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Ex Ubiquiti employee here. I barely recognize the company any more. The company always had problems but we had a lot of smart and hard working peopl in the earl

Ex Ubiquiti employee here. I barely recognize the company any more. The company always had problems but we had a lot of smart and hard working peopl in the early days. People are always amazed when I tell them how small the company was when we made Ubiquiti and UniFi into household names among nerds. Some of those people remain. UI-Marcus in that link is a good person. The company went into a steady decline after the CEO started centering the company around the offices in Portland and China. Portland was home to the UX designers who wanted to redesign everything to look nicer but didn't understand how customers used our products. Portland was also home to Nick Sharp, the cloud lead who tried to extort the company and lied to the press about hacks. The favorite office in China made the FrontRow product, which failed so badly that I doubt anyone has heard of it. These people were supposed to be the future leaders of the company, but everything they did was a disaster. We could all see the writing on the wall and left. Well, almost everyone. I don't even know which Ubiquiti office owns the cloud any more because everyone working on cloud at Ubiquiti either quit or was laid off after the cloud lead went to prison for extorting the company. I hope the company can get back on track some day. It's sad to see all of our old work decay like this.

aurareturn 3y ago
I hooked my home up with 3 Unifi AC Pros + ERPOE5 in 2015/2016. They've been running for 8 straight years without ever restarting. Never had a problem. Granted, I never updated the firmware in the 8 years. Heck, I'm not even sure how I can get back to the web UI to control them.
- wil421 3y ago
  Use the Unifi phone app to manage them. You can manage the APs themselves without logging into anything. I’d recommend updating the firmware after 8 years, you can always do a hard reset to get the original back.
  - SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago
    Hard reset will not automatically downgrade the firmware. And I don't think it's a good idea to manage multiple APs using the app instead of from the controller. Managing a single AP from the app is ok, but I think you'll run into problems when you have multiple in a network.
    - aaronax 3y ago
      It is unlikely that a home user has network functions in use that rely on the controller.
      - SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago
        My point still stands for multiple APs. For example, you can't set up meshing from the mobile app. Best you can do is give them all the same SSID/password, and they also have to be wired in that scenario.
    - TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
      Hard agree. Especially if you have something like the UDM/UDM-P and are managing VLAN-specific SSIDs and so forth.
    - wil421 3y ago
      OP didn’t ask about managing from the controller. I prefer the controller and use it myself. Some of my family members do not want a controller and use the Unifi APs I suggest.
- sonicanatidae 3y ago
  Its fine to use at home, but I see a lot of people pretend these are Enterprise devices and use them as such. They are upgraded consumer gear, at best, imo. Source: I've been working with unifi gear for the past 4+ years and use a basic unifi setup at home, since it was free to me. I wouldn't have bought it. Like all things, YMMV. I'm glad to hear its working like you need it to.
  - notyourwork 3y ago
    What would you have a bought instead? In my experience there isn’t anything comparable in the consumer space. I’d love to be shown I’m wrong. I use both their network gear and security setup (door bells, cameras). I’m not sure there is another company offering the same solution with ease of setup and low overhead to manage. Is there?
    - sonicanatidae 3y ago
      I guess this depends on use-case. I mean, if someone has a need for the more advanced features of a router/firewall like this, then they don't need the consumer focused UI. If someone doesn't know networking well enough, then the UI isn't helpful really since they don't know the why of things. It's a great niche, but Unifi has issues and they seem more focused on selling more of them, than fixing issues present for 5+ years. Here's an example: Unifi uses Strongswan for VPN. There is a bug in that 2 people cannot connect to the VPN site from the same IP. Site2Site between 2 unifi devices has been unreliable. As far as what I would have bought, it's moot, since I'm not the common use case. At one point, I used an ASA 5510 as a home router. ;)
12345hn6789 3y ago
>We could all see the writing on the wall and left. Well, almost everyone. >It's sad to see all of our old work decay like this. This is very common. Happened at my old company. Your last 2 paragraphs are 1-1 the experience of many of my coworkers and I. Very, very sad.
gene91 3y ago
That sound like a terrible workplace. For your own home, if not Ubiquiti, what do you use nowadays?
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Not the person you replied to, but I like Aruba Instant On. https://www.arubainstanton.com/ https://www.arubainstanton.com/
  - aetherspawn 3y ago
    Looks good but lacks layer 3 and fiber aggregation switches which we use in our SMB.
  - mook 3y ago
    Hmm, that looks like it must be centrally managed from the internet? Not saying it's not an appropriate replacement for Ubiquiti, but that seems like an opportunity for the same issues to show up… something that isn't remotely managed might be better instead.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      I think the "InstantOn" functionality requires internet for setting up, but it seems like there is a way to manage it locally without the use of the "InstantOn" functionality: https://www.arubainstanton.com/techdocs/en/content/get-started/switch-local-mode.htm https://www.arubainstanton.com/techdocs/en/content/get-start... Some more discussion here from years ago: https://community.arubainstanton.com/communities/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?MID=454 https://community.arubainstanton.com/communities/community-h... Although, I imagine this type of stuff may not be made to work well without internet.
      - mook 3y ago
        Thanks! So it sounds like it may work, but it's very unclear it'll keep working. (Also I happened to be more personally interested in the APs rather than switches, and it's unclear if that also has a local management mode.) I notice that the linked docs article doesn't get listed if you go up the breadcrumb and try to go back down…
sunbum 3y ago
While I havn't been keeping up with what was going on, the second I started seeing ads for ubiquti I knew something had gone deeply wrong.
chewmieser 3y ago
Hadn’t heard of FrontRow (as you assumed) so went looking for information about it and it looks like they may have repurposed it for the Access Reader Pro? Haha that’s a way to move them. What a miss… And weird product category for them… Also interesting, apparently Ubiquiti came out with a video editor too around that time for FrontRow: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/t9jz2n/ubiquiti_launched_a_video_editor/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/t9jz2n/ubiquiti_l... Curious - what was the size of Ubiquiti when “we [you and your tean] made Ubiquiti and UniFi into household names among nerds”?
