
Garmin Connect team asked to relocate - this is how they declined - cullenking
http://thegcteam.com
======
tbgvi
On one hand, Garmin probably got what they wanted. Moving a whole office from
San Francisco to Kansas seems like a passive aggresive way of downsizing.

On the other hand, they probably weren't exactly expecting this reaction. And
I have a feeling they aren't gonna like this. Well played ex-Garmin team, well
played.

~~~
cookiecaper
My hometown is Olathe, Kansas, Garmin's world headquarters. It is a really,
really great town. These people are missing out on a very good opportunity. :)

~~~
raganwald
I think it's entirely possible for one person to love Olathe, another to love
S.F., and for both people to be right. Arguing about which town is better when
the two are so dramatically different is about as productive as trying to
decide whether Billie Holiday or Eric Clapton is the better musician.

So go Olathe! And go S.F. And hey... If you aren't in Toronto, Canada you're
missing a third great opportunity ;-)

~~~
davidw
SF: too expensive, too trendy/hipster.

Olathe: where is the nearest mountain? Sorry, too flat.

Toronto: too cold, too flat.

~~~
raganwald
For your reading pleasure:

“Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful:
<http://meyerweb.com/eric/comment/chech.html>

Three blog posts I'd love to read (and one that I wouldn't):
[http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/10/three-blog-posts-id-
love...](http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/10/three-blog-posts-id-love-to-read-
and.html)

------
uuilly
Garmin has been consistently clueless about how software should be developed
and deployed. They are the Verizon of GIS. No surprise that they jettisoned
one of their more promising projects.

~~~
dailo10
Google Maps on mobile devices will eventually displace them.

~~~
Tichy
Problem with Google Maps is that there never is any reception when you need
it. Although you are right - eventually there might be (10 years? 20 years?).

~~~
somebear
Except you could build pre-loading of map data into the app. On Symbian phones
with Ovi Maps the app will download map data on-the-fly, or you can choose to
pre-load it (for example the full maps for Europe or whatnot). I see no reason
Google couldn't do something similar.

~~~
nostrademons
Google Navigation already does this, apparently. I was checking out one of the
state parks in the Santa Cruz mountains a month or so ago. Naturally, I lost
my cell reception once I got into the foothills. But Navigation continued to
direct me, turn by turn with map, until I arrived at my destination.

I lucked out on GPS though - in some cases, the GPS signal has died just when
I need it most. Darn Nexus Ones.

------
cullenking
This seemed pretty interesting in that I could not recall another example of
an entire development team leaving at once. Not to mention their way of
putting themselves back on the market is interesting and humorous to say the
least.

Does anyone else have any examples of entire development teams leaving at once
and offering themselves for hire? Seems like a great way for the competition
to snap up talent.

~~~
ciscoriordan
They're in California too so they didn't have non-competes. I bet if they went
to Kansas they would have had to sign them.

~~~
jamesbressi
I'll let you in on a secret. You don't need to be in California to not worry
about "non-competes". An employer rarely ever holds an employee to it; it is
rarely ever upheld in court; they are just a deterrent. You cannot lawfully
stop someone from gainful employment. The only time you will ever see a non-
compete become an issue is if it is an executive, and even then it is rare.

You can stop someone from disclosing trade secrets, that is why most companies
do a "non-compete / non-disclosure agreement". But, again, the non-compete
part is about as enforced as the "do no remove label" on your mattress ;)

~~~
cookiecaper
A company I used to work for is suing one of its ex-executives for starting a
similar company after he was fired. I am interested to see how it turns out.
The old bosses are of course telling everyone that they're going to win, but
as you've noted, that goes against traditional wisdom and is probably just for
psychological effect.

------
jim-greer
They seem like a strong team, but the list of client technologies feels more
like a skills list you would put on a resume than a reasonable design choice.
Is there a javascript framework they _didn't_ use?

JavaScript, XHTML, CSS

Prototype

JQuery

Ext

Scriptaculous

YUI

Seam

JSF & Facelets

RichFaces

Google Web Toolkit

Adobe Flex

Adobe Flash

Google Maps API

~~~
euroclydon
kitchensink.js

------
mistermann
I haven't gone through the whole website, and I have no idea to what degree
Garmin developers are limited by their management, But I own a Garmin XXX who
knows, I bought it about 2.5 years ago, for about $750, it was very close to
top of the line (text to voice, etc). I used it a bit, it worked pretty good,
but as a software developer, I couldn't stop thinking about the UI failures.
Failure after failure. You might think some would be caused by hardware
limitations, and I always appreciated this, but even considering that, it was
just unsatisfying.

