I am finding it hard to stay away from blogging. Perhaps it just gets under your skin in ways that are hard to stop. But in any case the reason I began my public commentaries was severe irritation over how things were being run under Siemens with SE. I still find I get irritated and still have things to say. It is not quite right to just post comments on others forums or blogs and so this blog seems to continue. Reading things today online prompted today’s post as I pondered the rarity of qualified people and the result of this. The rarity of good ideas and good management. Here we have Corporate Managers and Movers and Shakers chasing good things with invariably poor results.
Worthy of mention here is the maxim that the buck stops somewhere. I think that considering how ineffective Siemens marketing is at least where Solid Edge is concerned and knowing some of the leader ship of Solid Edge I can only conclude one thing. Their hands are being tied by corporate leadership above them who do not see any advantage in explosive growth. My opinion is that SE was bought as part of a package and that Siemens really does not care what happens here. The only thing I can conclude here based upon what I have heard and observed through actions taken is that Siemens is taking profits from SE and using them for other purposes. Perhaps to make less than stellar balance sheets in other divisions look better as they aggregate all profits and throw them into this Siemens gray corporate bag of ambiguities whereby success can be punished by having their generated profits skewed sideways to cover for those less capable.
Make no mistake here if Siemens decided to allow SE sufficient funding out of the money Solid Edge earns on it’s own merits and free reign to do things right their profits as a corporation called Siemens would be better and the subset called Solid Edge would be dramatically better. And it would be completely self funding from the proceeds from Solid Edge. But they don’t because somewhere some MBA CPA type idiot has decided that his prudent management metric should prevail over logic. Please note here that no CAD or CAM company was ever started by an MBA or CPA. Please note that no MBA or CPA has cut chips or designed products as coders or workers and they lack true insight into both what it is they manage and how it and their customers function in the real world. But somehow these disconnected gurus of fiscal wisdom get to dictate to those who know their products how things will be. Remember when leaders of tech companies used to be engineers? They were people who could and would over-ride bad policies when they saw them as being detrimental to their products. But today we have 90 day windows of MBA CPA placation of institutional shareholders and logic and prudence are out the window. So we have a generous helping of Corporate Siemens stupidity where SE is concerned as once again SE is plundered by MBA and CPA types whose last concern is for their paying on the ground customers. I know SE is profitable but I believe capital that is generated by SE is once again being syphoned off to do CYA for corporate interests. It is kind of funny how things work. A sales guy is promised a 10% commission on his sales. This is fine until he reaches say a million dollars and then all of a sudden he is only worth 5%. So the MBA CPA idiots break their contractural promise and a great sales guy leaves. The CPA MBA idiots then start over with the sales guys list and a new guy who gets the same promises. Repeat and recycle and you have the environment SE operates in. You can only show so much profit before we come in there and take it from you.
By the way, for those of you who email me with comments. Karsten Newbury is NOT the problem and has never been. It is those above him. It is entrenched Siemens corporate policies and things like Marketing and PR departments that do not answer to him and he can’t enforce change upon. Personally I would hate to be in his shoes. A brilliant product with a tremendous world beating potential run by a guy with industrial degrees who understands the product and its uses who is relegated to also ran status by those who have no clues but own the shoestrings. He has been a true firewall against dumb policies and I dread the day they finally run him off. And they will if this continues I fear. Can anyone say SolidWorks Two? Dassault eventually ran their bright people off too.
This is the only thing that can adequately explain to me why SE languishes in never never land and is not #1. The tremendous technical capabilities are now as they have been seemingly since the beginning. Sold down the river by those who have no clue of the gold mine they own. I struggle to think of a term here for leadership that has the best gold mine out there according to provable reserves and yet insists on turning in third rate results because they refuse to allow the mine to buy self funded new mining equipment. Looney bin logic #101 as a prerequisite before admittance to MBA CPA #101 I suppose.