- callumjones 3y ago
  Wow, I always wondered why the Access Reader Pro had such a weird design - it was just a repurposed product from a completely different catagory.
- teruakohatu 3y ago
  Here is the FrontRow website from 2017: https://web.archive.org/web/20170929122826/https://www.frontrow.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170929122826/https://www.front...
qwertox 3y ago
> Portland was home to the UX designers who wanted to redesign everything to look nicer but didn't understand how customers used our products. MirkoTik has also been updating their UI this year and it's only getting worse. They are starting to put everything into auto-collapsed sections so that instead of just scrolling down the page you now must remember the section's title and open it in order to access the controls. There are hundreds of sections.
- cmsj 3y ago
  Mikrotik's UI was terrible to begin with, just a big 90s smorgasboard in the style of My First Visual Basic App.
  - karolist 3y ago
    The Dude. edit: more context, that's the Win UI manager with the 90s look for MikroTik. It's not pretty but I know fairly large ISP admins swearing by it https://mikrotik.com/thedude https://mikrotik.com/thedude
  - dishsoap 3y ago
    I like it, it just works and everything in it makes sense. Very refreshing compared to a lot of the things we have today.
  - vetinari 3y ago
    Winbox UI might be not according to the latest UX fashion, but is pretty effective.
    - alyandon 3y ago
      Yeah, seriously - it's ugly and quirky but generally all the settings you care about are there and I don't have to click through 15 different levels of menus or look things up in the wiki for the proper cli invocation when I need to tweak something.
    - bobbob1921 3y ago
LeoPanthera 3y ago
I bought a FrontRow! I loved it! It still works, although the battery doesn't hold much of a charge anymore. It always seemed funny to me that the door access readers re-used the case from it.
giobox 3y ago
Is it true the failed FrontRow hardware was repurposed into the Unifi door fob scanning thing/product ("Access Reader Pro")? I recall reading this somewhere, and the hardware appears to be identical: > https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/8/15/16146354/frontrow-wearable-camera-price-available https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/8/15/16146354/f... > https://c3aero.com/products/ua-pro https://c3aero.com/products/ua-pro I was absolutely floored when I saw the announcement of the FrontRow device - what a bizarre thing to have brought to market for a network hardware company. I can only imagine someone somewhere got far too caught up in the "wearable" hype a few years ago.
- fest 3y ago
  I can't really go into details, but FrontRow wasn't the most bizarre thing Ubiquiti was working on, just the one that got reasonably close before being shelved. IIRC Access reader isn't the only product the FrontRow R&D cost/stock of parts was tried to be recouped, but at that time I wasn't working there anymore.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sonicanatidae 3y ago
How many years now has it been since Unifi implemented broken VPN and won't fix it? 5, by my count and still climbing.
adamjc 3y ago
> Portland was home to the UX designers who wanted to redesign everything to look nicer but didn't understand how customers used our products I think that's every single piece of modern software to date. I call them "Dribbblrs", because it's like they take inspiriation from these websites (e.g. Dribbble) that fetishize things that look pretty but are dogshit to use. I really wish it would end but I don't see it happening unless there's a revolution from within the UX community (which I am not a part of).
jonathantf2 3y ago
It's a weird one because they had a decent product line and just seem to be making really weird choices - I assume to market to the home/"pro-sumer" crowd instead of actual businesses? They just came out with a network switch with RGB for damnsake. A few of my IT clients have UniFi routers and they're quite lackluster for the price - pretty UI but loads of broken features and bugs galore, and you can't manage them centrally like the rest of the UniFi kit.
- hkchad 3y ago
  > a network switch with RGB for damnsake. This actually my turn out to be VERY useful. As someone who runs Unifi at home w/ a stupid amount of VLans, being able to color code them at the switch will come in real handy when I just go and start unplugging stuff and rearranging as does happen. If they update it to flash VLan color while unplugged using the LCD screen it will be even MORE useful. We can hate on RGB all day just for RGB sake but when it has a use, more the better.
dclowd9901 3y ago
Damn, I interviewed there a while back and turned down an offer. Kinda glad I did now.
fest 3y ago
Can you weigh in on the decision to require UniFi controller instead of providing on device configuration interface as well?
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  That was part of the UniFi product since day 1, no?
  - fest 3y ago
    Yes, but I always found it strange (though I lack any exposure to "enterprise" networking equipment).
    - baby_souffle 3y ago
      It makes good sense for large distributed deployments. One page to update everything rather than have to connect to each device and push a config. The controller also "back-ports" the configuration as appropriate for a given device. Declare a vLan once, don't have to worry about which cli version is running on a given switch and adjust your command accordingly. These things don't matter much when you only have one physical location / few devices but if you're an IT guy that manages networking across every physical building in a school district... Since the device tries to phone home, it's also a NAT buster which is invaluable when you're drop-shipping equipment to customers and have little control over your environment but need to be able to promise some level of functionality.
xoa 3y ago
>I hope the company can get back on track some day. It's sad to see all of our old work decay like this. Agreed, and it really was amazing work. As someone who started using and then deploying UniFi in maybe 2015-2016ish and found it a revelation, it's been tremendously depressing see so much potential and such a community utterly squandered. I can only imagine what it's like for someone on the inside. Nevertheless, thank you so much for your work and all the others who helped make it happen. If nothing else it did at least really blaze a trail and show what could be done, and contrary to this issue without any cloud bullshit and subscription lock-in. Even were Ubiquiti to truly implode, that showing of what could be done would remain and by its nature the kit would remain useful for a long time. There have been some mildly positive signs recently though, even if the UX churn remains shitty. There has been small shoots of progress on actual core features, years and years and years late granted, but not entirely too late. I wonder if the emergence of TP-Link's Omada as a clear, direct same-niche competitor has lit any fires there?
neilv 3y ago
Why did Ubiquiti open product/engineering offices in China?

