Category Archives: Work

(yet another) new phone.

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HP wanted to compete with Apple and Google. Rather than just make hardware and license Windows, they wanted to own the complete product, both hardware and software. Rather than create this all from scratch, they decided to buy Palm for $1.2B. They of course then used this technology to create the HP Touchpad, and we all know what happened there…… Because things didn’t go as planned, they decided to stop making webOS hardware, and focus on just the software (Palm’s webOS). webOS’s future is now uncertain. HP has mentioned either licensing it or selling it, but with Android being free, and doing really well, they’ve probably struggled.
Of course, when HP manufactured their own phones, they required that all employees with a company phone have an HP phone. This makes sense. They’re not going to buy their own employees a competitors device. But, just in the last week, HP decided that since they were no longer making their own devices, they’d approve non HP phones. That means I now have a Samsung Galaxy S2, and it’s amazing!

I love it. Being a lover of Linux, open source, and most things Google, this is the perfect device. I was a longtime Android fan before joining HP, and it was something I missed over the last 18 months.. Sure, with Android there are so many devices coming out that soon this won’t be super high end, but right now it’s pretty much the best Android device available. It has a great screen (4.3″ 800×480), 1GB of RAM, and probably the best SoC available (similar overall to the A5. Better CPU, worse GPU). It uses a 1.2 Ghz dual core ARM A9 CPU with a 4 core ARM Mali GPU.

Sure, the new Galaxy Nexus will probably be a little nicer phone overall when it comes out next month, but mostly just because of the software and screen. The SoC (TI OMAP 4460) in the Galaxy Nexus is actually inferior to the Samsung Exynos 4210. I’m fairly certain that Google picked the TI OMAP as the Android 4.0 lead hardware because it would be fairer for other device manufacturers (especially their newly acquired Motorola Mobility). TI doesn’t make their own phones, so all their OMAP chips ship to other companies like Motorola and Nokia. Samsung will sell their chips to other companies, but the bulk of their chips go in their own devices.
Regardless of what may or may not come out in the future, I couldn’t be happier. My work approved and paid for the exact device I would have chosen for myself anyway! The only downside is that I had to switch from Verizon to AT&T to get it :(

It’s crazy, but in just the last two years this is my 7th smartphone (all company bought!).

At my last company I had an HTG G1. We then switched to Verizon and I got the original Droid. Then when I switched jobs to HP and got an HP windows mobile phone. Then, HP bought Palm, so I got a Palm Pre plus. Then They upgraded me to the Palm Pre 2. Then I requested to switch from Verizon to AT&T (so that I could use my phone in India), so I got an identical Palm Pre 2 for AT&T. And now finally, I upgraded to the Samsung Galaxy S2!
All’s Well That Ends Well :)

Flight to Bangalore

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This week HP sent me to Bangalore, India. That meant flying from Salt Lake to New York (JFK), to Paris, to Bangalore. All in all, around 22 hours in the air. Here is info on my flight

Salt Lake City to New York City JFK.
The person sat to my left was straight out of “A Beautiful Mind.” She had about 10 different newspapers, and she was highlighting words all over the place, drawing lines connecting letters, and copying down complete sentences while she studied for patterns. Then she started doing the same thing with a novel that she had (about Churchill during WWII). Talk about Crazy. Then she pulled out her white iPhone 4 and started sending an email (I know this because she was giving everyone around her a running commentary – She really thought she was a super spy, and for all I know, she probably thought she was emailing the president.). I glanced at her phone and she had 2500 unread emails…. (Yep she’s one of those). It was really painful trying to watch her type on the iPhone’s on-screen keyboard. She took about 4 seconds per letter.
Then I had a different guy on the right. He was one of those back packers. The kind that thinks he can tour the world with only the contents in his pack. So, he asked me where I was going, but it was obvious that the only reason he was asking was so that I would politely ask him the same question. His eyes lit up when I did. He told me he was travelling to New York to do race commentary. He explained that he was going to a mud race where he would hold a microphone and shout out commentary. It wasn’t televised, it wasn’t a big event, and it didn’t sound like there were even many spectators, so who knows why he’d be giving commentary.

