Conference 7.286::digital

    Wang Corp.
    
     Fred Wang resigned this morning.
    Rumors are that Wang stock is up and Xerox has stopped trading.
    

At a picnic last weekend, some friends who work at Wang were joking
about Fred's new movie, "Daddy, I shrunk the company."

M.

	Interesting but what has it to do with how Digital works?

				Alfred

    re: .3
    
    Good question!  Because it coincides with the recent increase in 
    the Digital stock price, I thought it might be of interest.
    
    If you do not feel it is appropriate for this conference I will 
    delete it.
    
      - Drew
     

    Al,
    	I think anything that affects our competition and our industry
    can have an affect on DEC. Alot of what's going on around here today
    is not because of anything DEC has done.
    
    				Mike

    
     re: .3
    
          Directly probably nothing, but a lesson to be learned, I think
    so.  It a short drop from feast to famine.  We still have this DEC
    the Almighty view.  We don't see ourselves out on the street.  We
    are relatively secure and go about our individual jobs like we always
    have, with no changes, no imagination, no direction in many cases.
          Ken has stressed over and over again we have to change the
    way we think, the way we do business.  Product sets aren't the 
    solution, a better process or method of doing business and accepting
    change as a normal part of that business is.
           Fred Wang's downfall was caused by exactly the same problems
    that exist here, failure of the hardware industry, look alike
    product sets some God awful management decisions and a failure to
    look ahead instead of behind.  How well |d|i|g|i|t|a|l| does in
    the future will be a reflection of its employees actions, not
    reactions.        
           How Digital works, hopefully better than WANG does.
    
    
    
                             phil
    

    
    Digital and it's "Competitive wages" are disappearing along with the
    competition.
    
    verne
    
    Just_my_view

    Last night I writelocked this note. After receiving some mail and
    indeed having had second thoughts off my own bat, I have changed the
    basenote title slightly to encourage the discussion of how Digital
    Equipment may learn from the woes of WANG.
    
    So let me ask some questions:
    
    	o What lessons does this represent to Digital?
    	o What opportunities does this represent to Digital?
    
    Andy

    I'm not too sure there are many lessons for DEC at all.
    First of all, DEC and Wang are in two very different positions in
    the industry:
    	. DEC is publicly owned; stock is traded on NYSE
    	. Wang is controlled by the Wang family; not privately owned,
   	  but not as publicly owned as DEC.  Wang's biggest problem
    	  now is that they are burdened by incredible debt, but they
    	  have no way of getting it paid off.  Their credit ratings
    	  have plummeted.  No one will lend Wang enough money to get
    	  the company on its feet.  There can be no "white knight" buyout
    	  of the company because of its stock structure.  Wang simply
    	  cannot raise capital to get itself going again.
    	. Up until just a few years ago, DEC and Wang were similar in
    	  that Dr.Wang still ran Wang, and Ken Olsen ran DEC.  But with
    	  the appointment of Fred to president, Wang lost the vision
    	  and control of their founder.
    	. Ken Olsen made the difficult decision back in '83 or '84 to
    	  take DEC in the direction of "one company, one product", and
    	  stayed with his vision of distributed computing power tied
    	  together by The Network.   Dr.Wang, on the other hand, also
    	  had a difficult decision at around the same time.  He decided
    	  to go in the opposite direction and stay with his vision of
    	  office automation on every desktop.   As we all know, Ken's
    	  vision was a smashing success, while Dr.Wang's decision was
    	  the beginning of the downfall of Wang Labs.

    The only lesson for DEC that I can see here is also a lesson for
    all companies and all industries:   Don't make an incompetent person
    the president of your company.
    
    -Don-

    
    What we should reflect upon is the wisdom of Ken and the other founding
    fathers in not allowing their family members to succeed them in the
    company. 
                                                  
    Fred Wang, and the recent sad history of Wang, is living proof that
    nepotism in large companies is very dangerous.
    
    Mike. 

    I don't think nepotism itself is/was the problem at Wang. After
    all the Watson family was a very successful act at a little company
    called IBM. The problems that are at Wang started before Fred Wang
    became the big boss. 

    The lessons I see are:

    1. Products must work when they ship.
    2. Commitments must be kept but item 1 must be kept first. Ie. Don't
       lie.
    3. You have to pick the right options for the future.

    Wang has had a reputation for products that don't work. Several
    shipping products have had to be re-called over the years. Some were
    never re-issued. Customers tend not to be repeat buyers when that
    happens.

