
RIM is rotting from within - junioreven
http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/233771/rim-rotting-within
======
raganwald
Speaking as an Ontarian with some familiarity with the Waterloo area, I
strongly doubt that its rural location has anything to do with RIM’s problems.

The “Good Old Boy” syndrome described can happen anywhere. The company is
described as having 50-something executives who are out of touch making
decisions. You can find hundreds of tech companies like this in Toronto, New
York, Seattle, and SV. Some guys build a company, are successful, hire people
just like them, times change, but they don’t change with it, and refuse to
hire new blood.

For a theory like this to be credible, it must explain RIM, but also explain
other failures and successes. You can’t posit that Apple couldn’t have existed
in Wisconsin and use that hypothetical as an example to bolster the reasoning
that Apple couldn’t have existed in Wisconsin. My question is, how did
Microsoft succeed in the PNW? And why is it no longer succeeding in quite the
same way?

I agree that Waterloo’s talent pool is interesting by virtue of UW, but not as
deep as SV. Then again, lots of SV companies make these mistakes, so I think
it’s more fruitful to look at the mistakes than to try to theorize about the
environment somehow creating the mistakes, as if RIM would somehow be Apple if
they had only relocated a decade ago.

~~~
ChrisMac
I live in Waterloo and also think it's a stretch to call it rural. Sure, it's
not a metropolis, but there are about 500,000 people in the immediate region.
Toronto, the country's largest city, is also only an hour-and-a-half drive
away, along a well-worn, built up commuter route. Overall, South-Western
Ontario is the most populous part of the country. I rarely feel like I'm out
in the middle of nowhere. There's a definite sense that the city is in
Toronto's sphere.

~~~
a3camero
Also, RIM isn't just in Waterloo. There's a fairly substantial Mississauga
office that is in the Greater Toronto Area. RIM also has offices in Ottawa,
the US and Britain.

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untog
_it is unacceptable in this day and age that a global brand should have the
vast majority of its citizens derived from a [...] less important country
(Canada), that does not have a history of empire_

Wuhhh? The article makes some good points but this quote stuck out like a sore
thumb to me. What on earth does that have to do with anything?

In any case, being in an unusual location is not necessarily a terrible thing.
Companies in SV battle against employees jumping from company to company
constantly- everywhere has its challenges.

~~~
afterburner
Yeah, that bit sounds like chauvinist BS.

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tptacek
I see 'junioreven is the new 'jfruh, posting everything that hits ITWorld in
the hopes it'll bring some page views to their site. Can we just set up some
kind of RSS scrapey thing and be done with it, guys?

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Permit
I'll preface this with the disclaimer that I'm a University of Waterloo
student, so my opinion might be biased. Despite this, I have no particular
bias for RIM that I'm aware of, and couldn't see myself owning any of the
products they currently produce. I've also never worked for RIM, but I have a
number of close friends who have for co-op work terms.

There are a lot of things wrong with RIM, but I think the author of this
article missed most of them, focusing largely on a bunch of points that were
either irrelevant or incorrect.

First of all, as many have mentioned, Waterloo is not located in the rural
heart of Canada, nor is there a particularly huge problem finding talent in
the area. Like many universities we have a co-op work program during which
students find employment at a variety of companies including Microsoft, Apple
and Google. Bill Gates has stated that "Most years, we hire more students out
of Waterloo than any university in the world, typically 50 or even more"[1].
This leads me to believe that it's not a lack of available talent that has
plagued RIM, but the ability to attract and retain it.

Each term, RIM hires hundreds of students for co-op work terms. From a
student's perspective, it doesn't feel particularly challenging to get a job
there the same way it would for Google or Facebook. For this reason, I suspect
the best and brightest of our classes likely end up working in the States,
rather than sticking around here.

There are certainly some cultural issues at play here. Many of the people I
knew who worked at RIM were never challenged by their work or held accountable
for it and this lead to an incredibly low productivity. I've known people that
show up to work there drunk occasionally and high consistently. That same
individual went to work at a smaller mobile company his following term and was
working unpaid overtime on weekends simply because he enjoyed the work. Of
course, this is all anecdotal, but it paints a picture for me about what
working for the company must be like.

In my opinion, RIM needs to hire fewer students, and pay them more
competitively. They need to hold their employees accountable for productivity
and team leaders and managers accountable for the people they oversee.

All this being said, I sometimes can't help but wonder if RIM's problems are
over-exaggerated. True, they're losing market share, but they're still
profitable on the order of billions aren't they?

[1]
[http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20051013/billgates_waterloo...](http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20051013/billgates_waterloo_20051013/#ixzz1gitjhEDV)

~~~
icegreentea
Also a UW student. This is hearsay, so take it with a grain of salt, but it's
totally something I can believe.

