Bad MEN Of Wireless

justbeatit wrote to us with an article from Red Herring about the bad MEN of Wireless. MEN, of course, means Motorola, Ericsson and Nokia.

They know not what they do

[gosand]

I worked at the M in MEN for about 5 years, in the cellular division. Believe me, they don't really know what they are doing. It may sound logical to say they know that they are stifling competition, but nobody there could wipe their butt unless there was an SOP document showing them how. It was a huge, iceberg of a company, where it took months to get anything done. We had an intern who was there for 4 months, and he never got his UNIX account created. We had to submit the proper paperwork to someone, and they had to interoffice mail it to someone else, who then gave it to the manager of the sysadmin, etc etc etc. It was excruciating. We submitted the papwork the day after he started. We called, emailed, you name it for 4 months. No account was ever created, it was always "in process".

So as a company they may be part of a group (MEN) that collectively keeps their own interests to heart, but there is no grand conspiracy as far as I could tell. Unless it is between the VPs or CEOs, or other people who make those important decisions. I was just a grunt that got sick of working for a lumbering giant with a cult-like company culture.

Re:WAP anyone ?

[Zayin]

Not invented by the big three, hyped and failed.

According to this [wapsight.com] document, WAP was created by the WAP forum, which originally consisted of Phone.com, Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola. So it _was_ invented by the big three. (plus Phone.com)

Re:Duh...

[JimPooley]

We all know money is the root of evil
This is a common misquote. The actual phrase is "The love of money is the root of all evil"

Re:They know not what they do

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe me, they don't really know what they are doing.

I think this isn't universally true at Motorola. I worked there several years ago in one department that was SW-CMM Level 5, and most people there seemed pretty sharp. However, their general UNIX network and their network admins left a great deal to be desired. Their UNIX servers were vintage early-90's (really old Sun servers, I believe), couldn't handle the load they subjected them to (lots of users using new software on old computers tends to suck), and the reliability was poor (due to poor network architecture, I believe). Since then, they may very well have improved things; at least, I really hope they did.

Re:They know not what they do

[2can]

As a former employee of M also, I completely concur. After graduation, I worked there for two years after in paging/cellular. Of the five projects I was assigned to, all of them were cancelled. The beauracracy was stifling and they were struggling to get a pulse on what products there customers needed. The company was in a constant state of restructuring in attempts to recapture it's identity.