There Was No PDP-13
But here at pdp13.com there are some historical documents that may, or may not, be about Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).
Not the Digital Dictionary (txt)
A satirical view of DEC and DEC Culture, at the time it was written. The title comes from the publication of The DEC Dictionary: A guide to Digital’s technical terminology which was followed by The Digital Dictionary, Second Edition: A Guide to the Digital Equipment Corporation's Technical Terminology. I don’t know who wrote it, but it was a long time ago, in 1984. It was so long ago that we had DECnet e-mail addresses which looked like HOSTNAME::USERNAME (there was also a severe shortage of lower-case letters at the time). Attitudes were somewhat different way back then, so please consider it in its historical context.
Here is a sample entry which presages much-ballyhooed “modern” concepts like “anytime feedback” (and is perfectly obvious to anyone who knows anything about human or other primate behavior):
HELP: Careers are destroyed with too much help. You, too, can learn to help the people you want to get rid of. The following phrases will assist you:
a. "Help me understand that". Say this to your adversary at a large meeting after he has just made an amazingly silly statement. This will call everyone's attention to the fact not only that he is a complete idiot, but that you are a tactful and modest person.
b. "How can I help Irving?" Say this to Irving's boss, then point out Irving's many good qualities ("He seems to be trying his best") while making it clear that he is totally incompetent ("But he doesn't appear to be making much progress, and I know it's important"). Irving's boss will immediately recognize you as a helpful and tactful person, and will plan Irving as a "4" (Needs Help) on his next review. With any luck, Irving will be so incensed over his lousy raise that he'll quit DEC altogether.
Ethics in the Management Hierarchy (orignal pdf) (rtf) (html)
Joseph
A. Litterer
Visiting Processor of Management
The Amos Tuck
School of Business Administration
Dartmouth College
Hanover,
New Hampshire
A Cost Center manager wrote, “Read the attached Document! Sound like any place you know?”
Regardless of what the original subject company was, this paper examines the interaction of the tenets and values established by a company and how it affects employees, It is just as relevant to any company today, especially if it has a set of much-vaunted “core leadership principles” that just might produce unintended consequences.
Links to Other Papers
I don’t want to dwell on the negative, but I think these are worth saving pointers to.
DEC: The mistakes that led to its downfall
David T. Goodwin and Roger G. Johnson
Gordon Bell’s Appendix for Edgar H. Schein: DEC is Dead, Long Live DEC
Failure was simply ignorance and incompetence on the part of DEC’s top 3-5 leaders and to some degree, its ineffective board of directors [in that] removing Olsen [they] made an even worse mistake in appointing Palmer. Given the DEC culture of openness, honesty, letting the data decide, and taking personal responsibility—this straight-forward explanation should suffice and hopefully over-ride other explanations. The data clearly supports the need to take individual responsibility for DEC’s problems, rather than believing that it was the “events and the culture that made us do it”.
…
The Long, Final Days, 1992-1998
In 1992, Ken resigned and the board appointed Bob Palmer, CEO. With no experience in computing or running a successful business, downsizing an out-of-control company was a no brainier for a semiconductor manufacturing person. Unfortunately, Bob provided no leadership[10] for the critical top line, missing the biggest computing market of all time – supplying tools to build the world-wide web (www). Palmer’s severance from the acquisition by Compaq made him the first prize winner. The board came in second. Employees, customers, and stockholders all lost.
As Digital’s leaders and board continued to make bad ill-informed decisions, it hired consultants and outsiders to advise and paralyze. Instead, they only needed to look inward. DEC’s talented employee base did have the answers… but no one was upstairs or listening. Digital Equipment Corporation employed some of computing’s brightest and motivated people who came to work to design, manufacture and market world-class products and services. Thus the greatest and fatal flaw was failing to draw on its intellectual capital.
…
[10] A comment by a key Senior Consulting Engineer validates the board’s final error: “Palmer would come to the engineering committee meetings all slicked up and sit against the wall. He never sat at the main table. He said nothing. Contributed zilch. Had no ideas. Had no vision. Had no strategy. Seemed to worry more about how he looked than what was going on. His participation was zero. Bob Palmer was no visionary charismatic leader that could have saved DEC.”
I don’t know how long I’ll be able to maintain this site, so if you want to archive something, please do.
Sorry font geeks and other old friends, but Google Fonts doesn't have the exact font I would have rather used in the titles (with text spacing instead of logo non-spacing):