The Company that Broke Canada
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- čas přidán 14. 05. 2024
- For a brief moment, Nortel Networks was on top of the world. Let's enjoy that moment while we can. Part 1 of 2.
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Part 2: • Sinking in Scandal: A ...
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People to thank:
Subtitles provided by @redslendy
Charlie Arsenault - Assistant Editor
@ThePlainBagel on CZcams for providing me with Nortel’s stock price data
@ChrisHanel on CZcams for extensive Blender Geometry Nodes assistance
@hotcyder on CZcams for the thumbnail
Additional imagery licensed from Getty.
Music from the CZcams Audio Library and Epidemic Sound.
Additional music from @REPULSIVE and @WhitebatAudio
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A note on interviews: I spoke to over a dozen former Nortel employees for this series and those conversations provided many insights you'll hear throughout. Because some of the interviewees still work in the industry I have kept all names anonymous. If there is a direct quote with a name attached it's because it was a quote said publicly.
Sources:
The Bubble and the Bear - How Nortel Burst the Canadian Dream by Douglas Hunter (2002)
Nortel Networks - How Innovation Created a Network Giant by Larry MacDonald (2000)
No Fear: Tales of a Change Agent or Why I couldn’t Fix Nortel Networks by Tim Dempsey (2014)
Silicon Valley North: A High Tech Cluster of Innovation and Entrepreneurship edited by Larisa V. Shavina (2004)
Knights of the New Technology by David Thomas (1983)
Adventures in Innovation: Inside the Rise and Fall of Nortel by John F. Tyson (2014)
The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu (2011)
100 Days: The Rush to Judgement That Killed Nortel by James Bagnall (2013)
For $ale to the Highest Bidder: Telecom Policy in Canada edited by Marita Moll and Leslie Regan Shade (2008)
The Invisible Empire: A History of the Telecommunications Industry in Canada, 1846-1956 by Jean-Guy Rens (2001)
The Avro Arrow: For the Record by Palmiro Campagna (2019)
The Deal of the Century: The Breakup of AT&T by Steve Coll (1986)
Asleep at the Switch: The Political Economy of Federal Research and Development Policy since 1960 by Bruce Smardon (2014)
Canadian Science, Technology and Innovation Policy by G. Bruce Doern, David Castle and Peter W.B. Phillips (2016)
Reconcilable Differences: A History of Canada-US Relations by Stephen Azzi (2015)
Pa Bell: The Meteoric Rise of Bell Canada Enterprises by Lawrence Surtees (1992)
Random Excess: The Wild Ride of Michael Cowpland and Corel by Ross Laver (1998)
Dot.con: How America Lost its Mind and Money in the Internet Era by John Cassidy (2002)
TV Interview with John Roth on Market Watch on CNBC, October 1999
Royal Canadian Air Farce Episode from February 23rd 2001
The Rise and demise of Lucent Technologies by William Lazonick and Edward March (2010)
Brain Drain: Why do some post-secondary Graduates Choose to Work in the United States? By Brahim Bordarbat and Marie Connolly (2013)
An Overview of the Demise of Nortel Networks and Key Lessons Learned: Systemic effects in environment, resilience and black-cloud formation, University of Ottawa (2014)
Class, Nationality and the Roots of the Branch Plant Economy by Gordon Laxer (1986)
Foreign Ownership and Myths about Canadian Development by Gordon Laxer (1985)
Gale of “Creative Destruction” Engulfs Nortel by Sanjeev Kumar Sharma (2011)
Nortel Technology Lens: Analysis and Observations by Peter MacKinnon, Peter Chapman, Hussein Mouftah, University of Ottawa (2015)
Capital Gains Taxation in Canada 1972-2017: Evolution in a Federal Setting by Francois Vaillancourt and Anna Kerkhoff (2019)
The 2010 Federal Budget - A summary of the key tax measure that have a direct impact on you - RBC Wealth Management Services, March 4th, 2010
The Changing Structure of American Innovation: Some Cautionary Remarks for Economic Growth by Ashish Arora, Sharon Belenzon, Andrea Patacconi, and Jungkyu Suh (2019)
Do Tax Differences Cause the Brain Drain? By Don Wagner (2000)
The Branch Plant Economy by Stephen Clarkson (1972)
0:00 This is John Roth
2:04 The Elephant and the Mouse
12:47 Pa without Ma
26:27 Made in Amerada
42:15 Right Turns are Hard
57:43 Silicon Valley North
1:07:37 The Toronto Stock Explosion - Věda a technologie
Part 2 is out now! czcams.com/video/sDdC3-LT7pM/video.htmlsi=q8JTXXnRo0iq31FA
Hmmmm
you already know I have to cop the nebula for this
nah
Nah
Oh shit. Kanata boy, are ya?
Time to watch a documentary on a company that I've never heard of, committing a crime I've never heard of. Thanks bobby.
Never seen a “Northern Telecom” phone? Not surprised given you can’t spell “of” properly (translation: you look down at your phone all the time)
@@MinifigNewsguyThis is so out of pocket and rude lmao
@@BobbyBroccoli I don't celebrate ignorance as an excuse for not knowing a major company that went under not too many years ago that had such prominence.
But I do really like this work. Visuals are awesome.
@@MinifigNewsguy
Apologize.
@@MinifigNewsguyMy bad I never heard of a delisted company that went out of business when I was in first grade. Also people living outside the Western World wouldn't know either, so this comment is unfathomably embarrassing.
"BNR was respected, sure, but Bell Labs had six Nobel Prizes, and their latest hotshot physicist was bound to win them another."
Surely this physicist's miraculous work with organic transistors is totally above board. Nothing can possibly go wrong.
Lmaooo
Loving the tie in the the Broccoli Cinematic Universe
Love that Broccoli always ties things together like that, he also mentioned that guy on the fake clone video
The Broccoli Cinematic Universe.
I laughed so hard at this "cameo".
I worked for Nortel in Ottawa for many years until the downfall caught up to me in 2003 and I lost everything. Your video brought tears to my eyes as I relived all of those events you describe, and all of the great times while there. It is still so hard to believe that such a great great company was reduced to nothing and so many people suffered because of it. Looking forward to Part 2.