    Wang announced vaporware from time to time. Things with big potential
    never happened. In our own history, remember what Jupiter did to us?
    Imagine what would happen if we made a habit of that sort of thing.

    We tend to pick right. We picked networks and clusters. A big win.
    Wang picked word processing. Not enough of a win. If the right
    networking products had come with Wang word processing who knows
    maybe they would have won. People who are into work processing love
    Wang.

	  I think that nepotism certainly *was* a large part of the
	problem. From what I heard/read a few years back, Wang lost
	quite a few very good executives because they *knew* that
	they wouldn't have a chance to move up while the Wang family
	was in control.

	Roy

A positive affect that comes out of this, is that there will be an
base that DEC can hire from.  We are not currently hiring much from the
outside, but looking into the future, we will hire.  There will some excellent
people to hire from.

There is an amazing amount of current DEC employees who used to work for Wang
and came to DEC.  I think we will see a lot of bright (and some not so bright)
people looking for employment, from Wang.

This is an unusual time to get a wide range of 'trained' workers who have
been in the computer industry.  I realize that they will need to adjust
to a different employment style, but they will not be green.

On the down side, this affects NE, where many DEC employees live.  Unemployment
will go up as layoffs occur.  This can affect the industry in the area,
if major layoffs occur at Wang.

I feel sorry for the people at Wang, but also see this as an oppertunity for DEC
to hire some qualified people and get more market share.

	-mark

       There are some good pieces about this in today's Globe.
       The reason John Cunningham left Wang was because he was told
    that Fred would be the successor, period! If you read these articles
    it's clear that nepotism was alive and thriving at Wang.
    Here's a quickie on the 'rise' of Fred Wang:
    1972: Graduates Brown U. degree in applied math. Becomes programmer
          on Wang's 8000 project.
    1974: Becomes a specialist in Telecomm. in Marketing. Also involved
          in managing the firms Word Processing line.
    1976: Becomes director of office Systems marketing.
    1980: Appointed Senior VP of R % D. (Another article says he blew
          this one big time, but was promoted again nonetheless).
    1981: Becomes a director.
    1983: Becomes exec. VP and chief development officer.
    1984: Becomes treasurer with additional responsibility for Wang's
          worlwide manufacturing operations. 
    1986: Promoted to president at age 36.
    1987: Named chief operating officer.
                                                  Denny

    re .-2
    
    Hmm, by that timetable I should have been made a director
    in 1986.  The notice must have got lost in the internal
    mail...

Re: .16

The timetable didn't get to you becuase your last name wasn't 'Olsen'.

Lee   ;^)

    The timetable was obviously copied from the Globe which left out
    what, in fairness to Fred, may have been one rather in important
    detail. I don't know the date but Fred also got a graduate degree
    from Havad B School.
    
    Maybe that's the real problem?
    
    

re Note 887.9 by WMOIS::D_MONTGOMERY:

>           Dr.Wang, on the other hand, also
>     	  had a difficult decision at around the same time.  He decided
>     	  to go in the opposite direction and stay with his vision of
>     	  office automation on every desktop.   

        "Office automation on every desktop" is the road to ruin!

        Bob (of BOSE)

    Re:18  
    Fred has no MBA degree from HBS.

    Lets keep this topic on the straight and narrow.  Is there
    any other information about Wang and how it can affect DEC?
    Can we learn soemthing?
    
    Should DEC try to rush in and convert as many Wang customers
    to our software?  Is this possible?
    
    	- mark
    

    
    
    Re: -.13
    
    Do you know what happens in the housing market when there is an
    excess of supply ?  (Or any market, for that matter). That's one
    of the downsides to the Wang situation.  If DEC should achieve
    its profit objectives while our competitors fall on hard times,
    is it not just possible that the excess supply situation in the
    technical manpower market could lead to an indefinate stagnation
    of salaries even though the "freeze" be nominally ended ?
            
    
    ===============================================================
    
    Re: -.21
    
    Sounds like a good idea. I have heard experienced WP operators
    say that they prefer Wang because of the keyboard functionality
    - fewer keystrokes per function than WPS+ or 3rd party VAX WP
    software. Has anyone ever looked into offering a true hardware 
    Wang emulation ? 
    
    What single group within DEC would have responsibility for attacking 
    the Wang userbase ?
    
