[.ca] Bell Labs: Life in the Crown Jewel

Mildly interesting:
Crown Jewels describes the evolution of Bell Labs from the gravy-train days under the Ma Bell monopoly to its struggling to stay alive under the faltering Lucent. Aside from back and forth chronology that confused me at times, I found the book to be well-written. However, I don't know that the material is worthy of a book. The entire volume is really summed up in one sentence: Life at Bell Labs was like academia until after the divestiture, and then no one at either Bell Labs, AT & T, the RBOCs, or Lucent really knew how to harness its energy. As somewhat of an industry insider, I was hoping for more details of its products and innovations, but such information was hit-and-miss -- the author talked about "MapsOnUs" in detail, but quickly blew over other products like VoIP and Softswitch.

Jewels missing from the Crown:
There are good and bad sides to this account of the legendary Bell Labs. On the good side, this book is definitely a _must_ to the BL "diaspora", people who spent some 5-10 years of their life there, but did not choose it for lifetime. This is true especially for those who experienced the real pioneer era, i.e. when research was still under AT & T funding without business pressure, and at the birth of optical communications, a field that BL carried to the full end, in spite of many other useful or useless but high research achievements. Good times indeed from 1945 to until the 1990s for talented and die-hard investigators. As one Holmdel veteran wrote it once "..it was hard believing that you could be paid to have so much fun". The book is very interesting when showing the transformation from this legendary research system model into the new-and-ugly market-oriented one. Regrettably enough, the author puts emphasis on the more politically-correct later stage, instead of telling us what was good and personal in the earlier one. Yet, he provides a vivid account of his (seemingly mild ?) tribulations to get the scientific nerds and egoes under him through such a cultural painstaking transformation, especially when he strove to develop a viable and interesting product which unfortunately failed to interest the blind Top. In the concluding sections, he courageously mentions the infamous fraud that marred this respected institution (but it could be a "vaudoo" trick as well to avoid really adressing the core of the issue: scientific dishonesty as a mushroom on a decaying environment). In spite of many repeats and heavy commonplaces "scientific- vs. market-oriented research problem, or the reverse, and again never really solved", it is written in a soft and agreeable style, with that touch of personal and sincere account that makes you want to read the book to the end (could CS engineers of the world unite and follow such a writing example). On the less good side, there is way too much lip service to the author's past line/patriarchal hierarchy: basically GOD, as incidentally represented by VP research, then N+2 and N+1 or self, yielding annoying or meaningless expressions such as "the post-(my boss)BL", and so on. For any experienced-writer viewpoint, the final edition looks embarassingly perfect and rosy, in spite of some episodic 'disagreements' and other ego-tantrum lullabies. But the reader may forgive the author's sincere epitaph for the "great" bosses that made up his career, and understandably, that book is a dedication to them. (now are these heroes really dead, or enjoying happy lives in California start-ups instead ? We may surely save our tears in the latter case). We would have liked to know more about the causes that precipitated the doom of Telecoms, as viewed by the seemingly unique institution in charge. The competition and ROW must have been following in daily angst the Murray Hill saga, with its waltz of questionable promotions and friendly departures. Overall, it looks like the author stayed inside a fall-out shelter during all the events that got the market and stocks down to where it still lags. The painstaking story of the N-vestiture of the BL hologram, which gives a conceptual ground to the book, is alas no substitute to a real personal 20-years account. Maybe when the author was a post-doc researcher doing science and papers in his laboratory keyboard, hoping to get to the boss position, could we have learned something about the Crown Jewel times. Unfortunately, this is where the intimate story is skipped, and thus the official one (taht the reader is offered) starts with the "day after" the demise of the Crown, and the Jewels in the process of running away. At the beginning of his book, the author is very honest (say at least careful) to mention his lack of knowledge of non-CS activities at BL. But nevertheless he seems to praise Raman amplifiers (invented in Germany, France and Japan in the 80s, notwithstanding the discovery of SRS in fibers at Holmdel in the 70s) while remaining blind to the discovery/development of the erbium fiber amplifier at the BL Holmdel facilities. Such an event triggered the entire WDM revolution and generated billions of revenues for the new market-oriented BL BUs, their subsidiaries and an opportunistic submarine branch in particular. The author was probably not interested in the history of BL to such an extent, past his office/coffee-machine loft at Murray Hill. A bit more curiosity and less self-centeredness would have been a plus for such an otherwise very commendable personal account. This lack of curiosity about other fields, due to internal competition, rivalry or complete indifference between BL sites, was typical of the older BL regime. This book thus indirectly provides an unwanted homage to these lesser-known and shadowy aspects of the Labs. But glamour of the past is also important for little boys and girls. One star yet for "buy" in a 1/0 decision space.

Anecdotal, disorganized and poorly written.:
I can't remember reading a more poorly written book since grade school. I read the whole book solely so I could write this review honestly. Mr. Gehani appears to have slapped together every single moment he can remember about his time at BL, inserted 9 chapter headings at random, and called it a book. His sentence structure is consistent with a 7th grade reading level (7th grade by US standards, so basically, a normal 8 year old). I found myself frequently saying, "What the hell is the point of this?" after each chapter. There have been many brilliant scientists at BL; Mr. Gehani does not shed any light on the fascinating scientific culture that produced so many Nobelists. He does however, shed light on each and every mundane managerial decision he had to make. Again, I found myself frequently saying, "What the hell is the point of this?" after each chapter. It's truly sad that this book exists. So many other writers could have done a better job and added something to libraries around America. I wouldn't even use this book for a grade school book report. It truly is that worthless. My review of this book has since been critized. As PhD student in computational physics and chemistry, my failure to "get" this book is not for lack of understanding of the research that went on at Bell Labs, but perhaps a lack of understanding of why anyone would write this poorly about mundane events.

Crown jewels no more:
This is a must read for all those in organizations that have been around for a long time. Today, partly due to technology, organizations more at a far greater pace than ever before - Bell Labs the technology innovator itself could not keep pace. It was a fascinating look inside Bell Labs at the time it was going through a historic cultural shift. Gehani is a gifted writer, it was hard to put down the book.

Gehani was in the thick of it:
Having worked some with Gehani, it is important to clarify some of the errors in some of the other reviews. Narain indeed knew a lot of the "big names" at Bell Labs, as did many of us. However, it was not the culture, nor the tendancy to really put those folks on pedestals. Also, I expect Narain to write about things he was most involved with, such as MapsOnUs or the many other significant contributions he made. While the book may be hard to understand by those without "Bell-shaped heads," it is interesting to read by those of us who were there.