8 ms·

The Dropcam Team

232 points by robbiemitchell 11y ago

outside1234 11y ago
Thanks for creating Dropcam - I still love the device even with the Nest "improvements." I also worked at Nest (on the thermostat product) and couldn't echo your comments more strongly. Tony Fadell is a terrible manager. There are so many public data points at this point: the perma 6 day work weeks, the "f* being Googly" comment at the all hands, refusing to allow Nest employees to have the Google massage benefits because "they don't deserve it", and now, throwing a great team under the bus to hide his inability to manage. I have another twenty that I can't share because of confidentiality and I'm sure you do as well. The fact that Alphabet/Google hasn't replaced him is a horribly disappointing statement about what they think is most important: profit, not employees, not culture. Or maybe not even profit after your comments. :( Please do write the other story about your acquisition when you can - a lot of people here could learn a lot from it as a cautionary tale.
- bitbybite 11y ago
  They've made some really neat products. I'm always surprised how many product and business leaders in the world are harsh/aggressive, you just don't hear about them because smaller footprints. It's easy to tear down success and innovation without context of redemptive outcomes/tradeoffs. Turn your frustration into energy and go innovate.
- kdamken 11y ago
  Holy moly - 6 days a week? I can't fathom having to do that at a salaried job and staying for more than two weeks. Unless they were paying me an obscene amount of money, but even then, I'd probably be on the look out for something better.
  - vvanders 11y ago
    Haha, you'd hate the game dev industry then.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      How are there not class actions against that for wage theft?
    - kdamken 11y ago
      Lol I'm always horrified when I read what it's like for them. I feel like almost every other kind of developer is well paid and appreciated, yet for some reason game devs seem to always be overworked, underpaid and underappreciated with no job security. Maybe it's because more people want to work in the game industry? I'd rather have a well paying dev job with reasonable hours, and work on games in my own time.
      - Qworg 11y ago
        Many more people want to work in the game industry. Very few people dream of creating CRUD apps some day. Also, the pipeline and recruiting is set up for it. Places like Full Sail are set up right next door to major studios - you get your training, then you walk into the meat grinder.
        kdamken 11y ago
        That's sad. I feel like a lot of them would be better off getting a normal, well paying job as a non-gaming dev, then work on their own projects in their free time.
        vvanders 11y ago
        Good news is the industry prepares you pretty well(on the development side) for a career in embedded systems, or high performance compute. But yeah, gamasutra does a survey each year and the career time in gamedev is usually around ~3 years.
- revelation 11y ago
  I thought they did replace him? Wikipedia has him as leading Google Glass. I guess that is all you need to know about his qualities then.
  - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
    Glass was handed to him after the Explorer Edition was shut down. He had basically no involvement with anything Glass related that the public has had their hands on.
- awqrre 11y ago
  These cloud-only cameras should be free.
  - dguaraglia 11y ago
    It's exactly the cloud part that costs money to run. That'd be like saying "this streaming services where you never receive a hard copy of your content should be free".
    - Domenic_S 11y ago
      Ok, but you don't have to buy a Netflix CD and install it and then pay a monthly fee. You have to buy the Dropcam, and then on top of that you have to buy the service (or else your Dropcam is a brick). No thanks. At least Arlo has a free tier.
      - dguaraglia 11y ago
        Actually, your Dropcam/Nestcam will be happy to give you a live feed for free. Also, you get a 3 month trial. In fact, I'd argue that buying a camera that provides "free" service forever is buying into a trap of some sort. There's simply no way to make money running a free service (it's the first law of thermoeconomics: money cannot be generated by providing a service that costs > $0 at a cost point of $0.)
        Domenic_S 11y ago