Amen. I feel your pain..living it. They transferred families all over the world.many of us were left to fend for ourselves.
How are you doing these days? Wishing you the best bro/sis
Sorry for your loss
Maybe we know the same people
I feel that the captions on this are going to be massively underrated. The dial tone alone puts this above and beyond nearly everything else on the platform. Add to that the use of colours and placement on the arguments makes this an incredibly clear video.
Those were very kindly done by a fan!
I'm the fan who made the captions. Thank you so much for the compliments, I worked really hard on them!
@@redslendyYour hard work is truly appreciated!
@@redslendy thank you so much! You did a great job :)
@redslendy thank you for the captions!!! Amazing job ❤
"We make... fucking money." That is such an amazing line to end this video on. The lack of swears up until that point and not expecting it from you make it so much more impactful.
i need to stop reading comments before i finish a video..
@@paulstein8854 Oof, my bad
Oi, this is the Canadian Mint, what you talking aboot?!
...
THIS IS BANK OF CANADA, you want to get a hurt real bad EHHH?
i also need to stop reading comments before i watch a video
Tbh that line goes soooooo hard
The style of BobbyBroccoli documentaries is just perfect...the maps, the calendars, the voice-over...just amazing
I'm pretty sure it's inspired from Jon Bois' style of presentation, which you could also go watch and is very interesting
he's heavily inspired by jon bois, who (as far as i know) invented the format, which uses google earth. I would highly recommend jon bois, he's amazing. But BobbyBroccoli uses the format with a different tone and subject matter, and I would say it works just as well.
I think he credited Jon Bois as inspiration once
He has an entire video showing you how Jon Bois does his editing style. It’s really beautiful.
@@nolategame6367it's, you might say, pretty good
This was phenomenal. This might as well have been a Netflix special, it was that high quality.
Comparing BobbyBroccoli to Netflix specials feels like damning with faint praise
I don't think Netflix has the best quality shows, specials and especially not documentaries (Cleopatra for example...)
Buddy you don’t get high quality content.
@@Jester343 then they should hire Mr. Broccoli to raise their game
@@lindenbyrne7725 are you saying this video wasn't high quality?
I worked for BNR/Nortel starting in the early 90's and it really was an awesome place to work. Our division was sold off around 2001 and although we were pretty bitter about it, thinking we got the shaft and that Nortel would rebound, but being sold off was the best thing that happened to my career and pension. There is so much history in this video that I was completely unaware of, even though I worked for the company. Thank-You.
Learned of this company when a scholarship with their name on it went to me when I went to university to study engineering. Thanks, Nortel, the money went into gambling almost immediately.
Damn 😂😂😂 boss move mate
Did you say Campling, thought so roll them bones.
I love it
Sick pfp man
Yeah the first two years of my student loans and engineering scholarship also went into poker 🤣
I was at university studying in civil engineering while Nortel fell... Half of the electric engineering department lost their internships in one day, it was a total panic - some had to finish their "intership" as janitors at the university in order to get their credits...
I did a university co-op placement @ Nortel in Brampton about 4 yrs before it imploded. My job was to assemble regional sales forecasts across the globe and turn it into future projections. I remember submitting it and my boss telling me that my numbers were wrong as he already told his boss what the CAGR (compound annual growth rate) will be. From my perspective the "professional office workers" were making up numbers to keep their bosses happy and their bonuses high. Anyone getting real forecast numbers were heavily NDA'ed and forced to ramp up forecasts to an insane level. My 2 cents anyway
Electrical engineering.
Yep. I had a small inheritance sitting in a "diversified" index fund. But Nortel was such a big part of the TSE I lost a ton.
@@blackpearlphotos3529😂 I find that completely credible! Those were the days, eh? 😎✌️
I remember when Nortel was telling governments that governments had to train more electrical engineers to supply Nortel with talent.
He just gave a almost complete Canadian history condensed into one company. Bravo sir.
Nortel was a beast. To this day their PBX's are still running in a lot of offices. If you're in the telecom industry today, you either work with or have worked with min 1 former nortel employee. If you have a large enough family from the Ottawa region, you're almost guaranteed to have a relative somewhere that worked for them.
My mother worked for Nortel for many years in the U.S. After she retired was when the company fell apart and they tried to stiff their retirees on their medical benefits. Fortunately they got together as a group and took Nortel to court over it and managed to get a decent settlement. At least she had her retirement money in her 401k and Social Security.
he covers this in the next part extensively!
@@elilass8410patreon?
I worked at Nortel, and I recall the email from John Roth gloating about how Cisco missed its earnings numbers. He how this wouldn't happen at Nortel as we made a much more diverse business. Two weeks later, Nortel missed its earnings numbers. Wished I'd saved the email...
[Curb Your Enthusiasm theme plays]
My Dad was a manager at Nortel for years and we were almost ruined when the company crashed. I am pretty sure my dad had stock options and most of our wealth was in that stock.
So completely awful.
average capitalism L :// i hope that your family's been doing OK since
@@asterling4 Yeah things ended up working out thankfully, but I realize that's not the case for everyone.
@@asterling4as opposed to all those classic communism Ws, huh?
“Don’t shit where you eat” seems to be a common denominator in the comment section :/
This is very, very well done. As a former Northern Telecom employee, thanks so much for creating this documentary. I left in the early '90s but kept in touch with my co-workers and it was sad to see Nortel implode like it did.
My neighbour had 5000 shares of Nortel when it was worth over $120 a share! He worked at Nortel for decades as a salesman. He stubbornly would not sell the shares even when the writing was on the wall. By the time the bottom fell out of Nortel his shares were worth 60 cents each.
