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RIM employees in Ottawa asked to limit summer vacations, plus work six-day work weeks

By on July 5, 2012 at 2:13pm in Mobile News


RIM is focussed on two main objectives: saving the company $1 billion and delivering the new BlackBerry 10 OS in Q1 2013. Part of this plan is to receive guidance from JP Morgan Chase and RBC about how they can leverage their brand, plus cut 5,000 jobs. There’s been no official word on where the job cuts will be coming from, many of them have already been notified, but over in Ottawa employees are working overtime to produce the BB10 product.

According to the Ottawa Citizen RIM employees have been asked to limit their vacation, and in some cases work 6 days a week to bring the BlackBerry 10 OS to life. This will show certainly commitment to the company. RIM currently has about 1,600 employees in Ottawa. Apparently Ottawa is the “epicentre” of the BlackBerry 10 development, possibly because that’s where QNX is based (which currently powers the BlackBerry PlayBook).

The first BlackBerry 10 device will be an all touchscreen smartphone, followed by a physical QWERTY device. Thorsten Heins, RIM’s CEO, stated the reason for the delay of BlackBerry 10 was due to the amount of code required, not the quality of the OS. Heins noted that “RIM’s development team are relentlessly focussed on ensuring the quality and reliability of this platform. I will not deliver a product to the market that is not ready to meet the needs of our customers… there will be no compromise on this issue.”

Source: Ottawa Citizen
Via: CrackBerry

Discussion

62 comments for “RIM employees in Ottawa asked to limit summer vacations, plus work six-day work weeks”

  • espink

    I wonder if this is a way to force employees to quit instead of being the bad guys laying people off. Classy move making people work 6 days when high-ups profit.

    • Public Sector Behemoth

      Why does this never occur in the public sector?

    • Is this?

      The end as we know it?

      RIP RIM.

    • QUESTION ASKER

      WHY would anyone want to work for RIM after seeing this? Really? Who would give up a weekend or put more long hours in just to have your product s**t on by Google and Apple

    • A Citizen of Ottawa

      RIP RIM

    • Tim Cook

      HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

    • Harold The Barber

      RIM nerds’ wives will be leaving them! Only get to see them in the evening before bed and one day a week on Sunday while at church as they pray to God for RIM to survive so they can have a meal.

      The opportunity for RIM wives to cheat on their husbands will be happening in GROVES…with REAL MEN like 9-5er’s and police officers.

      BYE BYE RIMHEADS!

    • Canada is Broken

      These poor employees are working their butts off to save their company so their can pay their mortgages, and feed their children.

      Meanwhile teachers in Ontario are making $95k+ (10 years experience) with full pension, 3 months vacation every single year and are still threatening to strike if they don’t get more money

      This illustrates what’s wrong with Canada.

    • iBot

      meanwhile at Apple and Google they are laughing whilst playing a game of Starcraft and foozeball.

      RIP RIM

    • Janitors

      The Janitors will have friends while they clean the place up as the midnight oil burns…

      RIP RIM.

    • Gerhardt

      Dumb RIM heads will be working there six days a week while Thorsten takes his red SLS Mercedes for a joy ride in the region of Waterloo accompanied by his wife and hooker daughter.

    • UNDER SIEGE

      RIM IS DEAD.

      BYE RIM.

    • AlDente

      Seriously??
      July 2012 and JUST NOW they are “asking poeple to work 6 days a week?”
      I would have thought they were working 7 days a week with three shifts to get BB10 to market, evidently Management has been out for lunch!

      Obviously RIM workers will be working 6 days a week! They don’t know when they will be getting the pink slip!

    • AlDente

      Where is the Accountability and HOW do they think that this news are POSITIVE??

      1,600 empoyees in Ottawa and that’s the epicentre???
      I would fire them on the spot!! (I know that Management is the one to blame so I wouldn’t)

      How many delays??
      Over one year of work and STILL NOTHING TO SHOW???
      Sorry but my boss would fire me and I would fire any workers that had ZERO results over one year.
      What a waste of salaries!! (Management again!)

      -Why is Michael Lazaridis still in the board of RIMM?

    • AlDente

      If they are working only one shift a day; six days a week and releasing BB10 in February 2013 at the earliest; its EVIDENT that they need to work THREE shifts SEVEN days a week with holidays/decent sleep to be taken one week AFTER the Release of BB10!

      You would have thought that they had the janitors at RIM compiling code for BB10 since las year!
      Why only now??

  • JaymmerMan

    “This will show certainly commitment to the company”
    until the company decides you’re no longer needed… commitment goes both ways

  • jonny

    I work in software, and when there is a big deadline, everyone has to work OT like crazy till its done. After launch, everyone takes their holidays. This is normal practice. Close to a launch I easily work 30 hours of overtime in a week.

    • js

      But you know you have a job you can take a vacation from after the launch. RIM guys don’t…

    • Jim R

      If you’re working 30+ hours of overtime for multiple weeks for every launch, then there’s something less than stellar about how your schedules are created and tracked.

