CTO Cory Linden Leaving Linden Labs

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Rumored announcement of LL's CTO Cory Linden leaving Linden Labs

http://valleywag.com/tech/second-life/linden-lab-fires-chief-technology-officer-332769.php

as pointed out in the previous forum, Valleywag isnt much more than a gossip 'zine

Try this link:
http://www.massively.com/tag/cory-ondrejka

It kinda makes me sad, though it doesn't make any sense for it too, since I don't know Cory, but I've connected his name with SL for a good while now.

I wonder what it will mean for SL's future.

I wonder what part of the steps LL has taken lately were one's Cory disagreed with?

I hope they have all this recorded because you know there's SL & LL fans that would love to read a book with the inside story of SL someday.






Here's a paper Cory wrote, "Escaping the Gilded Cage: User Created Content and Building the Metaverse", http://www.nyls.edu/pdfs/v49n1p81-101.pdf

Here's a lecture given by Cory: http://www.archive.org/details/20060913-SecondLife-CoryOndrejka-v01

Here are some recipes attributed to a Cory Ondrejka - don't know if it is the same one: http://foodhacks.wordpress.com .

I just saw this in a google news alert myself. This is pretty major news. What will it mean for the direction of SL going forward? I have no idea. What I do know is that all of us who enjoy SL for what it's been and what it is owe Cory a huge debt of gratitude. He's been a major force in its development since the very beginning. So long, Cory, and thanks for all the fish. Best of luck in wherever your path takes you next.

Which Direction? Well we can`t get any worse then we are now. It has to be for the better right?! Lets hope so

I feel sad too, kind of like finding out your parents are getting a divorce (except mine were divorced before I saw 6 mos. of age). Cory is leaving some big shoes to fill. I hope things work out okay for both him and Linden Lab, and yes, Second Life.

Link to Philip's blog post a few weeks ago: http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/11/21/long-road-behind-long-road-ahead/

/me howwwwwwlllllzzzzz and waves at Sansarya.

Cory is the last linden i though would leave. Now waht? and who will be replacing him?!

Oh I don't know. You can have the greatest job in the world doing the thing you love most, but there will still come a time when you need a fresh challenge, or simply just need some time out.

Or you could take: "citing irreconcilable differences in the technical development of Second Life, Chief Technical Officer Cory Linden has left the company."
As a hint that perhaps it's not only the residents getting ticked off with the way SL is developing?

Plus there are more viable alternative virtual worlds out there for a Cory to jump over to these days. Coke has moved to there.com, AOL has decided to pack up in SL (hardly a major loss, but significant another corp. is moving out).

Basically, it looks like SL is sinking a little lower in the market with a significant loss in technical direction to help it recover. Any way you read it though. Good luck Cory. I hope you pick the next "big thing" to get involved in.

Agreed, but we don't know which party is making the wrong decisions?

Here's CNet's take on it: http://www.news.com/8301-13772_3-9832840-52.html

Here's an article in Massively (also click the related headlines at the bottom of the page):

http://www.massively.com/2007/12/12/peering-inside-what-does-cory-ondrejkas-departure-mean/

We all have our own ideas on which direction SL should take. It just comes down to preference.

I imagine the most difficult thing for Cory was that good coders are in high demand and so they're spoilt. You can't really tell them what to do. They get bored quickly and if they're not happy they'll go elsewhere. So you have to kiss their butts, send them lots of <3 and just hope they'll keep programming and not spend their days flicking elastic bands at eachother.

Just maybe there were too many elastic bands hitting the back of Philip's head.


Here's the root of all our problems:

Wow, if Phil actually said half of what he quoted as saying, then maybe he is starting to realize there's something wrong in rainbow land.

No, I'm not going to bash Cory, even though he did make the quarter bet that led to the opening of the flood gates in such a way that it stressed the technical and support sides of Second Life to the core.

And the truth may simply be that while he was great with a smaller, more personal tech group, he just didn't have the personality/skill sets to deal with a larger, less personal setting. No shame in that, because everyone has their strengths and weaknesses.