aurareturn 3y ago

I hooked my home up with 3 Unifi AC Pros + ERPOE5 in 2015/2016. They've been running for 8 straight years without ever restarting. Never had a problem. Granted, I never updated the firmware in the 8 years. Heck, I'm not even sure how I can get back to the web UI to control them.

wil421 3y ago
Use the Unifi phone app to manage them. You can manage the APs themselves without logging into anything. I’d recommend updating the firmware after 8 years, you can always do a hard reset to get the original back.
- SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago
  Hard reset will not automatically downgrade the firmware. And I don't think it's a good idea to manage multiple APs using the app instead of from the controller. Managing a single AP from the app is ok, but I think you'll run into problems when you have multiple in a network.
  - aaronax 3y ago
    It is unlikely that a home user has network functions in use that rely on the controller.
    - SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago
      My point still stands for multiple APs. For example, you can't set up meshing from the mobile app. Best you can do is give them all the same SSID/password, and they also have to be wired in that scenario.
  - TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
    Hard agree. Especially if you have something like the UDM/UDM-P and are managing VLAN-specific SSIDs and so forth.
  - wil421 3y ago
    OP didn’t ask about managing from the controller. I prefer the controller and use it myself. Some of my family members do not want a controller and use the Unifi APs I suggest.
sonicanatidae 3y ago
Its fine to use at home, but I see a lot of people pretend these are Enterprise devices and use them as such. They are upgraded consumer gear, at best, imo. Source: I've been working with unifi gear for the past 4+ years and use a basic unifi setup at home, since it was free to me. I wouldn't have bought it. Like all things, YMMV. I'm glad to hear its working like you need it to.
- notyourwork 3y ago
  What would you have a bought instead? In my experience there isn’t anything comparable in the consumer space. I’d love to be shown I’m wrong. I use both their network gear and security setup (door bells, cameras). I’m not sure there is another company offering the same solution with ease of setup and low overhead to manage. Is there?
  - sonicanatidae 3y ago
    I guess this depends on use-case. I mean, if someone has a need for the more advanced features of a router/firewall like this, then they don't need the consumer focused UI. If someone doesn't know networking well enough, then the UI isn't helpful really since they don't know the why of things. It's a great niche, but Unifi has issues and they seem more focused on selling more of them, than fixing issues present for 5+ years. Here's an example: Unifi uses Strongswan for VPN. There is a bug in that 2 people cannot connect to the VPN site from the same IP. Site2Site between 2 unifi devices has been unreliable. As far as what I would have bought, it's moot, since I'm not the common use case. At one point, I used an ASA 5510 as a home router. ;)

