Part 2 is out now! kzread.info/dash/bejne/pXiYpZVmfLedoLA.htmlsi=q8JTXXnRo0iq31FA

@Wmann

7 ай бұрын

Hmmmm

@velox__

7 ай бұрын

you already know I have to cop the nebula for this

@420roachdoggjr

7 ай бұрын

nah

@batorerdyniev9805

7 ай бұрын

Nah

@werbnaright5012

7 ай бұрын

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.

@MinifigNewsguy

7 ай бұрын

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)

@BobbyBroccoli

7 ай бұрын

​@@MinifigNewsguyThis is so out of pocket and rude lmao

@MinifigNewsguy

7 ай бұрын

@@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.

@IkeOkerekeNews

7 ай бұрын

​@@MinifigNewsguy Apologize.

@joshuariendeau3733

7 ай бұрын

​@@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.

"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.

@paulstein8854

7 ай бұрын

i need to stop reading comments before i finish a video..

@shadowsovereign4948

7 ай бұрын

@@paulstein8854 Oof, my bad

@ylstorage7085

7 ай бұрын

Oi, this is the Canadian Mint, what you talking aboot?! ... THIS IS BANK OF CANADA, you want to get a hurt real bad EHHH?

@djpitcock5634

7 ай бұрын

i also need to stop reading comments before i watch a video

@nathanchilders7331

7 ай бұрын

Tbh that line goes soooooo hard

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.

@janetabrowne5719

6 ай бұрын

Amen. I feel your pain..living it. They transferred families all over the world.many of us were left to fend for ourselves.

@reuternopalzin2422

5 ай бұрын

How are you doing these days? Wishing you the best bro/sis

@groundhero10casual

4 ай бұрын

Sorry for your loss

@johndc2998

2 ай бұрын

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.

@BobbyBroccoli

4 ай бұрын

Those were very kindly done by a fan!

@redslendy

4 ай бұрын

I'm the fan who made the captions. Thank you so much for the compliments, I worked really hard on them!

@chrisstroud1915

3 ай бұрын

​@@redslendyYour hard work is truly appreciated!

@roseyoung44

3 ай бұрын

​@@redslendy thank you so much! You did a great job :)

@ephrem3476

2 ай бұрын

​@redslendy thank you for the captions!!! Amazing job ❤

"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.

@jonathanjohnson9611

7 ай бұрын

Lmaooo

@kagof2354

7 ай бұрын

Loving the tie in the the Broccoli Cinematic Universe

@jesusramirezromo2037

7 ай бұрын

Love that Broccoli always ties things together like that, he also mentioned that guy on the fake clone video

@radwimp7484

7 ай бұрын

The Broccoli Cinematic Universe.

@wolfgangrohringer820

7 ай бұрын

I laughed so hard at this "cameo".

The style of BobbyBroccoli documentaries is just perfect...the maps, the calendars, the voice-over...just amazing

@nolategame6367

7 ай бұрын

I'm pretty sure it's inspired from Jon Bois' style of presentation, which you could also go watch and is very interesting

@ratchet44455

7 ай бұрын

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.

@lonesome3958

7 ай бұрын

I think he credited Jon Bois as inspiration once

@EastsideBodega_

7 ай бұрын

He has an entire video showing you how Jon Bois does his editing style. It’s really beautiful.

@bmac4

7 ай бұрын

​@@nolategame6367it's, you might say, pretty good

This was phenomenal. This might as well have been a Netflix special, it was that high quality.

@Vinemaple

6 ай бұрын

Comparing BobbyBroccoli to Netflix specials feels like damning with faint praise

@Jester343

6 ай бұрын

I don't think Netflix has the best quality shows, specials and especially not documentaries (Cleopatra for example...)

@lindenbyrne7725

6 ай бұрын

Buddy you don’t get high quality content.

@theseanwardshow

6 ай бұрын

@@Jester343 then they should hire Mr. Broccoli to raise their game

@theseanwardshow

6 ай бұрын

@@lindenbyrne7725 are you saying this video wasn't high quality?

He just gave a almost complete Canadian history condensed into one company. Bravo sir.

