Ed Brill

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1. 1  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 4/1/2008 2:33:46 PM

   Mike was the best thing to happen to the Lotus brand in the last decade. He's leaves tough shoes to fill.

1. 2  Daniel Lieber http://www.iiui.com | 4/1/2008 2:46:48 PM

   Congratulations to both Mike Rhodin and Bob Picciano! Please extend a warm welcome to Bob from those of us who are often just lurking in the Blogosphere! As he gets adjusted into his new role, he'll surely have fun collaborating with his new team largely using tools they are responsible for building.

   Ed, you now have a sales executive at the top of the Lotus management chain. I hope this helps get the sales team needs increased visibility as the sales force understands where the products provide business value to customers, what their expectations are, and where additional opportunities are within existing customers. With increased sales, everyone at IBM, partners, and customers all benefit.

   Bob, welcome to the Lotus brand!

1. 3  Stuart McIntyre http://blog.collaborationmatters.com | 4/1/2008 2:52:52 PM

   Mike has done a great job, and will be much missed by those in the Lotus channel.

   Having said that, he's moving on to our region in North East Europe so I'm looking forward to seeing more of him here. Ed, do you know if he will be still in IBM SWG, or GM of IBM NE as a whole?

1. 4  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 4/1/2008 2:58:42 PM

   @3 GM of NE IOT as a whole, hence my comment about "other segments of IBM's business".

1. 5  Keith Brooks http://lotustech.blogspot.com | 4/1/2008 3:00:08 PM

   Must agree with Nathan, no question Mike steered Lotus back to being interesting again, not just to all of us, but customers as well.

   Bob all we ask is that you keep an even balance of sales and technical advancement.

   Otherwise enjoy running Lotus.

   Mike enjoy managing in EMEA.

1. 6  Kurt Binnie  | 4/1/2008 3:45:12 PM

   Wow..congratulations all around. Lotus has a lot going for it at this stage and I'm sure it will continue under new management.

1. 7  John Vaughan http://jonvon.net | 4/1/2008 3:59:23 PM

   Mike really "got it" when it came to Lotus technology. He will be missed by the community. It's not surprising to see him moving up. He kicked a lot of ass at IBM Lotus, no question. Big shoes to fill indeed.

1. 8  Keith Smillie http://www.domiclipse.com | 4/1/2008 4:12:07 PM

   @0, a bit off topic but is the UK really part of NE Europe Region? If we're the NE who on earth is in the NW region? Greenland?

1. 9  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 4/1/2008 4:30:54 PM

   Keith, IBM has split Europe into two parts: NE and SW. The UK qualifies as N in NE. :-)

1. 10  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 4/1/2008 4:34:33 PM

   NE != "Northeast"

   NE == "Northern AND Eastern"

   That explains a huge amount. Like the fast that this is considered a promotion.

1. 11  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 4/1/2008 4:46:41 PM

   errr.... *fact, that is.

1. 12  Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 4/1/2008 5:33:50 PM

   I must concur with Nathan & John, very big shoes to fill indeed. Mike gave Lotus new direction and new life.

   Mike - If Switzerland is still part of the "northeast," portion of Europe; you're always welcome in Lausanne. Thank you for all your help and support.

   Bob - Welcome aboard! If you looking for a way to introduce yourself, may I suggest seeing if you can edited into this: { Link }

   :)

1. 13  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 4/1/2008 5:47:48 PM

   Henry, LOL.

   Yes, CH is NE. And Lausanne. What a nice place to live.

1. 14  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 4/1/2008 6:08:26 PM

   @8 and @9 - don't even bother trying to understand it, South Africa is part of North East Europe. That's some serious tectonic movement.

   Back on topic, I'm very sad to see Mike Rhodin leave the Lotus camp. Under his tenure the ship was put firmly back on course. I met him on a number of occasions and was always very impressed by his approachability - no high-rank mentality whatsoever. On the plus side, he comes to NE understanding the Lotus brand and that can only be a good thing.

   Bob (can I call you Bob?)... welcome.

1. 15  Pete Lyons  | 4/1/2008 7:39:30 PM

   Come on Ed. "Mike wasn't afraid to tackle big challenges, including jettisoning the Workplace brand, ..."

   If you're going to give him credit for getting rid of Workplace you should at least acknowledge he was instrumental in making that brand and in setting it up for its ultimate failure by forcing it to be tied to the dog that is/was Portal.