        Nest thermostat doesn't have a subscription fee ;) Besides, Arlo's freemium so I don't really get your argument (you get 7 days of recording free, up to 5 cameras; $$ if you want more of either). I like the idea of Dropcam, but $200/camera PLUS a monthly fee I can't swallow. It's an expensive razor with expensive blades. But, I'm just some random schmo and not a millionaire who sold his company to Google, so feel free to disagree!
        dguaraglia 11y ago
- mikestew 11y ago
  The fact that Alphabet/Google hasn't replaced him is a horribly disappointing statement about what they think is most important: profit, not employees, not culture. Yeah, well, they're probably not doing so hot on the "profit" part, either since while they're all busy having their internal squabbles, they're not innovating AFAICT. No more Nest products for me, because they don't seem to do any better than less expensive options (now that competitors have caught up, which was not a monumental task). The thermostat and camera that I've got are pretty much standalone devices (the camera and thermostat might talk to each other now, I think). From my minimal research, those two devices do not appear that will be a part of a "home automation system" other than talking (poorly) to each other. No HomeKit integration, of course, now that Google has purchased them. Yeah, there's Brillo, but to (put it kindly) Google past performance doesn't have me holding my breath. I expect a poorly-documented, buggy first release and after a few years it'll be usable.
  - Shooti 11y ago
    >No HomeKit integration, of course, now that Google has purchased them. Probably completely unrelated since Nest doesn't even support Google's Brillo/Weave. They're going forward with their own "Nest Weave" which despite the name is a completely separate platform/ecosystem from Google's stuff. Wouldn't be surprised if Homekit support is actually on the cards but it's stuck in their super slow release cycle.
    - mikestew 11y ago
      They're going forward with their own "Nest Weave" which despite the name is a completely separate platform/ecosystem from Google's stuff I swear, I don't know what gets into companies sometimes. They do that, they've all but assured that I'll never buy another Nest anything. Brillo? I wouldn't be happy about it (as primarily an Apple user), but I'd understand. And who knows, I'm open to options. But your own special snowflake API? Yeah, screw that, I've been down that road too many times.
- gduffy 11y ago
  On behalf of the team, thank you very much! There was a lot left to do to make Dropcam the product we all knew it could be in the future. The thermostat was a nice product, and that's part of what's so interesting about the backstory of all of this. I'm sorry you had to go through the pain as well. I will try to write more at some point, and I only hope it helps somehow, even if just for future entrepreneurs.
chollida1 11y ago
Wow, shots fired! To be fair to Tony Fadell, as I understand it, he made the comments to his team and not the public, so he was probably speaking more from the hip than he would have if he was talking to a reporter. In this case he was trying to assure his team that they shouldn't be worried about the departures, and one way to do so would be to try and spin it as a positive. On the other hand, wow, you just said this about people who you are trying to integrate into your team. Anyone whose managed people knows how hard it is to keep your employee's happy, especially when things aren't going well. You are constantly fighting battles and just when you feel like you've reached your breaking point you get another burden put on your shoulders. TL/DR Stress is an awful thing and it makes people react in ways that they normally wouldn't.
- outside1234 11y ago
  Saying that internally is not any better. It is classless, shows a lack of EQ, a high degree of immaturity as a leader, and frankly, makes him look insecure. If they really weren't any good, it should have been obvious to the rest of the team already.
- simula67 11y ago
  Why not focus on the good qualities of the team members already there ? This type of dialogue does not inspire trust in anyone. How can you trust someone who speaks ill of people behind their backs ? How do you know they won't do the same to you when your back is turned ? Besides there is something profoundly wrong about taking stabs at someone who cannot defend themself. I am not sure I can fully get behind someone like that.
- protomyth 11y ago