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.

@Yvng_MCR

7 ай бұрын

Damn 😂😂😂 boss move mate

@jasoncharles8651

7 ай бұрын

Did you say Campling, thought so roll them bones.

@SomeOne-vf1rs

7 ай бұрын

I love it

@pizzaapplepie1338

7 ай бұрын

Sick pfp man

@weouthere6902

7 ай бұрын

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...

@blackpearlphotos3529

7 ай бұрын

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

@elim7228

7 ай бұрын

Electrical engineering.

@kibbo86

7 ай бұрын

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.

@gus473

7 ай бұрын

​@@blackpearlphotos3529😂 I find that completely credible! Those were the days, eh? 😎✌️

@joesmith323

7 ай бұрын

I remember when Nortel was telling governments that governments had to train more electrical engineers to supply Nortel with talent.

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.

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 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.

@elilass8410

7 ай бұрын

he covers this in the next part extensively!

@archockencanto1645

7 ай бұрын

​@@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...

@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721

6 ай бұрын

[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.

@Karma-fp7ho

6 ай бұрын

So completely awful.

@asterling4

4 ай бұрын

average capitalism L :// i hope that your family's been doing OK since

@black_squall

4 ай бұрын

@@asterling4 Yeah things ended up working out thankfully, but I realize that's not the case for everyone.

@ao1778

3 ай бұрын

​@@asterling4as opposed to all those classic communism Ws, huh?

@AndrewBarsky

3 ай бұрын

“Don’t shit where you eat” seems to be a common denominator in the comment section :/

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.

@garciamedicine6010

Күн бұрын

Any golf stuff ?

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

@kaminsod4077

7 ай бұрын

I mean, you guys do have us beat in many quality of life statistics, and your health-care system puts ours to shame.

@samr9483

7 ай бұрын

@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.

@nat6098

7 ай бұрын

​@@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 😅

@Silvermoon424

7 ай бұрын

@@nat6098 Yeah, as a disabled American, literally ANYTHING beats our shameful healthcare system.

@hedgehog3180

7 ай бұрын

@@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 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.

@accountnamewithheld

7 ай бұрын

If you don't sell up to become an instant millionaire wtf is wrong with you :D

@wreitz455

6 ай бұрын

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.

@littlegoobie

6 ай бұрын

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.

@kreuner11

5 ай бұрын

bet he hits himself in the foot over that sometimes to this day

@plane_guy6051

5 ай бұрын

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.

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.

@swade98

6 ай бұрын

Welcome to Canada! Thanks for sticking around 🙂 and congrats on getting citizenship soon! 🇨🇦

@guillaumelalonde7945

5 ай бұрын

Welcome to Canada!

@TheDenzel2112

5 ай бұрын

You do not belong here.

@blakemcmillan5680

4 ай бұрын

2 months late but, you mind me asking where you lived before Canada?

@robbybobbyhobbies

4 ай бұрын

@@blakemcmillan5680 If I knew why, I might tell you, but let's just say I came from east of Canada.

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

@AlexanderJasperJay

3 ай бұрын

What name?

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

@Booootsie

6 ай бұрын

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

@rumple4skin140

6 ай бұрын

Same reason you will never learn about the monetary system, in social studies

@INF1NI73

6 ай бұрын

Hey but we learned the fur trade 3 or 8 frickin' times. So that's good.

@luker.6967

6 ай бұрын

@@Booootsie I'm calling it now, pretty soon schools will stop teaching that monopolies are bad.

@MisterManDuck

6 ай бұрын

Because nobody wants to teach you guys how much the capitalist global economy is propped up by bullshit.

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.

@Holfax

7 ай бұрын

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.

@goliathstark9142

7 ай бұрын

bringed!

@kellybraille

7 ай бұрын

@@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?

@goliathstark9142

7 ай бұрын

@kellybraille can an entity perish Kelly or am I blind

@Zanthorr

7 ай бұрын

​@@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.

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?'

The Ontario Securities Commission really looked at that 10% securities cap and went "there are no red flags if you wear rose-colored glasses."

