27 Jun
2023
27 Jun
'23
5:14 p.m.
On Jun 27, 2023, at 7:26 PM, Antonio Carlini via
cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
On 27/06/2023 21:17, Chris Zach via cctalk wrote:
Like the VAX 6000 and the VAX 9000 :-) Having competing teams wasn't unusual in DEC,
at least for a portion of its history.
It was a long running operating principle of Ken Olsen, and one of the worst management
notions in the history of the world. He didn't just do it with individual projects,
though that's bad enough -- he had whole product family organizations competing. A
notorious example I know well was the network products group (building routers and bridges
and terminal servers, out of Littleton) competing with the Loe End network products group
(building smaller routers and bridges and terminal servers, out of Maynard.
Once in a while there was some connection between the two, as in the DEChub family which
came out of LENAC (90 series) but evolved to include products from NAC as well (900
series, like the DECbridge 900 FDD/Ethernet bridge I worked on. But the misguided notion
that DEC had enough money to burn that it could build two product lines and cancel one of
them, or have each take a fraction of the available market, surely is part of why DEC
failed as a business in the long run.
paul
Different
thing, I believe.
Gotcha. I'd find it funny and perfectly fitting if DEC had two departments working on
the same concept and coming up with completely different, but equally oddball solution