So, Garmin has been working on this for years, they are up to version who
knows what....and then google comes out with their navigation program on
Andriod....it is night and day, despite this being like version 6 (I'm
guessing) for Garmin vs Version 0.5 for Google. Yes, Google has some
architectural advantages that Garmin doesn't, so they can offer some amazing
advanced features, but for me it's the small things that make the
difference...like, does using your software make any sense?

I wish these guys the best of luck, assuming they're been unhappy with how
things have been for years, but if they they their work of 2 years ago was
"good", I'm sorry, you guys should really be in a different profession.

~~~
huhtenberg
These are Garmin _Connect_ guys. They are not responsible for the actual
devices, but rather for some sort of a social web overlay on top of the
devices.

------
randomstring
The team fails to mention that the deployment of Garmin Connect was over a
year late and the migration from motionbased.com (which Garmin bought) was a
total disaster.

It looks like the motionbased.com blog and forums have been taken down. That
makes it hard for those who didn't go through that hell, like I and many
others did, to appreciate just what a total cluster fsck the transition was.
The new site, while much prettier with all its shiny web 2.0-ness, is
functionally on par with the site it replaced.

Here is a cached forum link talking about how the December 2008 launch is
slipping.

[http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:YnEfNC3lDnwJ:forums.moti...](http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:YnEfNC3lDnwJ:forums.motionbased.com/smf/index.php%3Ftopic%3D10744.0+connect+motionbased+migration&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

~~~
cullenking
Yeah they definitely lagged from what I can see, but if they are accurate in
their statements of 45,000 logged activities a day, that's a TON. To put it in
perspective, a single XML log file from my Garmin GPS bike computer is around
200-300kb for a 30-40 mile ride. Imagine that infrastructure buildout!

Not defending a slow release schedule, but it's not "trivial" after working in
this industry for the last couple years.

That, and any corporate structure slows a development team down considerably.
Nice dig for the cache, thanks for the info :)

~~~
djb_hackernews
This is coming from the confused part of my brain. 45k transactions a day
isn't that much and processing 300kb xml files should be trivial. What am I
missing? Was it tongue in cheek?

~~~
cullenking
I guess my response was a bit intense. but I will stand by with saying
processing 45k 300kb files a day is a non-trivial task. Making the site handle
that amount of traffic (serving the pages) is easy. Processing the data
however, isn't. Consider it's being done through their proprietary firefox
extension that works on two browsers and operating systems in order to pull
info off your devices. Then it has to go to some cluster of background job
processors. If you think growing your database/storage scheme by 2-5 gigs a
day is 'trivial' then I commend you. From my experience, it's an easy recipe
for setbacks. For example, our dataset is only 5 gigs, however at 5 gigs we
are to the point of multi-hour schema changes in our data storage format. So,
say you want to support handling laps from an uploaded logfile. A data
migration of how many terabytes spanning how many hours?

~~~
rbranson
It's ok, it seems as if you have real experience doing this, in contrast to
the armchair "scaling experts" flooding HN that balk at problems like this.

~~~
djb_hackernews
Noticing this a few days late, but feel the need to defend myself. I've worked
for two data mining and data aggregation companies. Currently working for a
real time vertical search company. We do 45k in the blink of an eye. real time
search over millions of documents is HARD. Granted we have lots of hardware
and bandwidth. I'd put 45k at entry level scaling problems and see no reason
to brag or get excited over it, which is why I asked for clarification.

