tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
1
I posted in another Topic recently that there’s more and more evidence that SmartThings is likely to be reorganized and no longer run as an “independent” subsidiary of Samsung (4 years after acquisition in August 2014). My first comment was on a thread about the SmartThings Store being merged with Samsung’s Store.
Throwing another log on the fire here. Latest Glassdoor review (unverified), which describes the transformation of SmartThings Samsung; and … mentions Alex Hawkinson leaving. Was bound to happen someday. Or maybe this is not factual.
With Alex’s [Hawkinson] departure, we no longer have a CEO and the other execs are either never in office, obviously don’t use our product (with the exception of our really savvy CTO [Robert Parker] who knows everything about the product…
Smart home industry is a money pit for the tech giants that want to secure a future place on the market. They have to do financial acrobatics to justify the losses. Look no further than Nest and Alphabet. They are going through the same problems.
I’m not really surprised, I’m more surprised it has taken this long. As someone involved in a company that has been ‘purchased’ and in turn we have purchased four other companies, we saw both ours and their CEOs change very quickly.
Nest’s problem is that they utterly refuse to become even remotely price competitive. I’m hoping that’s going to change the further they get reintegrated back into Google.
The passion and intelligence people bring to work every day is clouded by a complete lack of direction. There is really low morale and our leadership lacks vision and direction.
I guess not much have changed at ST in four years despite all the promises and high hopes.
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
9
Well - A new top-guy (Matt Lynch) and official “change” of relationship with Samsung will certainly bring brand new “high hopes”.
Change is inevitable: Optimism (or pessimism ) is optional.
I’m actually consider myself an optimist for sticking with SmartThung as a user for this long, hoping there would be a breakthrough one sunny day. Obviously, I’ve been more optimistic than some of ST employees.