5 ms·

Another great American brand reduced to a logo on a crappy Android tablet.

chasil 4y ago
For RCA (mentioned above), this happened due to bad management. The company ignored its core competence in electronics and semiconductors, and attempted to become a conglomerate. In the end stages, it was known as "Rugs, Chickens, and Automobiles" (RCA). The one good thing that RCA did at this end was to train the engineers behind TSMC, UMC and Mediatek. https://www.eetimes.com/rca-taiwan-workers-victory-too-little-too-late/2/ https://www.eetimes.com/rca-taiwan-workers-victory-too-littl...
- avian 4y ago
  Are there any good books that cover what happened with US companies like HP, Compaq, RCA, ... ? How and why they went from producing top-notch professional equipment to selling off their core engineering departments and reduce themselves to brands for cheap consumer stuff?
  - chasil 4y ago
    This is at the top of the search. I've never read it. https://www.amazon.com/Strategic-Management-Core-Competencies-Application/dp/1567205089 https://www.amazon.com/Strategic-Management-Core-Competencie...
    - avian 4y ago
      Thanks. This looks more like a "how to manage a company" text book. I was looking more for a historical view of these companies. For example, all history books on HP I found focus on their rise and "the miracle" of building a company out of a garage, not exploring their later years, like selling/spinning off parts of their core business and the reasons for getting where they are now. Maybe 20-30 years ago is still too early to get a good perspective on those events though.
      - chasil 4y ago
        That's going to be a large history, because DEC is inside that as well. A relevant study of DEC and Microsoft is the "Showstoppers" book by Zachary.
  - projektfu 4y ago
    To be fair, Compaq was in the middle of trying to become less known as a PC-compatible company and more as the heir to DEC when HP bought them. They took ownership of Alpha just to have HP crash the Itanic into it.
  - Tangurena2 4y ago
    I don't think any books that cover what happened would be considered "good" by business standards. There were too many idiots in the CxO arena and on the boards of directors. Too many directors are on overlapping boards with each other, so the network is somewhat incestuous - the capitalist version of the nomenklatura [0]. I worked for HP in 2003-2004 in the storage network division. HP stocks lost half of their value under her "leadership". Yet the CEO still got bonuses [1]. > In 1999, a dysfunctional HP board committee, filled with its own poisoned politics, hired her with no CEO experience, nor interviews with the full board. Fired in 2005, after six years in office, several leading publications titled her one of the worst technology CEOs of all time. In fact, the stock popped 10% on the news of her firing and closed the day up 7%. > Arianna Packard, the granddaughter of HP’s founder, commented when discouraging voters from supporting Fiorina in her 2010 senatorial run, “I know a little bit about Carly Fiorina, having watched her almost destroy the company my grandfather founded.” > However, before Conservative Political Action Caucus in February, Fiorina proclaimed that under her HP command, “We would double its revenues to $90 billion, triple its rate of innovation to 11 patents a day, and go from a laggard to a leader in every product category and every market segment in which we competed.” > Sure, she doubled revenues—through a massive, ill-conceived, controversial acquisition of Compaq Computer in 2002—but Fiorina did nothing to increase profits over her five-year term, with the S&P 500 showing net income across enterprises concomitantly up 70%. Furthermore, shareholder wealth at HP was sliced 52% under her reign against the S&P, which was down only 15% in that bearish period. She modeled the old joke