I'd like to briefly return to your first comment, because I've been trying to understand the essence of your criticism:
> You see, I'm not angry about the switch to WebKit. I'm disappointed that due to years of mistakes, this has become inevitable. Saying "18 years of development has been futile - our codebase is worthless, and will be dropped" is no victory. It's surrender. We lost, and it's our own fault. Stop blaming others - we brought this onto ourselves.
> I'm not surprised about the layoffs. I'm angry that my friends and old co-workers, who I care a lot about, are treated like crap. The last half of the layoffs, mentioned in the Q4 report, seem to have been handled moderately well. The first half (affecting Core) seemed random and arbitrary, lasting weeks - and nobody knew who was next. Suddenly, without warning, the guy next to you - who had been there for a decade - would be leaving. WTF was going on?
I thought I'd focus a bit on this part, because it seems to explain the source of your frustration.
To recap:
You are not angry about the switch to WebKit (decision by the "new management"). You are disappointed in the mistakes by the "old management" which resulted in the "new management" making the switch. So it seems you don't like the move to WebKit after all.
You are OK with the second part of the process (where you seemed to say that people should have been lied to like you claimed happene under the old management instead of what actually happened), but not the first part.
But the first part is where people were given an offer rather than outright fired. I'm assuming that those who had a specific role in the new organization did not get an offer, while those who may not have a specific role yet did. Does this make sense to you?
That the first part of the process lasted for a while is probably because it took a while to figure out what position needed to be filled across the company. If there is no specific position to fill for someone, should he be allowed to choose to get another job, or wait even longer to see if there's a position he can fill when it all settles down?
So what it all boils down to is that you think the first part (where parts the company was restructured, and roles and tasks were not clear right away) was handled poorly. Was it really? I don't know all the details, but I can see a clear and logical reason for why things were done this way, rather than anything being arbitrary, sudden and unfair.
And those who could not accept the move to WebKit at least had a chance to get out with a decent severance package.
Ok, you didn't really answer most of my questions, but you did have a really long reply for one of them.
I'm still somewhat confused. Your description seems to contradict most your previous statements. You seem to be saying that the new management actually had to clean up after the old one because of all the bad decisions you claim were made. You seem to be saying that "the former management made terrible decisions for the company and product, but at least we all had a good time". I don't necessarily agree, but that seems to be the gist of what you are saying.
You are disappointed in the "new management" and yet your comment is about the "old management".
In fact, judging by your description, motivation at the company must have been at rock bottom even several years ago, when your previous comments would have people believe that everything was fine. Once again, I don't necessarily agree. I'm just going by your own description here.
> The company culture was egalitarian. Decisions were not made in some ivory tower
And those decisions, you later claim, were apparently the wrong ones. How does that fit your argument?
> Apple and Mozilla's products, at this time, struggled with the same site compatibility issues as we did in this Microsoft era.
I wouldn't say that. Mozilla had the advantage of the Netscape legacy, and Apple had the advantage of designers usually being on Macs (and despite its limited market share, Apple was loved by the press, giving the company far more influence than its market position would otherwise indicate).
> Not to mention the failed projects we poured resources into, draining all departments for the people they needed just to _catch_up_ to the competition.
Weren't these projects started by the old management, in the old egalitarian company culture you claim existed but is now gone?
> Suddenly, without warning, the guy next to you - who had been there for a decade - would be leaving.
But wasn't that his own decision? Wasn't that guy given the chance to choose himself whether to leave or not? Whether he felt he could live with the technology switch?
See, I have another problem with your criticism of the new management and praise of the old management. You mentioned the 2010 layoffs, and you seem to be saying that it was better to come up with what you claim was a bullshit excuse (economic downturn) to justify it? Once again I must stress that I am not saying that you are right or wrong as that is not my point. I'm questioning the consistency of your claims.
I think most people would agree that it's better to say nothing than to tell a lie. You seems to be accusing the old management of telling lies during the downsizing in 2010.
At least now we have made a major acquisition, which the management obviously could not discuss when the downsizing actually took place. It seems logical that one wishes to save money when buying something expensive, and try to avoid too large of a loan.
> When things got difficult, one would blame Microsoft, as if taking the moral high ground would make any difference.
Isn't this the old management again? And have you not just been arguing that taking the moral high ground is good? That morals are more important than doing what's right for the business? The egalitarian company which makes all the wrong decisions but everyone is having fun is better than the top management making a technology decision that some in the company may not agree with (or God forbid, passionate former employees do not agree with)?
> We should have thrown out that ugly ad-banner instantly. Dropped the old paid model the moment Phoenix came into existence.
You may not recall the round of layoffs back then. A company can't support further development without any revenue, after all. You can't just drop one of your main sources of revenue without knowing that you can replace it. And even when we did remove the ads, it was not certain that it would work. It probably would, but it was not a certainty.