@crhu319

7 ай бұрын

Broke the trust of the whole country and it was not regained.

@jfbeam

7 ай бұрын

"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.")

@stinkymart3173

7 ай бұрын

​@@crhu319they've not given us a reason to trust them since.

@christopherjohnson2070

7 ай бұрын

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

@plplplplplpl7336

26 күн бұрын

Bojack reference?

BobbyBroccoli, one of the internets best documentarians by a country mile.

@smaaack

7 ай бұрын

BobbyBroccoli and Lemmino by far the best KZread documentary makers

@lonesome3958

7 ай бұрын

​@@smaaacktwo of the faces on the Mt Rushmore of YT documentaries

@bonefortune

7 ай бұрын

@@lonesome3958Fredrik Knudsen is the third face

@lonesome3958

7 ай бұрын

@@bonefortune and solarsands is the fourth imo. Or EmpLemon

@temmie4980

7 ай бұрын

ccountry kilometer

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

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.

@BobbyBroccoli

6 ай бұрын

Do you mean the chapter breaks? I don't actually manage the ad placement so KZread may have gotten smarter about where to put them

@icebuildsrobots

6 ай бұрын

@@BobbyBroccoli That's crazy, every time there's a TV ad graphic KZread plays actual ads. I guess they are just the right spacing.

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..

@evanfinch4987

7 ай бұрын

@@dprgrmmdwhat

@brinebot

7 ай бұрын

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).

@kylekylekyle505

7 ай бұрын

​@@dprgrmmdcringe comment

@PatientXero607

6 ай бұрын

@@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.

@anny8720

6 ай бұрын

⁠@@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

My grandfather was actually president of Nortel before Paul Stern so this was a surprise to see on my KZread 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.

@stella-vu8vh

7 ай бұрын

How's having money

@DATA-EXPUNGED

7 ай бұрын

@@stella-vu8vh idk ask my cousins

@steverogers8163

7 ай бұрын

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.

@the_julia_fair

7 ай бұрын

if i’m thinking of the right president, you’re in for a fun name drop/metaphor he does in part 2

@DATA-EXPUNGED

7 ай бұрын

@@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

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)

“What we do make, is fucking money” god that line hit so hard

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.

@rickmossop3733

7 ай бұрын

I bet this is why my father's pension got cut.

@ThePolomoloQC

6 ай бұрын

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

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.

Learned more about Canadian history in this video than the entirety of highschool.

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.

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!

@iankmak

7 ай бұрын

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

@InfernosReaper

7 ай бұрын

@@iankmak Yeah, that sunk-costs fallacy hurts

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"

@BobbyBroccoli

7 ай бұрын

I'm well aware that every other planet in Stargate Sg-1 is just BC haha

@tghidsgn

7 ай бұрын

​@@BobbyBroccolikind of like the X-Files painting an entire Vancouver quarry red for a few minutes of one episode.

@BlitzkriegHD

7 ай бұрын

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

@missybarbour6885

7 ай бұрын

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 really love how Jan Hendrik Schön shows up in basically every film in the Broccoli Cinematic Universe

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.

Thanks for making this, Nortel robbed my grandparents of their retirement

@cgktsr

7 ай бұрын

Such an awful thing, I hope your family's doing okay nowadays

@yofomojojo

7 ай бұрын

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.

@chizzmaster

7 ай бұрын

​@@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.

@JuneNafziger

7 ай бұрын

@@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.

@chizzmaster

7 ай бұрын

@@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.

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.

@BobbyBroccoli

7 ай бұрын

It was my impression that the analog switch with a computer brain was closer to describing the SP-1 than the SL-1?

@ogedeh

6 ай бұрын

Wars are no good 😢

@miscbits6399

6 ай бұрын

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

@kennethadler9326

6 ай бұрын

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!

@paulwarner5395

6 ай бұрын

The SL1 PBX systems that I worked on were all digital.

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

It’s so strange to hear Canada referenced in first-person, but that makes the narrative of this story so much more compelling!

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.

@kingalphawerewolf

6 ай бұрын

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.

@azurecinders

6 ай бұрын

@@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.