of “making it up in the volume.” > Fiorina rammed the Compaq deal through despite intense opposition by analysts, employees, and shareholders. When it appeared that she would lose the proxy vote, the balance was tipped back the other way using hardball tactics that would make Donald Trump wince. > Despite such carnage, Fiorina pocketed over $100 million in compensation for her short reign—including a $65 million signing bonus and a $21 million severance. I have studied comebacks from adversity, but she’s not shown the required contrition nor earned the needed exoneration, and she’s not served as a CEO since. Upon leaving Taiwan Semiconductor’s board, the firm disclosed she only attended 17% of the board meetings. She looted the place. And destroyed what was left. The commercial jets were another pitiful incident. The existing fleet of Gulfstream jets were unable to fly non-stop from America to India. So she had the company purchase new Gulfstreams which ran about $55-60M each. The story going around my division (in Colorado Springs) was that the older planes had older pilots and she wanted younger pilots, so the existing pilots were laid off even though the transition from Gulfstream IV to 450/550/650 (I forget which new model they bought) would be covered by the same type rating. So many people were being laid off that an entire department existed to try to comply with WARN Act compliance [2]. Every Friday there were lots of going away parties where things like "Joe Bloggs here is the last guy who knows how to do X". Los Alamos laboratories had the largest installed computer base of DEC Alpha chips [3][4]. All those folks who worked with Alphas were laid off by 2003. Los Alamos National Labs had to hurry up and replace those computers ahead of schedule because repair parts and tech support disappeared in the layoff frenzy. This was the first job I had where H-1B visa workers were present. Chatting with some, their paychecks said "Digital Equipment Corp" even though Compaq bought DEC in 1998 and HP bought Compaq in 2002. They explained it to me that it was almost impossible to rename a company in India (this might have been true back then, or they might have been pulling my leg). They were asked to work remotely on Fridays, or to come in on Saturdays instead. This was due to fears of disgruntled ex-employees committing violence. I got to learn PERL because the previous guy wanted to learn it and that jerk wrote all of the build scripts in PERL [5]. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenklatura https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenklatura [1] - https://archive.ph/ewfsG https://archive.ph/ewfsG [Fortune magazine] [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraining_Notification_Act_of_1988 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraini... [3] - https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.5555/509058.509130 https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.5555/509058.509130 [4] - https://www.top500.org/site/48276/ https://www.top500.org/site/48276/ [5] - Along with APL, PERL is a write-only programming language.
netsharc 4y ago
Do brands expire? If I saw a Compaq tablet in the store I'd think "Yuck, that's a 90's brand, I wonder how crappy the tablet will be!". I guess not, the brand Mercedes Benz is almost a hundred years old but is still desirable...
- projektfu 4y ago
  Yes, but I was pleased with Gateway laptop I bought as a gift. It was a good price with good specs and construction, even though I knew it was not related to Gateway (Gateway 2000 for those who remember) at all.
- bluedino 4y ago
  People like my grandmother, who retired a long time ago remember Compaq as being the "best computers" She worked in accounting so that's probably what she used every day, and might have had a bad experience with some other (also now-defunct) brand.

