A Letter From Within RIM

A regular commenter on this blog happens to work at RIM, so I asked him to jot down some thoughts about today's news that RIM would be laying off 2000 employees.

These words belong to Blackberry Ryan:

It was a bit of a somber day around Waterloo. We got an email in the morning explaining that the layoffs would be done by this week, which was good because the cloud of gloom and doom would be gone, but meant I may not have a job by the end of the week, and perhaps that day.

Most of the people that I saw get let go were dead wood: people who have been there forever and simply are in their job because they have been there forever. While my heart goes out to all the people who got laid off, it seems as though the cuts that were made were fair and needed. I have seen much of the organization and there are many people like this. There were some poor cuts, which I believe are strategic, but this is a normal thing in the tech world. RIM has no turn-over and that can be a bad thing. When you have turn-over, you are able to bring on new talent and fresh ideas...I think after this is done, you'll see some awesome ideas coming out of Waterloo that will truly revolutionize the way you work.

After this week, I'll be happy to get back into the old RIM spirit. I can't wait to launch the new products, they are truly great and move us up with the arms race we have been seeing in North America. Contrary to the media portrayal of RIM and our leaders, I believe in the company and I see great things happening. I believe that the senior leadership knows what is going on and has made some great changes to help us become more competitive in North America.

I always hear in the news that we are losing market share. Well, this may be true in North America, but worldwide (you know, the other 95% of the world), we are growing like crazy! We announced that we added 1 Million subscribers in 3 weeks in Europe, Middle East and Africa. How does a company that is "losing" add that many subscribers in 3 weeks?