1. 16  brian  | 4/1/2008 7:43:22 PM

   Geez. I'm fairly certain that when you look up the definition of "sycophant" in the dictionary it says "see Ed Brill". Mike wasn't afraid to jettison Workplace? He invented the damn thing and then tried to convince the world that it was a) just an experiment or b) invented just to light a fire under the Notes developers (because he was such a brilliant manager that he couldn't motivate the troops by any other means). He is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with IBM and so are you.

1. 17  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 4/1/2008 7:48:32 PM

   @15 Pete, the brand was created by the previous administration. The products were created in Rhodin's organization, but at the time they were kicked off, they weren't branded anything (other than "nextgen"). I remember exactly where I was and who told me about the Workplace branding, and it most certainly did not come from Rhodin.

   @16 I'm not sure what I did to draw that kind of personal attack, but with that attitude, I am glad you are no longer at IBM. At least you had the guts to sign your posting, which normally would have earned some respect.

1. 18  Sylvain  | 4/1/2008 7:49:00 PM

   Ditto #15 and #16. From the outsider feedback, it is obvious that Rhodin was a master spinner. For the Notes insiders who stuck to it this is a cause for celebration. Cautious celebration, of course. IBM bleeds a lot more talent than it breeds.

1. 19  Sylvain  | 4/1/2008 7:56:10 PM

   Ed, come on. 'Previous administration'. Could you at least try to not sound like some kind of campaign manager ?

   I was there too. (Sadly). Nextgen was a small incubation project. The main push, funding and commitment - the whole post-Nagano phase from LWP 1.1 on, the one that failed so spectacularly and so predictably - was 100% Rhodin.

   As for Brian, I am sure he is also very glad to no longer be at IBM. So am I. And fwiw, I concur. You used to be an advocate. I would call you a cheerleader but I find those to bring more value to society than this specific post so sycophancy seems quite appropriate in this exact case.

1. 20  Pete Lyons  | 4/1/2008 8:17:06 PM

   @17 "the brand was created by the previous administration. "

   Correct and in that vision Workplace wasn't tied to Portal. It was Rhodin who oversaw the coupling of Workplace to Portal and it was Rhodin who didn't listen to the technical leaders who where yelling that it wouldn't work. Letting him slide on that culpability is wrong.

1. 21  Sylvain  | 4/1/2008 8:44:14 PM

   Who came up with the brand name is peripheral at best anyway. This albatross of a product was designed for failure by Rhodin and his yes-mike leadership team.

   It is a relief that Notes and Lotus were able to survive their tenure. Huge credit to those who made it happen *despite* Rhodin et al. Those old 'I survived Workplace 1.1' t-shirts have never been more appropriate.

1. 22  Doug Delsoin  | 4/1/2008 9:38:14 PM

   So I am confused. (a) The first posts say we should be sad to lose someone that righted a confused ship. Cleaned house of of not successful product attempts (whether his or not), brought back focus, and introduced a wave of new products.

   (b) Then the posts point to negativity - he was the one that lost our way initially, wasted many years of development and marketshare with Workplace, and almost put the final nail in Lotus Notes.

   Well - I guess it is a win-win. If (a), he did some great things and the direction is in good shape. And if (b), well he took a bad risk and is now gone.

   If Lotus keeps up the momentum, and maybe a Sales guy coming in to keep up the energy and for once win some accounts vs. Exchange - then maybe the future is even brighter than yesterday.

1. 23  Sylvain  | 4/1/2008 10:02:11 PM

   And by extension, Doug, I am sure our current President is going to be considered quite the win-win as well come next January :)

1. 24  Randall Shimizu  | 4/2/2008 12:50:55 AM

   I have mixed feelings about Mike Rhodin. Mike did a very good job of launching new products this year.

   The problem however is that Voip features should have been leveraged years ago since Sametime has supported SIP 3 or 4 years. Lotus could have enabled these features when Microsoft was just talking about RTC.

   Workplace was a interesting concept, but IBM/Lotus should have recognized it's limitations much earlier. Or development should have accelerated with Workplace emulator. The good thing is that Lotus/IBM was able to leverage the technology.

   The other issue Lotus did not take advantage of Exchange's weakness at the time. Today things are much brighter for than ever for Lotus, but Mike Rhodin is still responsible.

1. 25  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 4/2/2008 1:44:51 AM

   Glad the group therapy for former IBM developers continued overnight...perhaps there were more reasons than I was originally aware of for the code quality and other dev issues with some of the Workplace products.

