A MobileMe team member apologizes

I just thought it sounded like a lot of whine with no substance.

What failure prevention is she expecting? Get 500 bucks for sounding the alarm? Personally I thought the demotions/lay off/wrath of CEO would be punishment enough to steer clear away from failure.

Yes, I agree the golden parachute is a screwed up component of the pay package. But its being made to be the scapegoat of the issue when the problem at hand currently is much bigger.

Copy pasting the post because Apple will shut that site down when they find out about it:

–
About two months ago, the group I work for suffered one of the worst product launch failures in its history. In fact, not just the group, but for the company. A very high profile product failed to launch on the day and then continued to fail for an agonizing week afterwards.

The predictable fallout ensued, with a dressing down by our CEO, followed by the usual finger pointing and finally ending in removal/demotion of some members of the senior management team.

Thing is, I don’t think any of these so-called consequences would prevent similar failures from happening again, because nothing was done to address the real problem.

The real problem is we, as a society, only reward success, and never prevention of failure.

To illustrate, let’s start with a simple thought experiment. Let’s say someone knew in advance the full extend of the failure and could have prevented it from happening. There is absolutely zero incentive for this person to do that, in fact they have negative incentive to speak up.

This is obvious if you have ever worked in a corporate environment. Success is very easily identifiable, there is a tangible product at the end and it’s relatively straightforward to reward those involved. But on the flip side, failures are always hypothetical until they are fully played out.

Even with 100% hindsight, knowing exactly what caused the failure, if I had raised that issue before launch, there was no way I could have convinced anyone of the full seriousness of the problem. At best I would just be seen as merely doing my job, but more likely I would have been called a naysayer who isn’t “fully on board” and trying to slow everyone down with overblown hypothetical edge cases.

This isn’t a dig at people I work with, because this is not a problem unique to our group or even our company. This is how corporate America works. Witness the spectacular failure of the entire financial system. Plenty of people were amply rewarded for the “success” of sub prime mortgages, and those who sounded alarm bells were basically ignored or laughed at, and they certainly got no part of the “success”.

So what happens now that these naysayers were proven 100% right? Well, the people who benefitted from it the most are getting bailed out, and they keep all their ill-gotten gains. The chairman of Lehman took home $40M last year, and $466M in his tenure from 1993 to 2007. What do you think his “punishment” would be? Well, if he gets terminated, he walks away with $60M. He is far from unique in his position.

As for us chumps who aren’t “in the game”, every man, woman and child gets to donate $3000 each to bail out these companies that are “too big to fail”.

Is it any wonder why we fail on a massive scale, and will continue to fail?

Dan,

Your heartless. You you will get her in hot water, and although she may have been naive to blog this, you could have spared her the trauma by not going public.

In many ways, you are a yahoo (in the bad sense).

Didn’t your mother love you?

(nothing personal)

People get fired or demoted for failures — only in corporate america? Please. In startups, if you fail in your product launch, you may not get your next round of funding and close up shop.

In life, there are no guarantees. We do the best we know how. If it goes against you despite all, you try again or go somewhere else and try again. The system does reward success and punish failures. We would not want it the other way around, would we?

Hm. Seems the blog is gone. Will this be a new phenomenon? Not slashdotted, rather FSJed?

@Tom:
Wow, they really DID take down that blog hella fast! Way to go Apple! Reminding us of why we trust you so much!

@Tom: Thanks for the foresight.

Oh please…dont jump the gun will you ?

http://ethlite.wordpress.com/

That woman is probably fired by now.

Fired…or dead

pk de cville: She knew what she was doing.

She goes by “Ethlite” and it looks like this is her myspace: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=53471791

Computer science degree, lives in Cupertino… hmm.

Bizarrely, http://www.Ethlite.com redirects to mobileme’s promo page on Apple.com

Even the Google cache was cleaned, wow it does help having some people on the board, maybe this never hapened after all… creepy

Check also .Mac websites… anyway I hope she will not be fired because no mention of Apple of MobileMe was made in her blog and complained with that crazy secret system.

Wow. Now the myspace is set to private only, location: Afghanistan; the other site mentioned above as redirecting to MobileMe is now redirecting to Go Daddy. Someone’s been very busy. And no sympathy from me. Everybody knows (or should) that anything on the interwebs is public. Not everybody does, I know, but I think we can all agree that someone in her position certainly knows.

