Employees pan Tony Fadell-led Nest as poorly managed, fear-driven machine
Once the darling of Silicon Valley, connected device company Nest -- with former Apple exec Tony Fadell at the helm -- is being described by some workers as a place where a toxic corporate culture has taken hold.
"Nest's every step is administered to death" by company chief Tony Fadell, one former Nest employee told Business Insider. That micromanagement is said to have created an environment where it's "always crunch time," as last-minute design changes result in unrealistically tight deadlines that force employees to work late nights and weekends.
Other former employees who spoke to the outlet "highlighted an atmosphere of 'fear' and said that sitting near Fadell's office meant hearing a constant barrage of shouting."
Criticism of Fadell in particular and his executive team in general has grown sharply following a spate of issues with his firm's flagship products.
Last month, software glitches forced some owners of the company's digital thermostat to wake up in the cold as the thermostat rapidly drained its own battery and shut down. Perhaps more worryingly, Nest's smoke detector faced a safety recall and is now without its tentpole wave-to-silence feature.
Discussion of the article on tech aggregator Hacker News prompted a second volley of complains about Fadell and Nest.
"I worked there. It was literally the worst experience of my career - and I have worked at all of the hardest charging blue chips and two successful startups - so it is not about high expectations - but abuse," one commenter wrote. "I still wake up with something like PTSD occasionally from getting yelled at and bullied by Tony Fadell almost literally every day while I was there."
The Nest thermostat "fails spectacularly at the ONE thing it's supposed to do, which is to let us set a comfortable temperature for our house," said another.
The thermostat "is a dream compared to the smoke detector," read one reply. "The smoke detector goes off all the time -- without rhyme or reason. With a normal detector, you can just pull the battery if it refuses to shut off. With Nest, you actually need a screw driver to open the battery compartment to turn it off."
Dysfunction at Nest has already begun to cost the company some key employees, including Dropcam founders Greg Duffy and Aamir Virani. While it remains to be seen what, if anything, Alphabet chief Larry Page will do to energize the struggling unit, one HN commenter did have a suggestion:
"Frankly, if I could offer Larry Page once piece of advice it would be to take Tony out front of TGIF and fire him publicly -- all of this comes from Tony."
"Nest's every step is administered to death" by company chief Tony Fadell, one former Nest employee told Business Insider. That micromanagement is said to have created an environment where it's "always crunch time," as last-minute design changes result in unrealistically tight deadlines that force employees to work late nights and weekends.
Other former employees who spoke to the outlet "highlighted an atmosphere of 'fear' and said that sitting near Fadell's office meant hearing a constant barrage of shouting."
Criticism of Fadell in particular and his executive team in general has grown sharply following a spate of issues with his firm's flagship products.
Last month, software glitches forced some owners of the company's digital thermostat to wake up in the cold as the thermostat rapidly drained its own battery and shut down. Perhaps more worryingly, Nest's smoke detector faced a safety recall and is now without its tentpole wave-to-silence feature.
Some employees said that "sitting near Fadell's office meant hearing a constant barrage of shouting."
Discussion of the article on tech aggregator Hacker News prompted a second volley of complains about Fadell and Nest.
"I worked there. It was literally the worst experience of my career - and I have worked at all of the hardest charging blue chips and two successful startups - so it is not about high expectations - but abuse," one commenter wrote. "I still wake up with something like PTSD occasionally from getting yelled at and bullied by Tony Fadell almost literally every day while I was there."
The Nest thermostat "fails spectacularly at the ONE thing it's supposed to do, which is to let us set a comfortable temperature for our house," said another.
The thermostat "is a dream compared to the smoke detector," read one reply. "The smoke detector goes off all the time -- without rhyme or reason. With a normal detector, you can just pull the battery if it refuses to shut off. With Nest, you actually need a screw driver to open the battery compartment to turn it off."
Dysfunction at Nest has already begun to cost the company some key employees, including Dropcam founders Greg Duffy and Aamir Virani. While it remains to be seen what, if anything, Alphabet chief Larry Page will do to energize the struggling unit, one HN commenter did have a suggestion:
"Frankly, if I could offer Larry Page once piece of advice it would be to take Tony out front of TGIF and fire him publicly -- all of this comes from Tony."
Comments
They've watched too many TV shows where the Captain says, "make it so" and magically, the impossible gets done.
Even though the Nest had a nice design, I always thought the concept was flawed. If you can remote control the thermostat, you're going to tend to heat up or cool down the house before you get home. This is going to use more energy, not less if one would have ordinarily adjusted the thermostat so that it was using less energy before one left. Only in the case where people kept the house at a comfortable level even when they weren't home would a Nest device save energy.
I've worked for companies where they kept on deferring adding certain functionality to the product (an enterprise application) because they didn't want to make the investment (which was phony anyway, since doing it or not doing it didn't change staffing levels). Then they get some new potential client who wants to see that functionality in a demo and the company head says, "we've got to build this in 48 hours" and everyone has to give up their nights and/or weekends to scramble. But of course, it's not built well, so it all has to be tossed when it's built for real, which it usually isn't until the next client to wants to see that feature. So it's management by chaos and I'm surprised we're not seeing more 35-year-olds with heart attacks because of it.
Godfather my arse - the break thru on the iPod was the wheel and that was Schillers idea from what I've ever read -
Constantly yelling at someone doesn't result in better work. If anything, it results in less work because it will eventually get to the point where you just don't give a shit because you're going to get yelled at anyways. Its no way to run a company (or a division of a company). How would you like it if your boss came in screaming and yelling every day at you? How would you feel about working there? How would you feel for others around you who are getting yelled at? As others have said, sounds like he's trying to be a Steve Jobs and thinking yelling gets work done, when in fact its the opposite.
PS. How hard can it be to get a thermostat and smoke detector to work properly? LOL!