   One interesting point is, regardless of the success or failure of the Workplace products and brand, Notes and Domino have shipped four major releases over a five year stretch (6.0 in 2002, 6.5 in 2003, 7.0 in 2005, and 8.0 in 2007) with a fifth major release coming in 2008. Workplace wasn't as much of an organizational distraction as some of the hue and cry of the era would lead one to believe. Even my own older blog entries on Workplace were more about the brand and what it meant than about Workplace products. The Notes/Domino engine kept moving along, and today is at its strongest in a decade.

1. 26  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 4/2/2008 2:40:05 AM

   Obviously I don't know the political ins and outs (not sure I care to), but from an outsider's perspective, Workplace wasn't all bad.

   At the risk of coming over like a sycophant ;o), I don't think we'd have many of the following without the design & development work that went into the doomed product:

   - Workplace Client Technology. This is the biggie, and for an outsider who trained in the early betas right through to Notes 8, there's a clear lineage here. We now have Lotus Expeditor & thus a lot of the underpinning of Notes 8 Standard, Sametime 7.x, etc., etc. That's good, right?

   - Activities

   - Elements of Lotus Connections

   - Much-needed functionality improvements in Websphere Portal Server 6.x

   - Elements of Quickr (e.g. Windows Explorer integration)

   Etc.

1. 27  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 4/2/2008 4:34:58 AM

   @26 - Ben, you hit the nail on the head here. Whatever anything thinks about the Workplace as-was story, there is no doubt that some very good technology AND experience came out of it. The Workplace Managed Client was the fore-runner of Expeditor on which Notes 8 and Sametime 7.5 / 8.0 are now based. Commercially the Workplace Managed Client may have not been successful but I have no doubt the development teams learnt a lot about the technology and possibilities.

   Lotus also learnt more about their customers and what they wanted. They didn't want something new, they wanted better versions of what they already had. And under the Rhodin administration that's what they got. I would credit Mike Rhodin with recognising that and steering the ship in that direction. That's not being sycophantic, that's how I see it and I know a great many people who agree.

   And finally @16 Brian - that's way too near a personal insult and doesn't do you any favours.

1. 28  Ports http://www.mrports.com/ | 4/2/2008 6:28:00 AM

   Mike Rhodin arranged for Neil Armstrong and I to be in the same room together at the opening general session of Lotusphere 2007. For doing that he will have my respect forever.

1. 29  Tim Haugen  | 4/2/2008 6:42:09 AM

   @26 & @27 - Maybe we view Workplace like NASA - The "product" itself might not be of great value, but the technology produced along the way yields value elsewhere :-)

   Actually, Mike having some degree of involvement in the decisions/directions toward Workplace adds to the respect I give him for closing the door on it. It seems all too rare for a senior executive to be willing to change his/her mind or admit he/she was wrong, regardless of the facts.

1. 30  Sylvain  | 4/2/2008 9:00:34 AM

   Ed, you are finally correct : there were reasons for the significant technical failings of Workplace that have nothing to do with the developers involved and everything to do with the interference of people who should have known better.

   In the end, that Rhodin was good at some things - as he clearly was from some of the comments here - is not mutually exclusive with him being execrable at others, as he most definitely was when it came of managing an engineering organization.

   It is not uncommon at all for executives to believe they are good at things they should leave alone. It is even less uncommon for said executives to believe the opposition to their decisions, however well-founded, to be a consequence of their visionary talents ('Visionaries were all opposed; I am opposed therefore...'). And nearly all of them manage to attract a cohort of useful idiots who will parrot and amplify their mistakes and attitude out of sincere naive ignorance, cynical interest and every nuance in between.

   I do not mind Mr Rhodin getting credit for the good things he did do. I do not even mind him getting a discrete pass for his manifest failures. This is, after all, the blog space of a paid company shill.

   However, having been there, I - and others - do very much mind him getting such strong credit for somehow saving us from a pointless dead-end quagmire he not only created but forced at great cost and sacrifice. The Rhodin era was a train wreck and a near-death experience for what used to be an awesome engineering team. His departure is most definitely not a loss for those of them who actually build those products.

1. 31  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 4/2/2008 9:16:08 AM

   I think there are a heck of a lot of people who would quarrel with the characterization of "used to be an awesome engineering team" -- and might even argue that they are ahead of where they were five years ago. But I'm just a paid company shill, albeit one whose day job has helped grow the Notes business by 25% over the last three years, which pays for the still/again/new awesome engineers (and more of them) who built Notes/Domino 8 and are working on 8.5 and beyond.