------
minouye
The icing on the cake is the Amazon affiliate links to Garmin products (see
right side-bar below twitter feed: <http://thegcteam.com/about>)

~~~
raganwald
I agree. They seem to be proud of their work and would love you to buy more
Garmin stuff. If I were Garmin I'd be throwing chairs right about now, I would
have de-hired a dev team and a sales force at the same time.

------
ghshephard
I've been thinking about this a bit, and I just came to the realization that
Garmin basically did the precise _opposite_ of what Atlassian did. Atlassian,
solidly located (and successful) in Sidney, Australia, went out its way to
open up a branch in San Francisco (and an awesome branch it is) - thereby not
only injecting the technology, culture, and people that you find in the
valley, but also exposing themselves to tons of valley customers (It helps to
be able to have half the company's executives show up to the user group
meetings)

You have to wonder what is going through Garmin's mind when they almost went
out of their way to _shut down_ their valley subsidiary...

------
_delirium
I like this idea on the whole, but isn't it using a _bit_ too much of the
branding/trademarks/etc. of the company they left? You can make factual
statements about your former work, like "I used to be part of the Garmin
Connect team", but this is verging on taking the name with it, with a no-
longer-Garmin-affiliated organization still calling themselves the "Garmin
Connect team", using Garmin Connect material (logos, demo videos, etc.)
extensively on their site, etc. As a now ex-Garmin set of engineers, they
can't really advertise their services using Garmin's name, though it can be
listed as relevant experience.

~~~
CamperBob
It seems fair enough for them to emphasize the work they did for Garmin, but
that site might go a little too deeply into exactly how it was done. I can see
Garmin getting upset about the implementation details.

~~~
Kadin
Unless they're under NDA I don't really think Garmin has much of a say about
that. A J2EE app server stack with AJAXy client side doesn't exactly seem like
it would qualify for trade-secret protection.

Making use of Garmin's trademarks (even indirectly, e.g. "gcteam") or other
intellectual property, or giving out example logins to the production website
... those things seem much more problematic if the relationship with Garmin
goes south.

I've never heard of anyone getting slammed for discussing implementation
details absent an NDA, unless there was source code or other obviously-
proprietary IP involved.

------
tmcw
This sucks. I just uploaded my most recent run to Garmin Connect, because it's
so incredibly better than Nike+ or any of that cheese. Your data is open, the
frontend is super-flexible, the browser plugin is great. Sigh.

------
mkinsella
Well this is certainly disheartening as I'll be moving to Kansas City in a few
months with my girlfriend as she attends medical school... My job hunt begins
soon and all I'm hearing is negativity about KC.

~~~
ubernostrum
My take on it:

If you want to work for ten different companies in three years (with at least
eight going out of business while you're there) and never know whether you'll
have a paycheck next quarter, then the Bay is the place. If you want a steady
job that you'll get to keep for a while, you can do a lot worse than KC.

There's a _lot_ of tech stuff going on in the area (Garmin's one company
headquartered here; Sprint's a stone's throw away in Overland Park, Linux Pro
magazine has its North American offices in Lawrence, etc.) and a lot of geeks,
but not so much youth (as in "I graduated college last month" youth). Most of
the techies you'll meet are in their late 20s or early/mid-30s, and have been
in the industry for a while; quite a few of them have written unglamorous but
indispensable tech books. Most have settled here to raise families. There's a
lot less emphasis on doing things that make great blog posts or conference
talks, and a lot more emphasis on doing things that solve problems in useful
ways.

That's not to say there's no innovation, of course; Django came from Lawrence
(close enough that a lot of people live there and commute to KC), there are
some interesting startups doing stuff like e-gov and transparency, one of the
best GIS groups anywhere (with a yearly conference at the University of
Kansas), a lot of new-media consulting... but nearly all of it happens without
fanfare and chest-thumping.

Anyway. The important thing is not to have an attitude of "oh crap, it's
Kansas", because you'll never meet most of the interesting people that way.

~~~
mkinsella
Thanks (to everyone) for the advice! You've definitely taken some of the
stress out of it and I'm looking forward to the new experiences.

------
marstall
"I’ve worn many hats, and enjoyed everyone."

<http://thegcteam.com/team>

yeah, that's not gonna fly in Olathe, Kansas.

------
djb_hackernews
Anyone else feel like that is a really big team for the product? Maybe I've
just been on really stretched teams but 15 people with 4 product manager
types, wow. Though I've never use it, the product looks great as far as I can
tell. But comparing the products I've worked on I'd say we would have had half
the head count.

------
Maciek416
I can't imagine there are that many companies out there who are making
products like this. Nike+, Runkeeper, Garmin.. Who else? Having only ever used
one application like this, Runkeeper, I find it interesting how similar it
looks to Runkeeper's UI and feature set.

If you've got a ready-made team that can make a product like this but is
unwilling to leave the bay area, it would seem there aren't a lot of companies
around that can absorb a whole team like this overnight. I wonder where
they'll turn up.

