4 ms·

I worked in Bell Labs from 2012 to 2018, unfortunately then it was a shadow of its former self. The MBAs had taken over. While there Weldon tried to pivot the

by knolan 5y ago

I worked in Bell Labs from 2012 to 2018, unfortunately then it was a shadow of its former self. The MBAs had taken over. While there Weldon tried to pivot the place from being ‘like twitter’ to an incubator to a like a startup. He got an Apple Watch so we were going to be a wearables lab. He threw together a book on the supposed future of networks and conspired to get it to the NYT #1 by forcing us all to buy it. There were endless reorganisations. Disastrous leads parachuted in to wreck groups. Weldon played favourite to an alarming degree only to turn on them when they didn’t deliver on the aforementioned vapid promises. We had endless managers holding endless meetings telling the smart people what they should be doing and not listening to what the smart people wanted to or could do. All hands meetings telling us how great everything was while they were letting a third of us go. They engaged in vanity projects like putting a 4G network on the moon and getting us to build endless fake demos for technologies that didn’t exist and then acting surprised when told said technology didn’t exist. The funny thing was that the old timers over in Murray Hill just ignored all of this and continued to work away on their research untouchable like some prize zoo exhibit. It was a place full of the most wonderfully intelligent people managed by fools who wasted fortunes on flashy demos rather that let the smart people take the time to build something.

Angle_Devoid 5y ago
I'm assuming bells labs no longer has the financial backing of a monopoly like AT&T that they had 40 years ago?
- Zeromika 5y ago
  I suppose even if they had the funding the company itself is at it's value extraction phase.
- gompertz 5y ago
  They are now owned by Nokia.
- knolan 5y ago
  It was cleaved off AT&T as part of Lucent and then merged with Alcatel. Part of the problem there was that it was never clear if Lucent merged with Alcatel or if Alcatel acquired Lucent. The whole company was pretty dysfunctional but nothing too unusual there. Nokia came along flush with MS money from the sale of their handset business to buy Alcatel Lucent and got Bell Labs for free. Neither company was doing particularly well flogging network gear and together they didn’t do much better.
seaman1921 5y ago
Bell labs was the original mafia though. Rob pike, Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson...
christophilus 5y ago
Makes me think of Buffett’s saying that goes something like: “I invest in companies that could be successfully run by monkeys because eventually they will be.” I don’t know how an organization avoids this fate, but it does seem to eventually come for all enterprises. IBM, Bell Labs, GE; who else should be on that list?
- davidb_ 5y ago
  > IBM, Bell Labs, GE; who else should be on that list? Intel felt quite a bit like IBM during my time there circa 2010. I wasn't familiar with this quote, but wow was that my experience at large tech orgs. I wish I would have known this about 15 years ago, as perhaps I would have done a better job picking orgs to work at early in my career instead of being so frustrated.
- dopylitty 5y ago
  From its history since the MD merger you could argue Boeing should be on this list. It's the inevitable result of prioritizing profit rather than prioritizing the creation of quality products that the people working at a company can be proud of. That's why you see companies fall apart when the founders leave. They're replaced by people who prioritize profit for the company and wealth for themselves rather than product quality so the company ends up rudderless.
  - rl3 5y ago
    >That's why you see companies fall apart when the founders leave. They're replaced by people who prioritize profit for the company and wealth for themselves rather than product quality so the company ends up rudderless. Which ironically fucks over profit anyways, just about every time. I think it's more of a personal greed thing combined with incompetence, on top of perverse incentives that come with being a publicly traded company. The quarterly profit model all but ensures a societal-scale myopia in the end.
  - Aloha 5y ago
    Unless the founder of the company builds a culture that is designed to survive without them at the center, the company will eventually fail without them there. One of my former employers was like this - the founder was a brilliant engineer, who installed good financial controls, and was himself decent at the business end. But, he was a micromanger, and he never sought to create replacements for himself inside the company, he tended to penalize people who stepped out of line too. So once he was out of the picture (he sold out), we didnt really have the right person to run the company, or the right culture to just install a generic manager with industry expertise, it instead was a company that had been formed for the founders personal needs. That company was purchased by a multinational, and is now being systemically dismantled.
sokoloff 5y ago
> conspired to get it to the NYT #1 by forcing us all to buy [his book] How many people worked at Bell Labs at the time? It looks to be a little over 600 now, which in relation to NYT #1 (best selling list?) having less-than-1000 employees all buy a copy seems to be a relatively ineffective strategy.
- rjsw 5y ago
  If it was a hardback then that could make a big difference to sales.
- knolan 5y ago
  There were considerably more when you look at the various European sites and other staff.
krylon 5y ago
This sounds disturbingly similar to my time at T-Systems as a trainee. Brilliant tech people getting managed to death by clueless MBAs. It was a great place to learn, though.
amelius 5y ago
> and getting us to build endless fake demos for technologies that didn’t exist But of course researchers are to blame too, if they lend themselves to doing stuff like this.
- knolan 5y ago
  True, it was all some people did… and some continue to do after our site was shut down. They know nothing else.