12345hn6789 3y ago

>We could all see the writing on the wall and left. Well, almost everyone. >It's sad to see all of our old work decay like this. This is very common. Happened at my old company. Your last 2 paragraphs are 1-1 the experience of many of my coworkers and I. Very, very sad.

gene91 3y ago

That sound like a terrible workplace. For your own home, if not Ubiquiti, what do you use nowadays?

lotsofpulp 3y ago
Not the person you replied to, but I like Aruba Instant On. https://www.arubainstanton.com/ https://www.arubainstanton.com/
- aetherspawn 3y ago
  Looks good but lacks layer 3 and fiber aggregation switches which we use in our SMB.
- mook 3y ago
  Hmm, that looks like it must be centrally managed from the internet? Not saying it's not an appropriate replacement for Ubiquiti, but that seems like an opportunity for the same issues to show up… something that isn't remotely managed might be better instead.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    I think the "InstantOn" functionality requires internet for setting up, but it seems like there is a way to manage it locally without the use of the "InstantOn" functionality: https://www.arubainstanton.com/techdocs/en/content/get-started/switch-local-mode.htm https://www.arubainstanton.com/techdocs/en/content/get-start... Some more discussion here from years ago: https://community.arubainstanton.com/communities/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?MID=454 https://community.arubainstanton.com/communities/community-h... Although, I imagine this type of stuff may not be made to work well without internet.
    - mook 3y ago
      Thanks! So it sounds like it may work, but it's very unclear it'll keep working. (Also I happened to be more personally interested in the APs rather than switches, and it's unclear if that also has a local management mode.) I notice that the linked docs article doesn't get listed if you go up the breadcrumb and try to go back down…

sunbum 3y ago

While I havn't been keeping up with what was going on, the second I started seeing ads for ubiquti I knew something had gone deeply wrong.

chewmieser 3y ago

Hadn’t heard of FrontRow (as you assumed) so went looking for information about it and it looks like they may have repurposed it for the Access Reader Pro? Haha that’s a way to move them. What a miss… And weird product category for them… Also interesting, apparently Ubiquiti came out with a video editor too around that time for FrontRow: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/t9jz2n/ubiquiti_launched_a_video_editor/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/t9jz2n/ubiquiti_l... Curious - what was the size of Ubiquiti when “we [you and your tean] made Ubiquiti and UniFi into household names among nerds”?

callumjones 3y ago
Wow, I always wondered why the Access Reader Pro had such a weird design - it was just a repurposed product from a completely different catagory.
teruakohatu 3y ago
Here is the FrontRow website from 2017: https://web.archive.org/web/20170929122826/https://www.frontrow.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170929122826/https://www.front...

qwertox 3y ago

> Portland was home to the UX designers who wanted to redesign everything to look nicer but didn't understand how customers used our products. MirkoTik has also been updating their UI this year and it's only getting worse. They are starting to put everything into auto-collapsed sections so that instead of just scrolling down the page you now must remember the section's title and open it in order to access the controls. There are hundreds of sections.

cmsj 3y ago
Mikrotik's UI was terrible to begin with, just a big 90s smorgasboard in the style of My First Visual Basic App.
- karolist 3y ago
  The Dude. edit: more context, that's the Win UI manager with the 90s look for MikroTik. It's not pretty but I know fairly large ISP admins swearing by it https://mikrotik.com/thedude https://mikrotik.com/thedude
- dishsoap 3y ago
  I like it, it just works and everything in it makes sense. Very refreshing compared to a lot of the things we have today.
- vetinari 3y ago
  Winbox UI might be not according to the latest UX fashion, but is pretty effective.
  - alyandon 3y ago
    Yeah, seriously - it's ugly and quirky but generally all the settings you care about are there and I don't have to click through 15 different levels of menus or look things up in the wiki for the proper cli invocation when I need to tweak something.
  - bobbob1921 3y ago

