Funemployment Part 1: Becoming Unemployed

This post is part one of a few to be published over the next coming days about my current funemployment, the best place to start is the leaving from my previous employer.

I've a small script that I run locally to show me how many days it's been since I left Jelsoft Enterprises (171 at posting), the reason for which I've more or less kept very quiet about. A tweet did recently appear in an article on The Register, oops!

A significant amount of time has passed and I'm now comfortable commenting on this without sounding terribly bitter about the whole thing.

In the summer of 2007, Internet Brands (carsdirect.com) purchased Jelsoft the company behind vBulletin. Nothing changed internally and the engineering team had very little direct contact with our now parent company, this remained for around a year. Jump forward to summer 2008 and a few members of the team were summoned to LA to give a presentation about the future of vBulletin 4.0 and the big re-write that was planned. Most of the progress since finishing 3.8 had been design plans and research. We had looked over the old product for current features and design issues, analysed customer feedback on missing features and checked the bug tracker for common issues. The end result was that the 4.0 re-write was cancelled.

A new project / general manager was installed based out of LA (development was in England) and scrum was the shiny new model that would allow us to refactor the current release of vBulletin (3.8) and have a new version chock full of features in a meager six months. I'm not going to comment too much on why there were problems, but lets just say that it didn't quite work out that way and we're now at 14 months and the beta process is just underway.

With creative control of the project moved to LA and out of the hands of the team that had been overseeing it for the past six years it was hard not to feel like a simple code monkey. I was no longer passionate about the product and had been that way for months. This accompanied by the change in direction of the product and priorities of the company resulted in my resignation in May just before php|tek. My final day at Jelsoft was June 19th 2009.

Since the other UK-based senior developers and I left the code quality has dropped somewhat, there are over 1000 open bugs filed, on a normal day this time last year it would be around 10. Internet Brands have also increased prices, changed the licensing model and shelved the project tools product. A lot has changed in a short period of time and I'm not sure if it was for the best.

More tomorrow!

Comments

[DarkstarIV]

Wow, Scott. I agree with you on the vBulletin issue. It just...seems to be going down the toilet, after IB took over. (no offense). I've recently switched my forums to Invision Power Boards, since I could not pay the $190+ fee for a license.

[Jon]

wouldn't all the developers and coders designers from vb, wouldn't they be able to make their own software to compete with VB or is it not worth it?

[Jon]

I meant the ones that left VB

[David McHenry]

vB4 is going to be a massive fail on many levels once people start playing with it. Every beta release brings dozens of new bugs, while a lot of the old ones are being ignored and not fixed for some reason as they go, which to me seems inefficent, especially the bugs that are left from clean back in Beta 3 (and who knows how many are left from eariler versions).

Not to mention it was promised by the end of Q4 2009, which will be impossible for them to put out a finished product any wear near that with its current state its in.

[Alex]

Scott, thank you for your sincere post, although I have to admit that it didn't make me very happy reading your first hands-on bits of what was going on "behind the scenes". In fact, it made me sad. Sad, because it reinforces my subjective belief that vB4 is heading in the wrong direction, both quality-wise as well as feature-wise.

I am hoping that you, and the rest of the amazing team that was once behind vB will have a chance (and legal go) to get together again and build a new software, one that would truly deserve the name vBulletin in it.

[BrandonSheley]

Great post Scott, I've bookmarked your blog and look forward to more like this.

[hotwheels]

I am so glad that Ray Morgan resigned. In my own opinion, between Ray Morgan and Steve Machol, they ran the forums part of the company into the ground. If a customer disagreed with anything they stated, the customer found themselves banned. For some reason, Ray and Steve Machol forgot that we are customers and not just members of a forum site. We actually paid for something and should have been allowed to discuss our thoughts without being beat down by these thugs. If Bob Brisco want's to save his internet company, he first needs to get rid of some of the moderator thugs, reopen discussions with the old devs and try to smooth over the customer abuse that took place. I would love to come back to vbulletin and move forward. As long as people like Ray morgan, steve machol, wayne luke and a few others continue to bully customers, the company will fail. Ray managed to steal some of my money from me, but because he burned me once, they will no longer receive any more of my money. But, if Bob Brisco straightens out a few things, i as a customer would continue to use their software.

Hotwheels

[ex-vBFan]

Thanks for the post Scott. I second the request to create a new product, one better than vBulletin. Build an impex clone to offer vBulletin import to the new system.

Remember mambo? See what happens to it and where is the branch out version Joomla standing now?

If you guys (the old vB team)can do that I'm with you. I know there will be some legal restrictions. But with the help of a good lawyer you can find out what you do legally.

Please, please consider this!

[Anthony Cea]

Thank you for coming out and confirming what a lot of us have understood by putting 2 + 2 together.

It is no surprise that Ray Morgan was forced out by the Board of Directors because Internet Brands has lost about 56 million dollars in market capitalization in the stock market since this fiasco began around October the 15th.

I was banned from the official vBulletin forum for calling for Ray Morgan to resign or be fired by Internet Brands, the Board of Directors only listened when the saw the stock getting sacked which threatens the entire company.

This threat is only one that Internet Brands faces, there are many law firms looking into this matter, IB could face over 100 million dollars in legal claims very soon unless they find a way to address the rights of vBulletin 3 license owners.

Since the contract was made under UK law most the law firm that must lead the way must be based in the UK in all probability.

I have had US based attorneys look at this case, but one of the factors keeping them from filing a lawsuit is the fact that our licenses are drawn under UK laws.

As far as some of you wanting this group of developers to get back into a dialog with IB to "help them fix vBulletin", you are lost and need to join the real world.

The best thing former developers can do is another thing I called for early on, start a new forum software platform with a forum engine that will support software module add ons where forum owners can add photo galleries, classified ads, link directories and so on.

This is the only way forward for a commercial forum package, that or we all move to open source ASAP.

[Valachi]

Scott. No offense to you, but I some what wished you would've told us the real reason of leaving.

You know how many customers you could've saved from this hassle?

I know personally I could've sold off my licenses and at least bailed out too. Instead, I got f***ed by Bob Brisco and Ray Morgan.

I'm glad you left while you could, but we the loyal members got screwed. I spent tons of money in multiple licenses. Now... they are worthless unless I upgrade.

Anyways good luck at Facebook.....

Thank you for your honesty Scott,im sorry that you felt trapped when those idiots took over....

You guys did a wonderful job with Vbulletin,you will always have that to remember :)

Thank you for all you have done!!

[Search Job]

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[eixaldaSnowxie]

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from you guys to point me in the right direction.

Thanks a bunch, this place is great btw.