New York City (JFK) to Paris (Charles de Gaulle)
We get on the flight, but the pilot announces that there’s a mechanical malfunction with the plane. We sit and wait on the tarmac while the mechanics come over and investigate. Since we’re stuck with no departure ETA, the old woman next to me decides to stand up and start doing yoga. She would deliberately do the more extravagant moves when she thought people were looking. I’m certain she wanted me to ask about it, but I ignored her. Unfortunately, the other woman (Woman B) on our row decided to to ask. Great! Now the whole row got a long speech about her super cool meditation techniques, and how easy to learn it was.

Unfortunately for all of us, woman B asked the worst followup question imaginable “Can you teach me?”  Just what I needed. Yoga woman’s eyes lit up. Fortunately/unfortunately, the pilot saved me by announcing that the issue required a part to be replaced and, not having it in stock, we’d all have to get off. The flight ended up being cancelled. Delta then gave us coupons for a Taxi and a Hotel (Hampton Inn) until the next day. Hey, there are worse places to be stuck for 24 hours than New York, right?
We walked to where you get a taxi and got it. He took us to the hotel and then refused to take the taxi coupon that Delta had given us. Brilliant. Luckily NY taxis now take credit cards. We arrived at the hotel and quickly got to our rooms. I turn on my laptop and try to connect to the internet. Their security page says that wifi is free for guests, and I just have to put my last name and room number to get online. It doesn’t work. I try to call the front desk, but the phone in my hotel doesn’t seem to work. I call the front desk from my mobile phone, and the woman says “It’s your fault, you must be entering the information in wrong” I politely tell her that I know how to spell my own name, and I’m pretty sure I typed 102 (my room number) in correctly. She then reads back how my name is in the system. “W-I-L-L-I-A-S-M-S. Seriously, who can’t spell my last name. It’s extremely common. Finally, she fixes is, and I get online. The next day we took a cab into the city and walked around. I ate swordfish at Union Square Cafe, which I highly recommend, looked around, and headed to the airport.

New York City (JFK) to Paris (Charles de Gaulle)  - 2nd attempt.
We arrive at the airport, and try to print the boarding pass. It gives an error saying that we must see a Delta employee. We do, and find out we’re apparently not scheduled on the flight. It’s obviously caused by the mix up of the cancelled flight. After an hour of arguing, and almost missing the flight, they agree to put us on it just minutes before it’s departure. They also upgrade us from Economy to Economy Comfort. Nice, right? We are the last to board, and take our seats. We were both sat on either side of a triple seat row at the front of the cabin, so we had a lot of space. A few minutes after I’ve sat down, a flight attendant asks me to return to my original seat. She basically thought I’d switched seats and given myself a free upgrade. After I finally understood what she was accusing me of, I showed my boarding pass and she left me alone. Two minutes later a guy comes up to the same flight attendant and asks to sit in between me and the other HP employee, as he’s stuck at the back of the plane next to a crying baby. Fortunately, the flight attendant was not the patient type, and blew him off.

Paris (Charles de Gaulle) to Bangalore, India
After a fairly uneventful flight, we arrive in Bangalore to find that Air France had lost our luggage.

We were given 100€ to buy new clothes. Being the genius that I am, I had no extra clothes aside from what I was already wearing. Luckily, we soon arrived that the hotel (at 2:30AM), where they provided me with some spare clothes and offered a laundry service. As luck would have it, our luggage was found and delivered to us on the last day of our trip.

The rest of the trip went well. I spent some of the time at the Bangalore HP office, and the last day touring the city (as it was festival day). Great food!

 Even though India is 11 ½ hours ahead of Utah, the jet lag actually wasn’t that bad.

Overtime.

