Another Exec leaves Palm, this time for AOL 43
As Palm heads towards its acquisition by HP, we can expect plenty of the team to leave the company and head for other pastures. The latest is David Temkin, the VP for the Developer Platform at Palm. PaidContent reports that Temkin is leaving to head mobile for AOL, "working very closely with all of the strategy groups to drive [AOL's] Mobile platform and product experiences globally." That quote comes from an internal AOL memo from Temkin's new boss, Brad Garlinghouse.
Temkin joined Palm in October 2009; he writes that his role included "Leading the team responsible for the webOS app catalog, SDK, developer tools, and portal." Temkin was also formerly the founder and CEO of Lazlo Systems
Other employees who have recently left Palm include Matias Duarte (to Google), Mike Abbot (to Twitter), and Rich Dellinger (to Apple). We're the furthest thing from corporate takeover specialists, but as with the previous exoduses we're not thinking this is anything beyond the normal churn that happens during these kinds of events.
Source: PaidContent and LinkedIn; Thanks to Jason for the tip!
43 Comments
Wow, stepping off of the Titanic, onto a remnant of PT109?
CLASSIC!
I agree. AOL must be willing to pay this dude a king's ransom... :)
My best wishes to David
well, the dev portal is still broken for IE users, the app catalog has had and still has issues both for devs and users.
So as a dveloper I hope the person that will be coming in, does a better job.
50% of the web is broken for IE users. Because IE is broken.
does the pre use IE ;) , the dev portal hardly works on the pre.
haven't yet found a forum where the "post topic" "post reply" don't work, yet it proudly states "Firefox 3.5+, Safari 4.x and IE 8 recommended", the app submission is in shambles, you must request a "reject" to get an update rejected, however the Palm reviewers need to be emailed to actually reject the app (unless you want to wait for someone to actually go through the rejection requests)...
the truth is the SDK was late in coming, the dev portal needs a major overhaul, the app catalog could do with an overhaul...
Which means engadget will be broken in few weeks.
I agree. This guy appears to have been in charge of many of the failures of Palm over the past year, while much of the company was overachieving.
Him leaving for AOL just reaffirms that this guy was dead weight anyway.
When a company aquires another company you have an overlap of talent. So some leave(or already was thinking of leaving) to make room. Trim the fat. Repostion resources. Get rid of the old light bread for some fresh baked. Get rid of the old cookies in the cookie jar for new chocolate chip........you get the point.
you're making me hungry....
good luck to him... AOL? Really? Really? Either AOL is needing help baaad or everyplace else looked at the app catalog, and how long past release date of the phone the sdk was available.. Lets face it those were and are some bad marks.
Just as long as the developers stick around I'll be happy.
I'm sure some of them already have. However, these are low level people that you will never see mentioned in a press release.
The only true way to find this out would be to see a count of employees when the acquisition was announced, and a mention of how many employees are still there when the acquisition actually goes through.
So this loser is responsible for the current International bowl of barf that the Palm App Catalog is? Now wonder he's leaving. Morons like this usually leave first and leave a mess.
"International bowl of barf". Nice.
I was thinking more along the lines of the proverbial turd in the smartphone punchbowl.
The crApp Catalog is the worst Bucket O' Junk (R) that I've ever seen (from a software perspective) out there.
The All New AOL Phone - Featuring Rotary Dialing!
Rotary Dial-up, and I just got rid of my modem cradle!
I hope the main brains behind Webos doesn't leave.It can be good to have new fresh ideas. But it can be bad too because the new people might not have the same vision from middle to end.It's like having a child and giving it up for adoption.Either the the new parents wil give them a better life with new possibilites or they will be a burden to their growth.Sorry to use humans as an example for software.
My experience with acquisitions of this sort is that a lot of the overhead of the company being acquired drops and moves on (like we have seen so far with Palm). Those hurt, but are not deadly. The ones that are deadly are the low level "brains" behind all of the overhead -- those you won't see mentioned in any press release. The biggest problem with this is that the "best of the best" always go first (since it is easier for them to find jobs), and the acquisition finalizes with the ones who were unable to find a new job somewhere else.
