Monday, November 20, 2006

CodeGear Borland, an example

How many times in the past (the Borland past, that is) has the director of IT actually posted a message in the newsgroups?  To the best of my knowledge, a grand total of ZERO times.  There was a thread over in the Delphi.non-tech group about the new CodeGear site and Mark Trenchard, the CodeGear IT director, actually posted a message!  Mark was recently brought on board and was previously with the networking group at HP.  This is certainly a good sign that things truly will be different here at CodeGear.  I will continue to encourage that all CodeGear employees interact with the community where appropriate.


  1. Hey Allen,

    good luck! Any news about the managment team?

  2. Yes, this is an excellent idea. Everyone is going to be watching for the slightest sign that CodeGear keeps acting like Borland. Getting right out there and interacting with people is a positive step away from that.

    Interestingly, if Borland had done this whole subsidiary idea in the first place, it would have made sense. Now it just annoys and frustrates people. Borland managed to turn something that had a positive aspect in to a collosal customer relations problem (kinda their expertise really).

    Are we going to see even higher degrees of seperation soon? CodeGear news servers and community websites?

    Oh, while we are talking about talking on news groups, it would definitely be a good thing if CodeGear had a large enough presence there to reduce the need for something like Team B? Team B as it currently exists is probably going to do more harm than good when it comes to attracting new customers.

  3. Impatient Delphi LoyalistNovember 20, 2006 at 12:05 PM

    This except is taken from "Good To Great" by Jim Collins (page 97). I hope CodeGear's CEO down to it's sales reps read the book:


    When I read the passage above the following comes to mind: .Net, C#, JBuilder and InterBase.


  4. Hi Allen!

    I am waiting about the strait relationship with developers community, in special here on Brazil. Where the Delphi is strongger!

    my regards


    ..nuff said...

  6. 1) Borland starts out as a company by nerds for nerds.

    2) Borland launches productive and profitable products, like Turbo Pascal and Delphi.

    3) Borland hires new management people with MBAs and flashy suits.

    4) Conflicts emerge between new management and old techies.

    5) Techies quit their jobs.

    6) Remaining techies start producing sub-average software.

    7) Sub-average software causes declining sales.

    8) Techies blame new management for declining sales.

    9) New management gets fed up with techies and decides to sell off IDE business.

    10) New management fails to get good enough price for IDE business.

    11) IDE business is split out as a new wholly owned subsidary of Borland.

    12) Techies get the illusion of managing themselves.

    13) New management get to take part in any remaining revenues coming from the IDE business.