1. 32  Pete Lyons  | 4/2/2008 9:19:52 AM

   @25 I would add that it's not just ex IBM developers. We're out of the loop now. We only learned of this spin on the Rhodin legacy from the private rants of current developers. The debacle that was Workplace still haunts Westford.

   Some good probably came out of Rhodin's tenure, but some good came out of the asteroid that caused the dinosaur extinction event as well. Much like birds are the evolutionary progeny of dinosaurs the current crop of products can trace their lineage back to the ideas of Workplace. I wouldn't give the asteroid the credit though. The survival and eventual success of those product has a lot more to do with the strong ecosystem and their genetic flexibility than the disaster that was Rhodin.

1. 33  Sylvain  | 4/2/2008 9:20:16 AM

   @Ben

   The lineage may not be as strong as you believe. Let us say many people involved in this technology were made to learn 'lessons' they knew all too well for the education of their leadership.

   Activities had nothing to do with Workplace. It started as a research project out of San Jose. The original project delivered precisely because it did not use any of the Workplace stack - we bypassed Websphere and used Tomcat for instance - since it had been such a wreck and productivity drain. So yes, you can count Workplace as the giant anti-pattern that allowed the team to actually deliver something. Incidentally, many of those who started this very much shared the 'bad attitude' displayed here - I was one of them - and used this project in part to demonstrate everything that was wrong and stupid with the LWP project. The vast majority of which was known *before* Workplace got under way.

   I do not believe the rest came out of Workplace or depended on it either. Even if they did, I am positive that the number of man-years sunk into the initiative would *not* make any of them look like any kind of return on investment.

   But as we know, this history can - and will - be rewritten to fit the needs of the moment.

1. 34  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 4/2/2008 9:21:03 AM

   - "... a paid company shill... "

   - "... what used to be an awesome engineering team..."

   - Email address "donotthinkso@ed.com"

   Nice work Sylvain, you're really coming across well.

1. 35  Sylvain  | 4/2/2008 9:48:00 AM

   @Ben,

   You're welcome.

   Yes, Ed is paid to market IBM's products and position, and even, apparently, to eulogize the greatness of his soon-to-be ex-boss and fabricate claims about his achievements. Sorry to bring you the news.

   Yes again, the engineering team I left was a shadow of what it had been. Which does significantly increase the credit of those who managed to achieve Notes 8 with so much less. Hint: that list does not include Ed Brill or Mike Rhodin.

   And no, I will not supply an email address to a marketing blog. Nor do I need to in this instance; maybe you should ask around Westford how many people with my first name have worked there in the past 10 years. I do not need any more signature than that. But if you knew that, you probably wouldn't be trying to quibble about the rest either.

1. 36  Sylvain  | 4/2/2008 10:02:53 AM

   Ed, your avoidance and denial are boring and I am probably inflicting the same on others here so I will end my part here. You have implied Mike Rhodin somehow courageously saved us from a mess he in fact created. You have been caught in a blatant lie by people who were there; by there I mean there every single day as opposed to blogging from Chicago or dozens of other places around the world.

   You may choose to handle it by playing victim, attempting diversion and casting blanket judgments on entire groups of current and former colleagues through the proxy of real, perceived or imaginary 'hecks' all you want. You may even fool a few of your regular readers in the process.

   You lied. Out of ignorance, sincere belief, professional self-interest, it doesn't really matter. And there is a 'heck of a lot of people' who agree you did. You may even have to work with some of them tomorrow. Sorry. And good luck.

1. 37  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 4/2/2008 10:05:50 AM

   According to many, Rhodin and co. screwed up trying to manage a talented team pushing through a dead-end product. Bad move. I'll defer to you on that, after all you were there.

   But that team has moved on, and I'm sure most of us can agree that IBM's worse off for it (I'm thinking of the people I know of like Ned, Bob, Pete, Damian -- again I defer to you on the rest).

   I don't get it. You're all talented, you all have new, better roles and are (presumably) happier away from Big Blue, so why hark back to darker times, burning bridges and offending your successors in the process? That's like me pissing & moaning about my former employer -- I just did that when I was there :)

   For the record, I do know who you are. The "shill" epithet I still object to (check a dictionary definition if you want to know why), but yes, the email thing was a minor snit I grant you.

