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I am 100% not surprised. I spent a year working for Ubiquiti, running the Network Controller team. Trust me, this whistle-blower "Adam" (I have a few suspicion

I am 100% not surprised. I spent a year working for Ubiquiti, running the Network Controller team. Trust me, this whistle-blower "Adam" (I have a few suspicions of who it actually is), toned it down. The reality is much much worse.

ex_ubiquiti 6y ago
I worked at Ubiquiti while you were there. I can confirm that the company was going downhill fast. The US offices were starting to feel empty because so many people were leaving the company. Only place I've ever worked where engineers would quit before they got another job. Saddest part was all the wasted potential. There were good engineers making good products at Ubiquiti only a few years ago. Once UniFi exploded in popularity the CEO started trying to micromanage everything and it all started falling apart.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  It's unfortunate what seems to have happened to Ubiquiti. The idea of decent network hardware with a good UI that can support the prosumer to small business segment of the market has a lot going for it. In the early days, it seemed like Ubiquiti was going to nail it and was building up a strong, loyal following as a result. Then came all the reports of quality problems, promised features never delivered, phoning-home, ads in UIs, the not just security breaches but cover-ups... How the brand hasn't become toxic already is a mystery to me, yet look at the stock price tracker. It's been trending up for years and it has well over doubled in the past six months alone. Apparently investors aren't too worried about any potential consequences of all these reported problems.
  - ex_ubiquiti 6y ago
    The early days at Ubiquiti were good. I worked with a lot of good engineers and we shipped good work. The decline is a recent problem. > How the brand hasn't become toxic already is a mystery to me, yet look at the stock price tracker. It's been trending up for years and it has well over doubled in the past six months alone. This is your answer. No incentive to change. All of the bad engineering decisions have been rewarded by increasing stock price and continued sales. Most of the original engineers have quit by now. I lost track of how many UniFi engineering leads joined and then quit after it started falling apart. Before I quit, I heard rumors that the CEO was making two separate teams work on the Dream Machine project separately, competing against each other. That made more people quit. I think they were trying to reboot engineering in foreign countries when I left because it felt like we were forgotten in the US offices.
    - ihsw 6y ago
      What do you suggest for someone leaning on an EdgeRouter Lite (with EdgeOS v1.10.11, staying far away from v2.x) and a Unifi UAP-AC-PRO access point? The router will probably reliably carry me until saturating 1Gbps becomes a daily occurrence and the access point will be retired when WiFi 6E comes around (assuming Ubiquiti's WiFi 6E access points aren't required to connect to the cloud.)
      - owly 6y ago
        I have the same setup and question. Anyone?
      - gbrown 6y ago
        What’s the issue with newer EdgeOS? I thought the cloud crap could be disabled.
      - mafro 6y ago
        Also in answer to sibling comments - you don't need to connect the UI software to the cloud. I have an Edgerouter SFP-X and a few AP lites. I recently added an 8 port Unifi switch for more PoE ports. Following is to the best of my knowledge! Any ex-Unifi folks or other pros are welcome to correct me: - The Edgerouter absolutely does not talk to ui.com (except check-for-updates). There's no remote control ability etc etc. - The Unifi range can be controlled from the cloud, but via your Unifi Cloud Key. You can run this software yourself, without buying extra hardware. When it is not running there is no comms to the cloud. Run the software, configure things, stop the software - I run it in docker on an rpi4.
      - severino 5y ago
        Can you please elaborate more about the thing with EdgeOS 2.x? I haven't been following the news about Ubiquiti until now.
    - Loughla 6y ago
      >I heard rumors that the CEO was making two separate teams work [. . .] separately, competing against each other. I don't work in tech, so maybe I'm dumb to this, but why would you ever do this?
