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'Cultlike' Devotion: Apple Once Refused To Join Open Compute Project, So Their Entire Networking Team Quit (businessinsider.com)
mattydread23 writes: Great story about the Open Compute Project from Business Insider's Julie Bort here, including this fun tidbit: "'OCP has a cultlike following,' one person with knowledge of the situation told Business Insider. 'The whole industry, internet companies, vendors, and enterprises are monitoring OCP.' OCP aims to do for computer hardware what the Linux operating system did for software: make it 'open source' so anyone can take the designs for free and modify them, with contract manufacturers standing by to build them. In its six years, OCP has grown into a global entity, with board members from Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Intel, and Microsoft. In fact, there's a well-known story among OCP insiders that demonstrates this cultlike phenom. It involves Apple's networking team. This team was responsible for building a network at Apple that was so reliable, it never goes down. Not rarely -- never. Building a 100% reliable network to meet Apple's exacting standards was no easy task. So, instead of going it alone under Apple's secrecy, the Apple networking team wanted to participate in the revolution, contributing and receiving help. But when the Apple team asked to join OCP, Apple said 'no.' 'The whole team quit the same week,' this person told us."
They did not quit because they had some sort of cultlike devotion. They quit because they recognized a business opportunity to "get in on the ground floor" and form a startup. "Instead, they founded a startup called SnapRoute, led by Jason Forrester, the former team leader. While Forrester declined to talk to us for this article, SnapRoute's website hints at the story. " Lord knows I've been tempted to leave my big ol' company to pursue similar ventures... Can never convince enough principles to join me. The lure of that pension plan (yes, still have one...) is too strong.
I was part of Apple's licensing software team twenty years ago---1996.
At the time, the Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP) was the big item, essentially the same as OCP. Standardize the API at a hardware-abstraction layer, and let everyone build compatible machines. The manufacturer would write the HAL (BIOS) and a variety of operating systems can run on the hardware. (At the time, it was MacOS, OS/2, Novell Netware, and a couple others I've forgotten.)
My question at the time was "How does Apple make any money when the platform becomes a commodity, and millions of units come into the market on barges from Chinese manufacturers?" Naturally, Apple would cease to sell computers. This was the OS-licensing situation in spades.
Steve Jobs cancelled Apple's participation in CHRP as well as all OS licensing, knowing that Apple makes most of its money selling the computer. IBM got out of the PC business when Dell and Gateway built PC-compatibles cheaper. Now they're starving as Acer and everyone else builds the platform.
Why would this be any different today than it was two decades ago?
the cult-like Apple doesn't like competing cults?
More like engineers are move devoted to their technology than to whomever happens to employ them at any given time. Particularly large, overbearing corporations that saddle them with a lot of rules and marketing idiots.
This is more a story about how technical people work than it is about Apple.
I have friends that work for Apple, Google, Oracle, whatever. And I have friends that have quit en-masse from those companies. They almost always quit because they went from a cool startup to a tiny cog in a gigantic machine. These gigantic internet companies consume smaller companies and spit out all the parts they don't like. In many cases, that's most parts.
This is not an Apple problem, it's an industry and maybe even a societal problem. I don't even think it's possible to get a good job, get an A+ rating for every performance review ever, and expect to stay at that job for 5+ years. After 10 years, you are too expensive to keep around.
It's a race to the bottom. Throw enough cheap shit at the wall and you'll eventually meet your short term profit goals but, damn, that's a lot of shit to clean off the walls. In fact, you may not be able to clean it all off.
Greetings, Humans. The machine churns. I'd like to introduce you to the grinding wheel...
I worked for a company that had one of their data centres divided into 5 zones, each zone had its own UPS and generator. The was a transfer switch between each zone so that if one zone's backup went down it would be supplied by the adjacent zone which had enough capacity for two zones. After about 5 years there was a major power outage with the local utility. The whole place went down. The investigation found that:
a. For the last 5 years management had decided not to do annual maintenance since we were "too busy";
b. The transfer switches were battery powered since they're supposed to work during a power outage;
c. The batteries are supposed to be replaced during annual maintenance;
d. The batteries have a useful life of 3-4 years;
e. If one zone goes down they all do; and
f. One zone didn't stay up due to a lack of annual maintenance.
I nearly sent them an energizer bunny but decided it might be a CLM.
Don't forget to mention.
Who work in an area where they can easily find a job elsewhere.
I bet these guys had jobs ligned up before the "bravely" quit Apple.
Rarely a whole department will quit at the same time. If the job really sucks you will see a migration where people quit over the course of months. Because normally before you quit you need an other job.
Having Apple not join open compute sounds more liike the first intent to look elsewhere. Then the reason to quit.
I expect they all just got picked up by some companies they found out they were all quitting at the same time so they used that as the reason for their exit interview.
What they did was found a new company, SnapRoute - http://www.snaproute.com/our-s...
Pain is merely failure leaving the body