If you don't sell up to become an instant millionaire wtf is wrong with you :D
I feel for your neighbor. That stubborn belief that nothing could kill Nortel lead many to hold on to their retirement stocks way too long. My friend had a lot of shares and after the creditors and shareholders were satisfied he got $185. Fast forward to now he is losing his house. With the Nortel shares he had prior to the bust he could have easily finished paying for the house. Nortels crash was a wealth transfer from the government and its employees to wealthy shareholders.
same story for Rim, now blackberry. Their complacency was over the top, and Apple came along killed them. They went from being canada's biggest company to whatever it is today. Still to this day, people are hanging on to their stocks hoping it'll bounce back to its former glory, but it's been over a decade and it's basically nothing (not including the spike from reddit). Fact of the matter is, blackberry is a completely different company with a completely different product and lazaridis/balsillie haven't been running it in ages. It might make a come-back, but it'll be completely unrelated to its past success. I also heard the ceo is planning his exit and will probably take a bunch of cash and options with him.
bet he hits himself in the foot over that sometimes to this day
I think there were a LOT of greedy people like that. They were concerned that they'd lose 20% in taxes or whatever the rate was, so instead they got nothing. Serves them right.
Regarding Canadian identity - as a Canadian, I always roll my eyes when people talk about how much better than the US we are. But also, if someone says we're not better than the US, my immediate reaction is "how dare you!"
I'd say regional identity can be pretty strong though, as a Maritimer
I mean, you guys do have us beat in many quality of life statistics, and your health-care system puts ours to shame.
@kaminsod4077 it really depends on where you are and what you're measuring. It's definitely better in some ways, and I have friends who would probably be much worse off in the US system. I've lived here (where I was born and raised) and in the US (family moved when i was a teenager, atayed until a few years after college) and am definitely getting more and better care here, as far as I can tell.
At the same time, there are challenges getting enough doctors in some places. My province is experiencing more immigration (from other countries and other provinces in Canada), which is a good thing, but there aren't enough new doctors to compensate, so the system is overtaxed. It can also be difficult to switch doctors or specialists if the one you have isn't meeting your needs, though it can be done.
Overall, I think ol the Canadian system is better than the US one, but sometimes there's a mindset here that being better than the US system is the main goal, rather than a very low bar that we could improve on.
@@kaminsod4077okay but being better than your healthcare system isn't really a high bar. We also have many politicans trying to privatize our systems now so we are in fact actively getting worse 😅
@@nat6098 Yeah, as a disabled American, literally ANYTHING beats our shameful healthcare system.
@@nat6098Being better than the US is more like the minimum for being a decent country to live in, not some high bar of praise.
My dad retired from Nortel, and I also worked for Nortel. Have a lot of company give aways and documentation left in his garage. Any old hobbyists telco guys are welcome to the books and left over cards before they get dumped.
Great job on this. One thing to note for people not around in the 70s and 80s, phone bills used to be on par with your electricity and gas bills. If you have any long distance calls, it would add up quickly. It was a juicy market for Bell Canada back in the day. Of course, they've been able to replace that with overpriced TV and Internet packages but that land line business was sweet sweet profit.
I'll never forget having to ask Mom or Dad if I could call long distance. The answer was almost always a no. It just cost so much back then to keep up with your friends that moved away or if you had moved. It's actually kind of a shame how you could lose friends back then just because of the sheer cost. Yeah, you could've wrote notes and sometimes you did. It just wasn't the same as the instant connections at one cost you get now. One of the good things about the net these days.
Even in the 90's in the US it was still that. I remember how costly it was to use Sega Netlink ANYTHING but locally.
@@XVa-uj8m Were you one of the few that had the Sega Channel in the 90's?
Pair that with the government stifling any outside competition and we get the triopoly of Canadian communications
The Ontario Securities Commission really looked at that 10% securities cap and went "there are no red flags if you wear rose-colored glasses."
Broke the trust of the whole country and it was not regained.
"What could possible go wrong, eh?" 🙂 There's a damn good reason such limits exist. (As Pinky would say, "Oh, well there you are then.")
@@crhu319they've not given us a reason to trust them since.
Turns out that sometimes rules and limits aren’t just there to get in the way of the line going up and making a gajillion-zillion dollars
As a Canadian gen Z, it’s amazing that absolutely none of this made it into any social studies class even though all of this happened at the very same time as every other event in Canadian history and had such a big effect on all of it, from the time of John A. MacDonald to the last few decades
Tbh I’ve always wondered why social studies never focused on business more in general. The most we got here in the US were basically bullet points about all the big monopolies of the ‘20s as reasons for monopolies being bad. Nearly all of the business history knowledge I now have is almost entirely based on my own research after becoming an adult, and I’ve become a wayyy more conscious consumer now because of it
Same reason you will never learn about the monetary system, in social studies
Hey but we learned the fur trade 3 or 8 frickin' times. So that's good.
@@Booootsie I'm calling it now, pretty soon schools will stop teaching that monopolies are bad.
Because nobody wants to teach you guys how much the capitalist global economy is propped up by bullshit.
As a recent arrival in Canada, a year away from citizenship, a hearty thank you. I feel like I've learnt about my new home's politics, economy, even some of its psyche. This is a major work, well done.
Welcome to Canada! Thanks for sticking around 🙂 and congrats on getting citizenship soon! 🇨🇦
Welcome to Canada!
You do not belong here.
2 months late but, you mind me asking where you lived before Canada?
@@blakemcmillan5680 If I knew why, I might tell you, but let's just say I came from east of Canada.
Nortel was an absolute dream to work for in the 90's. I worked at a production plant making circuit boards for phones and switches. Best job I ever had. And it was a culture of 'how can we help you to do this better?'
My father lost a lot of his pension when I was a kid.
It was fun watching this video and slowly piecing together that it was because of Nortel.
I bet this is why my father's pension got cut.
Same thing with my friends grandma, she used to work there and got poisoning from soldering boards. After like 15 years she finally got a settlement
My father used to work in Nortel's factory from 1986 to 2002. He had always nice things to say about the company, its focus on R&D, the value it gives to the employees, his friendships he made during his 16 years of work etc. He also talked about the day he was fired from the factory too, because of the financial collapse these corrupt managerial fat cats bringed to once wonderful and globally respected company. My heart is with the hardworking workers of Nortel.
I worked as a test engineer in Dallas for Nortel from 97-2000, my first job out of college. It was a good, friendly working atmosphere. Fortunately, I got out just before the final crash because I got an offer of a fun web job in California. My Nortel stocks did dive quite a bit before I left, but I managed to keep enough to get me through law school. While I have good memories from there, I was not surprised to hear of its demise...people were getting nervous around the time I left and most of my co-workers signaled to me that my leaving was a good idea.
bringed!
