
John Walker's Crisis Letter to Autodesk Employees (1983) - bigmac
http://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_22.html#SECTION00220000000000000000
======
ryanwaggoner
I could be wrong, but I think this letter illustrates why why many of us are
attracted to startups. This kind of esprit de corps, this sleeping under your
desk and working around the clock doing everything you can to move the ball
forward, this single-minded insanity that focuses 100% of your effort and will
on building something amazing and changing the world forever. Is it probably
just naive and idealistic and ridiculous? Yeah, it probably is. But I think at
the end of the day, many of us just want to be that committed to something.

~~~
caudicus
Totally agree. I've found that one of the most depressing things is feeling
like a "cog in the wheel". If someone sent me this letter, I WOULD open up the
window and scream "I'm going to make this product the best I can", and trust
that I will be rewarded for it as a shareholder. That would cast all what I
have historically labeled as "cynicism" toward my employer away. I'd believe
that they finally "get me".

I guess it's all about just getting the employees and management on the same
page and attacking a problem - with a startup it is really easy, since the
division between the two is pretty small and blurred. And that's why we love
the startup lifestyle.

~~~
vlad
>> That would cast all what I have historically labeled as "cynicism" toward
my employer away.

This is actually a letter to non-employee shareholders... making this much
more cooler.

------
vlad
I apologize if I'm mistaken (I'm sure if I was right somebody would have also
noticed this by now), but isn't this a letter to the shareholders of the
company, telling them they need to help out, even relocating to their office
for a month, as their full-time employees are already overloaded with work,
and the company may go bankrupt in months?

This is a huge difference because the link isn't to a typical story about
leadership telling their employees they need to work harder. It's in fact a
different type of letter--one that appears to have been sent to shareholders
who are not employees--that I don't think any of us have seen before.

~~~
mlinsey
From the note at the top: _Almost two years to the day after this letter was
written, Autodesk completed its initial public stock offering;_

So "shareholders" would have been employees and private investors.

~~~
vlad
Yes, employees could be a subset of shareholders, but again I specifically
believe this letter was sent to non-employee shareholders. Here are quotes
illustrating why:

>> Dear Autodesk Shareholder,

>> This is the time to neglect your job.

>> This is the time to take that leave of absence from the foundry and work
for Autodesk.

>> If you have skills as a programmer, use them...machines... will be
provided.

>> If you have management skills, offer to take over AutoCAD project
management tasks...

>> If your skills are in general management, finish our business plan...

>> Move to Mill Valley for a month (all expenses paid). Spend a week in the
center of the cyclone at 150 Shoreline.

>> The full time people in this company are working at or beyond capacity. We
need help, your help, or we will fail.

This is not a letter to the employees like the submission title misrepresents,
and other posters seem to believe... This is clearly something way cooler.
This is something that's been talked about in reference to choosing your
investors wisely, but this is the first application of those intangibles that
I ever remember reading about--a letter calling on your (non-employee)
shareholders to use their skills and connections to fill in the missing pieces
and grow the company, with the other alternative being insolvency.

Assuming autodesk favored investors with technological understanding and
expertise, this demonstrates that having investors who can help you in ways
other than with money is very important.

------
bayareaguy
While the Autodesk file makes for interesting reading, I'd find Walker's
personal opinions a little more credible if there were more material from
other sources.

