Things you always wanted to know the answer to [Vol. 5]
Discussion
borcy said:
When photographers take pictures on the red carpet, why do they need to take so many?
A friend, who I served with, went onto become a paparazzi and he always maintained that taking so many shots was his way (their way, I presume) of getting that 'one shot' where the star was looking directly at that particular camera eyes open (not shut whilst they blinked) and that 'just so' pose, that meant a photo editor would offer you the $10k and not your mate one photographer down the line.Given that there are multitudes of freelance photographers, all vying for that one shot, it was a safety in-numbers game.
He has quite a few of those 'shots' to his credit, to be fair to him.
So the skill, timing and position in the line, versus numerous wasted shots, occasionally pays off.
What goes on in the boardrooms of big companies that fail, such as Kodak, Yellow Pages, Blockbuster Video etc? Do a group of highly paid individuals just sit on the arses watching the ship sink and doing nothing about it until they have milked their last paychecck and then just shrug their shoulders and say 'Oh well' and bugger off to their mansions or next board job?
Frimley111R said:
What goes on in the boardrooms of big companies that fail, such as Kodak, Yellow Pages, Blockbuster Video etc? Do a group of highly paid individuals just sit on the arses watching the ship sink and doing nothing about it until they have milked their last paychecck and then just shrug their shoulders and say 'Oh well' and bugger off to their mansions or next board job?
I think in the three cases you mention, it was the inability to see the total Sea Change that the digital realm would bring. Even when the writing was on the wall to outside observers, it was still a case of an inability to adapt. All three of these companies were HUGE and had been very successful for decades. They did not understand that their entire business model was now obsolete. So, no, I do not think it was wilful.
Clockwork Cupcake said:
Frimley111R said:
What goes on in the boardrooms of big companies that fail, such as Kodak, Yellow Pages, Blockbuster Video etc? Do a group of highly paid individuals just sit on the arses watching the ship sink and doing nothing about it until they have milked their last paychecck and then just shrug their shoulders and say 'Oh well' and bugger off to their mansions or next board job?
I think in the three cases you mention, it was the inability to see the total Sea Change that the digital realm would bring. Even when the writing was on the wall to outside observers, it was still a case of an inability to adapt. All three of these companies were HUGE and had been very successful for decades. They did not understand that their entire business model was now obsolete. So, no, I do not think it was wilful.
Glug glug.
All the staff knew this was going to happen, nobody had any idea how to prevent it.
CivicDuties said:
My missus was working in a fairly senior role at Nokia during their fall, and ended up being made redundant. The board were utterly convinced of their own company's infallibility, their product's superiority and their brand's bulletproof nature, that they couldn't see that Apple and Android ere going to kill them, and that adopting Android rather than persisting with their own OS was the only way to stay on on near the top. What did they do? Brought in a Microsoft guy to implement Windows Mobile.
Glug glug.
All the staff knew this was going to happen, nobody had any idea how to prevent it.
Nokia was a difficult one as they could have pivoted so easily, and already had the means to do so. They had Maemo, which could have been a genuine competitor to Android. They already had the Nokia N810 (I have one) and N900 which was a genuine precursor of the smartphone. With the right foresight we could all be using Maemo-based smartphones rather than Android smartphones. Glug glug.
All the staff knew this was going to happen, nobody had any idea how to prevent it.
They were so close.
Clockwork Cupcake said:
Nokia was a difficult one as they could have pivoted so easily, and already had the means to do so. They had Maemo, which could have been a genuine competitor to Android. They already had the Nokia N810 (I have one) and N900 which was a genuine precursor of the smartphone. With the right foresight we could all be using Maemo-based smartphones rather than Android smartphones.
They were so close.
Nokia's other problem was competition - not external, but internal. They had the Symbian team and the Maemo team and I have vague memories of another smartphone platform they had, all competing internally for resources and attention. I suspect even if management didn't have an arrogance issue, they may have struggled to tell all the teams their platforms were being dropped for Android - even if they did end up getting dropped for Windows Mobile. They were so close.