@@goliathstark9142 I saw that “bringed” in there too... but since it was surrounded by an otherwise well-written paragraph, I think we can safely suppose that the autocorrect sabotaged the intended word, “brought.” Thoughts?
@kellybraille can an entity perish Kelly or am I blind
@@Holfaxlucky sob
UPDATE: So uhh... Brian Mulroney just died.
February 29, 2024 after being hospitalized for a fall at his home and just declining health in general.
I am in IT. In 2003 my company built a new HQ in Detroit. I was the one who benchmarked all the enterprise ethernet gear. I learned a lot about the various players but found the people working for Nortel and the tech features and management software to be clearly the best and so we went with the 8600 ethernet chassis switches. I think we ended up with 34 of them. The guys doing the phones also selected Nortel. It was great to actually have a single vendor for all of our comm gear. We came from a mixed environment. It was sad for me to see Nortel fall. RIP
My grandfather was actually president of Nortel before Paul Stern so this was a surprise to see on my CZcams recommended.
The story I heard was that part of the failure was due to the fact that Grandpa was an engineer, and when he left, they replaced him with people who weren't engineers.
How's having money
@@stella-vu8vh idk ask my cousins
Its the same problem that has cursed Boeing. The company was run by engineers until the disastrous merger with McDonnell Douglas. Which somehow even though Boeing was buying them it was the Douglas MBA's that ended up running the company. Their first big change was to move the HQ from Seattle to Chicago to quote, "be closer to our customers". Now they're moving the HQ again but to the wrong Washington.
if i’m thinking of the right president, you’re in for a fun name drop/metaphor he does in part 2
@@the_julia_fair You are not, as far as I can tell the only mark Grandpa's left is a few scattered forum threads from the early 2000s about how things would've been better if he never left
As one of the many Canadian families who hitched their wagon to Nortel, this brings back the years of mounting dread of waiting for the horse to keel over during Nortel's downfall. Fascinating to see the dominoes line up. Can't wait for Part 2 to understand exactly fucked my parents' retirement and professional self-esteem!
Didn't help that a lot of financially illiterate mom and pops invested in Nortel.
A lot of bad stock investors hold underperforming stocks until they become profitable due to loss aversion (they rarely become profitable again) and they tend to take profit in well performing stocks (they usually continue to climb)
My parents did that until Nortel was dissolved and they got back a few pennies per share
@@iankmak Yeah, that sunk-costs fallacy hurts
As someone also from Ottawa, I remember when Nortel went under. A lot of my friends on my street's parents worked for the company, I remember being a kid and all of a sudden all my friends started moving away, I was so confused at the time. It wasn't for a while that I realized it was because their parents had lost their jobs and had to downsize.
Hey I know a lot of people watch with adblocker but I don't and I want to say that the inclusion of dedicated ad breaks is awesome and something I wish everyone did. Seriously amazing, you deserve recognition for it.
Do you mean the chapter breaks? I don't actually manage the ad placement so CZcams may have gotten smarter about where to put them
@@BobbyBroccoli That's crazy, every time there's a TV ad graphic CZcams plays actual ads. I guess they are just the right spacing.
From a former 20-year Northern Telecom/Nortel employee, really well done. One small correction: The SL-1 telephone switch was not a digital switch. It was an analog switch with a computer brain; it used the crossbar switching architecture. The DMS switches that followed were truly digital end-to-end.
It was my impression that the analog switch with a computer brain was closer to describing the SP-1 than the SL-1?
Wars are no good 😢
As a former telco tech elsewhere in the world I'm surprised by the earthquake anecdote
We were using NEAX61 switches and had retired every single crossbar/strowager switch by 1990 (similar earthquake stats and no mechanical exchange had ever been killed by a quake either). Fibre optic had become commonplace on most routes by that point too
I took a 2 week SL-1 course in the late 80s and then an 8 day BCM course in the early 2000s. Both in Richardson... good times!
The SL1 PBX systems that I worked on were all digital.
BobbyBroccoli, one of the internets best documentarians by a country mile.
BobbyBroccoli and Lemmino by far the best CZcams documentary makers
@@smaaacktwo of the faces on the Mt Rushmore of YT documentaries
@@lonesome3958Fredrik Knudsen is the third face
@@bonefortune and solarsands is the fourth imo. Or EmpLemon
ccountry kilometer
i love when in these docus, full of names i dont know, a name i recognize comes up as a "small player" half way through the video and i know somehow they come out on top in the end
What name?
Excellent. It's like a doc on Nortel with a mini "Crash Course" of Canada embedded. Well done (P.S. I studied Nortel as part of my business degrees which took place during the peak and fall...then ended up moving to Ottawa for the collapse. I still get sad when I see the abandoned ball fields and sphere of the headquarters. Almost every engineer friend that I have worked for them at some point and made stupid money for doing nothing. One friend, who looked after the ID security system, told me he knew the company was in trouble when it ran out of ID tags cause it was hiring so quickly...only in Canada)
My dad worked for Nortel for most of my childhood. It was crazy to see the company, implode and heartbreaking to see what happened to the employees..
@@dprgrmmdwhat
My dad also worked for nortel. We got out in the late 1980's and sold all our stock before it crashed. They died because of Chinese espionage. The Chinese stole all the technology and undercut their prices and stole all the contracts. when they sold all the assets after the bankruptcy they cleared out the factories and found hidden cameras and microphones everywhere. Now Nortel lives on as Howie (or Wawai or whatever).
@@dprgrmmdcringe comment
@@brinebot It lives on as Avaya. Such is life in the corporate world. Nothing lasts forever. ATi, Nortel, Matrox, BlackBerry, all ran by greedy narcissistic egomaniacs.
@@brinebot wait for part 2, he addresses the chinese espionage theory and covers the 3 former exec criminal trials and concludes that while Huawei probably stole some tecg, nortel was already well on its way to failing from years of internal issues and decisions and what ultimately led to it's downfall was completely above the board
Love the in-depth dive and all your other work but as a Vancouverite my blood spiked when I saw a dot over Toronto saying "filmed here"
I'm well aware that every other planet in Stargate Sg-1 is just BC haha
@@BobbyBroccolikind of like the X-Files painting an entire Vancouver quarry red for a few minutes of one episode.