> I spent seven years of my life on this project. Now it's gone.
Yes, I'm sure it's frustrating to see someting you've worked hard on for years disappear, but that doesn't mean it's the wrong decision.
Opera as you knew it is gone, you say. But the Opera you knew doesn't sound all that great if we are to judge by your passionate description of the state of affairs at the time.
All those decisions that you say were so terrible... they were made under the old "good management", in the culture you have just praised. It seems to me you can't have it both ways. You can't have engineers make all the decisions, and then first complain that this power was taken away from them, and later complain that the decision that were made under the system you praised were bad ones.
You want a technology-driven company where everyone gets to make or influence decisions, but you also claim that this led to major problems.
See, I can't get it to make any sense. While you seem passionate about this, it just doesn't sound logical or consistent.
The 90 or so people who decided to leave (some couldn't accept the technology change) or were laid off included not only engineers (QA and development), but also marketing, sales, and other departments.
I read somewhere that about half of the people leaving were engineers. Since engineers make up the majority of the company, it actually seems like the development teams weren't hit as hard as non-development teams.
> In addition, morale is at rock bottom, with a number of people leaving on their own. Opera as we knew it is gone.
I think some people were offered voluntary severance packages. I'm guessing that some were disappointed by the move to WebKit, and this was a golden opportunity for them to move on to something else. Those who remain, then, should be committed to the new engine (and those who remain are the vast majority, as far a I can tell).
I don't know about morale being at rock bottom. It's pretty liberating to not have to deal with those site compatibility problems (to such an extent) anymore. Morale usually increases when people get to do cool things instead of grinding on the same old compatibility problems forever. Of course, downsizings are never fun, but I've been through probably 5 or 6 of them in my years at Opera. People get over it eventually.
Is the Opera you knew gone? That depends on what the Opera you knew was. The company has been under constant change for as long as I've been here at least. With the growth of the company and the changes in the market in general, that is quite inevitable.
> In the 2010 downsizing (described by the HR VP as "rightsizing"), they at least tried to make the decisions look good internally, blaming the economic downturn. The last two rounds they didn't even bother. No explainations, just individual talks - and a wave of fear.
We had a department meeting, and to their credit, they actually told the affected people right away. They didn't have to wait for days or weeks to hear the judgment, which is what happened under the previous management.
As for reasons, the change in technology is obvious. Then there's the acquisition of Skyfire which seems to be the biggest one in Opera's history. It's going to cost a lot of money, so it seems logical that the company wishes to save money where they can.
> My loyalty is to my old team and the technology - not the current mismanagement.
In a comment elsewhere you started that the switch to WebKit was the inevitable result of Opera's past missteps. Does that not mean that you are actually arguing that the change done by the current management is caused by the mistakes of the former management which you now praise? That the former "good management" actually forced the hands of the current "bad management" with its mistakes?
> You see, I'm not angry about the switch to WebKit. I'm disappointed that due to years of mistakes, this has become inevitable. Saying "18 years of development has been futile - our codebase is worthless, and will be dropped" is no victory. It's surrender. We lost, and it's our own fault. Stop blaming others - we brought this onto ourselves.
> I'm not surprised about the layoffs. I'm angry that my friends and old co-workers, who I care a lot about, are treated like crap. The last half of the layoffs, mentioned in the Q4 report, seem to have been handled moderately well. The first half (affecting Core) seemed random and arbitrary, lasting weeks - and nobody knew who was next. Suddenly, without warning, the guy next to you - who had been there for a decade - would be leaving. WTF was going on?
I thought I'd focus a bit on this part, because it seems to explain the source of your frustration.
To recap:
You are not angry about the switch to WebKit (decision by the "new management"). You are disappointed in the mistakes by the "old management" which resulted in the "new management" making the switch. So it seems you don't like the move to WebKit after all.
You are OK with the second part of the process (where you seemed to say that people should have been lied to like you claimed happene under the old management instead of what actually happened), but not the first part.
But the first part is where people were given an offer rather than outright fired. I'm assuming that those who had a specific role in the new organization did not get an offer, while those who may not have a specific role yet did. Does this make sense to you?
That the first part of the process lasted for a while is probably because it took a while to figure out what position needed to be filled across the company. If there is no specific position to fill for someone, should he be allowed to choose to get another job, or wait even longer to see if there's a position he can fill when it all settles down?
So what it all boils down to is that you think the first part (where parts the company was restructured, and roles and tasks were not clear right away) was handled poorly. Was it really? I don't know all the details, but I can see a clear and logical reason for why things were done this way, rather than anything being arbitrary, sudden and unfair.
And those who could not accept the move to WebKit at least had a chance to get out with a decent severance package.