Ericsson didn't have quite the same issue only having UIQ (which was a decent platform to be fair) so it was much easier for Sony to wield the axe when they took over and move everything to Android.
bodhi said:
Nokia's other problem was competition - not external, but internal. They had the Symbian team and the Maemo team and I have vague memories of another smartphone platform they had, all competing internally for resources and attention. I suspect even if management didn't have an arrogance issue, they may have struggled to tell all the teams their platforms were being dropped for Android - even if they did end up getting dropped for Windows Mobile.
Ericsson didn't have quite the same issue only having UIQ (which was a decent platform to be fair) so it was much easier for Sony to wield the axe when they took over and move everything to Android.
Those are all fair points too. I'd forgotten about Symbian (not to be confused with Sybian) Ericsson didn't have quite the same issue only having UIQ (which was a decent platform to be fair) so it was much easier for Sony to wield the axe when they took over and move everything to Android.
Nokia also had Asha, which was a descendent of S40
Frimley111R said:
What goes on in the boardrooms of big companies that fail, such as Kodak, Yellow Pages, Blockbuster Video etc? Do a group of highly paid individuals just sit on the arses watching the ship sink and doing nothing about it until they have milked their last paychecck and then just shrug their shoulders and say 'Oh well' and bugger off to their mansions or next board job?
There is a bit of that. If you are a late-50's CEO, all cashed up, no chance of getting another gig, then yes your natural inclination is going to be to try and squeeze out the last penny.But in all these situations there are two broad themes at play - the Innovator's Dilemma, and the Wartime Consigliere.
The Dilemma is the well described one of the difficulty a large corporation with big overheads has in responding to a smaller, cheaper, faster firm making something not quite as good but for lower cost, who uses that foundation to eat you away from below. Not the issue so much in Yellow Pages but definitely at Kodak, who didn't/couldn't respond to these digital cameras that were more convenient than film but much lower quality. Until suddenly they weren't.
The inability to respond is linked to the second issue, which is the leadership style. A management team responding to an existential threat is different to the one that is maximising revenues or improving quality or whatever. There's no single right answer - it's really down to the Chair and senior NEDs to spot that a change is needed, get the owners onside, and start whacking people asap.
To the point above about Nokia and internal competition and so on - that's a successful engineering leadership, looking for the best technical solutions. As soon as Android/Apple appeared on the strategy team's horizon scans, the board should have replaced the management with FIFO types carrying large axes and a singular vision.
GIYess said:
Tricky one this. No doubt unions have brought about better pay and conditions historically yet I can't help feel that today's unions just have to complain and are never happy.
Yes, there was a need for trades unions in the distant past, and thanks to their struggle all workers rights are now protected in law, even stupid ones like Paternal Leave [ really ? ] like horse drawn barges and airships they were once useful but now are an anachronism, the last refuge of scoundrels. bodhi said:
Nokia's other problem was competition - not external, but internal. They had the Symbian team and the Maemo team and I have vague memories of another smartphone platform they had, all competing internally for resources and attention. I suspect even if management didn't have an arrogance issue, they may have struggled to tell all the teams their platforms were being dropped for Android - even if they did end up getting dropped for Windows Mobile.
Ericsson didn't have quite the same issue only having UIQ (which was a decent platform to be fair) so it was much easier for Sony to wield the axe when they took over and move everything to Android.
I was a big fan of UIQ which was also a Symbian platform and very closely related to the OS found on Psion organisers. The SonyEricsson P1i being the high point of that OS and the keyboard / touchscreen style of smart phoneEricsson didn't have quite the same issue only having UIQ (which was a decent platform to be fair) so it was much easier for Sony to wield the axe when they took over and move everything to Android.
BigBen said:
I was a big fan of UIQ which was also a Symbian platform and very closely related to the OS found on Psion organisers. The SonyEricsson P1i being the high point of that OS and the keyboard / touchscreen style of smart phone
It's all very convoluted and also fascinating. Palm OS was also a thing, and I had it in my mind that this was also acquired but it seems not and it remained separate for its entire lifetime.
