Weekly Update from Alex - 07/10/16

Too much drama on both sides only makes people run away! Cannot blame either sides…it was reaching ridiculous levels…

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His tweets had him on ‘vacation’ for like a month. So I guess there’s a month of backlog emails. Then the whole Note 7 speech I bet all parts of Samsung got “do not blow up devices, ever” … that probably was a good day of time down the drain

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Yeah about that… who wants to bet that was an inside job designed to take the heat off of Smartthings…

I can just see the conversations…

Dude, what’s up with ST? People are pissed the lights don’t work right…

Suck it butt face! At least my hub isn’t hub the house down!

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The idea of a CEO running away would be hilarious if it weren’t so incredibly sad and pathetic. In cases where such were true, it would only serve to demonstrate a truth that was there all along and in all likely hood led to the situation to begin with.

EDIT: Irony at it’s best…

Alex Hawkinson ‏@ahawkinson Oct 12 San Jose, CA
In general, from my standpoint I would be fine if @Instacart, @munchery, and @doordash simply raised prices to ensure a healthy business.

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ROTFLMAO! :laughing:

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As of September 8th he still had a desk 20ft from @Tyler.

I have to say this is a very disappointing turn of events. I came from the Lowe’s Iris world where communication was done through subcontracted PR people. One of the key decision points for me was the level of staff engagement here, especially at the executive level. That openness and ease in which staff and management engages with customers seems to have pretty much gone away. I can’t help but think there’s a gag order in place.

I have to agree - an extremely disappointing last few days. The status has remained as “we are continuing to investigate additional performance improvements” and has not changed since Friday. For the first time in awhile, I actually needed to tweak some thing over the weekend, and it was a very unpleasant experience. Mobile app was extremely slow at best but most of the time just froze up altogether. I was just thinking about a week ago how stable things had been for me (sorry if I jinxed it for everyone), and for the most part that is still true for everything I’ve been able to get running locally. It’s only when I have to touch anything that’s cloud-dependent where things fall apart.

This is just not ok.

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So you are the reason that I am seeing such slow ST app performance @brbeaird ?!?!?

LOL :wink:

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We are apparently not using the same forum as each other!?! …???

There has never been substantial involvement of SmartThings staff here. Not judging – public communication is extremely risky – I’m just pointing out that it isn’t suddenly less than ever before. From time to time, usually either in response to a crises or upon the arrival of a rookie employee, there may be a short spike in posts from staff … but it is always a very short spike.


Visit: SmartThings Community

That page lists ALL of the Forum users and their posting and reading stats. Look at the stats for employees (marked with blue dot in their avatars).

Check out “Year” view. There are only 2 to 4 staff members in the Top 50 members by Replies posted.

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But those staff include three who are assigned to monitor the forum (Aaron, Jody, and Tim, to list them alphabetically), the company CEO (Alex), another founder (Ben, who only left the company in August 2016), and the certification manager (Tyler). That’s three senior staff and three assigned support employees.

I think that is a high-level of involvement, and something typically only seen at start ups or very small companies.

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Ben left SmartThings without saying farewell? :crying_cat_face:

He’s still listed on the “about” page, but his avatar changed from staff to regular community member on August 1, 2016.

https://www.smartthings.com/about

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It’s been two years since the acquisition. He just cashed out and split as soon as his retention agreement was up. Why are you surprised?

This is incorrect. Ben left for personal reasons.

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Obviously, I was speculating. Thank you for setting the record straight. :slight_smile:

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Agreed… I guess “substantial involvement” is relative and subjective.

My point was that the level of involvement, to me, subjectively (despite my reference to Forum Stats) is not on a particular upward or downward trend.

There are significant periods of variance, which may account for the perception by some members that involvement and participation is falling.

And, to the point of the original Topic, objectively it is disappointing that a commitment to weekly status reports was made and simply stopped without being publicly withdrawn or delegated.

That’s why this Topic is still open 3 months after the “Status Report” of July 10th, 2016. Not all promises and commitments can be kept — we all know that. But it doesn’t make it right.


It’s pretty obvious that the least stressful approach to working with SmartThings is to be Zen about it and not have any expectations. Not sure I’m quite there yet.

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I think that’s apathy, and when it hits it’s probably time to move on…

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Well… I still have interest in SmartThings, even if my enthusiasm has waned.

And as a key partner in SmartTiles, I have plenty of concern and a vested interest.

The Zen attitude I recommend is with respect to executive, management, and staff communications. Sometimes they exceed expectations, and sometimes they fall short. I have no expectations either way now, and recommend the same. High expectations in this regard are a path to bipolar disorder. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I think you really need to get out more then. SmartThings is at the top of their game in terms of customer interactivity by a mass-market HA system. If you want to see how bad it gets, check out Wink, or Lowe’s Iris. There is no customer engagement with Lowe’s Iris, none, zero, zip, nada. At least we have something here. It’s not perfect, and Alex’s disappearance isn’t winning me over either, but there are still members of the team active here daily.

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