I'll preface this with the disclaimer that I'm a University of Waterloo student, so my opinion might be biased. Despite this, I have no particular bias for RIM

I'll preface this with the disclaimer that I'm a University of Waterloo student, so my opinion might be biased. Despite this, I have no particular bias for RIM that I'm aware of, and couldn't see myself owning any of the products they currently produce. I've also never worked for RIM, but I have a number of close friends who have for co-op work terms. There are a lot of things wrong with RIM, but I think the author of this article missed most of them, focusing largely on a bunch of points that were either irrelevant or incorrect. First of all, as many have mentioned, Waterloo is not located in the rural heart of Canada, nor is there a particularly huge problem finding talent in the area. Like many universities we have a co-op work program during which students find employment at a variety of companies including Microsoft, Apple and Google. Bill Gates has stated that "Most years, we hire more students out of Waterloo than any university in the world, typically 50 or even more"[1]. This leads me to believe that it's not a lack of available talent that has plagued RIM, but the ability to attract and retain it. Each term, RIM hires hundreds of students for co-op work terms. From a student's perspective, it doesn't feel particularly challenging to get a job there the same way it would for Google or Facebook. For this reason, I suspect the best and brightest of our classes likely end up working in the States, rather than sticking around here. There are certainly some cultural issues at play here. Many of the people I knew who worked at RIM were never challenged by their work or held accountable for it and this lead to an incredibly low productivity. I've known people that show up to work there drunk occasionally and high consistently. That same individual went to work at a smaller mobile company his following term and was working unpaid overtime on weekends simply because he enjoyed the work. Of course, this is all anecdotal, but it paints a picture for me about what working for the company must be like. In my opinion, RIM needs to hire fewer students, and pay them more competitively. They need to hold their employees accountable for productivity and team leaders and managers accountable for the people they oversee. All this being said, I sometimes can't help but wonder if RIM's problems are over-exaggerated. True, they're losing market share, but they're still profitable on the order of billions aren't they? [1] http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20051013/billgates_waterloo_20051013/#ixzz1gitjhEDV http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20051013/billgates_waterloo...