    
    

    
    RE: .12
    
    With Ken at the top, do you think anyone can move above him?
    Now Fred Wang is gone, there is open oppornity for exec to succeed
    An Wang.
    
    RE: .14
    
    John Cunningham!  He helped the success of Wang, but he also
    was the person cuase the downfall of Wang.  At the high of Wang
    Dynasty, he as president, didn't guide the company in a right
    direction.  As a result, Wang has very proprietary pruduct.
    
    Some people said the Wang didn't catch the wind of IBM compatible
    PC.  Did Digital do better?  No, Digital spend a lot of money
    on three differect non-compatible PC.  We lose them all.
    
    The only difference between Wang and Digital is Digital is much
    large company and has a large install base.  Another thing is
    Digital keep "the promise", again this is because Digital is large
    and can afford to.  When you are a small company, you are scramble
    to keep the customer happy, otherwise you can't compete with the
    big guy.  It is very good and important that we ship product that
    works.  Strategy-wise, I don't see anything better at DEC.  Did
    you see a survey at Lowell Sun about pruductivity,  DEC is even
    bellow Wang!
    
    I don't see Wang will die soon.  Looks like they are determined to
    fight to the end.  Most of the lose in $375M are not real lose.

    
    Affect on Digital:
    
    	Both the Globe and Herald along with some analysts are saying
    that Jack Shields is among those being considered for the top job
    at Wang.
    

.23>    The only difference between Wang and Digital is Digital is much
.23>    large company and has a large install base.  
.23>    ...
.23>    Strategy-wise, I don't see anything better at DEC.  Did
.23>    you see a survey at Lowell Sun about pruductivity,  DEC is even
.23>    bellow Wang!

I think that if you believe this then you have missed a few things about
our company.  There are plenty of differences.

I started to make a list and decided there's no point.  If you really believe
what you've written, nothing I'm going to say will matter.  

Regardless of our "productivity" I would much much prefer to work at DEC.

And if you really think their strategy is as sound as ours then I think
you've missed the point of the last 18 months of DEC's announcements.

K.

I can think of at least one "lesson" for Digital:

Wang apparently believed that a proprietary architecture that was
very suitable for one part of a customer's business would
lock that customer into their corporation for ever and ever.

Martin.

     re: 887.27 Misplaced criticism.
    
    This is a private network, right?  So this is private criticism.
    
    (1) No one's wished for An Wang's health to remain poor.
    
    (2) It's not Digital employee's who are "writing Wang Labs off" but
    it's own employees and their own customers.
    
    (3) Talented employees of Wang might be expected to put their own
    interests first and seek employment here rather than work to restore
    Wang to profitability.  Indeed, Wang needs to become much, much smaller
    to become profitable and that means much, much more attrition and
    layoffs.
    
    By the way, "|d|i|g|i|t|a|l|" as a rendition of the logotype of Digital
    Equipment Corporation is violation of the corporate identity standard.
    One so well versed in our "Corporate Philosophies" ought to know
    better.

    
    In an earlier life I worked for a competetor of the Wang Word
    Processor and let me tell you hardwarewise it was primitive but
    the customers loved the software. We never could get those customers
    away from the Wang systems to buy our Word Processors which had
    great hardware (for its day) but used Word Star software.
    
    I never relized the significance of it at the time but in June of
    1983 I interviewed with Wang. They turned me down. That just might
    have been their first horriable mistake!
    
    If Wang is undergoing so much restructuring when can we expect them
    to stop airing those terriable commercials? You know the ones that
    have some yuppy rattling off several mouthfuls of data processing
    jargon to some customer who is stunned by it. If you've ever heard
    these commercials you'll also be looking forward to their demise.
    
    Fred Mudgett

    There are many lessons to be learned from Wang, both the company
    and the founder's book.  6-7 years ago Wang was poised on the
    edge of greatness. They had the beginning of networking,
    downline load distributed processing, desktop and central
    processing with off-the-shelf parts (Z80s and fans), and the top
    market position. The major technical decision that separated DEC
    and Wang was that DEC went ahead and did the MicroVAX chip,
    while Wang fired its recently hired semiconductor designers.
    (Killing the myth that Wang cared about its employees.)