  - fossuser 6y ago
    I think the brand isn’t toxic because of the state of the competition. Even with this hack, their stuff is still the best available for home use. Netgear or Linksys consumer routers are awful. The mesh devices are okay, but serve of a different market. The other stuff people recommend is often 2-3x the Unifi price and 2-3x more complicated to setup and configure. Any ex-employees want to start a company making this stuff that doesn’t suck?
    - Silhouette 6y ago
      The other stuff people recommend is often 2-3x the Unifi price and 2-3x more complicated to setup and configure. I don't know about 2-3x the price, at least not here in the UK. We looked into this when fitting out a new office with the networking essentials a couple of years ago, and Ubiquiti wasn't particularly attractive on headline prices compared to the other typical brands that get mentioned in that space (MikroTik, DrayTek, etc.). However, the ability for non-networking experts to set something up quickly that does the job and doesn't have glaring security problems is definitely a competitive advantage in that prosumer to small business market. None of those other brands has a great UI that I've seen and they all tend to assume that anyone who wants to set up a couple of extra APs for a small office WiFi and a standard firewall for the Internet connection will be a pro-level network expert. I think it would help a lot of people if better products/companies started to compete seriously on that front, and I have to think that with the SME market to fight for there is room to compete with the established names. After all, that is largely how Ubiquiti themselves broke into the market, or at least that's the perception I had at the time.
      - zippergz 6y ago
        The prices we are comparing against are Meraki, Aruba, Ruckus, etc. I would be shocked if Ubiquiti was similar in price to those even in the UK.
        Silhouette 6y ago
        Who is "we"? You're talking about brands aimed at enterprise customers. I have no idea how much penetration Ubiquiti has managed to make into that market, but certainly around these parts its products are better known in the tier below that. The kind of organisation that is considering Ubiquiti IME probably wants significantly more functionality and scalability than home or entry-level small office gear but isn't working at enterprise scale and doesn't want to pay for it either. That organisation is unlikely to be considering the kinds of brands you mentioned as alternatives, and I rarely see any of those brands mentioned in discussions about alternatives to Ubiquiti.
- rsync 6y ago
  Now rewrite your entire comment with s/ubiquiti/sonos/g. So much wasted potential ... so much customer goodwill wasted because (apparently) no company is worth running unless it is a publicly traded unicorn.
  - javajosh 6y ago
    Why is it so easy to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in tech?
    - rossipedia 6y ago
      Greed. 100% greed. While I was there, the CEO loved to just fly between offices (randomly) on his private jet. You never knew where he'd pop up, and that put everybody on edge, because when he was unhappy he tended to fire people in large chunks (and shut down entire offices). Every decision was motivated by how it affected the stock price.
      - croutonwagon 6y ago
        Even if greed is the only factor. Being unwilling to take a short term loss or hit while you rebuild or reinvest is just short sighted. Most successes come with some amount of risk or foresight to anticipate the market.
      - xyst 6y ago
        At least a handful of Glassdoor reviews verify this sort of micromanagement. How awful and what an asshole. That's a company that needs to be re-worked from the top. All C-level management fired, no golden parachute. edit: Robert Pera owns 75% of the company, looks like C-level mgmt will never get fired. If you are at this company, just leave.
      - arp242 6y ago
        I'm just an outsider looking in based on a short paragraph, but that doesn't strike me as greed. How does firing entire batches of people help the stock price? Anyone with more business acumen than a cat will understand that it doesn't. "Oh, that office made a mistake? Let's fire the lot of them so they'll learn how to do better next time!" Based on this, it seems more like an asshole with some attitude problems rather than greed per se.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