Now this is quite a sideways shift from the above but what started all this today was going over to the Ironcad site. They send me tons of emails and today for the heck of it I went there. And for the heck of it I went to the partners section as considering the goofy implementation of this at Siemens controlled SE I wanted to see what Ironcad had. So I have a look at their solution partners and I see
ProCam 2 has as it’s newest web listing something from 2006. Visualmill is on version 2014 and I figure V4 is probably six or seven years out of date to. Once again website gurus strike right to the heart of the matter with complete and accurate information as an example of their dedication to their jobs. I think there must be a special source of bottled designer water these Marketing and PR people are force fed no matter who their employers are. And a minimum daily quantity must be consumed by each marketing or PR employee per upper corporate management directives so they can spout off things like 500% better and 200% quicker and 300% increases in productivity and never have to fear the burden of accuracy in whatever they do. Never have to worry about updating content or living up to promises. Siemens appears to be the predominate bottler of this fine product.
Sometimes I wish I knew less than I do about what goes on behind the scenes. There are things I wish I had never read. All this accumulated stupidity and inaccuracy and patronizing junk turned out by Marketing and PR at upper management behest just give me a sour opinion of the whole thing and it did not have to be this way. And it IS upper management because the buck stops there.
By the way. I am now going to refer to SE as Siemens controlled Solid Edge. If Solid Edge was left to it’s own devices and Karsten could run it the way he knows how to, without inteference from Siemens, it would be #1 in sales by now. So to commemerate the Siemens interference in what could and should be they deserve to have mention. Each and every time. Celebrate the failure of Siemens controlled Solid Edge as it takes it’s corporate assigned place in life anywhere but as #1. WAY to go Siemens. And stop sending bottled water to Ironcad. They probably would not appreciate it if they knew what you were doing.
Machined Audio Horn Lens 
Maybe someone at Siemens with power sees SE as a threat to his path up the ladder.
Hi Larry,
Who could that be unless it is someone with NX? I believe that the most exciting thing to happen to NX for many years was the incorporation of ST from Siemens controlled SE into NX. I do know from personal experience that the PLM World and NX crowd do look down their long noses at poor boy imitator Siemens controlled SE. Do you suppose NX fears competition from increasingly capable SC SE (Siemens Controlled Solid Edge)?
Karsten Newbury is the problem. He doesn’t have the nuts to make the needed changes. He’s the wrong man for the job.
Hi Jon Banquer the idiot and premier CADCAM troll. Folks I allow him to slip one in once in a while. The amusing irony of someone like JB who hollers at people who post anonymously and then he does so himself. The amusing irony of having critical things to say about everything but not one thing ever for peer review to buttress his opinions or as evidence he has the slightest personal user knowleged based idea of what he is talking about. So here you go Jon you are now a “published author” on my blog although I am not certain why you would want to be here since this is not for fiction writers.
Some day I may write an article about you and rational thought. That greased pig picture would come in pretty handy I think.
It will be interesting to see where Siemens 12000 or so layoffs due by the end of the year will come from. SE appears to be well down the Siemens importance list so you would suspect SE will be over represented in the numbers, which of course is not helpful to the cause. Perhaps you should turn your critical commentary seeking better marketing of SE to the masses, to promoting SE use to Siemens upper management, else it suffers an unfortunate withdrawal of support beyond present levels?
Hi Neil,
A few thoughts come to mind here. First is the increase in manufacturing robotics that is eliminating jobs world wide while maintaining or increasing actual output levels. Do not be the human drone working in a factory and expect a bright future. Be the guy that designs and fixes robots and robotic factories. Or be the guy who is independent and sets himself up to have his own little factory where the big guys use you to avoid the cretinous expenses inflicted upon them by socialist nut jobs like Obama and his ilk.
The second is that I hear Siemens Controlled Solid Edge is intended to be a testing platform for new ideas. I rather like that and it implies that while Siemens is retarded where Marketing and PR is concerned they do intend to utilize SE for the purpose for which it was bought. Namely make better dog food for the Siemens kennels. I can be satisfied with that. So while they moronically take profits from SE in sufficient levels to prevent the growth it deserves for those who are willing to look past corporate myopia the software itself and the capabilities therein will I believe continue to be developed. Remember that Siemens bought this primarily for themselves and while they don’t give a flip about you or the world they do care about the tools they intend to use internally. Buy Siemens Controlled Solid Edge because it works and not for any expectation that they care about you or your company and as long as you remember this you can’t go wrong.