1. 38  Rob Novak http://www.LotusRockStar.com | 4/2/2008 10:07:26 AM

   Within an organization as large and diverse as IBM, some failures are inevitable on the path to success. Regarding Workplace, like Ed says it was not as much a distraction to Notes & Domino, Sametime or Quick-whatever as some think (it was a shiny object for me for a while, I admit - then I installed it). It confused the market, to be sure. But it didn't kill anything, and produced some interesting byproducts.

   I'm not objective on this subject. My wife and I count Mike as a personal friend. And he has been the leader of the organization that has made success possible for my company and many others.

   So it's disappointing to see a post about his promotion turn into a vent festival for disgruntled former IBMers and an indictment of the failed Workplace strategy. And the personal attacks on Ed? Highly unprofessional.

   On the magnitude and impact of any successful leader's failures -- and Mike has been a leader -- Robert F. Kennedy probably said it best: "Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."

   I wish him the best.

1. 39  Sylvain  | 4/2/2008 10:21:08 AM

   Ben, someone I once thought to be a friend - professionally speaking - is making sh*t up publicly and claiming on behalf of his boss that he saved a ship that he built and sank against the professional opinnion of a large part of his crew. Believe me, it is sickening. I'm glad Rhodin was good to you and others here. And I can even accept that in his position Ed didn't know what was really going on in a rather different part of the company. But then don't come out and say this stuff, which removes nothing to the rest of the story he wants to tell anyway. And when called out on it, don't dig in and counter-attack by implying IBM kept the best and tossed the rest. For someone whose job it is to communicate, that is a pretty darn poor move. I can at least claim to be a paid nerd with poor interpersonal skills.

   Rob, let's not bring Kennedy and Rhodin in the same sentence. Please. Unless you want to say it's always the good guys who gets shot.

   OK, now I'm done with you two :) Continue over email if you wish.

1. 40  Neil Agate http://www.4gatesllc.com | 4/2/2008 11:00:32 AM

   @38 - Rob, well said !!

1. 41  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 4/2/2008 11:06:06 AM

   Sylvain, accusing me of lying is pretty uncool.

   I am not sure how stating that Rhodin "jettisoned the Workplace brand" is a lie or making sh*t up. It may not reflect the entire picture -- any more than you as a former developer can claim to have the entire picture.

   As was noted elsewhere in this thread, it was Zollar who announced the two-lane highway and the move to J2EE, and Rhodin didn't come in until later in that effort.

   All I was stating was that Rhodin made the decision to end Workplace. I did not expect that to bring out three former developers who, for whatever reason, decided that now was the time to publicly attack Rhodin, me, or anyone else. Do you (plural) think every single thing you wrote publicly from that era supports the position you are taking today? OK, then.

1. 42  Pete Lyons  | 4/2/2008 11:37:52 AM

   It's the spin Ed. It's the spin.

   Look back at the David DeJean article from Jan 22 2007 in InformationWeek. According to Rhodin Workplace was just just a stalking-horse to spur on the Domino developers. Tell me that wasn't a public, self-serving slap in the face to all the developers both on the Workplace team and the Domino team.

   Your post just touched a nerve by perpetuating that revisionist history.

   I loved the original Workplace vision. I loved the team of people I worked with. I hated to see them become physically and emotionally ill from the environment that was created under Mr. Rhodin. A good friend on mine almost died from it. So, yes, I'm not happy with the lauding of his legacy.

   I don't recall Brian or Sylvain saying anything publicly about Workplace prior to this, but we both know I certainly have, so I'm a bit confused by the last paragraph of @41.

1. 43  Sylvain  | 4/2/2008 11:43:54 AM

   Ed, OK. I will bite again.

   Lying - even by omission or implication - is pretty uncool so I'm glad it is uncomfortable. Now you know exactly how I felt when I read your post: that taste in the back of your mouth ? Yes. It is vomit.

   I couldn't honestly care less about the infamous two-lane highway slide or when it popped out of whose orifice. Rhodin did not courageously 'jettison' Workplace. He and his coterie fucked it up beyond all repair and tossed it when nothing else could be done with it. Courage would be admitting it. Integrity would be not spinning it as success. I don't see him nor you rising to those challenges. All you can do is conveniently and oh-so-courageously deflect the blame on his predecessors, whose brilliant ideas he eagerly carried forward with his trademarked 'maniacal focus'. Until they collapsed; because you just cannot stack shit this high.