  > To be fair to Tony Fadell, as I understand it, he made the comments to his team and not the public, so he was probably speaking more from the hip than he would have if he was talking to a reporter. Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught. - J. C. Watts Character is what you are in the dark. - D.L. Moody I'm starting to the think their needs to be a tech CEO version of these quotes. I think he needs to be fair to other people before someone is fair to him. Putting a positive spin on something by disparaging others is a sign of low character and poor leadership.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
yalogin 11y ago
What is happening with Google? Its strange that all their bets are resulting in these kind of childish situations. I understand unhappy employees leaking stuff but coming from the upper management like this is not good at all.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  Who knows, but there's this vision of home automation that google has bought into and thinks it can sell. The logical place for your home automation 'master' is your thermostat. Everyone has one and having a nice one is well... nice and centralizing it as a sensor hub makes a lot of sense. Google saw Nest and knew it had a lot of potential, so they snapped it up. Now they're trying to sell us on this idea. Personally, I'm just not seeing it. The idea of a centralized or master system is old fashioned. People will just buy automation as they need it. So I'll have an app on my phone for my Ring doorbell, another for my garage door, another for my security system, another for my lighting, etc. Google is betting that people won't want this and want an Apple-like experience of just having one vendor perform all their tasks, but people without SV salaries aren't going to casually drop Nest-like prices (total cost of the system with multiple smoke detectors is in the four digits) all at once and they might resent a high level of vendor lock-in. They'll just pick up random automation pieces at home depot for $99 each now and again and just install a new app as needed. Its not a terrible inconvenience and so what if my doorbell can't talk to my thermostat.
  - cballard 11y ago
    In this case, though, as I understand it (I live in NYC and am thus not the target market for these types of products besides maybe lightbulbs), Apple's solution, HomeKit, does allow interaction between disparate products, and it's even the banner feature! https://www.apple.com/ios/homekit/ https://www.apple.com/ios/homekit/
    - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
      But your 'central controller' is your phone's proprietary software. And a wireless central hub isn't always ideal because that central hub (your phone) sometimes leaves the house.
throwaway6497 11y ago
Couple of things about the Medium article itself. It is not obvious that "Reed Albergotti’s recent article." is a link. No anchor tag styling css to know otherwise. On clicking the hidden link I see the following " This link came from a private email sent to Greg Duffy and has already been used to view the full text of the article. If you are a subscriber please log in. To create your own account, subscribe or email corporate@theinformation.com. Subscribe to The Information ... " It will nice, if we can fix both problems, so your medium article reaches more target audience.
- dogecoinbase 11y ago
  A cached copy of that article: https://daringfireball.net/misc/2016/03/the-information-tony-fadell.html https://daringfireball.net/misc/2016/03/the-information-tony...
- jsnell 11y ago
  The link is underlined. But what you need to understand is that Medium is way too cool to underline text they way a normal website would [0], and instead does it using a gradient as a background image. Maybe you're blocking background images, or something like that? [0] https://medium.com/designing-medium/crafting-link-underlines-on-medium-7c03a9274f9#.f5w06hopd https://medium.com/designing-medium/crafting-link-underlines...
  - throwaway6497 11y ago
    What? Yes, it is underlined in Safari but not in Chrome. I am checking what is different in Chrome. I don't have any fancy plugins/extensions in Chrome which blocks images other than adblock.
    - dabernathy89 11y ago
      Underlined for me in Chrome.
- twelvedigits 11y ago
  Hi everyone - you can use this link to read Reed Albergotti's article: go.theinformation.com/08cb09
supergeek133 11y ago
The cracks really are starting to show! Also, I've said it for years.. people don't quit jobs, they quit managers/leaders.
- cylinder 11y ago
  Thank you for this.
  - supergeek133 11y ago
    It's actually pretty crazy how much you realize this happens once someone says that.
- somerandomness 11y ago
  Pretty common saying actually.