Then there is Maemo and Moblin merging to become MeeGo. Which was then abandoned.
Now all that is left is Android and iOS. Even Blackberry is gone.
CivicDuties said:
My missus was working in a fairly senior role at Nokia during their fall, and ended up being made redundant. The board were utterly convinced of their own company's infallibility, their product's superiority and their brand's bulletproof nature, that they couldn't see that Apple and Android ere going to kill them, and that adopting Android rather than persisting with their own OS was the only way to stay on on near the top. What did they do? Brought in a Microsoft guy to implement Windows Mobile.
I used to develop for Symbian, and I used to go to their Developer Expo thing when it was in London. Every time, when I was talking to Symbian people, I tried to make the point that they needed to support the developers better than they were doing. Too many differences between Symbian platforms - Series 60 and UIQ - that meant having to develop stuff separately despite being almost identical. Too many differences between Series 60 handsets that meant I didn't dare suggest our software would work on any Series 60 phone unless I'd actually tried it. And no way to try it without buying an expensive handset, or signing up for more phone contracts than we had members of staff. I think towards the last expo before they started holding them on mainland Europe they'd started some sort of handset loan scheme, but it was convoluted. bodhi said:
When did people start queueing at bars? As in forming a proper queue behind the person getting served and sneering at people who do things properly and just go up to the bar?
This is a weird one. I had it occur at a bar in some god awful holiday park in the Lake District (White Cross Bay) about 5 years ago. I walked up to the virtually empty bar and when the nice lady working it asked 'who's next' some ferret like Brummie came racing from about 20 feet away shouting 'me, it's me'. They had some weird queue going on where they stood in a line, so far from the bar, and so far apart you would never think they were even queuing up. The people working there seemed just as baffled. 150 feet long bar and a bunch of wombles lining up behind each other at one point.Clockwork Cupcake said:
BigBen said:
I was a big fan of UIQ which was also a Symbian platform and very closely related to the OS found on Psion organisers. The SonyEricsson P1i being the high point of that OS and the keyboard / touchscreen style of smart phone
It's all very convoluted and also fascinating. Palm OS was also a thing, and I had it in my mind that this was also acquired but it seems not and it remained separate for its entire lifetime.
Then there is Maemo and Moblin merging to become MeeGo. Which was then abandoned.
Now all that is left is Android and iOS. Even Blackberry is gone.
From memory Palm got bought by HP, who kept Palm OS for their own uses but Open Sourced WebOS, which was Palms other offering at the time. That's now become the operating system for LG Smart TVs so is definitely living on.
bodhi said:
I was a big fan of UIQ as well - I had the SE W950 which was the Walkman phone with loads of storage but no camera, which wasn't a big loss considering how average phone cameras were back then. I worked in the industry at the time so watched the original iPhone launch and didn't see much on the face of it my year old SonyEricsson couldn't do - the difference was Apple made it really easy to develop and install apps, which the legacy manufacturers didn't do. The rest as they say....
From memory Palm got bought by HP, who kept Palm OS for their own uses but Open Sourced WebOS, which was Palms other offering at the time. That's now become the operating system for LG Smart TVs so is definitely living on.
Interesting. From memory Palm got bought by HP, who kept Palm OS for their own uses but Open Sourced WebOS, which was Palms other offering at the time. That's now become the operating system for LG Smart TVs so is definitely living on.
Somehow I have always done desktop dev, even though (or perhaps because) I've been freelance for 25 years (so get hired to do stuff I have expertise in). So I never dabbled in all that. Apart from one contract which was Windows CE which turned out to be a complete sham anyway but was an amazing experience. Google the Gizmondo scandal if interested. I wasn't in any way involved, and was just a contractor and just got paid for what I did (although had to sue the agency as they got stung for non-payment and tried to pass that off onto me. But as I told them, "what the f
k do you think you get your 20% for? That's your risk". We settled on the courtroom steps)Edited by Clockwork Cupcake on Friday 12th April 21:51
Gassing Station | The Lounge | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff