Yeah, but the whole point of Bell Labs was to be an engineering driven wild west. They had so much money, they could afford throw money at PhDs and let them do

Yeah, but the whole point of Bell Labs was to be an engineering driven wild west. They had so much money, they could afford throw money at PhDs and let them do cool stuff. Tech tends to suffer from employees getting bored and wanting to do cool stuff that is totally disconnected from the business.