ex_ubiquiti 6y ago

I worked at Ubiquiti while you were there. I can confirm that the company was going downhill fast. The US offices were starting to feel empty because so many people were leaving the company. Only place I've ever worked where engineers would quit before they got another job. Saddest part was all the wasted potential. There were good engineers making good products at Ubiquiti only a few years ago. Once UniFi exploded in popularity the CEO started trying to micromanage everything and it all started falling apart.

Silhouette 6y ago
It's unfortunate what seems to have happened to Ubiquiti. The idea of decent network hardware with a good UI that can support the prosumer to small business segment of the market has a lot going for it. In the early days, it seemed like Ubiquiti was going to nail it and was building up a strong, loyal following as a result. Then came all the reports of quality problems, promised features never delivered, phoning-home, ads in UIs, the not just security breaches but cover-ups... How the brand hasn't become toxic already is a mystery to me, yet look at the stock price tracker. It's been trending up for years and it has well over doubled in the past six months alone. Apparently investors aren't too worried about any potential consequences of all these reported problems.
- ex_ubiquiti 6y ago
  The early days at Ubiquiti were good. I worked with a lot of good engineers and we shipped good work. The decline is a recent problem. > How the brand hasn't become toxic already is a mystery to me, yet look at the stock price tracker. It's been trending up for years and it has well over doubled in the past six months alone. This is your answer. No incentive to change. All of the bad engineering decisions have been rewarded by increasing stock price and continued sales. Most of the original engineers have quit by now. I lost track of how many UniFi engineering leads joined and then quit after it started falling apart. Before I quit, I heard rumors that the CEO was making two separate teams work on the Dream Machine project separately, competing against each other. That made more people quit. I think they were trying to reboot engineering in foreign countries when I left because it felt like we were forgotten in the US offices.
  - ihsw 6y ago
    What do you suggest for someone leaning on an EdgeRouter Lite (with EdgeOS v1.10.11, staying far away from v2.x) and a Unifi UAP-AC-PRO access point? The router will probably reliably carry me until saturating 1Gbps becomes a daily occurrence and the access point will be retired when WiFi 6E comes around (assuming Ubiquiti's WiFi 6E access points aren't required to connect to the cloud.)
    - owly 6y ago
      I have the same setup and question. Anyone?
    - gbrown 6y ago
      What’s the issue with newer EdgeOS? I thought the cloud crap could be disabled.
    - mafro 6y ago
      Also in answer to sibling comments - you don't need to connect the UI software to the cloud. I have an Edgerouter SFP-X and a few AP lites. I recently added an 8 port Unifi switch for more PoE ports. Following is to the best of my knowledge! Any ex-Unifi folks or other pros are welcome to correct me: - The Edgerouter absolutely does not talk to ui.com (except check-for-updates). There's no remote control ability etc etc. - The Unifi range can be controlled from the cloud, but via your Unifi Cloud Key. You can run this software yourself, without buying extra hardware. When it is not running there is no comms to the cloud. Run the software, configure things, stop the software - I run it in docker on an rpi4.
    - severino 5y ago
      Can you please elaborate more about the thing with EdgeOS 2.x? I haven't been following the news about Ubiquiti until now.
  - Loughla 6y ago
    >I heard rumors that the CEO was making two separate teams work [. . .] separately, competing against each other. I don't work in tech, so maybe I'm dumb to this, but why would you ever do this?
- fossuser 6y ago
  I think the brand isn’t toxic because of the state of the competition. Even with this hack, their stuff is still the best available for home use. Netgear or Linksys consumer routers are awful. The mesh devices are okay, but serve of a different market. The other stuff people recommend is often 2-3x the Unifi price and 2-3x more complicated to setup and configure. Any ex-employees want to start a company making this stuff that doesn’t suck?
  - Silhouette 6y ago
    The other stuff people recommend is often 2-3x the Unifi price and 2-3x more complicated to setup and configure. I don't know about 2-3x the price, at least not here in the UK. We looked into this when fitting out a new office with the networking essentials a couple of years ago, and Ubiquiti wasn't particularly attractive on headline prices compared to the other typical brands that get mentioned in that space (MikroTik, DrayTek, etc.). However, the ability for non-networking experts to set something up quickly that does the job and doesn't have glaring security problems is definitely a competitive advantage in that prosumer to small business market. None of those other brands has a great UI that I've seen and they all tend to assume that anyone who wants to set up a couple of extra APs for a small office WiFi and a standard firewall for the Internet connection will be a pro-level network expert. I think it would help a lot of people if better products/companies started to compete seriously on that front, and I have to think that with the SME market to fight for there is room to compete with the established names. After all, that is largely how Ubiquiti themselves broke into the market, or at least that's the perception I had at the time.
    - zippergz 6y ago
      The prices we are comparing against are Meraki, Aruba, Ruckus, etc. I would be shocked if Ubiquiti was similar in price to those even in the UK.
      - Silhouette 6y ago
        Who is "we"? You're talking about brands aimed at enterprise customers. I have no idea how much penetration Ubiquiti has managed to make into that market, but certainly around these parts its products are better known in the tier below that. The kind of organisation that is considering Ubiquiti IME probably wants significantly more functionality and scalability than home or entry-level small office gear but isn't working at enterprise scale and doesn't want to pay for it either. That organisation is unlikely to be considering the kinds of brands you mentioned as alternatives, and I rarely see any of those brands mentioned in discussions about alternatives to Ubiquiti.
rsync 6y ago
Now rewrite your entire comment with s/ubiquiti/sonos/g. So much wasted potential ... so much customer goodwill wasted because (apparently) no company is worth running unless it is a publicly traded unicorn.
- javajosh 6y ago
  Why is it so easy to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in tech?
  - rossipedia 6y ago
    Greed. 100% greed. While I was there, the CEO loved to just fly between offices (randomly) on his private jet. You never knew where he'd pop up, and that put everybody on edge, because when he was unhappy he tended to fire people in large chunks (and shut down entire offices). Every decision was motivated by how it affected the stock price.
    - croutonwagon 6y ago
      Even if greed is the only factor. Being unwilling to take a short term loss or hit while you rebuild or reinvest is just short sighted. Most successes come with some amount of risk or foresight to anticipate the market.
    - xyst 6y ago
      At least a handful of Glassdoor reviews verify this sort of micromanagement. How awful and what an asshole. That's a company that needs to be re-worked from the top. All C-level management fired, no golden parachute. edit: Robert Pera owns 75% of the company, looks like C-level mgmt will never get fired. If you are at this company, just leave.
    - arp242 6y ago
      I'm just an outsider looking in based on a short paragraph, but that doesn't strike me as greed. How does firing entire batches of people help the stock price? Anyone with more business acumen than a cat will understand that it doesn't. "Oh, that office made a mistake? Let's fire the lot of them so they'll learn how to do better next time!" Based on this, it seems more like an asshole with some attitude problems rather than greed per se.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]