Working with Jake

Jake and I came to our work at RIM at nearly the same time; he was fresh out of school, and I had hopped around a bunch of other companies in the area before settling in at RIM.

Over our first year at the company, we worked within a team that fashioned the first "new" set of applications that became the modern BlackBerry: all built in Java. Jake's area of responsibility was building our new set of public application APIs and mine was describing them.

I worked closely with Jake for about four years, and during that time I always found him to be courteous, generous, thoughtful, humorous, and exuberant. I'm sure there were times that we didn't see eye to eye, but I honestly can't ever remember quarrelling with him.

My fondest memory of Jake is attending the meetings that he chaired: he hated wasting time in meetings, and so he picked up everyone in the room on his back and shuddered forward at exhilarating speed. If you hesitated, you were lost. I think Jake got the same kind of joy from moving his meetings along that he got from free-wheeling down a steep hill with the wind in his grin.

Jake and I had similar backgrounds and upbringings so, despite the difference in our ages, I always felt a deep understanding for the kind of person Jake was. Like everyone else, Jake had his shortcomings, but those who knew him must have surely come to the conclusion that he was a very good man.