Following things closely as a viewer is not really the same as working here, but I appreciate that you watch all the same. I think there were a series of things that led to Gary leaving.
- HR had questioned his attendance despite the fact that Gary opened the building every day and was frequently the last man out every night.
- I think he felt like he was being stonewalled in requests to upper management for more support for his team. For example, equipment they need to do their job. Additionally, if you've ever visited the Labs building, you would know that it's not a very nice building and the Labs team is working in a corner of the warehouse space.
- I spoke with him before he left and he seemed disillusioned with the direction the company is going in now. Previously, the new big thing was his Labs team. Now we're a badminton company that makes videos and sells merchandise. I'm actually with Gary on this one, I don't get the badminton centre that we're putting together. It takes a lot of our company resources to do work on a building that only benefits Linus and will probably never make any money. The 30+ million dollars they've spent on it could've been better served finding us an actual campus building.
I think what was unkind to him is we set him up to fail, we wasted his years of expertise, and we made him feel unwanted enough that he left and headed back to San Jose. I don't blame him.