~~~
zackham
The original poster (cullen) and I are behind <http://ridewithgps.com>, so
this news is particularly interesting to us

------
andrewljohnson
If I can get some VC funding, then this group would be a treasure trove of
hires for my company.

------
nroach
They seem to be very management-heavy. I looked at the page at
<http://thegcteam.com/team> . Look at how many people they have listed as
managers or coordinators. Unless all the development is being outsourced, I
don't see how a 1.5:1 ratio of developers to managers is efficient. Perhaps
this has something to do with why the team was missing its migration dates in
the first place?

------
plasticbuddha
WTF, Garmin... The real issue for me as a long time sports user of their
products is, if this causes problems with garmin connect (like I expect), I
will finally be fed up with their products.

I've had nothing but disappointment with Garmin's commitment to their products
until Connect came out. I hope this isn't the last stupid move of a failed
company.

~~~
cullenking
Garmin makes fairly solid devices (they have their flaws, but in general work
well), however I feel you on their software. It's a nightmare, as any person
who has used Garmin Training Center or Mapsource can tell you.

If you are really fedup with connect, try out our service at
<http://ridewithgps.com>. We offer much of the same stuff they do and more.

------
bricestacey
I was clicking through some of the team's profile and Anothony Pelosi ticked
"Willing To Relocate: Yes" on his resume on dice.com. Obviously, this
shouldn't be taken at face value. The truth is, no employeee is willing to
relocate unless it's obviously beneficial to them, which is not always the
case.

~~~
allwein
There's a huge difference between "Willing to Relocate" and "Willing to
Relocate anywhere". I currently live in Pittsburgh, and I'd be willing to
relocate anywhere on the East Coast between Charlotte, N.C. and Boston. Most
of my family and friends are out east, so I'm not willing to relocate to the
midwest or the west coast or abroad.

So being willing to relocate but having restrictions doesn't make Mr. Pelosi a
hypocrite

~~~
bricestacey
I don't think I ever implied he was a hypocrite. I was just pointing out that,
although people are willing to relocate, it can't be taken at face value.

------
benofsky
Feels very unprofessional to me, really the sort of people you want to hire?
Nothing wrong with not wanting to relocate but Garmin clearly didn't want to
relocate just to annoy them, there were obviously organisational, cost or
other business reasons to.

~~~
temporaryacct
Absolutely right. People like this are just not going to be team players.
Garmin is getting eaten alive by GPS pressure through the Iphone, they are not
laying people off or asking people to relocate for fun. In short, this is a PR
disaster for Garmin brought on by disgruntled former employees who just don't
care.

Do you want employees that don't care about causing you a PR disaster?

~~~
argv_empty
_People like this are just not going to be team players._

Is this the context where "team player" means "someone who will bend over
backwards for a company that likely wouldn't do the same for him"?

------
njharman
Olathe, Kansas. Grew up there. Had cows on mainstreet 1/4 century ago, damn
that makes me sound old. Close enough to drive to Lawrence (KU) for punk rock
shows and into Kansas City for industrial dance clubs. Not a bad place,
really.

------
swah
Shouldn't a team like this start their own business instead of thinking of
being hired?

------
davidw
Incidentally, isn't it kind of odd that a GPS device company is somewhere with
so little... well, "geography", in the sense of mountains and other features.
I would see them out west somewhere.

------
naqeeb
I think that they should use to as an opportunity to launch a consulting
company focused on webapps.

I've not used Garmin connect but some of the features look promising enough
that other websites would benefit.

------
fseek
Good for them. I wonder what Garmin thinks in terms of competitors now easily
finding a large group of ex-employees.

------
unperson
Where is the story about how they actually declined? All I am seeing is their
team resume.

------
daok
It doesn't render well on Chrome. Firefox works fine.

------
pclark
really hope these guys get hired.

------
hga
I see that Garmin still does not treat its engineers well.

For a number of years my father was the business manager for a group of
microwave engineers in Olathe, Kansas, strangely enough (only a few hours
north from SW Missouri). After that team failed to win a contract for some
sort of JDAM precursor (I think, my father is not a techie) they broke up and
their top dog was one of the first hired by the founders.

Let's just say that the founders weren't terribly generous with employee stock
allocation....