Damn straight. Starting to feel that east-west division all over again. Where’s my beloved home city and why isn’t it being mentioned in the first interesting video produced about our country? An ootrage if you ask me
As an American, yeah, I thought he was talking about Vancouver as the filing hub! I know Toronto has a lot too though, so all in all good for you guys lol
I work as an operations manager for General Datacomm in Canada from 1998-2002. I’m at 21:00 and can say a) you’re evaluation of Canada/USA relations sounds right, and b) a lot of my bosses (CEO & directors) were ex bell labs. They had a certain camaraderie and patents under their name.
I think the most enjoyable part of this documentary was how much context it added to the conversations, angry firings and hirings adults did, and ads on tv and billboards when I was a kid.
Also makes you wonder when dad got fired in the 90s cause of corporate upheaval, it wasn't his fault.
For some unknown reason, my father gave me the password to his retirement investing account when I was in elementary school. I had this video playing in the background and didn't recognize the name, Nortel, until about an hour in, and I suddenly recognized that this was the stock I saw in my father's account as a kid that he had dumped tens of thousands of dollars into at the very peak of its price and was now worth only a few cents. I didn't even have a concept of how much money that was back in the day but was just baffled and I remember thinking how my father could possibly be so bad at investing. But now thanks to this video, I have a better understanding of the social zeitgeist within Canada at the time and how it'd be easy to get wrapped up into all the hype. Although now that I'm older, I'm also baffled as to why he thought that giving an elementary school kid the password and even the trading keys to buy and sell stocks in his investing account was a good idea lol. I don't think my father was a very smart man in general but luckily he was able to make his money back overtime and I got bored of looking at the stock market pretty quickly so I didn't end up making any stupid trades in his account and just went back to playing pokemon.
Thank you for this video.
Now, to be fair to him. He might have been trying to teach you things. Through a possibly dumb, likely not fully thought out manner, but still.
@@kingalphawerewolf You're right on the money actually. Though I think it started more as me just being a kid and goofing around in his office one day and asking him what he was looking at on the computer, it turned into him actually explaining some basics to me. I don't know if he really intended to teach me about the stock market or if he was more just kinda answering my questions, I actually think this was one of the best things my father ever did for me even though things might have turned out worse if we were unlucky lol. There was even a short period of time where I was trading penny stocks in his account but because I was an impatient kid I sold them off pretty quickly for small profits. All of those companies ended up tanking away not long after XD.
But because my father taught me this stuff at a young age, I think it made me a lot more comfortable with investing and a lot more financially literate as I grew into adulthood compared to my friends. So yeah, perhaps not the best thought out plan but I feel like it actually worked out very well and has been one of the most consequential lessons I was given in life. So thanks dad for that one XD.
At some point your dad thought hey, maybe the kid can do this better than me 😂
“Yeah I really screwed the pooch on this one, guess he couldn’t make things any worse 🤷 “
I know this story didn't actually happen but I feel for your fictional papa. He invested money in one of the strongest companies in Canada, lost it all from circumstances he couldn't control, and his investment savvy kid in elementary school thinks he's dumb and sucks at trading to boot. Oof.
It's so infuriating that someone can go to prison for years for shoplifting but huge corporations can ruin tens of thousands of peoples lives and the execs get off, not just scott free but with millions in bonuses
agreed.and then the private prisons actually profit from prison labor, at least in America under the 14th amendment. it's by design, because the execs used their profits to sway the government. just a side effect of private ownership aka capitalism
Nobody "goes to prison for years for shoplifting" . No one. Ever. LOL.
A person convicted of theft under $5,000 as a summary offence can be fined up to $2,000 or imprisoned for up to six months or both. These are maximum penalties, however, and the penalties for a first offender would likely be much less severe.
@@Gas_Station_Tampons isn't that why Walmart or target will log your shoplifts until you've accumulated a felony amount before they report you? using advanced facial tracking etc
The issue is the law, it was legal for them to obfuscate their numbers and not pay any severance under bankruptcy. Paying severance is moral but you can't expect businesses to do the right thing which is why the government is supposed to protect the workers unless you're not an important voter bloc and they don't really care about you...
@@Gas_Station_Tampons Ok fine. It's infuriating that normal people can go to prison for years for possessing drugs. Or literally doing nothing wrong, but they're just a black guy. It doesn't have the same poetic ring to it, but either way, white-collar crimes should be punished way more heavily.
found your channel two days ago and since then have binge watched all your documentaries/retrospectives. The quality of both production and storytelling is on par if not better than every channel ive come across doing similar content, and the long format just sets you apart. keep it up
I know that im late to the party but I just wanted to say how much I appreciate you putting out this level of content. When I say that your essays are one of a kind I mean it. The presentation is so good it really does feel like watching a movie. I love how every time one these parts end music starts playing signifying the highest point of the company, before a major flaw is revealed as the camera zooms out. Absolutely genius.
I don't think I've ever seen a channel so adept at combining expertly crafted visuals with top notch writing to make the viewer truly UNDERSTAND the subject matter of the story being told. Simply put, its masterful storytelling. Well done, and PLEASE continue to do what you do.
We are all Canadian on this blessed day!
Already am
amen
Can I stay Canadian? Really not a fan of what’s going on south of your border.
Eh there bud, don't be taking our culture there bud
No thank you 😂
thanks for the video! it's really well done and the visuals are fantastic, i've watched it a few times before. it's also very nice to put on when you're sick and can't stay asleep, so thx for the company :)
“What we do make, is fucking money” god that line hit so hard
Thanks for making this, Nortel robbed my grandparents of their retirement
Such an awful thing, I hope your family's doing okay nowadays
I just watched part 2 and oh god, I never knew a company could just *do that* without some system somewhere stepping in to make things right. Absolutely wild. I just started my first salaried job with full benees after a decade and a half of gig work and I am sweating over if I got played by buying in to that very thing that was sold to me as the safest bet. HOW CAN YOU NOT GIVE YOUR EMPLOYEES THEIR PENSION, THAT'S LITERALLY THEIR MONEY.