For RCA (mentioned above), this happened due to bad management. The company ignored its core competence in electronics and semiconductors, and attempted to become a conglomerate. In the end stages, it was known as "Rugs, Chickens, and Automobiles" (RCA). The one good thing that RCA did at this end was to train the engineers behind TSMC, UMC and Mediatek. https://www.eetimes.com/rca-taiwan-workers-victory-too-little-too-late/2/ https://www.eetimes.com/rca-taiwan-workers-victory-too-littl...

avian 4y ago
Are there any good books that cover what happened with US companies like HP, Compaq, RCA, ... ? How and why they went from producing top-notch professional equipment to selling off their core engineering departments and reduce themselves to brands for cheap consumer stuff?
- chasil 4y ago
  This is at the top of the search. I've never read it. https://www.amazon.com/Strategic-Management-Core-Competencies-Application/dp/1567205089 https://www.amazon.com/Strategic-Management-Core-Competencie...
  - avian 4y ago
    Thanks. This looks more like a "how to manage a company" text book. I was looking more for a historical view of these companies. For example, all history books on HP I found focus on their rise and "the miracle" of building a company out of a garage, not exploring their later years, like selling/spinning off parts of their core business and the reasons for getting where they are now. Maybe 20-30 years ago is still too early to get a good perspective on those events though.
    - chasil 4y ago
      That's going to be a large history, because DEC is inside that as well. A relevant study of DEC and Microsoft is the "Showstoppers" book by Zachary.
- projektfu 4y ago
  To be fair, Compaq was in the middle of trying to become less known as a PC-compatible company and more as the heir to DEC when HP bought them. They took ownership of Alpha just to have HP crash the Itanic into it.
- Tangurena2 4y ago
  I don't think any books that cover what happened would be considered "good" by business standards. There were too many idiots in the CxO arena and on the boards of directors. Too many directors are on overlapping boards with each other, so the network is somewhat incestuous - the capitalist version of the nomenklatura [0]. I worked for HP in 2003-2004 in the storage network division. HP stocks lost half of their value under her "leadership". Yet the CEO still got bonuses [1]. > In 1999, a dysfunctional HP board committee, filled with its own poisoned politics, hired her with no CEO experience, nor interviews with the full board. Fired in 2005, after six years in office, several leading publications titled her one of the worst technology CEOs of all time. In fact, the stock popped 10% on the news of her firing and closed the day up 7%. > Arianna Packard, the granddaughter of HP’s founder, commented when discouraging voters from supporting Fiorina in her 2010 senatorial run, “I know a little bit about Carly Fiorina, having watched her almost destroy the company my grandfather founded.” > However, before Conservative Political Action Caucus in February, Fiorina proclaimed that under her HP command, “We would double its revenues to $90 billion, triple its rate of innovation to 11 patents a day, and go from a laggard to a leader in every product category and every market segment in which we competed.” > Sure, she doubled revenues—through a massive, ill-conceived, controversial acquisition of Compaq Computer in 2002—but Fiorina did nothing to increase profits over her five-year term, with the S&P 500 showing net income across enterprises concomitantly up 70%. Furthermore, shareholder wealth at HP was sliced 52% under her reign against the S&P, which was down only 15% in that bearish period. She modeled the old joke of “making it up in the volume.” > Fiorina rammed the Compaq deal through despite intense opposition by analysts, employees, and shareholders. When it appeared that she would lose the proxy vote, the balance was tipped back the other way using hardball tactics that would make Donald Trump wince. > Despite such carnage, Fiorina pocketed over $100 million in compensation for her short reign—including a $65 million signing bonus and a $21 million severance. I have studied comebacks from adversity, but she’s not shown the required contrition nor earned the needed exoneration, and she’s not served as a CEO since. Upon leaving Taiwan Semiconductor’s board, the firm disclosed she only attended 17% of the board meetings. She looted the place. And destroyed what was left. The commercial jets were another pitiful incident. The existing fleet of Gulfstream jets were unable to fly non-stop from America to India. So she had the company purchase new Gulfstreams which ran about $55-60M each. The story going around my division (in Colorado Springs) was that the older planes had older pilots and she wanted younger pilots, so the existing pilots were laid off even though the transition from Gulfstream IV to 450/550/650 (I forget which new model they bought) would be covered by the same type rating. So many people were being laid off that an entire department existed to try to comply with WARN Act compliance [2]. Every Friday there were lots of going away parties where things like "Joe Bloggs here is the last guy who knows how to do X". Los Alamos laboratories had the largest installed computer base of DEC Alpha chips [3][4]. All those folks who worked with Alphas were laid off by 2003. Los Alamos National Labs had to hurry up and replace those computers ahead of schedule because repair parts and tech support disappeared in the layoff frenzy. This was the first job I had where H-1B visa workers were present. Chatting with some, their paychecks said "Digital Equipment Corp" even though Compaq bought DEC in 1998 and HP bought Compaq in 2002. They explained it to me that it was almost impossible to rename a company in India (this might have been true back then, or they might have been pulling my leg). They were asked to work remotely on Fridays, or to come in on Saturdays instead. This was due to fears of disgruntled ex-employees committing violence. I got to learn PERL because the previous guy wanted to learn it and that jerk wrote all of the build scripts in PERL [5]. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenklatura https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenklatura [1] - https://archive.ph/ewfsG https://archive.ph/ewfsG [Fortune magazine] [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraining_Notification_Act_of_1988 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraini... [3] - https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.5555/509058.509130 https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.5555/509058.509130 [4] - https://www.top500.org/site/48276/ https://www.top500.org/site/48276/ [5] - Along with APL, PERL is a write-only programming language.

netsharc 4y ago

Do brands expire? If I saw a Compaq tablet in the store I'd think "Yuck, that's a 90's brand, I wonder how crappy the tablet will be!". I guess not, the brand Mercedes Benz is almost a hundred years old but is still desirable...

projektfu 4y ago
Yes, but I was pleased with Gateway laptop I bought as a gift. It was a good price with good specs and construction, even though I knew it was not related to Gateway (Gateway 2000 for those who remember) at all.
bluedino 4y ago
People like my grandmother, who retired a long time ago remember Compaq as being the "best computers" She worked in accounting so that's probably what she used every day, and might have had a bad experience with some other (also now-defunct) brand.