3 ms·

I'm happy to see the link here as I was curious about the subject given that my career started in US Steel's data center in Pittsburgh. I'm saddened by the fac

I'm happy to see the link here as I was curious about the subject given that my career started in US Steel's data center in Pittsburgh. I'm saddened by the fact that this retelling seems mostly negative and ignores a large part of US Steel's evolution into USX. The retelling is subtractive whether you view Marathon Oil's involvement as a positive complementary asset play at the time or a negative given the history of its divestiture. I can say that there was innovation in the data center where I worked in the evolution from manual human mainframe era data center operations to token ring networks of PC API's along with abstraction and automation via glue code. The minimization of manual human labor as people retired is likely lost to the history books unless one of my old technical collaborators decides to write a book in retirement. The CMU kids I worked with at US Steel's data center in Pittsburgh were just as smart as the ones I worked with in the software industry from Boston to Seattle.

WhitneyLand 3y ago
I don’t doubt you at all, but what kind of innovation was there? Did it tend to be strategic or tactical? How closely was tied to their core competencies? How many innovations were industry firsts? What percent impact did they have on profits / growth / market share? From the article it sounds like innovation and investment were consistently blocked by short term financial goals. I can easily believe there were lots of very smart people, with transformative ideas, that were never given a chance to thrive.
- davidthewatson 3y ago
  Thanks for your response. There was plenty of innovation clear to anyone with the proximity and education to recognize it, but your questions raise intractable issues of the proprietary information of any large corporation. From my naive college kid's vantage point, the majority of innovation was tactical and not tied to core competencies owing to the siloed nature of communication between management and technical layers; i.e. it's difficult, if not impossible, for innovation to pass through that gated silo without a catalyst to nurture and support its transformation from tactical to strategic. This is a fundamental problem of complementary assets and the need for interdisciplinary culture that accrues to their composition, complexity, and collaborative community. We could certainly debate whether this is the crux of "The Corporation" over the last twenty years of acquisitions seemingly aimed at silencing competition. Of the two companies I worked with in that time period thirty years ago, both of their nail-in-the-coffin, final acquisitions approached $20 billion. Innovation has a way of disappearing in the dark subtext of large corporate acquisitions. The "never given a chance to thrive" is insightful beyond US Steel. That is, well into modern tech startups that are managed by the same kinds of people who managed GM in the 1970's.
Digory 3y ago
I had the same feeling at the end. Of all the ways to spend the 20th century, being tied to US Steel wasn’t exactly a bad ride. “Arguably, the Harvard system was a disappointment every day since 1636…”
bluGill 3y ago
How does technical innovation serve their core purpose of produting steel? The things you name are a distraction from the real business and should have been bought not done in house. or they should have done a pihiot to tech and got rid of the mills to someone who wanted to run then.
- davidthewatson 3y ago
  Technical innovation in metallurgy plays a significant role. It's easy to say that things are a distraction, but it's also only true in retrospect, unless you're on a spectrum of Turing award winners or the like. It's not clear to me whether you meant "pivot" or "pilot" but the downstream effect is likely the same. Trying to account for divestitures and acquisitions in such a large corporation is a fool's gold of forensic accounting. Just because the business wasn't more transparent than their incorporation required doesn't mean that they weren't thinking broadly and deeply about the future of their core business.

WhitneyLand 3y ago

I don’t doubt you at all, but what kind of innovation was there? Did it tend to be strategic or tactical? How closely was tied to their core competencies? How many innovations were industry firsts? What percent impact did they have on profits / growth / market share? From the article it sounds like innovation and investment were consistently blocked by short term financial goals. I can easily believe there were lots of very smart people, with transformative ideas, that were never given a chance to thrive.

davidthewatson 3y ago
Thanks for your response. There was plenty of innovation clear to anyone with the proximity and education to recognize it, but your questions raise intractable issues of the proprietary information of any large corporation. From my naive college kid's vantage point, the majority of innovation was tactical and not tied to core competencies owing to the siloed nature of communication between management and technical layers; i.e. it's difficult, if not impossible, for innovation to pass through that gated silo without a catalyst to nurture and support its transformation from tactical to strategic. This is a fundamental problem of complementary assets and the need for interdisciplinary culture that accrues to their composition, complexity, and collaborative community. We could certainly debate whether this is the crux of "The Corporation" over the last twenty years of acquisitions seemingly aimed at silencing competition. Of the two companies I worked with in that time period thirty years ago, both of their nail-in-the-coffin, final acquisitions approached $20 billion. Innovation has a way of disappearing in the dark subtext of large corporate acquisitions. The "never given a chance to thrive" is insightful beyond US Steel. That is, well into modern tech startups that are managed by the same kinds of people who managed GM in the 1970's.

Digory 3y ago

I had the same feeling at the end. Of all the ways to spend the 20th century, being tied to US Steel wasn’t exactly a bad ride. “Arguably, the Harvard system was a disappointment every day since 1636…”

bluGill 3y ago

How does technical innovation serve their core purpose of produting steel? The things you name are a distraction from the real business and should have been bought not done in house. or they should have done a pihiot to tech and got rid of the mills to someone who wanted to run then.

davidthewatson 3y ago
Technical innovation in metallurgy plays a significant role. It's easy to say that things are a distraction, but it's also only true in retrospect, unless you're on a spectrum of Turing award winners or the like. It's not clear to me whether you meant "pivot" or "pilot" but the downstream effect is likely the same. Trying to account for divestitures and acquisitions in such a large corporation is a fool's gold of forensic accounting. Just because the business wasn't more transparent than their incorporation required doesn't mean that they weren't thinking broadly and deeply about the future of their core business.