by knolan 5y ago

Angle_Devoid 5y ago

I'm assuming bells labs no longer has the financial backing of a monopoly like AT&T that they had 40 years ago?

Zeromika 5y ago
I suppose even if they had the funding the company itself is at it's value extraction phase.
gompertz 5y ago
They are now owned by Nokia.
knolan 5y ago
It was cleaved off AT&T as part of Lucent and then merged with Alcatel. Part of the problem there was that it was never clear if Lucent merged with Alcatel or if Alcatel acquired Lucent. The whole company was pretty dysfunctional but nothing too unusual there. Nokia came along flush with MS money from the sale of their handset business to buy Alcatel Lucent and got Bell Labs for free. Neither company was doing particularly well flogging network gear and together they didn’t do much better.

seaman1921 5y ago

Bell labs was the original mafia though. Rob pike, Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson...

christophilus 5y ago

Makes me think of Buffett’s saying that goes something like: “I invest in companies that could be successfully run by monkeys because eventually they will be.” I don’t know how an organization avoids this fate, but it does seem to eventually come for all enterprises. IBM, Bell Labs, GE; who else should be on that list?

davidb_ 5y ago
> IBM, Bell Labs, GE; who else should be on that list? Intel felt quite a bit like IBM during my time there circa 2010. I wasn't familiar with this quote, but wow was that my experience at large tech orgs. I wish I would have known this about 15 years ago, as perhaps I would have done a better job picking orgs to work at early in my career instead of being so frustrated.
dopylitty 5y ago
From its history since the MD merger you could argue Boeing should be on this list. It's the inevitable result of prioritizing profit rather than prioritizing the creation of quality products that the people working at a company can be proud of. That's why you see companies fall apart when the founders leave. They're replaced by people who prioritize profit for the company and wealth for themselves rather than product quality so the company ends up rudderless.
- rl3 5y ago
  >That's why you see companies fall apart when the founders leave. They're replaced by people who prioritize profit for the company and wealth for themselves rather than product quality so the company ends up rudderless. Which ironically fucks over profit anyways, just about every time. I think it's more of a personal greed thing combined with incompetence, on top of perverse incentives that come with being a publicly traded company. The quarterly profit model all but ensures a societal-scale myopia in the end.
- Aloha 5y ago
  Unless the founder of the company builds a culture that is designed to survive without them at the center, the company will eventually fail without them there. One of my former employers was like this - the founder was a brilliant engineer, who installed good financial controls, and was himself decent at the business end. But, he was a micromanger, and he never sought to create replacements for himself inside the company, he tended to penalize people who stepped out of line too. So once he was out of the picture (he sold out), we didnt really have the right person to run the company, or the right culture to just install a generic manager with industry expertise, it instead was a company that had been formed for the founders personal needs. That company was purchased by a multinational, and is now being systemically dismantled.

sokoloff 5y ago

> conspired to get it to the NYT #1 by forcing us all to buy [his book] How many people worked at Bell Labs at the time? It looks to be a little over 600 now, which in relation to NYT #1 (best selling list?) having less-than-1000 employees all buy a copy seems to be a relatively ineffective strategy.

rjsw 5y ago
If it was a hardback then that could make a big difference to sales.
knolan 5y ago
There were considerably more when you look at the various European sites and other staff.

krylon 5y ago

This sounds disturbingly similar to my time at T-Systems as a trainee. Brilliant tech people getting managed to death by clueless MBAs. It was a great place to learn, though.

amelius 5y ago

> and getting us to build endless fake demos for technologies that didn’t exist But of course researchers are to blame too, if they lend themselves to doing stuff like this.

knolan 5y ago
True, it was all some people did… and some continue to do after our site was shut down. They know nothing else.