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I remember when I was a student and was paid hourly. I used to sign up for frequent Saturday shifts. The same went for holidays. I worked 9-5 every day of the 2 week Christmas break, worked thanksgiving, etc… The same happened over the summer holidays. While many of my friends would go home and literally do nothing for the entire months of June, July and August, I would work. I was still able to have a social life. I would just hang out with my friends at night. Some semesters I took classes over the summer break, but I would still work at least 30 hours/week. It just felt good to build up some savings. To be honest, I always wondered what some of my non-working friends did all day. Some of them had a class at 10am, then another class a 3pm, and another at 5pm. But what did they do the the rest of the day…. seriously? I usually had class blocked out perfectly. I has class from 9-1pm, and worked from 1-5pm. I had to take exams at the testing centre at night, which sucked, but still, it was worth it when my paycheck arrived. Still, back to my main point. I worked those extra hours because my hours correlated perfectly with my paycheck.

Everything changed the moment I graduated and was switched to Salary. Suddenly it didn’t matter if I worked 40 or 70 hours in a given week. My paycheck looked identical. My eagerness to work overtime disappeared instantly.Why should I work weekends? Why should I stay late?

Everyone knows to expect occasional overtime. I understand that sometimes there are important deadlines, but where do you draw the line? After 45 hours? 50? 60? how about 70? In reality, most managers have no incentive to protect a full-time salaried employee from overtime. After all, it costs them the same whether you work 40 or 70 hours in any given week. So, if a company can produce more in 70 vs 40 hours of work, and at the same exact cost…. overtime almost seems like an inevitability. I suppose like everything in this world, there’s hierarchy. At the end of the day, a manager (or boss) just wants to report success to his superiors. They want to report that the project is complete/working. They don’t really want to report that they sent their engineers home due to too much overtime, and that they’ll fix it the following morning.

 

During my last few jobs I’ve noticed that there are 2 distinct types of managers (though obviously various subsets of each).

 

  • Manager-1 cares specifically about his employees. He wants to get the best out of them, but doesn’t want to take advantage of them. He wants to treat them fairly, and pay them according to their worth. If a project doesn’t get completed on time, the manager will (unless it’s absolutely urgent) alert his superiors that the deadline was unrealistic, that there were unforeseen complications, and that it will be finished soon. In the event that there’s a problem that’s absolutely mission critical, and requires overtime, Manager-1 will very nicely ask his employees for help, and, most importantly, make up for it later. Whether that is a raise/bonus and/or time off depends on the amount and frequency of the overtime. Not only that, but a good manager will proactively try to prevent overtime from being necessary, usually by either stretching out release dates, or hiring more employees.
  • Manager-2 only cares about results. You’ll only ever go home on time if absolutely EVERYTHING is finished perfectly. Manager-2 only ever wants to report success to his superiors. He hates to hear complaints, even if they’re extremely valid. If something goes wrong, it doesn’t matter if it’s the middle of the night, or if you’ve already put in 60 hours that week, he’ll call, wake you up, and expect you to start work immediately. You won’t be compensated, and won’t be thanked, as you’re expected to do this sort of thing. Manager-2 likes to take credit for his employee’s work. Worse than that, he ends up believing it himself. Because of this, when a worker complains that he’s done too much overtime, Manager-2 is surprised, as he really believes he’s the hardest working person in the office.

Like most of us, I’ve had both types of bosses before. As you can guess, employees of Manager-1 are much more willing to do overtime, as they know their boss will make it right. Not only that, but they’ll try to make their boss look good in front of his superiors. It’s ironic, but the manager who only values results usually gets worse results.

