Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

A bit of history and lost opportunity.

The Android operating system is 13 years old in November of 2020. Gosh. Horrible memories back to 2007 and early 2008.

Senior government managers looked at the mobile landscape back then and declared: The future was the Microsoft phone and its operating system.

Junior government engineers were speechless. Microsoft phone? Look at this Google open-source operating system. The world was wide open with everyone contributing to the system. Microsoft? Closed. Proprietary. Based on Windows or something, not x-nix.

History tells us that the senior government managers were wrong—laughably wrong.

Their mobile OS mistake, however, was not the BIG problem. These senior government managers spent the next few years judging who among the junior engineers knew what they were doing and who should be promoted and who sent packing. They didn’t judge any better on personnel than they did on technology.

I suppose there are some lessons to be learned here. Maybe had these managers been held accountable for their technology mistake—and been removed from their positions—others would have made better judgements for years to come. Maybe had people listened to the junior engineers, those bright junior engineers would now be managing and judging well. Who knows.

Just a bit of history and lost opportunity.