Solid Edge, that is Siemens Controlled Solid Edge grows in spite of the lovely nurturing so lavishly heaped on them by Germany.
Well its their company to run as they see fit however I hope no dispassionate bean counter in Germany looks at the small very grey numbers of the SE budget and decides marketing and R&D can be reduced for it because SE isn’t a performer for Siemens overall. It would be even worse if support for SEU, blogs etc. dried up because what has been done in the past is regarded as satisfactory vs saving moneyand repurposing it for say NX promotions. At the very least they still need to find some $ for a proper SE website. Not holding my breath considering….
Hi Neil,
No do not hold your breath, they do not care. I believe the tech aspects are secure for my aformentioned reasons. However the ideas of diligent pursuit of growth and user community are not on the radar with these Siemens guys. You can see it in everything they touch. Take Matt Lombard for instance. They take this guy who has a proven record of success with upwards of over 5,000 hits a day on his blog and destroy his potential. For what ever reasons they came up with to do so. Tell him what he can do and how and then starve the whole web site thing for cash so nothing can be done. Before the SEU 2014 event they had him so busy that he had no time to blog to assist in the generation of excitement for the event. Matt achieved something that no other Siemens employee had ever done with social media and now these goofballs who can’t are telling someone who can how to do things. It is pitiful and this attitude is endemic throughout the Siemens side of the equation. Unless somehow some logic is applied along with some big boots in rear ends it is all over. The Siemens Sales Suppression Team is effectively killing any chance for SE to thrive like it should.
Hey what about this for a marketing strategy for Siemens. Here is a suggested script for them to follow. “Your SolidWorks stinks so bad because corporate leaders have made it so. (However, our dumb corporate interference is different and we believe it to be a paragon of prudent conservative management. Hey at least we ain’t messin wit de tech stuff!) We offer no serious enducements and don’t care if you show up to buy our product. We think it is superior and so we bought it for ourselves but don’t really care what you think of it. We promise the public face of SE and indeed our whole company will reflect our disdain for your perception of us but we are satisfied with what and how we do things. If this is OK with you and you care to plunk your money down we guess that is all right but don’t expect us to get excited about it.” THIS is the Siemens Corporate allowed branding effort. Buy it if you want to but we don’t care. The guys with SE would have it otherwise but they don’t count. Big companies are just so cool.
Sorry Neil, Siemens does not have sufficient funds available to be able to afford a decent web site. Why that might even cost us a couple hundred grand and they don’t have that kind of money to frivolously throw around on junk like web sites. They can afford endless meetings though where nothing is done but plan for the next meeting. THAT is a prudent use of time and money.
This will blow your mind. I sit there in an office in Huntsville before SEU2014 and I am asked if I am going. No I say and partly why I am not. One of the things I said was it is about time SE picked up the tab for me. I went to two sessions in 2013 and the rest of the time was spent being a booster for SE with various bloggers, reporter types and analysts. Or meeting with Geometrics people to go over product problems. And that does not count my time to have the first machined parts cut with SE and CAMWorks there for display for the event. Nor did it count the time I spent with posts over the year and posts with videos do not happen in a seconds time. I figure that I spent around three solid weeks doing this with time I could have spent earning money. I have paid to sell their product for them basically and have received not one thin dime of support or consideration in any way. So the response was hey, these events cost a LOT of money and they can’t afford to just give stuff away. But the utter stupidity of his statement was demonstrated when SE gave away gobs of tickets to Siemens and SE employees and I dare say paid their way and hotel too. So the Siemens guys show up and have a good time and most DO NOTHING to help advance Solid Edge in the public arena before or after the event. These people really really don’t have a clue.