Yet another mobile phone

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Those of you who know me know that a little over six months ago I started a new job at HP working on their Web Print Solutions team. Leaving my previous job at a startup meant giving up my old phone (Motorola Droid). It was a great phone. One that I’d only had for about five months. During the transition, I temporarily bought an old HTC T-Mobile G1 with a month to month plan. I had that for two months until HP got me a phone on their corporate plan. Working for such a huge company has many differences vs the average startup. First, they actually produce equipment that you use. Rather than buying everything from other companies, you can order many things from yourself (internally), and save a bunch of money. Because of this, if HP makes a version of something you want to buy, it’s usually expected that you get the HP version. Usually this doesn’t matter, as I don’t really care if my computer monitor is made by HP or someone else. There aren’t going to be too many differences. But, in the case of a mobile phone, the differences are huge. I was only given the option of one phone on one network. Unfortunately for me, the options were both bad. It uses the worst ‘smartphone’ operating system (OS), on the nation’s least reliable network. The reason for the lack of choice? HP builds their own phones, and have only released them for AT&T. It would obviously look pretty bad if HP employees didn’t use their own phones.  Now, as I’m sure you’re wondering, “why can HP force you to get a certain type of phone!” Obviously they can’t force you to buy a certain type of phone, but they can restrict what types of phones they give their employees. Due to my job, HP pays for my phone (and plan), so it’s only fair that they choose what it is. Thus, my only choice was to get an HP iPaq Glisten on AT&T.
I am a current HP employee, so I probably shouldn’t be too critical. But I’ll say one thing. They’re using Windows Mobile 6.5, and I believe Windows Mobile 6.5 to be truly terrible. HP, being mostly a hardware (and services) company didn’t have their own mobile OS. Most mobile OS’s aren’t for sale. Apple and RIM won’t licence out their OS for use on HP hardware. So really, there were only 3 options:

  1. Build their own OS
  2. Ship with a licensable OS, such as Windows Mobile (or, more recently, Android and Symbian)
  3. Buy a phone company that already owns its own mobile OS

Which did HP do? Well, they started out doing #2. The problem here is that they were entirely reliant on Microsoft to do a good job for them to have a successful product. As we all know, the iPhone came out a little over 3 years ago, and blew Windows Mobile out of the water. So HP was left with a huge problem. They had an inferior product because Microsoft had dropped the ball. By only controlling the hardware, HP could only do so much to compete against the iPhone (and more recently, Android), so it wasn’t their fault they had an inferior device. The solution? Either switch to Android, or buy a phone company. In July 2010 HP purchased Palm Inc. for $1.2b, thus giving them the very capable mobile OS named webOS, along with a whole bunch of useful patents. Now HP  controls both the hardware and software.

So, what does this all have to do with me? Well, since HP now owns Palm (and webOS), Palm phones are now on the approved list of devices for HP employees. This means that I’m now able to get a Palm prē + (in doing so, I’m also able to switch to Verizon Wireless, the best national carrier! hooray for no more dropped calls!). The choice was really a no-brainer. I was given the choice between the Palm Prē or Palm Pixi on either of the available carriers (Verizon, Sprint or AT&T). Obviously Verizon is the biggest/best carrier, and the Prē is clearly Palm’s flagship device (having a significantly superior CPU/GPU over the Pixi). Also worth noting is that the Palm Prē came out first on Sprint. 6 months later, it arrived on Verizon and AT&T with double the RAM and flash memory (512MB RAM and 16GB Flash), redubbed the Palm Prē plus. So by choosing Verizon I not only got the best network, but also the best version of the Prē.

So, how do I like it so far? While it’s obviously miles better than Windows Mobile, I do admit I’m still a fan of Android. Having said that, webOS is an extremely capable OS. To be honest, my major gripes with the phone are actually hardware (read: all easily fixable). The main issues I have with it are screen resolution (480×320, which is very last-gen), and the small screen (3.1″, also last-gen). With all recent Android devices being 3.7″ or bigger, with at least 800×480 resolution, this screen feels a little cramped. Also, the CPU feels a little underpowered. It’s the same CPU as in the original Droid (though it’s underclocked to 500Mhz). And the Droid has obviously since been replaced with the Droid 2. All recent Android smartphones have been coming out with 1Ghz CPUs, and having ‘just’ a 500Mhz CPU is noticeable. Still, two great things are the RAM and Flash storage. Both are as good as any other device on the market (with the exception of the $300 iPhone 32GB). The keyboard is decent, and usable despite being of the small portrait variety, rather than the more common landscape kind. Another downside is the fast that the touch screen is plastic (versus almost all modern smartphones that are now hardened or Gorilla glass).

