What Happened to Linden Chief Product Officer Tom Hale, Lead Developer of Second Life Viewer 2? UPDATED 6/14: Linden Lab Confirms, Tom Hale Gone From the Company

UPDATE, 11/14: Just got word from Peter Gray, Linden Lab's in-house publicist: "Yes, I can confirm that Tom is no longer with Linden Lab." This affirms what was told to me by my sources last week, who suggested that investors and management were unhappy with the performance of Viewer 2, the new, user-friendly version of the Second Life viewer. Most of the Linden developers working on Viewer 2 are also believed to have left the company. More analysis below. (Post bumped from last Friday.)

6/11: In recent days I've gotten word from multiple extremely trustworthy sources that Tom Hale, Linden Lab's Chief Product Officer, is part of the company's massive layoffs. I'm attempting to confirm this with Linden and Hale directly now, so I caution that this is not officially confirmed and may not be true, or not precisely so. (Hale may, for example, still be involved with the company, but in another capacity.)

Looking at the Linden Lab webpage right now, however, Hale (known in Second Life as T Linden, who is a frog avatar) is no longer listed among the Executive Management team. (To make things confusing, Cyn Skyberg is still listed there, but yesterday Cyn confirmed with me directly that she was laid off.) If Hale's departure is the case, it would be extremely significant news.

Tom Hale led the development of Viewer 2, which was promised to be a dramatic improvement of the SL user interface, making it more user friendly and feature rich. I admired it at launch last February, but believed it would not be enough to drive mass adoption of Second Life. And while Second Life has grown its userbase since Viewer 2 came out, the additions have been modest, perhaps less than 50K. (And the Lindens attributed last quarter's growth to advertising and James Cameron's Avatar.) However, to reiterate, it's currently uncertain what Tom Hale's status is now. All that's certain is Second Life and Linden Lab are in for significant changes soon.

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Comments

[Ricco]

Take a look here: http://alphavilleherald.com/2010/06/t-linden-visits-grave-in-second-life.html

[ziki questi]

T Linden is gone from inworld search, and his name has been removed from LL's senior staff list.

[Little Lost Linden]

This doesn't seem very good.

I wonder when Viewer 3 will be out?

[Wy]

They couldn't have laid off anyone in PR, because they clearly never had anyone in PR. Say what you like about PR, but people in that field have to tell a company what it looks like to outsiders, ugly truths like how pathetic things like the enterprise outreach were. Sad. I'd bet the company is being streamlined for sale.

[Doreen Garrigus]

Well, then. Maybe M didn't like viewer 2?

[Isadora Fiddlesticks]

maybe he resigned...not laid off? timing is coincidence though.

sad, i like t linden...:(

[InterestedToKnow]

Can we get a list of lindens actually known to be laid off please?

Some of the lists going round contain names like sea, wallace and brodesky who all appear to still be at the lab...

[Molly Montale]

And then there is this:

"You could easily impact their ability to get re-employed quickly as it is
way easier to get another job while you still have one (or at least seem to
have one). Publishing their names (even the linden names) could easily
cruel their chances, and restrict their presentation options, and I am sure
we would not want to repay past favours, help and friendships in that way.

In the US, in particular, there is a current rising incidence of employers
not accepting even applications from unemployed people, regardless of the
reason, let alone employing them. "
https://lists.secondlife.com/pipermail/opensource-dev/2010-June/002261.html

[Henri Beauchamp]

Given the fiasco which is viewer 2, I'll not mourn about its lead developer absence...

[Talvin Muircastle]

I only hope that his departure means the end of the "Separate-But-Equal" policy regarding Accessibility.

[brinda allen]

As I commented here: http://alphavilleherald.com/2010/06/t-linden-visits-grave-in-second-life.html
***
/me wonders if the frog ever understood that we are a culture…
An immersion…not just a way to augement a “real” life.

Sometimes the amount of experience or the number of credentials isn’t relative to understanding the job at hand.
***
Personaly, I would hope 2.0 is dead, but so far I've seen a lack of acknowledgement of mistakes by The Benevolent Monarchy...no reason to believe that cat will change it's spots now.

[Ann Otoole]

@Molly - You can't avoid the unemployed effect. The HR departments will verify departure dates. People need to be calling their elected reps and demanding criminal law against refusal to hire unemployed people. There needs to be mandatory prison time for the CEO of any company that refuses to consider hiring the unemployed. What is the unemployed millions supposed to do? Commit suicide? Bullshit. There needs to be a law that puts the lives of CEOs in danger if they break it.

But for those let go it is too late. There is no hiding it because they have to declare it or lose anyway for falsifying the information.

Hope they find something fast and don't have to give up a home and life they love to get it. Like moving from San Francisco to Albany Georgia would be a rather difficult culture shock.

[Lili]

I hope he can find a job at a chicken farm or maybe a nice rabbit ranch. You know, something he's qualified for. Because seriously, should the man responsible for viewer 2 really be in a job that could affect other people?

I can just picture him at a chicken farm, innovating away, making nice things like the viewer 2, but for chickens.

Ok chickens, this is going to be so much better. When you want food, all you have to do is lay on your back, peck three times to your left, once to your right, drag yourself three meters to the north without touching the ground with your feet then cluck once. You will get one kernal of corn. To get another kernal, just repeat the above steps. See how great that is? Yes yes, I made that. I'm so proud. Now, to get water you just...

Commenter note: No chickens were harmed in this Viewer 2 sarcasm scene.

[Allison]

Sounds like both his enterprise appliance boondoggle and the viewer 2 fiasco caught up with him.

[Dannah]

"There needs to be mandatory prison time for the CEO of any company that refuses to consider hiring the unemployed. What is the unemployed millions supposed to do? Commit suicide? Bullshit. There needs to be a law that puts the lives of CEOs in danger if they break it."

