Tag Archives: nortel

Northern Heads South

Not a great day for local tech companies in RTP. Nortel (Northern Telecom) is shedding another 1,300 jobs in an effort to stay afloat.

I worked at Northern for nearly seven years (I started at Team10 for any old-timers out there). Back then it was an incredibly vibrant can-do company with a really nice and committed workforce.

In the late ’80’s, early ’90’s Northern had a lock on digital telephone switching equipment. Profits bulged as management got fat and sassy. Profligate spending on some rather ridiculous ego-driven projects became the norm.

Unfortunately, upper management’s vision couldn’t keep up with that of the folks cranking out telco gear. Their top-of-the-heap attitude blinded them to what could and eventually would happen. I remember meeting with the top-dogs in RTP in ’91 trying to convince them that one of Nortel’s bread-n-butter products, the DMS-10, would be replaced within years by cheap, rack-mounted computers using commodity components.

That day eventually came to pass finding Nortel poorly prepared. By that time, I had moved on to help bootstrap a couple startups.

The lessons of Nortel – especially what missteps to avoid – have stayed with me all these years. Those lessons aren’t particularly grounded in Nortel’s culture but are more reflective of common attitudes found in many institutions (“too big to fail” for one).

If the Council does follow up on my call for a Citizen’s Budget Board, I will volunteer and apply the lessons of Nortel, my successful entrepreneurial experience and my diligent efforts to help set the Town’s finances on a firm grounding to bear.

To any remaining Nortel folks that stumble on this entry – good luck and god-speed.

Northern Going South

Another bad bit of news for RTP’s Northern Telecom.

Photo: Telecordia

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has charged four more former Nortel Networks Corp. executives with accounting fraud, alleging they manipulated reserves to change Nortel’s earnings statements on the orders of more senior officers of the Canadian networking equipment maker.

The U.S. stocks regulator said Wednesday it had filed civil fraud charges against Douglas Hamilton, Craig Johnson, James Kinney and Kenneth Taylor, the former vice presidents of finance for Toronto-based Nortel’s optical, wireline, wireless and enterprise business units.

In March, the SEC filed civil fraud charges against ex-CEO Frank Dunn and other executives — including former Chief Financial Officer Douglas Beatty and former controller Michael Gollogly — alleging they directed a so-called earnings management fraud to manipulate the company’s financial reports.

My Triangle career started at Northern (now Nortel) in the late ’80’s. Back then I worked for TEAM10, the DMS-10 switching side of the business. Over the next 6 years I managed to move around to various units, working on everything from manufacturing process automation to revamping the switch engineering process to writing software that managed the core central office switching equipment.

I won several Presidents Awards and was the first IT staff to get a Chairman’s Award for Innovation.

Northern Telecom (it’ll always be Northern to me) had a good energy back when I started – a vibrancy that made it fun to work there. Towards the end of my tenure, Northern was a different place. Wave after wave of layoffs. Many folks climbing the management ladder based on gamesmanship over merit.

The fun was over. The waste of talent, the incredible dissipation of the “can do” spirit was sad to see.

I kept in contact with those folks that decided to ride out the storm, looking for Northern to regain its footing, waiting for the old Northern to emerge as a technical leader once again. Unfortunately, the rot that was apparent in the mid-90’s wasn’t rooted out. It appears to have spread, as today, another 4 company officers face SEC charges.

I learned quite a bit at Northern. Great lessons in managing folks and projects. Terrible lessons on how to drive the joy out of a joyful working place.

Good luck Northern, maybe better days are ahead.