@@yofomojojoI haven't been able to watch part 2 yet, but I'm assuming that because Nortel employees were probably on defined benefit pensions, they were screwed when the company went under. This is actually the main reason why defined contribution is the standard pension plan today. You're hedging your risk of your employer going bankrupt since independent fund managers are responsible for your retirement benefits. If your employer fails, your retirement money is still safe.
@@chizzmasterI’m thinking that if the stock crashes it could destroy a bunch of pensions that were invested in it right? That’s part of the reason that the limit on the index funds *had* existed, so if one stock dies your not shit out of luck.
@@JuneNafziger yes. But in general, defined contribution is better than defined benefit anyway. The only exception is if you're in a government position since the general expectation is that the risk of the government collapsing is zero.
Nothing better than starting my day with a Broccumentary! Just a few minutes in I can see the editing is already a league above the previous ones. Keep up the good work Kevan!
Broccumentary is the best term ive ever heard
@@unholyscreeches8766definitely
Trademark it
The way you present the information and connect the dots.. it is fascinating! I admire your work! You really have the best skills to do a research and present it. Keep up the good work Bobby!
What really makes this is the in-depth assessment of the historical and geopolitical factors that make the phenomenon what it is, although it requires a bit more digging than the usual sensationalized CZcams video. Even the most "in-depth" studies of this topic and topics like it do not go this far into the subject matter; the insights here are so well-integrated into the greater history of North America as a whole. A wonderful, wonderful vid, and can't wait to watch Part 2.
Came to the realization that my Grandfather worked for Nortel pretty much all through this debacle - from the 70s till their eventual fall. He was an engineer at BNR in Ottawa for some time. He retired in the mid 2000s, right around when I was born, and I remember my dad telling me a bit about what happened at Nortel before my Grampa left. It sounded genuinely like quite a stressful time to be working there. My grampa was an engineer at heart, not a businessman, but he was thrust into making a lot of business decisions and advising on issues he had no real firm knowledge on because so much of the staff had left. After my Grandfather left, he was working in Calgary at the time, Nortel fell apart completely not long after. I too was born in the city I was born in because of Nortel.
I worked as a temp for Nortel in Calgary. It was a cool building with a beautiful lunch area but....the building was so big, it took a whole 5 mins to walk to the break room and 5 mins back to work area, so you actually got a 5 min break that you barely had enough time for either a cigarette or a bathroom break. I made a point about this 5 min walk for a break to management by wearing a sports stopwatch too prove my point, I don't think they wanted to hear they needed a break room on both ends of the place 😂
I did not expect the mic drop moment of this video to explain how my old man lost his job at Lucent over 20 years ago 😂Grade A content, I came away learning more than I expected.
My father worked for Nortel through most of my childhood. He had been relocated from Edmonton ,Alberta to Fort Lauderdale Florida to work at their office. I remember lavish Christmas parties, seeing the Oilers when they played the Panthers in box seats with his coworkers, and attending softball games on weekends and Friday’s. I lived in a cul de sac of mostly Canadians. He stayed on until about 2008, one of the last employees.
It was a good time when It was good, but a REALLY bad time when it went under.
Extremely well put together docu series, I look forward to part two!
It's incredible how you manage to make the most random and "boring" subjects so interesting, so much so that I can't stop watching. If the titles of your videos were from any other channel I wouldn't even bother to click. But you somehow manage to keep us here for one and half hours when most other videos have you bored in the first five minutes. INCREADIBLE
The ATM vs IP bit was great because I vividly remember living in a house in the middle of nowhere in the late 90's-early 00's where the Internet was so intermittent that I essentially couldn't use DDLs at all, and it immediately brought to mind the first time I discovered torrenting. It was like a whole new world opened up to me 😂
The "I have rural internet and just discovered torrenting" experience was so mind-blowing. I still have folders of CDs of stuff I downloaded at the time just because I suddenly could.
There was a small Nortel satellite office in the building where I worked. When the company went under and shutdown, the letter R on the sign bolted outside their front door found itself onto a shelf in my bedroom. A little piece of history worth more than the company itself :-)
How?😂
@@The_Divergent On advice from my lawyer, I have no comment :-)
That's hilarious.
@@The_Divergent Well, Notel surely didn't need it anymore
Excellent irony!
Too bad that I didn't get away with any souvenirs when the executive essentially stole my pension, and that of several hundred others in Calgary.
This is insanely thoughtful and well put together. Incredible work brother. I know you will continue to find great success in your work
The fact that you organize your playlist in such a way that it is easy to listen to all your videos in proper order is amazing
As a Canadian, I find it sad that a lot of our history is undiscussed online because it is just as interesting as other country’s history and I would love to see more discussion around it. So thanks for this video, BobbyBroccoli!! Very well-made and well-researched.
theres a reason why lol canada and lot of control was from external forces and is a new country we dont have that much of a history and mostly all of it is false like this video maybe made for entertainment only not factual
@@kolavadae4592 What? This video is quite factual lol nor is Canada that new of a country anymore and does have its own history.
@@kolavadae4592 150+ years isn’t enough history for you?
As an American I find it sad, too. I love obscure history.
@@Melody_Raventress Right??
If you’re looking for more interesting Canadian rabbit holes some I recommend are: the Tainted Blood Scandal, the Halifax Explosion, the origins of Nelvana of the Northern Lights (the comic book character the Nelvana animation studio is named after), literally any cult in British Columbia, the origins of our national anthem, and the mysteries surrounding crews that tried to search for the Northwest Passage.
Not to mention any Indigenous history. Looking into how specific tribes were treated/their histories is also very enlightening, albeit sad.
I took a course on Canadian Comics last year and the sheer amount of history there is crazy cool, and that’s just one medium! So much to talk about. I hope one day to possibly see more youtube videos, etc. on this stuff
So crazy to me how your videos link together. The fact that Schoenn had an effect, no matter how small, on this story is so fascinating.
best part of that one-off line was that he didn’t even have to mention Schoen’s name
"Their latest hotshot physicist was bound to win them another." Probably the nerdiest in-joke ever.
The ride up to that 124 price tag was awesome. The way you animate these videos always has immense payoff later and this was no exception!