I actually don’t have too many complaints for webOS. It’s an extremely polished OS with a great user interface (UI). It has clearly been designed to compete with the iPhone. In many ways it trumps it. Multitasking is perfect, and there are a number of great ideas and keyboard shortcuts. Cut/Copy/Paste is great, as is Synergy, webOS’s way of combining contacts from numerous sources such as Gmail, Facebook, Exchange and Yahoo.

The obviously downside to not having sold too many devices is the fact that the Palm App Catalog has only a small fraction of the apps that Android and iOS uers have, but, if HP can deliver great hardware in the coming months, users with flock to it, which will in turn bring developers.

The biggest loser in all of this is of course Microsoft. They’re had nothing good to compete with the iPhone for 3 1/2 years, and because of it they’ve lost HP, Motorola and most of HTC, as customers. Microsoft’s new mobile OS, Windows Phone 7 is set for release this month, which will be the first time Microsoft officially supports capacitive touch screens (disgraceful huh?). Honestly, how does a company with a research and development budget the size of Microsoft’s take 3 1/2 years to catch up with Apple?
I’ll tell you why. Some companies, such as Apple and Google are creative companies. They create something better because they can. Microsoft, being the dominant player in most markets doesn’t need to take such risks. They merely need to maintain what they have without taking too many risks. Then, if a competitor releases a significantly superior product, Microsoft has time to ‘play catchup.’ Obviously this isn’t good for the consumer, as we’re all reliant on the Apples and Googles of this world to provide innovation. I’m getting off topic here, but just ask yourselves why Microsoft fired the Internet Explorer team after they released Internet Explorer 6. Why? Because there was no competition, Netscape was dead. Why did they bring them back to create Internet Explorer 7 (many many years later), simply because Firefox was released. If Firefox had not been released, Microsoft would not have improved Internet Explorer 6. Ever. Ironically, I remember when Internet Explorer 7 was released. Mozilla (creators of Firefox) made the statement “Internet Explorer 7 is the best release we’ve ever made.” (obviously implying that the only reason IE 7 was released was because of the competition they’d created with Firefox).

Will Windows Phone 7 be good? Probably; but it had better be after almost 5 years in development. The problem is, I don’t want to use Microsoft products because you then become tied to a company that only innovates if they have to, rather than because they want to. I really believe that if the iPhone (and Android) had never been released, WP7 would never have existed in its current form. They’d probably still be using a stylus. If WP7 is good, it will all be thanks to Apple and Google.

The cost of engineering

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I read something very interesting the other day while looking for a Firmware update to my Samsung LN46b650 HDTV.

An owner of the same TV as me was asking (on a forum) Samsung to release an updated firmware with support for more codecs. The Samsung rep. replied that it was an older model, and that engineering effort was mostly spent on newer and unreleased models. Sounds obvious so far, right?
Here comes the funny part. The user replies:

“I would be willing to pay for the requested firmware update to defray the companies costs”

Does anyone else see how realize how stupid this sounds?

Having worked as an Engineer at several different places I can tell you that engineering a new firmware is no quick and simple task. It usually requires a Project Manager and depending on the size of the project, it can take between a few and dozens of Engineers. Then it takes lots Quality Assurance testers who verify that there are no regressions, and finally, it requires a Release Manager who approves the final release as ‘Production Ready.’
So, given the fact that the firmware is already available and a few features just need to be added does simplify things, but you’re still talking possibly thousands of man-hours. Even if one Engineer could do this upgrade by himself, it would still require lots of testing (imagine if an ‘update’ broke your TV!). All in all, you’re probably talking tens of thousands of dollars for a fairly simply update. Something that one individual user is hardly going to fund. Seriously, what was this guy willing to pay. $10? That pays a single engineer’s salary for about 12 minutes.