One of the reasons why so many RIM jobs aren't as 'exciting' as Microsoft or
Google jobs is because in the last last generation of RIM products, they
actually had coops do a lot of work that got released into production, and
then started playing hell after they left for the term. RIM apparently got
burned pretty bad with that, so now attempts to limit how much coop work
actually goes into production.

This was from gossiping with a RIM employee who I played Ultimate Frisbee
with.

------
keithpeter
Blackberry phones are _must have_ items for UK teenagers (its the BBM
accounts, which are cheap or free here, add free wifi over college campus and
you can chat for nowt). Skull Candy or Sony headphones listening to music and
chatting on BBM is what they all do at lunchtimes. The demographic doesn't
stretch to Dr Dre.

Surely some monetization potential there?

[http://www.tuaw.com/2011/08/04/iphone-preferred-by-adults-
bl...](http://www.tuaw.com/2011/08/04/iphone-preferred-by-adults-blackberry-
by-teens-in-the-uk/)

[http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-teen-girls-want-
blackbe...](http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-teen-girls-want-blackberries-
not-iphones/)

PS: As a 50+ Maths teacher, I achieved instant credibility by purchasing a
payg blackberry recently, mainly because I like qwerty phones and wanted a G3
connection, and, yes I live in a provincial city in the UK. Another market?

------
jorgecastillo
RIM is not done and saying this is nonsense. BlackBerry devices are still
selling and will keep selling. They may never again have a huge market share
but they are far from dead, a decent market share is all they need. Some
people are delusional believing that people don't want BlackBerry smartphones
anymore. As a current Android user I can tell you that my next smartphone will
not be an Android one. I will not be recommending Android smartphones to
anyone I know either. To me BlackBerry smartphones seem like a good choice and
that is what I will be recommending if asked.

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Alexmania
This article is just BS if you are blaming RIM on Southern Ontario because it
doesn't have any talent you clearly have no idea about it. How can you compare
Wisconsin to Ontario that's just stupid.

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fredsanford
RIM has an office in South Florida and I believe they came here to pick up the
unhappy Motorola Cell Division employees. Anyway, they hired a bunch of people
away from Motorola that were just poor quality developers.

I don't think this bodes well for their future as the 2 phones I was involved
with at Motorola (as a contractor) were pure disasters and a majority of the
US people that were involved were hired by RIM.

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wglb
Hmmm. _far from any technology hub that would contain a deep talent pool of
developers._

So how do your account for their prior success?

And calling that area "rural" or "provincial" (well, it is within a Province,
after all) is just geographically inept. If they were in Whitehorse, that
would be one thing.

Perhaps their prior great success exposed them to the possibility of
disruption?

I am wondering why we need the articles from itworld here anyway?

------
rorrr
RIM is done. Only a true miracle can save them.

~~~
grannyg00se
I don't know what qualifies as a miracle these days but I don't think their
task is unreachable. They have cash (as far as I know) and they still have
some decent brand recognition. They also have a supply chain, and
distribution.

They are still in a great position to make positive moves, the fact is they
need to make those moves. Soon.

~~~
rorrr
Yes, they could make a groundbreaking phone, but to make it profitable would
require a miracle.

BlackBerry OS can't compete with IOS or Android, it's too specialized and too
crappy.

I think their only way to save themselves is to fire 85% of the executives,
which will never happen. They are in charge, and they are getting paid
extremely well, while driving company into the ground. They are just trying to
squeeze as much money as possible from the dying company, that's why their CEO
makes these ridiculous statements.

~~~
grannyg00se
The next phone is going to have a completely rebuilt OS. Are you already
writing it off as non competing? How?