      By chance you work for EA?

      I suppose if you’re compensated with 1-1 time-off and you don’t mind it, fine.

      FWIW, I work in software as well. And, yes, come crunch time you can well expect to put in some extra hours. But what you’re talking about is way beyond anything I’ve ever seen at the places I’ve worked.

      As for the RIM employees, all I can say is that ongoing, mandated 6 day work weeks had better come with some in-writing guarantees concerning compensation (money, time off, and/or stock) or RIM can kiss goodbye to the very type of engineers they need – the ones sharp enough to land a new job without breaking a sweat.

      My 2 cents.

  • js

    If this is mandatory I would be looking to jump ship. A sinking ship that is. Vacation request is reasonable but we all know a company will drop you if they have to… so no point to express this type of loyalty.

  • Rich

    Sounds brutal, but probably -very- necessary at this point.

    • JustMeAndMe

      Sounds brutal, but probably -very- LATE at this point.

  • Raid Ismail

    It’s common practice for a company to take these kinds of measures during their belt-tightening phase. Many companies during the 2008 recession including the one I work for did the same thing.

  • Obstacle-Man

    I work for a software company. If I saw this I’d leave. Over-tired workers are not productive workers.

  • Big Ang

    Blackberry 10 work being done in Ottawa? No wonder things are so delayed! These employees are probably infected with the same work ethic their neighbours in the federal government have!

  • BB man

    Are they whipped and beaten too?

  • The dude

    My brother works as a programmer for Apple and he gets overtime work when a deadline is coming up that needs to be met. I think this is fairly common in software development, as long as it isn’t how the employees are always treated.

    I can only hope this means the CEO has stopped listening to the stupid things he keeps saying and is trying to get BB10 out for fall, instead of the laughably ridiculous 2013 timeframe we currently have.

  • monsterduc1000

    Stop paying your dip sh1t CEO’s an exorbitant amount of money and re-invest that money into the company and the employees. I don’t want RIM to die, but pulling crap like this makes it hard to root for them.

  • vn33

    Seems like the recent motto at RIM is “The whippings will continue until morale improves !!!”

  • Ted

    This would obviously be expected when trying like HELL to get their product ready as fast as they could and need by a deadline given exactly as others have said.

    I wish RIM the best, but I am very skeptical they’ll become a shadow of they formal selves an be taken out, then possibly making a long run come back with someone else’s deep pockets carrying them.
    Jmtc

  • James

    I work at a hardware company and its deadline season here too… had to work during Canada Day weekend, this is pretty standard fair in the industry, at least for firms that want to stay competitive. Looks like RIM wants to stay alive… badly.

  • Drew Moreberry

    This is a fairly common practice in programming if a major deadline is coming up. This isn’t the normal thing asked of employees as it will cause them to burn out if they do.

    Hopefully this means the CEO has stopped believing his own lies and is trying to get BB10 out for Fall, instead of the laughable time frame of 2013.

  • bummy

    Standard practice in any video game or film industry.

    This is not Starbucks; in the tech industry, every day counts.

    • JustMeAndMe

      Even when the deadline is 6 month away?

    • Jim R

      But RIM isn’t in the video game or film industry. RIM is an engineering company in the communications/networking industry. And RIM engineers are presumable not fresh out of school grads who think working for a game company is so freaking cool that it doesn’t matter if you don’t have time for an actual life.

      The game industry has a culture unto itself in this regard. And RIM isn’t in that industry.

  • jansen

    ugh rim stfu and dont talk till you ready to launch. youre annoying me.

  • TETHERMYFEATHERS

    I cannot wait for the day that RIM dissolves.

  • Dan

    “There’s nothing wrong with the company”… yeah, ok….

  • chung

    are the employees paid OT pay? will this drive up company cost? if they’re not paid OT, will they file a class action?

    • wang

      OT is only for public sector laggards who are protected by a union.

  • Drew Moreberry

    Holy forking carp, the amount of ignorance being displayed here leads me to conclude most of the stupid comments made here, are done by 16 year old trolls who haven’t had to work a full time job.

  • kman

    If I were @ RIM I wouldn’t have a problem with this, especially since its a mission critical project.

    If I wasn’t being compensated for my extra work however(ie. overtime pay) then I would have a MAJOR problem with this.

    /IT Consultant
    //An hour worked is an hour billed.

  • Scott

    I have no problem working late and missing vacations if there is an important deadline coming up and everyone is pulling together and doing their very best for the company. The thing that drives me nuts, is that this situation is completely unnecessary and could have been avoided if the high-paid executives had been working harder and making some smarter decisions a couple of years ago. Now the engineers are being asked to make significant sacrifices to cover for the executive’s stupidity? I would have a problem with that…

  • sunil chung

    we’ll all work in the public sector money is free there OT is paid out x2

  • JustMeAndMe

    @Canada is Broken | July 5, 2012, 2:50 pm

    Why do you think these people at RIM make less than that? Till now we’ve always heard how good is to work for RIM & what kind of advantages their employees have…

  • Omis

    Did some fool bring up teacher negotiations to a MOBILE PHONE discussion? Really? Harper paying you guys per post?

