Pros

The company finally has a product that one can be proud of again. A lot of the new hires from Apple and elsewhere have created a New Palm with energy and excitement out of a company that was a bit sleepy in the past.

Cons

There are still parts of the Old Palm around with mediocre, uninspired management.

It's refreshing visiting the New Palm. People seem to be excited about their work. They're informed as to what is happening around them. They have technical seminars about interesting topics. And judging from the books in their library, management is at least aware of current methods in software project management.

Old Palm is about just doing the job or putting out the current fire. There is no vision for the organization past the next deliverable on the schedule. No desire to get better at what the organization does. Managers were put in place because they had "hard" technical skills, not because they had any aptitude for managing. So you have managers who don't communicate, don't know how to plan and manage a project, and have no idea how to manage people. It is not uncommon to hear people moaning about "they don't know what's going on".

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to evaluate and clean up the lower level managers and get the entire company's culture going in the direction you've established with the New Palm. Train people if they're missing some skills. But get the people who don't have the aptitude for managing out like you did before. It's only going to cost you in the long run.