I've always been bothered by his attitude that he made no mistakes in how he
handled an interview with an analyst who subsequently smeared Autodesk, after
it lost half its market value in one day -
<http://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_99.html>

~~~
palish
_"[Autodesk] lost half its market value in one day"._

I'd say Autodesk didn't lose its intrinsic value. In Walker's words:

 _How can I possibly impugn the performance of the management of Autodesk when
Autodesk has just finished the most successful year in its entire history? We
have highest sales, highest profit, largest number of new products, greatest
market share, broadest international distribution, more employees, more
technology in the lab, more products scheduled for introduction next year than
ever, okay. That's not a record of failure. The fact that our earnings were
lower in the fourth quarter than some people on Wall Street expected because
we sell to the two most cyclical industries in the world, construction and
building, and we're in the middle of a depression, is not anything that has to
do with Autodesk strategy. We began this year with about a 70% market share in
the CAD business, we ended the year with a 71% market share in the CAD
business--71.4 I believe it is. That's not a company that's being clobbered by
competition. That's not a Lotus being clobbered by itself. That's a company
that needs to build on the base that we have, and expand that base with
additional products, with additional platforms such as Windows, to broaden to
the point that we are a broadly diversified company. That has been our goal
since the foundation of the company. We have been in the multimedia market for
several years; we're in the retail market--we're increasing all that focus as
time goes on._

Also, could you give specific examples of what Walker said in the interview
that could be considered a big mistake?

The reporter who interviewed Walker started with what could be classified as
"incoherent babbling":

 _GZ: I'll just remind 'ya that this is a newspaper interview and that we'll
just treat it as such. Ah, well listen, I appreciate the chance to come by and
talk with y'all cause, let's see, Autodesk is a very interesting company and,
uh, you know, for reasons that have to do with the fact that, uh, they're just
so many things we can get to... we haven't--haven't really paid it a lot of,
much attention in the couple of years I've been covering software--I also
cover personal computers--but, uh, I've had a chance to do some--a little bit
of boning up on the company and, you know, I'm real grateful that I had a
chance to come by and talk because, uh, there's really, is no substitute for
talking to senior management when it comes to assessing how a company is doing
or what it's up to so, uh, I hope that... now I don't know what kind of time
frame you had, but I hope we can get through a lot of things and, I, I hope
also you'll appreciate that, uh, you know, a lot more about the company than I
do and I will benefit by whatever time you can, you can share with me because,
ah, naturally I have a lot of qu... you know... there's a lot of things I'm
trying to come to grips with and... and in a lot of ways you're the best
people to help me._

So, a scenario: imagine that a potential new employee showed up to interview
at your company and you posed to him a somewhat open-ended question, and he
responded by babbling. How would you feel about the candidate's credibility or
competence? Not good, I'd imagine.

The reporter was unfortunately dumb, and it is very easy to make mistakes when
dealing with dumb people. I specifically chose the phrase "deal with dumb
people" because that is what what you have to do in the above scenario --
uninformed, ignorant people who have strong opinions are attempting to frame
you in a particular light, and you have to deal with the results.

John appears to have thought quickly and dealt with this dumb person swiftly.
So, picture yourself in his situation: "I have just invited this reporter to
ask questions of myself and the upper management of my company. I just
discovered that he is unprofessional, somewhat incomprehensible, and has
ulterior motives that were not communicated. Therefore, I am being bullied."
What do you do? How do you respond in that type of situation? Throw him out?
Can't, that would look terrible. Excuse yourself but let him continue to
interview upper management? Same thing. So John had to proceed by dealing with
a bully, and he seemed to have done just that. He seemed to have handled it
OK, at least to me.

Anyway, that's my thought process, and I'm quite interested to hear yours, if
you get time.

EDIT: Here are a couple amusing gems in the interview transcript. "GZ" is the
reporter.

 _JW: I thought we weren't here to discuss personalities. That's what you
said.

GZ: Yeah, yeah, right. We're not going to discuss personalities. That's right.
But the personalities... People run this company, right?

JW: People run every company.

...

GZ: Do you undermine senior management by distributing a paper like this?

JW: No.

GZ: You don't.

JW: All of the senior management who was in charge then are in charge now.
We've reorganised a little bit, but...

GZ: Well, Al Green is outgoing, I mean, I mean one could say, ad hoc, that
senior management was undermined, I mean in the sense that, that...

JW: You could say that. It's not true.

...

GZ: The, the sad fact is, is that if you look at the successful software
companies and you look at the unsuccessful ones, uh, the Ashton-Tates and the
Lotuses, they don't have that [technical] person there. The Borlands and the
Microsofts, the Symantecs--they do.

JW: I disagree with you. The largest software company in the world is IBM. It
isn't run by a software guy.

GZ: Would you be happy with their record? (Laughs condescendingly.) Would 'ya,
would 'ya...

JW: Fifteen per cent compounded growth for a century? Yes, sir, I'd be happy
with that record.

...

GZ: Okay, so, what, I mean, what, in terms of Alvar's replacement, then, what,
what is your thinking about, about that? You need someone who will just fit
in, with the strong team that 'ya have already?

JW: (Interrupting). I don't need. I'm not on the CEO search committee; that's
a board matter. And the board, is the board, which is charged by the
investors...

GZ: (Interrupting). You are on the board, no, right?

JW: No, I'm not on the board.

GZ: You're not on the board anymore.

JW: I haven't been since 1988.

GZ: All right. (Long pause.)

...

GZ: What was the reaction, of, of folks to the, to the letter?

JW: Ahhhh, I think it was, uh, a little like when you fire a shotgun in an
aviary, there was silence at first...

GZ: (Interrupting). In a, in a, in an ``ave-ary''?

JW: In an aviary.

GZ: Aver-arary, okay.

JW: You know, where they have birds?

GZ: Um-hummm._

My conclusion: John Walker is a badass android, and this reporter has some
serious thought disorder issues.

~~~
bayareaguy
This exchange is a classic example of a failure to communicate. We have the
uber-geek founder of one of the most successful companies of the time and a
dumb reporter who just wants some standard fluff to cut-and-paste into his
article and neither party really understands the other. While Walker clearly
exposed the guy as being prejudiced and ill-informed, he should have realized
even before the interview that it wasn't in the best interest of his company
to allow that to happen.

Walker clearly "won" the argument but he lost an opportunity to communicate
the reasons for Autodesk's successes.

~~~
palish
But he never had an opportunity to communicate Autodesk's success. The
reporter's underlying goal was to establish why Autodesk _wouldn't_ be
successful. No amount of effective communication would have convinced the
reporter that his conclusion wasn't valid.

~~~
bayareaguy
Perhaps, perhaps not. We do know the guy was dumb, hostile, unsatisified by
the exchange and in a position to publish bad things. Walker may have been
better off to just refuse the interview. However agreeing to the interview and
then using the opportunity to just piss him off did nobody any good.

------
sireat
Trust me on this, you'll never get a completely "truthful" article out of a
journalist. Clearly this was an extreme case, but my advice applies even when
the journalist is amicable and eager to please, even then your
opinion/data/information will be mangled in some way, shape or form.

------
zandorg
I know Ted Nelson, who was funded by John Walker (after an introduction at the
secretive Hacker's conference) to the tune of $10 million for Xanadu. He's had
problems getting funding for Zigzag, which is equally as innovative.