Beyond that, I don't know enough to say one way or another.

Well, if Cory was responsible for this:


http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/casestudies/linden.jsp
"We think the Love Machine is one of the most interesting cultural things that we've done, and I know that many other companies are going to adopt it. I eagerly tell people about it whenever I can. The Love Machine is built around the idea of generating a token of appreciation for any other person in the company. It is a horizontal, decentralized way for employees to give each other mini peer reviews, which in turn they can use when they go to do their own quarterly performance reviews. So, anyone in Linden Lab can send a little 80-character piece of email that says, for example, "Thanks for a great job this week," which makes both the receiver and the sender feel good. If the right people are thanking you for your help, you know you're doing the right things."



Then maybe his leaving is a good thing.

Yeh, that always seemed a bit odd to me. IMO, formalising appreciation in this way reduces it to be almost meaningless.

Philip seems to be a dreamer who has his head somewhere up in the (puffy WindLight) clouds, with no real clue of what the daily reality of SL is like.

Cory would also be the 4th Linden (that I know of) that's leaving over the span of a few months. I wouldn't be surprised if most of them leave because Philip won't let them make SL better now which would compromise chasing after his dream.

heh. Well I would take 'capable' people who really want to be part of the team over highly talented individuals that need to be constantly motivated any day. Any company of course wants the cream of the crop working for them, and motivating and offering employees incentives should be part and parcel of any setup. But if an employee needs to be constantly motivated, feels they are 'too good' for the team, then the company is better off without them.

Those of us not employed by LL will never know if they have their 'setup' right, and even that definition of what is 'right' will of course vary from one individual to another; everyone has their opinions on which is the best way to run a show. We will also never know the full story as to why Cory is leaving, and rightly so - neither LL nor Cory should be expected to announce more than what they are comfortable with. I just hope that the parting is amicable for both parties, and that both parties go on to be successful in which ever direction they decide to go in.

The Love Machine was actually tied to some sort of bonuses, no idea whether it still is. Making any part of an employee's compensation dependent on what is essentially a popularity contest is a suicidal management technique. Your most "appreciated" employees do not correlate to the most valuable ones, particularly as an organization grows. I'm sure it contributed over time to LL's rather high attrition rate, for such a successful startup. Its reputatiion in the engineering community as an employer is not great.

The Love Machine would also make your employees reluctant to share anything negative about what others are doing, slowing down your company's ability to react when a bad decision has consequences. We've certainly seen that from LL.

That said, even if Ondrejka originated this, it is a CTO's job to propose ideas, and the rest of the management team's responsibility to vet them. Rosedale was an enthusiastic proponent of this concept, and the corporate culture is ultimately his responsibility.

Ondrejka and Rosedale have so far created a wonderful thing in SL. But LL is approaching 300 employees, a major inflection point. Things that used to work no longer work, and more standard job descriptions and management styles become a necessity. My bet is that LL will weather this, firm up its direction, and continue its evolution ... toward what, is known only by them.

I'm sure Ondrejka will go on to create more wonderful things, and add my small wish to him ... and LL ... for all the best in doing so.

In case anyone's interested: http://www.archive.org/details/20060913-SecondLife-CoryOndrejka-v01 (About an hour-long presentation Cory gave last year)

<random>
Residents really picketed and lit themselves on fire at the WA because they were disgruntled with LL and brought user rentention to a record low?
</random>

Seems like you are doing a mighty bit of speculating there, claiming it as fact...

Peer reviews in themselves are not a negative thing. And any management team that's not braindead will see such unsolicited reviews as only one small piece of many in evaluating an employee.

It's not so much speculation - anything I give as a fact above is actually true, to the best of my knowledge. Most of the post is opinion, though, agreed. I think everyone is entitled to those, yes?

That is so true! We all move on because people need change.　Ｗｅｌｌ　Ｓａｉｄ！

Anyone able to find pictures of Philip and Cory together? Especially old ones?

Or videos.

But reviews have to include the bad as well as the good. From my understanding these were nothing but mutual (insert sexual reference here) .