Why Philip Left .. (Pure Speculation)...

There are, of course, so many elements that need to work for a business to become and remain successful that it would be a little stupid of me to begin to tell LL what has gone wrong and how to do it better, not that that has stopped me, ever, from voicing my half-baked theories and opinions. With no possibility for us to vote or otherwise be heard by the Lab, then blogging and commenting is our 'pressure release valve' and, by the gods, we need one.

["I hear you" and "we are listening" are euphemisms for "you are wrong"]

Tateru Nino's post on the problems some people are having paying LL is not the first I have heard of it by any means.

Aliz told me of a friend last month who had troubles, and since then I have heard of several such problems. Well they lost peoples billing information... the list must have slipped down the back of the sofa along with the remote, I guess....

This follows on the back of Eners blogging of the basic turmoil involved in working for the Lab. I read quite a lot of Glassdoor which, as someone said, is like Linden Labs WikiLeaks. Now, at the time I thought that maybe the bad reviews of working for the Lab and the good ones maybe sorta cancelled each other out to a certain extent.

But... there are a couple of points from these two posts which have stayed in my head.

1)...from Tateru's.... [question to the Lab]“if the billing system is down, can I be assured that my sim won’t be taken offline due to non payment?”

[Reply] ”I can not assure you of this at this time”

2)... from Ener's..... [ex employee] "Business folks view technical must-do’s as things to negotiate. Since the business folks are the ones setting development priorities, and developers tend not to be good negotiators, this leads to cutting corners, resulting in fragile software with poor performance." [my highlight]

Now, with a smaller grid, like InWorldz, if someone were to cock up, then someone would be online to apologise ... I blogged this before... in a post called "A Good CEO" , and as Tateru points out, and would be obvious to us all, silence is the worst course of events.

However, by admitting you cocked up you are liable... so the Legal Dept. may have advised silence.... and so the slide continues... [they really need a Rapid Response Task Force, don't they]

Now, the quote via Ener..(2)... just reinforces what we have all suspected for a long time, namely, that the Bean Counters are running the show and it makes no difference how brilliant your staff are if they have, ultimately, no say in what happens.

Now, ranting at LL is more and more like shooting fish in a barrel, and I am actually starting to feel sorry for the Boys (a bit, not much). They had the best, the only, show in town, but they are heading towards an "..Also Ran" status.

A Benevolent Monarchy as Brinda calls them is actually less efficient than a Benevolent Dictatorship which would, really be the best outcome....
....but more and more it is looking like the Impotent Monarchy and, obviously (to most of us), the reason for the chaos and dissatisfaction rather than a passionate and engaged User Base.

Did Philip realise that.. and turn to Lurvvv... ((he was always a bit smarmy, mind you))...


:))