And thanks to the person who copy/pasted. Nice move. It’s now safely stored on my HD.

Gonzo. Outta here.

Sorry, the blog at ethlite.blogspot.com has been removed. This address is not available for new blogs.

Incredible. Yeah, she seems scared for some reason.

Google Cache of the now removed myspace page: http://tinyurl.com/43knup

I’m on the case. More later.

Here on setteB.IT http://www.setteb.it/content/view/4815 (sorry, it’s in Italian, but you can use automatic translators) you can find a screenshot of the original post on her blog, pictures from Flickr (now private) and some links (most of them no more active).

Damn, someone at Apple has some great connections. She does have a point though, why are ceo’s who fuck up rewarded, while they leave a lot of people with big problems.

Hey guy here’s the cache copy

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:xlsnsd3D2R4J:ethlite.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html+ethlite+why+we+fail&hl=it&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=it

It’s called the “Cassandra” problem, and it’s not new.

I wonder whether Apple had her blog pulled, she got scared, or she simply didn’t feel comfortable with thousands of RDL readers looking at her blog (along with the compulsory “I’d hit it!” — Woz comments). A combination of factors, perhaps?

Very interesting!

Did anyone actually read any of the other stuff this person has written? She’s a flake disguised in scientific clothing. Speaking analytically doesn’t make an argument analytical.
So, CEO’s get rewarded and the rest of us get left holding our, uh, wallets. And the big news is? This is sometimes called capitalism and sometimes called human nature. Remember that old saying “absolute power corrupts, absolutely”? It’s not new. It’s old. This is the story of humankind’s history. That’s why we have conversations/debate about society and make efforts to constrain or restrict people when their power becomes too great. If you have any questions about that you should take a look at the political system, that’s what it’s there for. Having said all that (hardly) enlightening wisdom, let me say that in the application development world we try to mitigate against catastrophic failure, and indeed any level of failure by doing tests, tests and more tests. As a software tester (a lowly, lowly tester) I can tell you flat out that there is a rewards structure in place for finding flaws: you’re a good tester: you find bugs or inconsistencies: you get bonus, a raise, or consideration for a promotion. If this person feels that they wouldn’t be able to convince people a flaw is important, then it sounds like a flaw within that management team -which could explain why they lost their jobs.
It’s all quite simple really. If you want to bitch about power dynamics and the impact of society on your life, then that’s fine, welcome even, but this is the world we live in and whining about it is a lot less productive then taking an active role. And no, blogging is not an active role. I would suggest to this person to buy some books, any books, and read them. Try starting with an introduction to sociology, then you can move on to Marx, Jefferson and Dilbert. Then, when you finally reach an understanding of society that is current, informed, and productive, write an article, join a political party, start a political party, host community discussions, do something other than whine about your tiny world and how it is, like, mirrored by the, like, greater societal trends.
I just can’t believe this is what people consider good introspective/retrospective (analytical) thinking. I liked her blog on beauty the best; great “thought experiment” next time try working on the “thought” part a little more.

One more thing regarding power and freedom. If Wallmart were to close tomorrow, and the internet, pro sports, and cable TV went with it, American’s would be forced to recognize that we/they live in a pretty restrictive society. I truly believe that within one year without cheap toys and the entertainment industry we would see major revolution of some kind, and the resultant power/ideological struggles that would inescapably be produced. Afterall, these are the things that serve as distractions while politicians and CEO’s take all the spoils. As long as they keep feeding scraps like an ipod to the masses, the masses will eat it up and think they’re full on steak. That’s my two cents, not that there’s anything terribly revelatory here either.

^^^
True dat. Don’t whine. Get busy!

It’s interesting how the headline says: “A MobileMe team member apologizes”, and then two sentences in he contradicts himself by saying “It’s worth noting that she’s not really apologizing for MobileMe’s suckage”. Nothing says “real journalist” better than making up headlines that is directly contradicted by the piece itself.

More seriously, disclosing someone’s employer without their consent is a criminal act. Dan Lyons is an accomplice in a criminal act, he’d better have a good lawyer ready.

Pathetic.

She’s a bulldyke. Say no more.

Ethlite has published a comment on what happened: http://ethlite.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/gutter-blogs

Sorry, I haven’t read the previous one

Since when was one blog linking to and commenting on another blog cyberstalking?

Let the topic rest, fanatical fucks.
-Please fetch some real news next time.

You are all hairless, fleshy, squishy sheep.

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