@Distinctions

3 ай бұрын

At some point your dad thought hey, maybe the kid can do this better than me 😂

@AndrewBarsky

3 ай бұрын

“Yeah I really screwed the pooch on this one, guess he couldn’t make things any worse 🤷 “

@censored1430

3 ай бұрын

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.

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!

@unholyscreeches8766

7 ай бұрын

Broccumentary is the best term ive ever heard

@Human_85

7 ай бұрын

​@@unholyscreeches8766definitely

@jennymartin547

7 ай бұрын

Trademark it

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 KZread 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.

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.

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

@clown134

7 ай бұрын

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

@Gas_Station_Tampons

6 ай бұрын

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.

@clown134

6 ай бұрын

@@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

@anny8720

6 ай бұрын

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...

@screwyourhandle

6 ай бұрын

@@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.

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.

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 watched this happen and was in the industry, this should be watched by everyone in both Canada and the USA. Fantastic overview.

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.

@iam1smiley1

7 ай бұрын

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.

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!

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 :)

We are all Canadian on this blessed day!

@Exo_Tricity

7 ай бұрын

Already am

@Micha-si4hp

7 ай бұрын

amen

@Lilly-Lilac

7 ай бұрын

Can I stay Canadian? Really not a fan of what’s going on south of your border.

@malakaipops1683

7 ай бұрын

Eh there bud, don't be taking our culture there bud

@squatchit5700

7 ай бұрын

No thank you 😂

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.

@babaloudanceoff

7 ай бұрын

best part of that one-off line was that he didn’t even have to mention Schoen’s name

@chrome235

7 ай бұрын

"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!

They were also the company my dad worked for the longest in his career as a telecommunications engineer in Australia as he worked for them from 1992 until 2009-2010 when Nortel closed their Office in Melbourne which is now occupied mostly by the Toll shipping company. My mom also worked for them from the late 1980s to the beginning of the 2000s as receptionist and had a really good experience working with them compared to the companies she was previously working for as a receptionist, that were highly abusive and full of the most narcissistic and selfish managers and bosses you could imagine. Pretty much those were the days that abusive behaviour in the workplace was commonplace and was completely legal as it was well before it was officially outlawed in 2004.

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 😂

@honoratagold

7 ай бұрын

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.

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.

@kolavadae4592

7 ай бұрын

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

@annaairahala9462

7 ай бұрын

@@kolavadae4592 What? This video is quite factual lol nor is Canada that new of a country anymore and does have its own history.

@sadfrown

7 ай бұрын

@@kolavadae4592 150+ years isn’t enough history for you?

@Melody_Raventress

7 ай бұрын

As an American I find it sad, too. I love obscure history.

@Mediaworm7

7 ай бұрын

@@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

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

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

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!

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 :-)

@The_Divergent

6 ай бұрын

How?😂

@TomJones-wi4nh

6 ай бұрын

@@The_Divergent On advice from my lawyer, I have no comment :-)

@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721

6 ай бұрын

That's hilarious.

@HeyLeFay

6 ай бұрын

@@The_Divergent Well, Notel surely didn't need it anymore

@deagol43

5 ай бұрын

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.

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

First time watcher. I just clicked on title randomly. Let me just saw this great F'in job with this. Seriously! This kept me interested the entire time with a subject I never knew I'd be interested in and I learned a lot. It made me want to learn more as well. That's what I'd assume you aimed to accomplish? Well you did just that! Thanks and hats off to you Mr. Broccoli.

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

@ca-ke9493

7 ай бұрын

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:

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.

@Rudmin

7 ай бұрын

I used to be a Calian government contractor, such a scam.

@DavidAKZ

6 ай бұрын

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 $.

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!

This video explained Canada’s history and indeed its psychology better than their education system

Knudsen and Broccoli in the same week?! This is beyond amazing.

@freeroamer6962

7 ай бұрын

I don't want to make your head pop, but Internet Historian just posted as well...

@ActionJackson_785

7 ай бұрын

I know. crazy

@PenguinDT

7 ай бұрын

@@freeroamer6962 OMG, you're right! What is going on? We're not worthy!