232 points by robbiemitchell 11y ago

Thanks for creating Dropcam - I still love the device even with the Nest "improvements." I also worked at Nest (on the thermostat product) and couldn't echo your comments more strongly. Tony Fadell is a terrible manager. There are so many public data points at this point: the perma 6 day work weeks, the "f* being Googly" comment at the all hands, refusing to allow Nest employees to have the Google massage benefits because "they don't deserve it", and now, throwing a great team under the bus to hide his inability to manage. I have another twenty that I can't share because of confidentiality and I'm sure you do as well. The fact that Alphabet/Google hasn't replaced him is a horribly disappointing statement about what they think is most important: profit, not employees, not culture. Or maybe not even profit after your comments. :( Please do write the other story about your acquisition when you can - a lot of people here could learn a lot from it as a cautionary tale.

bitbybite 11y ago
They've made some really neat products. I'm always surprised how many product and business leaders in the world are harsh/aggressive, you just don't hear about them because smaller footprints. It's easy to tear down success and innovation without context of redemptive outcomes/tradeoffs. Turn your frustration into energy and go innovate.
kdamken 11y ago
Holy moly - 6 days a week? I can't fathom having to do that at a salaried job and staying for more than two weeks. Unless they were paying me an obscene amount of money, but even then, I'd probably be on the look out for something better.
- vvanders 11y ago
  Haha, you'd hate the game dev industry then.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    How are there not class actions against that for wage theft?
  - kdamken 11y ago
    Lol I'm always horrified when I read what it's like for them. I feel like almost every other kind of developer is well paid and appreciated, yet for some reason game devs seem to always be overworked, underpaid and underappreciated with no job security. Maybe it's because more people want to work in the game industry? I'd rather have a well paying dev job with reasonable hours, and work on games in my own time.
    - Qworg 11y ago
      Many more people want to work in the game industry. Very few people dream of creating CRUD apps some day. Also, the pipeline and recruiting is set up for it. Places like Full Sail are set up right next door to major studios - you get your training, then you walk into the meat grinder.
      - kdamken 11y ago
        That's sad. I feel like a lot of them would be better off getting a normal, well paying job as a non-gaming dev, then work on their own projects in their free time.
        vvanders 11y ago
        Good news is the industry prepares you pretty well(on the development side) for a career in embedded systems, or high performance compute. But yeah, gamasutra does a survey each year and the career time in gamedev is usually around ~3 years.
revelation 11y ago
I thought they did replace him? Wikipedia has him as leading Google Glass. I guess that is all you need to know about his qualities then.
- ocdtrekkie 11y ago
  Glass was handed to him after the Explorer Edition was shut down. He had basically no involvement with anything Glass related that the public has had their hands on.
awqrre 11y ago
These cloud-only cameras should be free.
- dguaraglia 11y ago
  It's exactly the cloud part that costs money to run. That'd be like saying "this streaming services where you never receive a hard copy of your content should be free".
  - Domenic_S 11y ago
    Ok, but you don't have to buy a Netflix CD and install it and then pay a monthly fee. You have to buy the Dropcam, and then on top of that you have to buy the service (or else your Dropcam is a brick). No thanks. At least Arlo has a free tier.
    - dguaraglia 11y ago
      Actually, your Dropcam/Nestcam will be happy to give you a live feed for free. Also, you get a 3 month trial. In fact, I'd argue that buying a camera that provides "free" service forever is buying into a trap of some sort. There's simply no way to make money running a free service (it's the first law of thermoeconomics: money cannot be generated by providing a service that costs > $0 at a cost point of $0.)
      - Domenic_S 11y ago
        Nest thermostat doesn't have a subscription fee ;) Besides, Arlo's freemium so I don't really get your argument (you get 7 days of recording free, up to 5 cameras; $$ if you want more of either). I like the idea of Dropcam, but $200/camera PLUS a monthly fee I can't swallow. It's an expensive razor with expensive blades. But, I'm just some random schmo and not a millionaire who sold his company to Google, so feel free to disagree!
        dguaraglia 11y ago
mikestew 11y ago
The fact that Alphabet/Google hasn't replaced him is a horribly disappointing statement about what they think is most important: profit, not employees, not culture. Yeah, well, they're probably not doing so hot on the "profit" part, either since while they're all busy having their internal squabbles, they're not innovating AFAICT. No more Nest products for me, because they don't seem to do any better than less expensive options (now that competitors have caught up, which was not a monumental task). The thermostat and camera that I've got are pretty much standalone devices (the camera and thermostat might talk to each other now, I think). From my minimal research, those two devices do not appear that will be a part of a "home automation system" other than talking (poorly) to each other. No HomeKit integration, of course, now that Google has purchased them. Yeah, there's Brillo, but to (put it kindly) Google past performance doesn't have me holding my breath. I expect a poorly-documented, buggy first release and after a few years it'll be usable.
- Shooti 11y ago
  >No HomeKit integration, of course, now that Google has purchased them. Probably completely unrelated since Nest doesn't even support Google's Brillo/Weave. They're going forward with their own "Nest Weave" which despite the name is a completely separate platform/ecosystem from Google's stuff. Wouldn't be surprised if Homekit support is actually on the cards but it's stuck in their super slow release cycle.
  - mikestew 11y ago
    They're going forward with their own "Nest Weave" which despite the name is a completely separate platform/ecosystem from Google's stuff I swear, I don't know what gets into companies sometimes. They do that, they've all but assured that I'll never buy another Nest anything. Brillo? I wouldn't be happy about it (as primarily an Apple user), but I'd understand. And who knows, I'm open to options. But your own special snowflake API? Yeah, screw that, I've been down that road too many times.
gduffy 11y ago
On behalf of the team, thank you very much! There was a lot left to do to make Dropcam the product we all knew it could be in the future. The thermostat was a nice product, and that's part of what's so interesting about the backstory of all of this. I'm sorry you had to go through the pain as well. I will try to write more at some point, and I only hope it helps somehow, even if just for future entrepreneurs.

chollida1 11y ago

Wow, shots fired! To be fair to Tony Fadell, as I understand it, he made the comments to his team and not the public, so he was probably speaking more from the hip than he would have if he was talking to a reporter. In this case he was trying to assure his team that they shouldn't be worried about the departures, and one way to do so would be to try and spin it as a positive. On the other hand, wow, you just said this about people who you are trying to integrate into your team. Anyone whose managed people knows how hard it is to keep your employee's happy, especially when things aren't going well. You are constantly fighting battles and just when you feel like you've reached your breaking point you get another burden put on your shoulders. TL/DR Stress is an awful thing and it makes people react in ways that they normally wouldn't.