    Wang was also a personality driven company, a strong personality
    lead the company and strong personalities lead projects. But
    most companies are driven by strong personalities and  should
    not have been a negative. The assumption that the next president
    would be chosen by who he was rather than what he could do MAY
    have influenced the whole culture causing a ripple effect. (Even
    in spite of the fact that Fred probably was fully capable of
    doing the job.) Also, there were rumors that some people at Wang
    would go out of the their way to design products that would not
    work with products being built by people they did not get along
    with.

    I believe the major lesson to learn is to value your people. The
    extra effort of trying a little harder with a "difficult" person
    that is trying to do the 'right thing' is worth it. Separate the
    person from the product, good people are sometimes forced to do
    bad products. And, as Jack Smith pointed out, no company is so
    big that it can not disappear.

    mike

    Wang was in trouble long before Fred became president. I heard from a
    Wang employee that An Wang punished John Cunningham by reducing his
    large office on the top floor to a small cubicle, cut his salary. He
    punished him for the fall in revenues. About a month after I heard
    that, I read about Cunningham's resignation. And then Fred inherits
    some big problems.
    
    There were a lot screwed up things about Wang. Fred tried to change a
    lot of things, but there was too much resistance. In a way, Fred was
    used as scapegoat being promoted into a no-win situation. Perhaps, An
    Wang was hoping that Fred would save the day, making Fred into a hero
    -- establishing him as a valid president rather just the boss' son.
    
    -George

    Sounds like a rotten thing to do to your kid...

    I recently read a 1984 book called "The Coming Shakeout in the Computer
    Industry" - forget the author.  Anyway, his forecast for the top
    survivors by 1990 (only months away!) was
    
    IBM (surprised?)
    DIGITAL
    WANG 
    H-P
    
    .. the BUNCH had completely dropped out of the running ..
    
    karl

    Re: .33
    
    Well, two out of four isn't bad.

    Re: .15  "Whatever happened to wordprocessors?"
    
    Alan M Sugar
                                
    
    Re: .33  "the BUNCH"        
                                
    Well the B and the U are now just a U and in some league tables
    are second only to Big Blue!
    
   

I was at Wang from 1982-1985.  I learned some lessons.  The biggest one was that
corporate cultures can change rapidly.  When I was at Wang there was a 
distinct feeling of family, that Wang was a family business and that Dr. Wang's
Chinese values of caring and nurturing the family were carried over to the 
employees of the company.  This was a distinct part of the Wang corporate 
culture.  Then the losses came.  I remember attending a mass meeting with
hundreds of employees in the third tower I had watched be built and listened to
Dr. Wang tell everyone that there would be no lay-offs and that Wang's employees
were its greatest asset.  Before the end of the quarter, I had been laid-off.
(Being laid off by having my name read off a list in a Friday afternoon 
department meeting has been one of my all time career lows.)  In the 
space of a few days, the Wang corporate culture was changed forever.  It 
certainly changed my ideas about the employee/employer relationship - from both 
sides, this should be accepted as the business relationship that it is.  

I have noted some statements in this notesfile about the no lay-off tradition 
here at Digital.  I have also noted the statements by the senior management 
about this being a tradition and not policy.  One of my lessons at Wang was that
traditions can change rapidly when forced by financial considerations.  Digital
is beginning to feel the force of those financial considerations.  I hope that
we can evolove our corporate culture rather than suffer the radical changes that
came to Wang.  While Digital is not Wang, we both are in the same business.
Every computer company I have worked for has had a no lay-off tradition.  While
I like to think that Digital is different that those other companies, I hold
no illusion that this tradition will continue forever.

Another key lesson I learned at Wang had to do with product announcements and
introductions.  In October of 1983, Wang announced an enormous number of major
new products: imaging devices for PCs, Unix for their VS line of minis, a
universal data interchange for word processing and compound documents to name
a few.  This announcement was intended to satisfy what the customers had been 
asking for - and the customers were truly pleased with the announcements.
Unfortunately, many of these products had not made it into the specification 
phase and did not even have engineering schedules.  When the products deliveries
fell further and further behind, many customers began to suffer as a result of
having planned on these products being available.  The associated drop in 
revenues, IMO, resulted in my lay-off and that of many other employees.  This 
was a good lesson in why you don't announce and sell a product before it is 
real.

I wish Wang all the best.  From some people I know who still work there, it is
a much different place than what I knew.

Here's a purely speculative idea ....

Wang now has a open position at the top.

Perchance there might be high-level managers at other vendors with aspirations 
for the 'top' job that might entertain the idea .... I'm not thinking of anyone
in particular, of course ....