This isn’t the case with software updates. How many of us have downloaded a software ‘update’ that screwed stuff up? Probably all of us. The difference here is that you can usually fix a software update with another update (or hotfix). Firmware, however is different. Because it sits right on top of the hardware, it can do much more damage. It would be quite easy, for example, for a firmware update to break its own ability to update, so, the new firmware doesn’t allow further updating. With software, this can happen too, but there’s nothing stopping you from uninstalling and reinstalling an older version. This usually isn’t possible with Firmware.

It just goes to show that for a great Engineering product, you generally need to be selling millions of devices. How else can you afford to spend millions on Research and Development? Thats what makes my change of job so drastic. My last two jobs were very small startup companies. The first (http://novadrill.com/) had just a handful of Engineers, and we were each our own QA. They ended up being very successful, selling to a much larger company. The company had some good technology, but it needed to sell to one of the big players. In fact, it was always intended to be sold. There was never a plan to get to market alone. They knew they’d need lots and lots of funding, and that meant being bought out. The initial funding was really just to create products that could show great potential, and interest some of the big players. Now I’m at HP working on Eprint. There are literally hundreds of people involved. Every week I’m on a conference call with people I’ve never heard of. There are entire teams of people in multiple different countries working on different parts of the product. Of course, HP is only investing this much money on the project because they know that each year they sell millions and millions of printers. That means several things. 1, they will very quickly have a huge customer base, and 2, they want an extra edge over the competition, and obviously they wouldn’t mind getting their own app store.

New job!

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Today I started my first day at HP. I’m working on the Linux side of their imaging and printing solutions group in American Fork, UT. Basically, all future HP printers will be able to connect to the cloud to download/upload stuff. I’m working with the team of people that will get the server side stuff ready. I’m really excited. Not only do I get to work with the newest and most expensive technology, but I get to work with some really smart people. As I’ve only worked there for one day, I really don’t know too many details of all the stuff I’ll be doing, but it’s all Linux related :) . So far I’ve mostly been setting up my machine/email address (they’ve given me a Desktop with a nice 24″ HP monitor, and I have an HP laptop/dock on order). I still can’t get into the building without knocking, as I don’t have an HP employee ID card, but that should arrive soon. It should be very different to what I’m used to. I’m used to working for companies that are quite limited in funding, and have had me build the cheapest working solution, HP is all about buying stuff that has support contracts. Here are a few examples of the differences:

Past jobs vs HP

Free (with no support) Linux open source gateway/router  –> Cisco gateways/routers (with support)
Free (with no support) CentOS –>  RedHat (with support)
Free (with no support) MySQL –> Oracle (with support)
Free (with no support) OpenVPN –> Cisco

Get the idea? It’s not always that a paid solution is better than the free version (case and point RedHat vs CentOS – they’re identical), but in a worldwide production environment, it’s useful to be using a product that you can get support from if something goes really wrong. If CentOS goes wrong, I end up reading through log files and bug reports.

In many cases, the best version is the open source (free) version. For example, there is no better kernel than the Linux kernel (suck it BSD fans!), there’s no better web server than Apache, and the best two browsers (Firefox and Chrome) are both open source. But this isn’t always the case. Oracle has many more features than MySQL, and Microsoft Office 2007 (and soon to be 2010) is better than OpenOffice (though I still use OpenOffice because it works on Linux and it’s ‘good enough’).
My point is, sometimes free software is better, and sometimes paid software is better. Unfortunately, too often price is the deciding factor on everything. It’s going to be nice to work in a place where money is not usually the issue. If a free product is better, we’ll use it, but if a thousand dollar piece of software is just a tiny bit better than the free version, HP will probably buy it.

I’m not sure what else I can say now, as it’s very early, and until I learn what’s going on, I won’t be contributing anything to the team. Hopefully I catch up quickly. Wish me luck.