My friends Dad was a Nortel employee in Ottawa when it all went to shit. His dad eventually bounced back, but man did that suck for them for a while.
Thanks for the doc, really interesting stuff! Looking forward to part 2
I remember Nortel's downfall very well. I was working for Calian in the late 1990s and our business started to dry up when Nortel decided to have a hiring freeze. It never ceases to amaze me that no matter how old the Ponzi Scheme method is, society falls for it year after year.
I used to be a Calian government contractor, such a scam.
Well as we know now the money just flowed out of the tech sector, then into Stocks and housing.Google bought (fibre) infrastructure for cents in the $.
Knudsen and Broccoli in the same week?! This is beyond amazing.
I don't want to make your head pop, but Internet Historian just posted as well...
I know. crazy
@@freeroamer6962 OMG, you're right! What is going on? We're not worthy!
Now we just need Defunctland and maybe Ahoy to drop and we got the best of the best all in one spot
I had to rub my eyes and make sure I wasn’t dreaming when I saw that Knudsen video on my feed
49:59 The captions looking like there a loading bar during the dial up sound is a nice touch.
I love when BobbyBroccoli video essays overlap. He's like, "Bell Labs invented the transistor--" and I'm like, "YEAH THEY DID!"
Also, as a lifelong American, I never knew how much the stereotype of Canada being "America Lite" was really true. Well,,, I guess now I know.
Coming from a Nortel family it was exciting times in the nineties. The headquarters in Brampton was like a modern day Apple headquarters. We would go to camps within the campus as kids. Now well we do not talk about Nortel anymore. A lot of lives fell apart with the company. I am happy to have learned about the history and feel proud my Dad was one of the engineers in the eighties changing the world. He tries not to talk about it. Its a shame what it did to him in the end. I would love to share this video with him but it would just hurt him.
I worked as a contractor in the facilities management department at that location. Your comparison is bang on. Daycare, shopping, camps,restaurants, coffee shops, tele-banking, all before its time. Thats why the location was nicknamed "The city". I was in awe every morning as I walked through the main doors and through the production area . It was ahead of its time, but spent way too much on appearances
What did your dad do after Nortel?
JESUS CHRIST, when I saw the line finally appear after listing about 6 different ways Nortel exploited everything and the pie chart started glowing, I was expecting maybe an increase of twice as much, 3 times, 4. Maybe 5. It just kept going, with faults between all-time highs appearing immediately after every single high. Jaw literally dropped, and for seeing moments like those early, I'm buying a Nebula subscription as soon as I can support it.
Phenomenal. One thing that is rare these days is that you took the time to go into intricate details, like details about the techonology, the personal relationship between Mulroney and Reagan, the pension plans, how the stock indices work, etc. I absolutely love this!
I like that you used that Air Farce clip at the beginning, just because the bits of this story that were familiar to me already was from watching Air Farce as a kid, too young to understand what was going on, or Air Farce's jokes.
I’m a little ashamed to admit this is the best source of history on the Canadian political landscape I’ve seen. Then again, your series on the SSC was one of the best political history lessons on the American political landscape so maybe you’re just that good lol
A scientist who's good at researching politics. He's like a dynamo.
Man, I did not know I could be this invested in a Canadian phone company and a funny little man who loves fast cars and fast deals. Great work as always!
I had no clue I would keep watching for more than an hour. While a lot of folks are focused on the content, I have to give you kudos for the presentation style. The focus on making a cohesive story where everything comes together. I cannot imagine the planning and scripting it takes to get there, but it pays of as an efficient communication model. Good job.
This is legitimately one if the best produced and clearest CZcams videos I've ever watched. Well done.
holy shit that graph at the end was incredible at showing the scale of this feedback loop. this is an absolutely terrifying look at what prioritizing growth at all costs leads to and im so excited for part 2. oh boy this is gonna be good
Holy fuck. I'm doing network and obviously Cisco is on top now. But the sheer greed and money manipulation just...makes me really sad for what could have been. Ive never even heard of Nortel before this video. But also this makes me realize the Fintech bros is not a new phenomenon D:
As someone who was around for much of the Nortel madness, this is the most thorough, detailed and fascinating retelling of its history I've yet seen. And the way you made your entire use of motion graphics essentially one giant shot that you just kept adding to and moving around was top shelf. Well done! I've got a Nebula subsription and am definitely heading to check out part two! Hi from Almonte! :)
@@johnwattdotca wow
@@johnwattdotcaYeah, the whole "Slightly more autonomous 51st state" thing is fucking infuriating. However, BobbyBroccoli himself appears to be Canadian; so I dunno what his deal is, but it wouldn't appear to be racism. Maybe he's just severely jaded.
My uncles camper is in Almonte! 😂
@@ChadMoosey Moved out here in 2021. Love it! I lived in Ottawa my whole life, but I hope to be out here for a long time.
@@jstarstudios7110 it's much the same reason Australia is sometimes referred to as the 51st state as well, we're both always dragged along in the USA's BS and a lot of our politics are heavily influenced by the USA. Whether or not the CIA was actually involved at all in the Dismissal is still a somewhat popular did they or not discussion or outright CT territory, and also the last time AFAIK either nation had a PM that told the USA to bugger off.
Im amazed by the quality of your videos. They make for an awesome podcast while working! Also the visual presentation is very neatly polished
Oh man i got this in my recommended and good lord this is great shit. Glad to have found this, definitely subbing for future!! The visuals, storytelling, everything is on point and amazing
Damn my dad used to work in Nortel (the Hong Kong branch). When they got bought out by Ciena, half of his buddies got immediately fired. He still works in Ciena, and he still considers himself to be a miracle as he's been working in the same company (by technicality) for the past 23 years.
I think one of most important things I pulled from this is that Cell phone tech is like 20 years behind thanks to AT&T.
I hate to be that guy, but GB (as shown in this video) is the abbreviation for a gigabyte, not a gigabit. That would be Gb. It's case sensitive.
I really love how Jan Hendrik Schön shows up in basically every film in the Broccoli Cinematic Universe
One of the anecdotes my dad used to tell me was about how all his friends he studied with got a job at Nortel and that he was lucky Nortel didn't offer him one as well. Nice to see a video about why that was lucky.