Would be a challenge for anyone that got it.

re: .-1

"It takes a small man to lead a small company!" ???

Ray

<><><><><><><><>  T h e   V O G O N   N e w s   S e r v i c e  <><><><><><><><>
 Edition : 1884               Monday 21-Aug-1989            Circulation :  7311 
    
 Wang - Executive VP Ian Diery resigns
	{The Boston Globe, 18-Aug-89, p. 73}
   The top sales and marketing executive at Wang resigned Thursday in the midst
 of a financial crisis blamed in part on overly optimistic sales predictions.
 Ian Diery, 39, was one of two executive VPs reporting to Dr. An Wang. A
 spokesman for Wang Labs denied that Diery's resignation had anything to do
 with the company's current debt crisis. Analysts speculate that Wang's bankers
 could be pressing for evidence of commitment to new management. Wang said
 Diery resigned to "pursue other interests." One analyst said that under the
 company's current circumstance, Diery's departure was not a surprise. "I think
 Ian could see the writing on the wall that the next executive team is going to
 be looking for its own people," said Tom Willmott, VP at Aberdeen Group Inc.,
 a market research firm in Boston. Diery's appointment to the top domestic
 sales job was Frederick Wang's first move as president of his father's
 company. Wang Labs reported Diery's resignation in a brief press release
 outlining a reorganization of the company's sales and marketing operations. In
 announcing Diery's departure, An Wang said Diery "contributed substantially
 to the growth and success of Wang Laboratories." Three senior VPs will now
 report directly to acting president Harry H.S. Chou. They are John T.
 Chambers, US operations; Arend Vleggeert, Europe, Africa and Middle East; and
 Edward V. Yang, Americas and Asia/Pacific operations.

    Having worked at wang labs for 5 years and at here for a short while
    (9 months), I think that I can identify a couple of important
    similarities and differences.
    
    Decision Making -- At Wang decisions were made by the Rule of the
    Warlord (Wang, Tsiang, Chou, etc).  When the decisions worked out, this
    type of paternalism relieved everyone else of responsibility and
    worrying so that they could get on with their assigned tasks e.g. just
    worry about your own job and don't question decisions made by those
    above you, they know what they are doing.  Of course history has proven
    that too much of the time, they didn't know what they were doing and
    their wrong decisions have caused Wang's downfall.  
    
    Talk about opportunities.  Wang was the second large computer company to 
    come out with a PC.  It was propriatary of course but you can't blame them
    because there was no industry standard to follow.  However, one year
    later when it became clear that the IBM standard was going to win, did
    they go off and become the first major clone vendor?  No. they
    stubornly resisted giving the customers what they wanted and tried to
    lock them into a propriatary solution.  They could have been Compac but
    they blew it.  Then when it becomes clear that PCs arn't going to go
    away, some bright engineer (he works here now by the way) comes up with
    the idea to port Wang leading software product WP to the PC.  An
    enormous political fight ensues and the groups whose propriatary
    hardware supports WP win.  They could have been Multimate or
    Wordperfect but they blew it.  Ever here of Electronic Publishing? 
    Wang should have been the leading vendor.  They could have been
    Interleaf but they blew it.  Did you know that in 1984 when Apple was
    doing badly they wanted to arrange to have their products connect to
    Wangs minis but the idea got shot down because it MIGHT cut into Wang's
    terminal business.  I'll bet they regret that one big time.  The list
    goes on and its the same old story, a refusal to think long ternma nd
    give the customers what they want.
    
    Now here at Digital, it seems that decisons are made by the Rule of
    those with the Greatest Lung Power and Largest Bladder Capacity (handy
    in thoses endless meetings 8^) )  Sometimes this seems like an enormas
    waste of time and it was very hard to adjust to.  But it seems that
    allowing everyone access to the decision making process and valuing
    their opinions regardless of how trivial they may seem works better
    than the Wang method.  At least at Digital, when a decision has been
    made, everyone seems to go along with it even if they didn't initially
    agree.  I think this is called teamwork.  I know for a fact it results
    in better products than Wang produced so there is an essential
    difference that we can feel proud of.
    
    However, we should remember that what caused Wang's downfall is that
    they didn't give the customers what they wanted.  All those people who
    have their own little empires that they want to protect at the expense
    of providibg what the customers want should take heed.  What happened
    at Wang Labs can happen here too!
    
    Mark