More old hands could join the new team
At Android Police, we talk a lot about the best phones to get and the software features we want out of them. We don’t often talk a lot about the people behind the details and decisions behind them, though we have talked around them thanks to news of layoffs in the past season. Okay, we do talk a lot about big personalities like Carl Pei of OnePlus and Nothing fame, but as he found out, the specific people he hires do ultimately matter to the product — we’re learning that included the Nothing Phone 1 and will include the Nothing Phone 2.
Pei recently revealed that his new company, Nothing, doubled payroll over the course of the past couple of years to 400 employees with “close to 100 people” working on software. What Nothing Phone 1 users got with Nothing OS that was “half in-house and half outsourced” at launch became more appreciated with later betas as developers got to work.
Some users have noticed similarities between the experiences of old OxygenOS — you know, prior to the ColorOS codebase merger — and Nothing OS’s improvements over time.
In noting recent improvements in battery life with Android 13 and Nothing OS 1.5 on the Phone 1 on Twitter, he also gave pats on the back to Nothing’s team which includes a number of old hands who worked on OxygenOS back at OnePlus.
Interestingly, Pei also addressed a question from the Paranoid Android account asking him if he’d consider hiring even more people from that old team. He said he was open to the possibility.
Paranoid Android was pretty much the first custom ROM to announce development work for the Nothing Phone 1 back in July and was able to pass along a stable Topaz build last week.
We decided to follow up on this exchange, reaching out to Paranoid Android director Hernán Castañón to ask what the comment meant.
He told us that he’s in touch with a handful of developers who were part of his team before they were recruited for OxygenOS — a few of them, he claims, were the original developers of OxygenOS. As many as six to eight of these people who are now out of Android development could be coaxed back if Nothing is able to employ them, barring specific hiring caps.
“As the company is still growing, we do not know what amount of space Nothing has,” Castañón told me in a Twitter DM. “I am guessing that they will need to evaluate what [Paranoid Android] developers can provide.”
We also asked Carl Pei for further comment on the thread to which he has not replied.
As we’ve noted before, Pei may have a few unique twists to differentiate his new upstart, but he seems to be going back to his favorite fundamentals to ensure success, among which are allowing people to experience his brand in real life and ensuring a great software experience on a product for the long term. If going back to his origins — and the people who were with him — helps him achieve the second, he’s shown his willingness to do it.