@MUGENanaya

7 ай бұрын

Now we just need Defunctland and maybe Ahoy to drop and we got the best of the best all in one spot

@markciarelli9741

7 ай бұрын

I had to rub my eyes and make sure I wasn’t dreaming when I saw that Knudsen video on my feed

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.

@johnnybgoodbeesandbarbecue5788

6 ай бұрын

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

@BluesBoyJonny

6 ай бұрын

What did your dad do after Nortel?

This is legitimately one if the best produced and clearest KZread videos I've ever watched. Well done.

this is my third time rewatching this story. your sense of storytelling, pacing, paired with the immersive graphics is just immaculate.

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.

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! :)

@bettyunicorn6132

7 ай бұрын

@@johnwattdotca wow

@jstarstudios7110

7 ай бұрын

@@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.

@ChadMoosey

7 ай бұрын

My uncles camper is in Almonte! 😂

@PXAbstraction

7 ай бұрын

@@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.

@cericat

7 ай бұрын

@@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.

49:59 The captions looking like there a loading bar during the dial up sound is a nice touch.

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.

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.

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.

took a nap watching something about options and woke up to this video playing, just layed in bed and listened to this whole thing… only cracking an eye open to see Boris Yeltsin stealing a micro chip which is honestly a funny bit. good video! I enjoyed it and subscribed. idk how many of your subs are nap conversions but you definitely have at least one.

@BobbyBroccoli

7 күн бұрын

I get this sort of comment a surprising amount haha

@TDOLLA

7 күн бұрын

@@BobbyBroccoliI was half asleep when I wrote this. I realized I have definitely seen your stuff before and it makes sense youtube would play this video for me based on what I watch. I think if you have autoplay on and don’t interact for a bit and let a few videos play through it will start serving you longer form related videos like 60+ minutes. I’m glad it happened because you have several new videos I look forward to watching and I love longer form well put together stuff. This is peak KZread for me.

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!

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 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

@Crowald

7 ай бұрын

A scientist who's good at researching politics. He's like a dynamo.

Love this channel love how in depth everything is without it having an over complicated explanation thank you!

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!

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

@fernando4959

7 ай бұрын

@@johnwattdotca wait how so

@fingersm

7 ай бұрын

As someone who"front row" this doc id amazing!!

@ping-lingchen5934

7 ай бұрын

@@johnwattdotca but wouldn't it be weird that he's against Canada despite him being a Canadian himself?

@captaineflowchapka5535

7 ай бұрын

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

@flametitan100

7 ай бұрын

@@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.

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.

@demonicbladez

7 ай бұрын

How did it affect Ottawa?

@evanrhildreth

7 ай бұрын

​@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.

bobbybroccoli is doing things with the captions previously thought to be impossible

@BobbyBroccoli

3 ай бұрын

That was a fan! They are credited in the description

I emigrated to Montreal in 2002 and I remember our company got a lot of former Nortel employees on the cheap. They were pretty miserable, I think the company I worked for was paying them probably a 1/3 of what they were getting with Nortel, and not to mention most of them not only lost a great job but also lost a ton in their investments.

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.

@elilass8410

7 ай бұрын

Spoilers: you are not wrong.

The pan over the graph of Nortel's stock price skyrocketing to the moon, the vanishing blue and white lines making it look like one of those early 2000s visualisations of data travelling through fibre optic cables, has to be one of the most exciting moments in any documentary I've seen since whenever Jon Bois last uploaded. I watched this on Nebula when it was first released and I've been _so_ excited for Part 2 since then. With the bar part 1 set, it's looking like it might be my favourite video of yours yet.

@Ronald98

7 ай бұрын

Hard agree!

Im amazed by the quality of your videos. They make for an awesome podcast while working! Also the visual presentation is very neatly polished

This was a great documentary. Now I can't wait for part 2!!

There's always just enough time between your releases for me to forget about the scale effect thing and be blown away by it every time. What a shot.

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.

Whatever the wait is for these videos, it's worth it. I love learning and Bobby's videos make it a joy