3 ms·

It's just an interesting little footnote in the history of Apple's rise to handheld superstardom. Ed Colligan sounds very reasonable and level headed in his re

It's just an interesting little footnote in the history of Apple's rise to handheld superstardom. Ed Colligan sounds very reasonable and level headed in his responses to Jobs' threats and intimidation approach. However, Mr. Colligan basically led his company into insolvency, failing to innovate, failing to support his customers, failing to properly leverage the once-dominant Palm market share. I was there in 2004, a happy user of the mighty Palm T3 which to this very day has some superior features versus the Android and iOS handhelds. My wife still misses her Zire. I gritted my teeth and put up with Palm's steadfast refusal to support Linux; jpilot and pilot-sync filled in the gaps pretty well. Then Palm decided to innovate by abandoning the PalmOS platform entirely and going with WebOS. Did they support Palm apps? Sure, as an extra cost add-on. Friends with Palm WebOS phones traded them in for Android as soon as they could; the units were buggy and crashy. So in the long run, the support and innovation award has to go to Apple, and in my opinion it has less to do with employee poaching than with visionary and intelligent leadership. Certainly you can't build a great company without great talent, but poaching from your competitors is only a small part of the story. Then there's the stigma of being the poachee. Is it advisable to be known as someone who will jump ship and join the enemy for a few more pieces of silver? Is loyalty of so little value? In my opinion, there's great value in loyalty to one's company. If you must jump ship, at least spend a year elsewhere before joining the competition. It's a professional courtesy thing.

cloverich 14y ago
> Is it advisable to be known as someone who will jump ship and join the enemy for a few more pieces of silver? Is loyalty of so little value? In my opinion, there's great value in loyalty to one's company. If you must jump ship, at least spend a year elsewhere before joining the competition. It's a professional courtesy thing. No. But what if say... you hate your boss? You disagree with the coding (for example) style imposed on you? What if more money is just a (small) part of the story? Its not as though Jobs is arguing "Hey, you can take my employees, as long as you don't pay them more ". There are many reasons to leave a job, and any good interviewer will ask you why if you are jumping ship. > If you must jump ship, at least spend a year elsewhere before joining the competition. It's a professional courtesy thing. IMHO, not a reasonable expectation. Going to a competitor, you are presumably taking your experience with you. By not going to one, you are presumably throwing it away - why is that a good thing (for innovation or personal success)? It would be great if we all worked for companies that really cared about us. Those companies are few and far between, and my guess is they don't fear employee attrition as much as the bad employers. Or, perhaps that fear of attrition is why they are good to their employees at all. Either way, I don't think the issue is nearly as simplistic as you're making it out to be.

cloverich 14y ago

> Is it advisable to be known as someone who will jump ship and join the enemy for a few more pieces of silver? Is loyalty of so little value? In my opinion, there's great value in loyalty to one's company. If you must jump ship, at least spend a year elsewhere before joining the competition. It's a professional courtesy thing. No. But what if say... you hate your boss? You disagree with the coding (for example) style imposed on you? What if more money is just a (small) part of the story? Its not as though Jobs is arguing "Hey, you can take my employees, as long as you don't pay them more ". There are many reasons to leave a job, and any good interviewer will ask you why if you are jumping ship. > If you must jump ship, at least spend a year elsewhere before joining the competition. It's a professional courtesy thing. IMHO, not a reasonable expectation. Going to a competitor, you are presumably taking your experience with you. By not going to one, you are presumably throwing it away - why is that a good thing (for innovation or personal success)? It would be great if we all worked for companies that really cared about us. Those companies are few and far between, and my guess is they don't fear employee attrition as much as the bad employers. Or, perhaps that fear of attrition is why they are good to their employees at all. Either way, I don't think the issue is nearly as simplistic as you're making it out to be.