~~~
hyperbovine
You lost me. The founders of Garmin had a killer idea, well ahead of its time,
and they're terrible people for not lavishing the resulting riches on some
lucky schmo who happened to be a talented electrical engineer living in Kansas
at the time? You fail to appreciate that, while many people could have done
the same job as your father's friend, it took a singular amount of vision and
balls to build a company around a satellite network which wouldn't even be
functional for another 4 years. If GPS failed, got axed by the gov, whatever,
those guys would have been ruined while said friend would have walked away
scot-free. People always seem to forget these points when bemoaning how
undercompensated engineers--who after all, do all the "real" work--are.

~~~
amackera
You forget that their "singular vision and balls" would be useless if no
engineers every actually _implemented_ it. The point of stock allocation is to
get people to do the work that needs to be done, and it's risky because at the
time of hire the engineer doesn't know if the idea will be successful.
Generous stock allocation, in my mind, is a token of good-will to the engineer
and a recognition of the importance of the engineering phase of the project.

~~~
abossy
If the engineer felt it was a bad deal, I'm sure he wouldn't have taken it.

~~~
argv_empty
Assuming, of course, there were good deals being offered.

~~~
gommm
So in this case, it's the law of supply and demand...

~~~
jcdreads
Which is among the reasons an engineer might balk at moving from San Francisco
to Olathe, KS.

------
Daniel_Newby
Wow. The back-end and business performance details they publish go pretty far
into trade secret territory. Garmin probably won't sue to avoid giving off bad
recruiting vibes, but I would think twice about hiring these folks.

------
richardw
Yeah, because I want to hire someone who will use my resources to get
themselves hired elsewhere. It's like a girlfriend using my money to put up a
profile on a dating site.

~~~
richardw
Downvotes. I guess the talent is feeling particularly precious today. Kids:
when you start hiring people, maybe you'll change your mind.

edit: And checkout <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1197891> \- this is
your uber talent who deserves special treatment during a recession?

------
temporaryacct
Who would want to hire the kind of employee that doesn't care about causing a
PR disaster?

AVOID, these cats are selfish prima donnas who are not team players. Garmin
isn't asking them to relocate for fun, they're doing it because they face an
existential threat on the consumer side of things from the Iphone.

~~~
potatolicious
And Garmin is a team player for conducting what is essentially a mass layoff?
Employers can have no expectation of loyalty unless they are willing to
demonstrate it in return.

~~~
richardw
The team is worrying about itself. The management have to worry about
themselves, the team, the rest of the staff, the stockholders, the continued
existence of the company. They are being responsible and making what is likely
an incredibly hard decision. The team? Looking out for themselves, while
harming further the company that put up the resources and took the risks (and
maybe came up with the ideas) for creating Garmin Connect.

~~~
potatolicious
How is Garmin's resources being used, and how is the company coming to harm
from all of this? That's a very specious claim unless you have information the
rest of us don't.

All the team is doing is saying "hey, we built this for Garmin, but now we're
on our own. If you think we do good work, come talk to us!" - how are they
unfairly profiting from Garmin's product? I suppose you also refuse to talk
about past work at previous employers on your resume/during interviews?
Otherwise you'd be guilty of the same level of unfair profit.

Furthermore, Garmin's resources _aren't_ being used. Garmin isn't paying for
the server that this page is on, in fact, Garmin's not paying for any of this
attempt at advertising. What's your stance on this? Should all former
employees of a company disavow their previous employment and _not_ use any
showing off of previous work (publicly accessible work, mind you!) to seek
more employment?

As for your first claim: the company is worrying about itself, and the team is
worrying about itself. Everyone is a selfish, but rational actor in this
situation. Nobody is evil - and I find it disingenuous to paint the team as
profiteers when you fail to do so to Garmin also.

~~~
richardw
Since I'm getting (anonymously) downvoted anyway:

Did the team buy all software they used to create the site themselves? Did
they discuss it during work hours? Did they mail each other ideas or designs
at work? Using email addresses of the company? What is the quality of their
work focus between now and the time they stop working, which IIRC is in May
sometime? They're still being paid, but I'm pretty sure they are quite focused
on ramping up their own marketing during this period.

Note that the blogosphere is really enjoying this interaction and the company
is coming off as stupid, out-of-touch etc. Do you think it's helping Garmin or
hurting them, on balance?

It comes down to do-unto-others. I'd prefer not to burn the bridges, myself. I
loathe corporate game-playing as much as the next person, which is why I write
and sell my own software. But I fully understand that some decisions are just
very hard to make, and beating up on Garmin seems a bit simplistic.

