4 ms·

As a Touchpad and Pre3 user, I can honestly say that these guys done a great job in delivering these devices (I love them both, yes I am a long-suffering webOS

by j_col 15y ago

As a Touchpad and Pre3 user, I can honestly say that these guys done a great job in delivering these devices (I love them both, yes I am a long-suffering webOS fanboy), and this is a terrible reward for all of their hard work. Wish them all well in their post-HP lives.

hvs 15y ago
Unfortunately, "hard work" is not something that inherently deserves a reward (or is it its own reward?) in the business world. You can work really hard on the wrong thing. I hope the developers were compensated well for putting out a good product, but I wouldn't associate their getting laid off with how hard they worked, but that the company miscalculated.
- j_col 15y ago
  I agree that you can work really hard on the wrong thing, but in my opinion the Pre3 and the Touchpad are the right thing (and I'm not alone in this). The reasons why they didn't sell (in my opinion) are that they were priced wrong on the initial release, the marketing was poor to non-existent (in the case of Europe for example, where there was no marketing), and finally they were just not given enough of a chance (who cancels a new device about a month after it is released? And in the case of the Pre3 it was never released outside of Europe...). All of these things are the fault of strategic management at HP, not the hardware engineers who are losing their jobs.
  - jackson71 15y ago
    The Pre3 and the Touchpad are the right thing? They may have been the right thing in HP/Palm's eyes at the time, but they're dead now. Flatlined. Time to let go. I hope the hardware engineers land on their feet at other companies, but I have a hard time believing for a moment that 525 folks comprised the Hardware division alone and nobody else was caught up in this. Developer Relations and webOS Development seems to have escaped the axe this time, but if I were working there I'd be looking over my shoulder more than a couple times a day. Unless webOS gets a new lease on life through either a coherent strategy or new hardware licensees (preferably both) VERY soon, it's dead. They had one massive dry spell during the transition to HP that killed what market share and most of the developer mindshare they had; they're not going to make it through another one and have both consumers and developers give it yet another chance. All but the most dedicated webOS developers have already left as it is. My prediction: Once the CM7 (Android Gingerbread) port hits, most of the people who bought the Touchpad at firesale will evaporate away from webOS along with whatever developer revenue was left to be had, dual-boot or not. webOS will end up an embedded OS for menu-driven appliances and other applications of their ilk, but never see another non-enterprise consumer mobile device again.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - j_col 15y ago
      They're only dead now because HP chose to kill them. I know there are many people still trying to get these devices but they can't, and I seriously doubt that most of these are looking to install Gingerbread on their TouchPads, given the fact that it was never designed for scaling to tablets (and Honeycomb is no great shakes in that area either).
SkyMarshal 15y ago
"and this is a terrible reward for all of their hard work." Don't cry for them too hard, Argentina. I know one of them, they have a severence coming which I believe was part of the deal when HP bought them - cancel Palm/WebOS, lay us off, and we get paid. It'll buy a lot of them time to think about what's next and hopefully start some cool new startups that inherit what they've learned and done over the years.

by j_col 15y ago

hvs 15y ago

Unfortunately, "hard work" is not something that inherently deserves a reward (or is it its own reward?) in the business world. You can work really hard on the wrong thing. I hope the developers were compensated well for putting out a good product, but I wouldn't associate their getting laid off with how hard they worked, but that the company miscalculated.

j_col 15y ago
I agree that you can work really hard on the wrong thing, but in my opinion the Pre3 and the Touchpad are the right thing (and I'm not alone in this). The reasons why they didn't sell (in my opinion) are that they were priced wrong on the initial release, the marketing was poor to non-existent (in the case of Europe for example, where there was no marketing), and finally they were just not given enough of a chance (who cancels a new device about a month after it is released? And in the case of the Pre3 it was never released outside of Europe...). All of these things are the fault of strategic management at HP, not the hardware engineers who are losing their jobs.
- jackson71 15y ago
  The Pre3 and the Touchpad are the right thing? They may have been the right thing in HP/Palm's eyes at the time, but they're dead now. Flatlined. Time to let go. I hope the hardware engineers land on their feet at other companies, but I have a hard time believing for a moment that 525 folks comprised the Hardware division alone and nobody else was caught up in this. Developer Relations and webOS Development seems to have escaped the axe this time, but if I were working there I'd be looking over my shoulder more than a couple times a day. Unless webOS gets a new lease on life through either a coherent strategy or new hardware licensees (preferably both) VERY soon, it's dead. They had one massive dry spell during the transition to HP that killed what market share and most of the developer mindshare they had; they're not going to make it through another one and have both consumers and developers give it yet another chance. All but the most dedicated webOS developers have already left as it is. My prediction: Once the CM7 (Android Gingerbread) port hits, most of the people who bought the Touchpad at firesale will evaporate away from webOS along with whatever developer revenue was left to be had, dual-boot or not. webOS will end up an embedded OS for menu-driven appliances and other applications of their ilk, but never see another non-enterprise consumer mobile device again.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - j_col 15y ago
    They're only dead now because HP chose to kill them. I know there are many people still trying to get these devices but they can't, and I seriously doubt that most of these are looking to install Gingerbread on their TouchPads, given the fact that it was never designed for scaling to tablets (and Honeycomb is no great shakes in that area either).

SkyMarshal 15y ago

"and this is a terrible reward for all of their hard work." Don't cry for them too hard, Argentina. I know one of them, they have a severence coming which I believe was part of the deal when HP bought them - cancel Palm/WebOS, lay us off, and we get paid. It'll buy a lot of them time to think about what's next and hopefully start some cool new startups that inherit what they've learned and done over the years.