I work for a large company that acquires others all the time, I have seen this over and over again. Many times it is the IP and customer base that is really being acquired, the employees are typically not the reason.
aol still exists?
AOL owns Engadget. Ever heard of that?
Again, this means absolutely NOTHING. People come and go for various reasons. Nothing to see here, people. Move along...
"normal churn" is understandable in management with takeovers, but when the key guys who laid out and oversaw the fundamental aspects of your whole product jump ship, I think that's a pretty clear indicator that things are not going to be business as usual going forward.
Either way, good luck, Palm. I just ordered my Nexus One, but if you ever catch up, I'll definitely take another look at you...
And you feel that everyone here needs to know you bought a N1 today, isn't it?
I'll give you a clue: nobody needs that info, thanks.
The model of phone isn't the point. It's that I was the biggest Palm promoter in my circle, loyal and evangelistic. But Palm screwed it up with their hardware build, with my 4th phone in less than 10 months starting to fail on me now. I need a phone that I know will work when I need to use it, and very sadly, that's not the Pre. I've got my fingers crossed that HP's hardware team will be able to correct that deficit, but I'll believe it when I see it.
I think that "normal churn" is understandable in management with takeovers, but when the key guys who laid out and oversaw the fundamental aspects of your whole product jump ship, I think that's a pretty clear indicator that things are not going to be business as usual going forward. is far from being a "my phone doesn't work for me because of hardware quality". It fits better in the Palm is doomed, webOS too, be smart and jump ship like me category, sorry.
So, they had a hardware design that didnt work well for some people. There are two types of Pre owners. Those on their first from release date, and those on their 5th. You're preaching to the pope to tell them you're unhappy with the fact that you can't keep a Pre together. That's old news that you can share with PalmParchma over a McDonalds lunch. Fact is, Palm did take care of you, and you still want to kick them? Go play with you N1 and hang with the droids. If its so good, go celebrate among your peers and the TMO cult. Would you continue to go to the local Mustang Owners club meeting and lament about the high points of your Dodge Neon?
Nexus One, wow, sounds like a blast from the past, hard to believe in January, this was the final word in mobile tech...until it came out.
Are you talking about the Nexus One or the Palm Pre? :-)
Palm Pre definitely fell into that catagory as well, but WebOS was born and it did exceed expectations while the hardware came up very short.
drcrank, I feel what you are saying (despite the needless attacks you've received for your post).
WOW, I have forgotten all about AOL. Good thing this guy is good looking. Seems that his past is not that great with WebOS.
AOl got him because of their stock options, I'm sure. Compuserv was in the running but couldn't match the package. ;)
Compuserve is owned by AOL.
with the acquisition by HP so near, THE execs @ PALM Are either part of the problem or part of the Solution.. To The execs still @ Palm : If you are not part of the Solution...GTFO!" Which leaves more room for aspiring folks to make a difference.....
Its plain simple. Ruby and Team is the core team. If you are not in the "Team" good luck. The ones who left are really the cream and believe in the platform. The ones like Mike abbott and Duarte.... can leave the team but will have least impact on the platform. The foundation of the platform is mature, it just needs good hardware and beefy SDK. With HP taking over, the hardware issues will be resolved. The SDK will take another year to be on par with other platforms.
opps..double post!
aol? He must be desperate. I guess Prodigy and Netzero aren't hiring?
If AOL is so bad and this guy leaves Palm for AOL, what does that say about Palm?
The performance of the average employee at both firms...just went UP!
What, everybody upgrades on every change of jobs? Great goal, but not a certain reality.
AOL needs him...I wish him the best. The new OS is in the works, I hope it gets better and that is the real reason people are moving on. They took it as far as they could with the resources they had. it had to go beyond and change. AOL needs change in a good way. I am sure he can do it.
well another one bites the dust. Good luck to him, new hope and anticipation for us. the silver lining in this... I'd like to think these are going out there and helping webos be more "compatible" (twitter, google, prolly not apple guy) or whatever you wanna call it. They've worked webos so having them out in the world is a good thing I think. Just my optimistic thoughts...