Her nom de blog is Ethlite the Pole Dancing Philosopher, but in the halls of Cupertino, she appears to be Helen Hung Ma, an Apple software engineer tied to the disastrous MobileMe launch. And unfortunately for her, an unwise early morning post on her personal blog, since whisked down, is about the only glimpse we have of what went wrong.
Hung Ma hints that MobileMe’s launch problems were totally avoidable, but Apple’s corporate culture ostracizes potential problem labelers as cynical, hyper-critical mavericks. “Not team players,” in other words.
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 seen as a naysayer who isn’t “fully on board” and instead trying to slow everyone down with overblown hypothetical edge cases.
Hung Ma then goes on to claim that this is not a specific dig at Apple, but rather an indictment of “corporate culture” as a whole. I’m unconvinced: Apple is different from most companies in that it is headed by a galvanic, steel-willed prophet / despot, whose visions mercilessly drive the entire company. It is easy to imagine Apple, as a culture, being too soft willed to challenge him with the devastating consequences of what Jobs might consider to be mundane technical details when his mind is made up about something.
Although “Ethlite” never specifically names Apple or MobileMe in her post, Dan Lyons’ deep Apple sources confirm to him that she is indeed a MobileMe engineer talking about the launch, and Camillo Miller’s excellent detective work has nailed down her identity even further. Further credence that she’s speaking about MobileMe and Apple is the speed in which her blog was purged from the Internet, along with most Google caches of the page. Either Apple went into overdrive to keep this from leaking out, or Hung Ma rightfully panicked once the stream hit the surface of the swimming pool.
Elthlite, Apple and MobileMe: the Missing Post [Apple Lounge]
Previously:
It looks like she pulled the blog entry for personal reasons: http://ethlite.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/gutter-blogs/
Being a corporate schill myself, I can empathize with what Helen said. Having worked through release cycles with four different companies, I can safely say every one of them considers meeting the timeline to be the #1 determinant for a project’s success. They’d all rather put a broken solution in production on time than put a working solution in production late.
With a name and logo remarkably similar to Windows ME, what could possibly go wrong?
There’s really not a lot to the blog post. It’s quite generic really. “I work for a big company that had a bad launch and here are some of the reasons why.”
The Apple fanboys who did “detective work” to figure out who she was, however, seem a little bit creepy and obsessed. Clearly this person wanted to post her comments anonymously and did not want to slam her employer publicly. Why work so hard to make it impossible for her to do so?
Apple is no different from any other company silo. It functions just like any other company. Most companies of this size grow tall and wide with managers who insulate themselves, keeping their underlings hidden from the spotlight, often taking credit for the work of those under them, but if there is a failure, quick to point the finger of blame.
Same ol’ Same ol’
Not to mention the fear aspect of being someone who warns of impending doom…I’ve worked for a lot of failed tech companies in upper management. I’ve learned my praise helped me climb, while dire predictions put me on the outs with other management…generally meaning that I was asked to leave. Not one of those companies survived, but I’m doing much better as a consultant.
As magical as Apple products are and “thinking different” seems…I don’t see Apple really being any better or worse than any other large company. Their people come from the same business schools and work at other companies before coming to Apple with their MBAs.
I don’t quite agree with the idea that Apple is no different from other companies.
Before iPod, especially after the Fall of 1996, the only reason you worked at Apple is because you want to work there. The foundation for the success of OS X were laid at NeXT, most of whom followed Steve to Apple.
After iPod, suddenly a lot people who got interested in working for Apple. But they were primarily attracted to success, not Apple per-se. These are the same people who, back in the mid-90s, would have scoffed at the idea of working for Apple because it was flailing in the market place.
I thought Steve was supposed to accept failure? Oh, but not criticism.
I’m sure Helen was right if she panicked; being outed just as an Apple employee discussing MobileMe would be bad enough. Having her name publicly disclosed is terrible. I don’t know what drives people to find that stuff out then release it. If they’re doing it because they like spoon feeding names of people to be fired to Apple then that’s okay, except for the ethical questions involved. But if they like getting that sort of information, they’re going about “rewarding” it all wrong. Every time I see one of these events, I think “If I ever have information like this that could get me fired/arrested/killed, I’m never going to release it.” Because some jackass would tirelessly seek me out and blab to everyone that would listen.
(Not that I try to hide very well, given my user name…)
Good job they work at Apple and not NASA
“Apple’s corporate culture ostracizes potential problem labelers”
And thus did Apple die.
>I’m unconvinced: Apple is different from most companies in that it is headed by a galvanic, steel-willed prophet / despot, whose visions mercilessly drive the entire company.
Yes, that’s definitely a recipe for an environment where anyone can step forward to say they see a serious problem and not fear being shouted down or ignored by groupthink. This isn’t an example of how Apple is different from other corporations, it’s an example of how they can fall prey to the same folly as others.