   So even if we-plural wrote something then that conflicts with our stated opinion today, I'm pretty positive we'll be able to admit we were wrong then, why and how. At this point, I am also pretty positive neither you nor Mr Rhodin could do the same. Too bad.

   Once again, good luck to you.

1. 44  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 4/2/2008 12:07:03 PM

   Sylvain, I think you have made your point. You have been heard loud and clear. Many will agree that it was not like Mr. Rhodin saved Lotus from Workplace.

   However I would like to ask you to respect two things:

   1. This is Ed's house and you are a guest.

   2. I am sure Ed has a few things to say about Mr. Rhodin which would be less positive. For obvious reasons he chose not to.

   You (?) and I have the liberty to speak our minds. That is an exception.

1. 45  Tim Brown  | 4/2/2008 12:12:45 PM

   @37 - Nicely put. Why is it that those who do leave IBM cannot leave it alone?

1. 46  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 4/2/2008 12:18:49 PM

   Tim, because you can suddenly say what you wanted to say all along.

1. 47  Pete Lyons  | 4/2/2008 12:32:55 PM

   @37 and @45. The Iris team and by extension the early nextgen team were more family than co-workers. It was a bond formed by a passion for creating great software, open and honest discussion and the willingness to sacrifice yourself for the good of the team.

   Being part of something special and then having it ripped and shredded by people who clearly didn't understand what you were trying to do tends to leave some scars. In my 20+ years of doing this I've never seen anything that came close the horror that was WP1.1 and beyond.

1. 48  Sylvain  | 4/2/2008 12:38:15 PM

   Volker, Ed is free to take a dump in my plate on his blog. I don't have to pretend I like it nor do I have to be nice about it. Sorry. If you don't want to hear it or dislike the smell, you are welcome to take a detour around the pile-up. Sorry.

1. 49  Dave Harris http://www.wavysworld.com | 4/2/2008 12:47:27 PM

   Ed, for the first (and only, i hope) time, I move that you close this post for comments given the vitriol it's drawing towards someone who's not even participating (aside from the "paid shills", and for any further communications to be continued via email should they have validity.

1. 50  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 4/2/2008 12:47:34 PM

   Sylvain, just call it a day. All roads lead downhill from here.

1. 51  Richard Schwartz http://www.poweroftheschwartz.com | 4/2/2008 12:59:29 PM

   @44 Vowe: Well said.

   @47 Pete: With all due respect, a family can be dysfunctional at times, and most of the time they don't know it. There is pain involved in recognizing and correcting it. There might be less painful ways, but there are no painless ways.

   Whatever Rhodin's (and/or his predecessor's) role in the creation of the Workspace monster was, my outsider's viewpoint (it's been a decade since I was a contract insider) is that the dysfunction pre-dated Workspace by several years. And whatever pain Mike Rhodin inflicted on the Lotus family, the growth in financial results for Lotus during his tenure have been outstanding and the growth in the product line even without (or especially without) any contribution from Workspace attests to the fact that the final result of his tenure is that Lotus is coming back from being dysfunctional.

1. 52  Richard Schwartz http://www.poweroftheschwartz.com | 4/2/2008 1:01:55 PM

   Errr... Workplace.

   I've been trying so hard to forget ;-)

1. 53  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 4/2/2008 1:40:26 PM

   I hated to see them become physically and emotionally ill from the environment that was created under Mr. Rhodin. A good friend on mine almost died from it.

   I am struggling to imagine a development atmosphere in which computer programmers risk death.

1. 54  Ian Scott  | 4/2/2008 1:56:37 PM

   @53 - Maybe they thought they might be driven to kill someone in a state where there's capital punishment but instead of accepting responsibility for such thoughts and actions they decided to blame Rhodin for it instead.

1. 55  Pete Lyons  | 4/2/2008 1:58:22 PM

   @53 Nathan, perhaps you should read up on the effects of stress on the human body.

   Since you seem to be lacking imagination, I'll help you out. Imagine if someone asked a group of conscientious, highly motivated developers to do the impossible and then hound them that it's not getting done.

   The developers who didn't recognize the no-win situation and kept up at the Sisyphean task could eventually develop mental or physical problems.

1. 56  Ian Scott  | 4/2/2008 2:00:40 PM

   ....of course the law wouldn't agree with them.

1. 57  Sylvain  | 4/2/2008 2:17:17 PM

   Actually, attempting what is seemingly impossible can be quite motivating.