    What’s really sad is these employees will be laid off next year. The CEO will get a big bonus for all the money he saved by laying them off. And I am willing to bet that weren’t “ASKED” to limit their vacation and work OT. They were told to.

    B-B-But unions are evil.

  • stylinred

    not as bad as working @ EA where you’re pulling straight 72hr shifts or more to make a deadline/introducing a patch etc etc

  • roman20

    They’re just putting on a show for buyers.
    RIM will be chopped up a sold before BB10 ships.

  • Matt

    There is a term for this in the software development industry. “Death March”

    • PeterA

      @ Matt,
      That’s hilarious. If this is called a “Death March” in the software industry, then Apple does it in spades on an annual basis. How do I know, because I’ve been a corporate client of thiers for over a decade and we can time how close to lauch is by which of our contacts are “unavailable”. First to disappear are the hardware designers, then software, … all the way until they get all the way to the sales reps (no not the Apple Store staff).

      Just posting something on the internet doesn’t make it true.

      Six months may seem like a long time but considering the millions of lines of code in building an OS and all the supporting apps, it really isn’t especially if the new OS is a total departure from your old one.

    • Yeria

      @PeterA
      I agree with you mostly, but you got to admit RIM has missed their target just one too many times with their software development cycle.

      They seriously need new project managers and need to learn how to estimate more accurate deadlines. 6 months isn’t even close to the time a large corporation like RIM needs if they’re building a completely new OS. I would say a good year should be allotted even if the design part was done to code the system efficiently and thoroughly test the product.

      I don’t know for sure exactly when RIM started to work on BB10 though. They announced it as BBX last October, am I right? If they wanted to meet the Q4 of this year deadline, they should have started developing for BBX at least in last August, and design phase should have already been done or almost been done by then. I seriously hope they didn’t assume they could have pulled off this thing in 6 months. I mean, if that’s STILL the mentality of their management.. well.. I don’t know what to say. Just all the best to RIM I guess.

    • Jim R

      @PeterA – Without knowing the details about what Apple’s employees are required to do and how (or not) they are compensated for it, this is an apples-to-some-other-fruit-that-may-or-may-not-be-an-orange comparison. Heck, we don’t even know the full details of the RIM situation.

      So, IMO, disappearing Apple contacts really doesn’t contribute a whole lot.

  • marion

    I’m happy with this comment: ” I will not deliver a product to the market that is not ready to meet the needs of our customers… there will be no compromise on this issue.”…

    With that being said, our needs are forever changing and we need RIM to anticipate future needs to incorporate into BB10 rather than play catch-up

  • ace

    common practice in china… and they dont get paid overtime… even though its illegal lol

  • Nick

    First off is this a leak from RIM to show how dedicated they are? Also they’re totally playing on the employees’ fear… if they just work harder they might be able to keep their job. What happened to “Work smarter, not harder”? Employees will burn out and the gains will diminish.

  • pam

    hahahahahahahaha dumb rim f**s

  • pam

    lolol dumb rimmers

  • Monroe

    This is working harder and instead of working smarter.

    Working harder: Work like mad to release a dead end OS called BB10 that few will pick up.

    Working smarter: Adopting Android OS and using free time to incorporate BB elements into it.

    Conclusion: RIM is working harder to drive itself into the ground.

    • Jim R

      The only reasons I can see for not adopting Android in the first place is not-invented-here syndrome, and/or *massively* under-estimating the development effort required to incorporate QNX.

      If RIM had gone with Android, there’s a very good chance their next-gen phones would be on the market as we speak. Instead, RIM opted for an OS that AFAIK has never been used for anything like cell phones.

      And for a touch of irony, Blackberry 10 will supposedly support Android apps. More development and maintenance work that would have been unnecessary if Android had been used in the first place.

      QNX is a cool OS (how can you not like a message passing microkernel), but it’s not the tried and true Android, at least as far as cell phones are concerned.

      My armchair inspired 2 cents.

  • JHK

    You lazy north americans (especially Canadians) are reading this and saying “Oh my god, how could they be so cruel, they shouldn’t be working that much” blah blah
    Well here is the surprise of the century people, Samsung already has pushed people to work 6 work day at probably around 60 hours – THAT IS WHY THEY LEAD!
    Success and profit comes at hard prices and if you are just thinking of doing easy 9 to 5, mind as well sign up for a public sector job.

  • Fruvous

    Why get rid of 5000 employees when there is obviously more work than RIM’s existing workforce can handle?

    • Jim R

      My guess is that those employees
      a) did not have the required skill set for working on the project, and/or
      b) are not directly involved with product development, and so their positions could be eliminated on a temporary (6 month?) basis so as to conserve cash (e.g. do you need sales people if there are no sales?)

      Just a guess – take with large grain of salt