LeoPanthera 3y ago

I bought a FrontRow! I loved it! It still works, although the battery doesn't hold much of a charge anymore. It always seemed funny to me that the door access readers re-used the case from it.

giobox 3y ago

Is it true the failed FrontRow hardware was repurposed into the Unifi door fob scanning thing/product ("Access Reader Pro")? I recall reading this somewhere, and the hardware appears to be identical: > https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/8/15/16146354/frontrow-wearable-camera-price-available https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/8/15/16146354/f... > https://c3aero.com/products/ua-pro https://c3aero.com/products/ua-pro I was absolutely floored when I saw the announcement of the FrontRow device - what a bizarre thing to have brought to market for a network hardware company. I can only imagine someone somewhere got far too caught up in the "wearable" hype a few years ago.

fest 3y ago
I can't really go into details, but FrontRow wasn't the most bizarre thing Ubiquiti was working on, just the one that got reasonably close before being shelved. IIRC Access reader isn't the only product the FrontRow R&D cost/stock of parts was tried to be recouped, but at that time I wasn't working there anymore.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

sonicanatidae 3y ago

How many years now has it been since Unifi implemented broken VPN and won't fix it? 5, by my count and still climbing.

adamjc 3y ago

> Portland was home to the UX designers who wanted to redesign everything to look nicer but didn't understand how customers used our products I think that's every single piece of modern software to date. I call them "Dribbblrs", because it's like they take inspiriation from these websites (e.g. Dribbble) that fetishize things that look pretty but are dogshit to use. I really wish it would end but I don't see it happening unless there's a revolution from within the UX community (which I am not a part of).

jonathantf2 3y ago

It's a weird one because they had a decent product line and just seem to be making really weird choices - I assume to market to the home/"pro-sumer" crowd instead of actual businesses? They just came out with a network switch with RGB for damnsake. A few of my IT clients have UniFi routers and they're quite lackluster for the price - pretty UI but loads of broken features and bugs galore, and you can't manage them centrally like the rest of the UniFi kit.

hkchad 3y ago
> a network switch with RGB for damnsake. This actually my turn out to be VERY useful. As someone who runs Unifi at home w/ a stupid amount of VLans, being able to color code them at the switch will come in real handy when I just go and start unplugging stuff and rearranging as does happen. If they update it to flash VLan color while unplugged using the LCD screen it will be even MORE useful. We can hate on RGB all day just for RGB sake but when it has a use, more the better.

dclowd9901 3y ago

Damn, I interviewed there a while back and turned down an offer. Kinda glad I did now.

fest 3y ago

Can you weigh in on the decision to require UniFi controller instead of providing on device configuration interface as well?

AlexandrB 3y ago
That was part of the UniFi product since day 1, no?
- fest 3y ago
  Yes, but I always found it strange (though I lack any exposure to "enterprise" networking equipment).
  - baby_souffle 3y ago
    It makes good sense for large distributed deployments. One page to update everything rather than have to connect to each device and push a config. The controller also "back-ports" the configuration as appropriate for a given device. Declare a vLan once, don't have to worry about which cli version is running on a given switch and adjust your command accordingly. These things don't matter much when you only have one physical location / few devices but if you're an IT guy that manages networking across every physical building in a school district... Since the device tries to phone home, it's also a NAT buster which is invaluable when you're drop-shipping equipment to customers and have little control over your environment but need to be able to promise some level of functionality.

xoa 3y ago

>I hope the company can get back on track some day. It's sad to see all of our old work decay like this. Agreed, and it really was amazing work. As someone who started using and then deploying UniFi in maybe 2015-2016ish and found it a revelation, it's been tremendously depressing see so much potential and such a community utterly squandered. I can only imagine what it's like for someone on the inside. Nevertheless, thank you so much for your work and all the others who helped make it happen. If nothing else it did at least really blaze a trail and show what could be done, and contrary to this issue without any cloud bullshit and subscription lock-in. Even were Ubiquiti to truly implode, that showing of what could be done would remain and by its nature the kit would remain useful for a long time. There have been some mildly positive signs recently though, even if the UX churn remains shitty. There has been small shoots of progress on actual core features, years and years and years late granted, but not entirely too late. I wonder if the emergence of TP-Link's Omada as a clear, direct same-niche competitor has lit any fires there?

neilv 3y ago

Why did Ubiquiti open product/engineering offices in China?