   Being made to attempt things that are both impossible and that you know to be wrong will definitely impact you negatively.

   Volker, thank you again for your feedback. It is very important to me.

1. 58  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 4/2/2008 3:19:21 PM

   Hrmmm.... I didn't notice anyone shackled to their desks when I was last in Westford.

   Your example, Pete, sounds like every good team I've ever worked on: conscientious, highly-motivated developers asked to do the impossible. The definition of "hounding" is probably unclear to me.

   Although the use of the term "impossible" surprises me, as well. If we're talking about shipping product in accordance with someone objectives, well I see a bunch of product in the marketplace right now. Certainly a lot more from Westford than from Redmond.

1. 59  brian  | 4/2/2008 3:41:26 PM

   One of us (who is still at IBM) suffered a stress-induced heart-attack during Workplace.

   At the time, the job market was such that most of us didn't think it was possible to leave IBM and find gainful employment. When we learned otherwise, we left. Some are still there for various reasons. It's all a balancing act.

   The issue was not that a team of talented engineers were asked to do the impossible. It was that they were asked (forced) to do something stupid, wrong, and hopeless with absolutely no regard for the talented people who said so from the beginning.

   And yes, many of us are having a very difficult time letting go even though we haven't worked for IBM for years. The experience was really that horrible. To echo Pete's sentiment, I've been doing this for almost 30 years at big companies and small and the Workplace experience was without question the worst of my professional career. This is why postings lauding the great achievements of Mike Rhodin make our bile churn.

1. 60  Pete Lyons  | 4/2/2008 3:48:18 PM

   @58 No Nathan, no one was chained to their desk. People are funny like that they actually have a sense of commitment to do what's being asked of them.

   I use the term impossible in the strictest sense, not just an ambitious sense of purpose to do the nearly unthinkable. Think alchemy, anti-gravity or making EJB's perfom on par with the Domino server.

   If your last line was a dig against Microsoft it was misplaced. I don't work there.

1. 61  Sylvain  | 4/2/2008 4:04:21 PM

   Nathan, this is best left for an offline discussion. You have my email. I'll even chat with you on the phone if you like. It's been a while.

   It's clear we cannot reach an agreement on this topic and in this space. Having people who were complete strangers to the situation argue with those who were in it based on little but their limited external perception and such deep insights as the lack of shackles is bound to fail. I, and many others, was there. Ed, to a large extent, was not. Neither were you. Mr Rhodin very much was though. And it was not pretty.

   Again, happy he did well by you. Good for you. But when the guy who dumped the sand in the engine gets so publicly credited for 'jettisoning' the sand problem because he liked to 'tackle challenges', it's bound to piss the hell out of the people who were slaving on said engine. And yes, that is the word for it whether you saw shackles or not.

   Peace.

1. 62  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 4/2/2008 4:08:19 PM

   @60 - it was a dig at MSFT, but it wasn't misplaced, whether you work there or not. Lotus is shipping when the competition isn't. Whether you are that competition is beside the point.

   I'm perplexed by the description of "alchemy" as unthinkable, unless you're thinking of specific outcomes such as the Philosopher's Stone. But alchemy as such -- the experimental process of understanding the structures of substances and how they interact, has given us such goodies as gunpowder and metallurgy. Gravity being a simple matter of mass and relative motion, "anti-gravity" is hardly unthinkable -- it's merely a matter of matching relative velocity (such as on the "Vomit Comet") or moving outside of the mass-induced curvature (such as by flying out of the atmosphere.)

   So I'm not sure how strict your sense of "impossible" really is, Pete.

1. 63  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 4/2/2008 4:13:51 PM

   So, can we all move on now?

1. 64  Sylvain  | 4/2/2008 4:21:14 PM

   If you can stop yourself from spinning fairy tales out of a total failure, I'm sure we all will, in time. It's your call, really.

1. 65  Bob Balaban http://www.bobzblog.com | 4/2/2008 4:25:53 PM

   @63 - YES, PLEASE!!!!!!

1. 66  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 4/2/2008 6:24:57 PM

   @64 well, that time is now. I should point out to you that other blog readers remember you from your tenure at IBM Lotus. While I won't publish the contents, I have to say that an e-mail I received describing all of what IBM did for you really cast all of your comments here in a very different, decidedly more negative light. I hope you are enjoying your time in Redmond, or wherever you eventually ended up after your time here.