Holy crap! Are you serious? How the HELL would you know what someone 'considered'? Yet you advocate the death penalty for it?!

I am always stunned when people believe everything they read without question. Molly quotes a business man from AUSTRALIA about the practices of American businesses? *sighs*

*from the Australian/Canadian businessman: "In the US, in particular, there is a current rising incidence of employers not accepting even applications from unemployed people, regardless of the reason, let alone employing them."*

Bull. It's against the law in the USA to refuse an application from ANYONE--whether you're hiring or not. The penalties for breaking it are severe, as it's considered a violation of civil rights.

[Isadora Fiddlesticks]

t linden may have screwed with viewer 2.0, but that's because he didn't understand us yet...but i was confident that he is qualified and stuff. he tries to be approachable in blogs and all, and seems nice.

the real issue with viewer 2.0 is that it was forced down to us without considering our suggestions, or looking into the 3rd party viewers to see what we liked in those viewers.

i use viewer 2.0, it's odd at first, but has potential to be easier for new residents. let's just let it evolve, hopefully, with us helping with its evolution....if that is possible.

[Ann Otoole]

Even though the SL economy commenced a very visible steady decline the day the GSAv6 was put into production without being trained and debugged in parallel we see LL has not removed it.

So there appears to be a continuing denial of accountability for the destruction of SL on the part of LL's leadership.

@Dannah - Go back and read. Unless you consider any prison sentence a death penalty then you put words in my mouth. It is just a fact that arrogant rich people that caused the problems of today for the underclass they created that get thrown in prison don't last long. And if it was illegal then they wouldn't have it right on their ads that they do not take applications from the unemployed. So if it bothers you then start sending angry letters to your elected reps and to Obama. People should raise hell because it needs to be fixed now.

[Wizard Gynoid]

The 2.0 Viewer was a friggin FIASCO! My god, if I had tried to sell that product to my own IT customers I would have been tarred and feathered. There is an apparent arrogance about that team that was extremely annoying. I submitted a JIRA bug report about the 2.0 clothing attachments behavior. My report was summarily closed with the comment "This is expected behavior." Oh. You designed the product to behave this way? Are you serious? Didn't these people consult any of the users? What kind of operation did this Tom Hale run anyway? Is it surprising to anyone that he would get shitcanned this way?

[Hitomi Tiponi]

2.0 should never have been released as anything other than a Beta - it was poorly designed and incomplete - it managed to alienate so many residents.

I must say I do see in the ongoing 2.1 developments a sign that the developers are trying to turn it around.

The big question is just how long are they giving Mark Kingdon to turn things around before he will also be given his notice.

[Sidney Smalls]

*** It's against the law in the USA to refuse an application from ANYONE--whether you're hiring or not. ***

Uh, no. That's freaking hilarious. I run a small company. I'm not taking your application. Sue me.

[Sidney Smalls]

FYI in the U.S. companies can refuse to hire, take applications from, or talk to anybody they want, for any reason they want, or for no reason at all, so long as they aren't violating specific provisions of civil rights laws -- ie discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, pregnancy, age (40 or older), citizenship status, disability, military status, and union membership. Some states add additional protected classes. The unemployed are not among them in any state that I am aware of.

[Little Lost Linden]

I think in order for Linden Lab to really put this behind them, they should start working on a new product and call it Second Life 3.0.

I would focus on improving the graphics because what they have going now does not look pretty for the year 2010. I would also focus on fixing the CPU utilization, lag, sim crossings, and IM limits. And also, yeah, bots, campers, and model avatars. Make them all AR.

I want my SL to look and feel like Neuromancer, damn it.

Also, they need to learn from past mistakes...like laying off a third of the company a week or 2 before a birthday celebration. Talk about timing that could not possibly be any worse.

We just got rid of 30% of our employees. Now, let's celebrate!!

http://sl7b.wordpress.com/

Craziness I say!

-Little Lost Linden
http://www.thebotzone.net

[Delinda Dyrssen]

I dont really know anything about Tom Hale except what I have seen on the blogs. But I do know that he worked for a company that probably had much influence on the projects he led and he probably had to work under certain time/financial restraints that we all face when we work on projects for whomever.

Yeah I dont care for 2.0 viewer either but geez lets not rake the man over the coals for it! Maybe walk a mile in HIS shoes before you do that? After all he just lost his job and he may be looking for a new one.

I hope his future employer doesn't happen to read some of these comments. Most of them are opinions and probably not much more than that.

[Buckaroo Mu]

I was part of the private Alpha team for SL2. I think my NDO no longer applies. At any rate, I can tell you that very little of the feedback that our team gave, that was not precisely related to bugs, was ignored and dismissed, because they had a specific design document and weren't going to deviate from it. For my part, I'm glad to see Tom go. I tried my damnedest to keep SL2 from being released in the craptastic form it ended up in, as did a team of about 30 or so others that I know of. We were largely ignored.

For my part... uh... "sorry."

[Lauren Weyland]

What bothers me most is slowly but surely it appears if it isn't Linden Labs hitting an iceberg it's everyone on the ship yelling out we are sinking. Unfortunately I understand financial. Unfortunately I understand emotional. Hopefully neither will lead to the outcome so often decried. I'm even ready for Wednesday Update.

[Tateru Nino]

I got it confirmed last Friday. Had someone call and ask for him. Was told that he'd left the company.

[Servian]

Viewer 2.0 was an epic fail on the part of LL. I hope LL tosses it in the dumpster and learns to listen to their residents.

I doubt LL realizes that the residents want SL to succeed even more than they do.

[ColeMarie Soleil]

I wonder if the girl they hired at the offices purely as eye candy/drink server to clients got laid off too <.< XD eek sorry =( too honest