outside1234 11y ago
Saying that internally is not any better. It is classless, shows a lack of EQ, a high degree of immaturity as a leader, and frankly, makes him look insecure. If they really weren't any good, it should have been obvious to the rest of the team already.
simula67 11y ago
Why not focus on the good qualities of the team members already there ? This type of dialogue does not inspire trust in anyone. How can you trust someone who speaks ill of people behind their backs ? How do you know they won't do the same to you when your back is turned ? Besides there is something profoundly wrong about taking stabs at someone who cannot defend themself. I am not sure I can fully get behind someone like that.
protomyth 11y ago
> To be fair to Tony Fadell, as I understand it, he made the comments to his team and not the public, so he was probably speaking more from the hip than he would have if he was talking to a reporter. Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught. - J. C. Watts Character is what you are in the dark. - D.L. Moody I'm starting to the think their needs to be a tech CEO version of these quotes. I think he needs to be fair to other people before someone is fair to him. Putting a positive spin on something by disparaging others is a sign of low character and poor leadership.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

yalogin 11y ago

What is happening with Google? Its strange that all their bets are resulting in these kind of childish situations. I understand unhappy employees leaking stuff but coming from the upper management like this is not good at all.

drzaiusapelord 11y ago
Who knows, but there's this vision of home automation that google has bought into and thinks it can sell. The logical place for your home automation 'master' is your thermostat. Everyone has one and having a nice one is well... nice and centralizing it as a sensor hub makes a lot of sense. Google saw Nest and knew it had a lot of potential, so they snapped it up. Now they're trying to sell us on this idea. Personally, I'm just not seeing it. The idea of a centralized or master system is old fashioned. People will just buy automation as they need it. So I'll have an app on my phone for my Ring doorbell, another for my garage door, another for my security system, another for my lighting, etc. Google is betting that people won't want this and want an Apple-like experience of just having one vendor perform all their tasks, but people without SV salaries aren't going to casually drop Nest-like prices (total cost of the system with multiple smoke detectors is in the four digits) all at once and they might resent a high level of vendor lock-in. They'll just pick up random automation pieces at home depot for $99 each now and again and just install a new app as needed. Its not a terrible inconvenience and so what if my doorbell can't talk to my thermostat.
- cballard 11y ago
  In this case, though, as I understand it (I live in NYC and am thus not the target market for these types of products besides maybe lightbulbs), Apple's solution, HomeKit, does allow interaction between disparate products, and it's even the banner feature! https://www.apple.com/ios/homekit/ https://www.apple.com/ios/homekit/
  - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
    But your 'central controller' is your phone's proprietary software. And a wireless central hub isn't always ideal because that central hub (your phone) sometimes leaves the house.

throwaway6497 11y ago

Couple of things about the Medium article itself. It is not obvious that "Reed Albergotti’s recent article." is a link. No anchor tag styling css to know otherwise. On clicking the hidden link I see the following " This link came from a private email sent to Greg Duffy and has already been used to view the full text of the article. If you are a subscriber please log in. To create your own account, subscribe or email corporate@theinformation.com. Subscribe to The Information ... " It will nice, if we can fix both problems, so your medium article reaches more target audience.

dogecoinbase 11y ago
A cached copy of that article: https://daringfireball.net/misc/2016/03/the-information-tony-fadell.html https://daringfireball.net/misc/2016/03/the-information-tony...
jsnell 11y ago
The link is underlined. But what you need to understand is that Medium is way too cool to underline text they way a normal website would [0], and instead does it using a gradient as a background image. Maybe you're blocking background images, or something like that? [0] https://medium.com/designing-medium/crafting-link-underlines-on-medium-7c03a9274f9#.f5w06hopd https://medium.com/designing-medium/crafting-link-underlines...
- throwaway6497 11y ago
  What? Yes, it is underlined in Safari but not in Chrome. I am checking what is different in Chrome. I don't have any fancy plugins/extensions in Chrome which blocks images other than adblock.
  - dabernathy89 11y ago
    Underlined for me in Chrome.
twelvedigits 11y ago
Hi everyone - you can use this link to read Reed Albergotti's article: go.theinformation.com/08cb09

supergeek133 11y ago

The cracks really are starting to show! Also, I've said it for years.. people don't quit jobs, they quit managers/leaders.

cylinder 11y ago
Thank you for this.
- supergeek133 11y ago
  It's actually pretty crazy how much you realize this happens once someone says that.
somerandomness 11y ago
Pretty common saying actually.