for
illegally killing/stealing animals? Was there some concerted effort years ago
to associate the two, to make leaving one company for another seem like a bad
thing?

~~~
1123581321
I can't speak to the history of the term, unfortunately, but the term poaching
in a hunting context means more than just killing an animal illegally; it has
a connotation of trespassing to gain something otherwise inaccessible.
Employee poaching has the same connotation because the former employee uses
their familiarity with the old company to hire employees that other companies
can't access as easily.

~~~
will_pseudonym
I see your definition and that of the first definition I saw from the
internet, and coming from a family of hunters/fishers, it surprised me a bit.
I associate poaching almost entirely with killing of animals illegally. I
think that is because in my home state, there were fewer problems with people
trespassing to hunt than with those hunting with no regard for
licenses/hunting laws. The Wikipedia article on poaching in the USA[0] is more
what I associate with poaching.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poaching#Poaching_in_the_USA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poaching#Poaching_in_the_USA)

------
Apocryphon
Interesting they're based in Scotts Valley. I have to wonder if California
tech in Santa Cruz and Monterey have dwindled in recent years because of the
emphasis on San Francisco and Palo Alto.

~~~
Fnoord
Don't think ever was much at that side of SV to begin with. People who work in
tech and live in SC just travel to SV. From what I remember its a ~1 hour
drive from SC to SFO airport or SJ. Quite doable if you love living in SC.

------
thanatropism
Sounds like a vanishing market, though.

People don't buy new cars because theirs are "outdated". They buy the new
shiny because they deserve the new shiny godammit. Not unlike computer
hardware geeks who only buy new devices when they need it.

~~~
smpetrey
Are you kidding me? Have you ever worked in/or visited a vehicle dealership?
It's over -run with 1st-movers, and most of the time the owners and salesmen
always have the newest and latest.

~~~
Spooky23
Not like it used to be.

See:
[https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pu...](https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_26.html_mfd)

I work with a group of well paid engineering types. About 50% have cars < 5
years old. I have the third oldest -- a 2003 model year. My boss drives a 1991
Accord, although this will be its last winter.

------
zump
How do people gain satisfaction from working for a dead on arrival product?

------
thesmallestcat
> More than 50 of the company’s 80 or so employees worked for Apple at some
> point.

I understand how/why this happens, but as an engineer who's not an Apple
"alumnus" (ugh), I would never work at a place like that. A company needs
diversity in more ways than one.

~~~
furyofantares
I don't understand. Would you work at Apple itself?

~~~
thesmallestcat
Maybe. Apple's too large to have 70% of their employees come from the same
company. I've worked at "startups" like this before, and there is a caste
system with the former $BIG_CORP-ers and everybody else. No thanks.

------
sillyrabbit
Sure, plug a mobile app directly into your OBD-II, what could go wrong?

~~~
ams6110
Does OBD-II have any direct control capability? I had thought it was a
diagnostic (read-only) interface.

~~~
casylum
OBD-II diagnostics are mandated by law, but manufactures often connect almost
all microcontrollers to that connector. This allows updating all of your
firmware from one port. That can be a security problem when connected to the
internet.

~~~
nickbauman
I was not aware of this; I assumed it was read-only except for reset flags,
thank you for pointing this out.

~~~
xenadu02
There are numerous holes in various firmware that allow cross-talk between the
various CAN busses anyway. I don't think anyone who set out to research
automotive security has ever had to move on to another vehicle due to lack of
exploitable flaws.

------
rocky1138
I am less concerned with who they are and more concerned with what they're
doing. What does their company do?

~~~
mdonahoe
The sell an aftermarket rear view camera for your car.

[https://pearlauto.com/](https://pearlauto.com/)

------
yalogin
I don't know if there is a huge need for this in the market though. I would
rather spend to upgrade the media and other controls in the car than the rear
view camera if I have to. For someone used to driving without a rear camera
there is no need for one. They need more products.