I'm just at the beginning but I gotta say, I love how you, as a Canadian, just floated a "the war of 1812 ended in a stalemate" in there as if it was nothing, lol
I know what you're trying to do there, Bobby, and I want you to know that you achieved it. My Canadian partner DID turn to me and go, "only we WON because what we wanted was STATUS QUO and that was the result of the war, literally everything we wanted we got and the US got nothing they wanted so that's not a stalemate, that's a victory."
ask the americans saying they won, which white house they celebrated in
"And the Whitehouse burned, burned, burned, and we're the ones who did it!"
Ask the average American and they'll ask you "What's the war of 1812?"
I found that hilarious
To be fair we did get 2.5/3.5 of our goals, that being
A) Get the British to stop kidnaping our sailors
B) Get the British to stop supporting Native groups that were hampering American expansion West
C) the 0.5, reaffirm and get the British to respect American indepence
We didn't get Canada though and both the US and UK were just tired of the war, hence the agree upon return to status quo minus some stuff and a stalemate
Fascinating stuff. As an Electrical Engineering college student in the early 90s, I worked at BNR in the Research Triangle Park between 1990-1993. I knew very little of the backstory and what happened to it after I left before watching this. It was also my first experience with Mac products. Thanks!
Man I just love your videos
So detailed , so well edited , so smooth .
Great work 🤩
I have a feeling this is going to be instrumental to causing the same telecom crash that our old friend Jan Henrik Schön panicked under.
Spoilers: you are not wrong.
Being involved in telecoms back in the 1980s and 1990s I recall the price of switching equipment from the likes of Nortel and Lucent was eye watering, along with all the maintenance contracts. They had been living on enormous, fat profits and semi-captive customers for a many years and has very high cost bases. When the market and technology changed they were faced with a cliff edge.
The same thing has happened to many computer companies, only a very few of which survived that same era. Cheap, commodity based technology wiped away decades of proprietary stuff.
Love this channel love how in depth everything is without it having an over complicated explanation thank you!
This is the best Documentary I've ever seen. I was completely glued to this. The ending gave me goose bumps. Absolutely epic
I'd pay to see BobbiBroccoli videos in cinema ngl. Given the amount of effort that goes into them, they deserve a cinematic experience(minus the chewing and people...). Saying that I haven't watched this one yet, but if it's anything like his previous videos, you're all in for a treat!
wth are you talking about people won't even pay for real movies these days and they certainly won't watch a pie chart presentation
@@stellviahohenheimPeople have different tastes. I’m sure plenty of folks who like Bobby’s (or, say, Jon Bois’s) work would appreciate watching it in a cinema. Beyond that, just because something wouldn’t be profitable doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be enjoyable.
@@stellviahohenheimmany movies in cinemas are just remakes or milking an established universe. I wouldn't like to pay for that to watch in cinema. If it's something high quality I'd be willing to pay
@@stellviahohenheimpresentations were, if anything, originally made for demonstrations in theater-like settings.
I’d still pay to watch a lecture with slide presentations in a lecture hall/theater if I felt the speaker had something informative or compelling to convey.
But I’m just a person, not “people” so never mind
@@tim.noonanif it was the 1800s this video would be a live speech at a lecture hall, back when those were popular. I’d still go see it, only now I’d have the extra perk of visuals.
Learning about a company I've never heard of, from a century I wasn't alive in, in a country I've never been to has never been more entertaining! Great documentary Mr. Broccoli, I'll be waiting for part 2 :D
@@johnwattdotca wait how so
As someone who"front row" this doc id amazing!!
@@johnwattdotca but wouldn't it be weird that he's against Canada despite him being a Canadian himself?
or he have a other definination of tie , or speak of a tie on a different contexte that isn't eleaborate here
to me at least he seem to make a point to not put canada as a "hero" agaisnt the "evil" USA , since if he didn't ,it would come of as anti USA @@johnwattdotca
@@ping-lingchen5934 We also overhype our own role in the War of 1812. The White House was burned by British reinforcements overseas, IIRC. And while the Yanks failed to conquer us, they did get their other major goal, which was an end to British impressment of American Sailors. Calling it a draw is probably the most accurate description.
Great video, I was hired on in RTP in Feb. 2006. One of the last new hires in Nortel. Rode it out through Genband before I finally jumped ship in 2017 shortly before the Ribbon acquisition and Kandy/AVCT split. Lots of detail I had no knowledge of, well done!
This was a great documentary.
Now I can't wait for part 2!!
I'm from Ottawa and I can remember at least 2 of my scout leaders when I was a kid worked at Nortel. We went there as a group for a tour a couple times and it was just incredible. Huge facility with so so much going on. This is the first time I've thought about Nortel in a while, and its really making me think about how the loss of that company affected the city. I was less than 10 years old at that time so it didn't even register. Thank you for talking about this.
How did it affect Ottawa?
@demonicbladez After Nortel's implosion, you had to be severely over-qualified to get any sort of tech job in Ottawa. There wasn't a mass exodus (at least not enough to crash the housing market) because a lot of former employees were tied to the city due to family or spouses working in Ottawa, and switched careers to things that were relatively quick to train or get certified for, like financial planning advisors, insurance brokers, etc.
The tech sector, once Ottawa's #2 industry after government civil servants, stabilized but never grew back. Ottawa doesn't have a tech-centric university to spawn startups, Nortel depended on a constant flow of new grads from Toronto and Waterloo, and that flow stopped, and no new companies were started to potentially take Nortel's place. Ottawa lost it's title of "Silicon Valley North". All eyes shifted to Waterloo during Blackberry's glory days, and afterwards to Toronto as the hub of the Canadian tech industry.
I grew up in Ottawa and Nortel always had such a presence in the city. There's a massive R&D campus (now occupied by the Canadian military) you drive past on the highway. Many people you meet lost their pensions when they went bankrupt. If you look at old office landline phones, many of them will be stamped with Nortel's logo. Thank you for preparing this documentary.
Grade 9 take your kids to work day used to be an epic occasion at Nortel. So many parents worked there it would just be a mega field trip with your school and every other school in the area
you did great, earned my sub watched video entirely without realizing how big it was. thank you so much please make more