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Non-Tech : Kirk's Market Thoughts

COHR 134.64

+4.6%

Nov 5 3:59 PM EST

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To: Sun Tzu who wrote (10458)	10/15/2020 10:48:06 PM
From: Kirk ©	Read Replies (1) of 26423

Great points! We at HP hired people we liked and wanted to work with. Parties, social activities like beer busts and camping trips at private parks the company bought were part of the culture. We blew the doors of Xerox with our laser and ink jet printers that with a simple scanner built in became copiers that gave people on their desk Xerox quality copies at a fraction of the cost. Fiber optics... I was on the team to staff up and build our first datacom product. The competition was AT&T. They were broken up shortly after we got started so we interviewed a bunch of their PhDs and didn't hire a single one. They were great at writing technical papers and looking good to their peers, but they couldn't get things that worked designed and built.... I think we had a 95% market share after we got some of the cost reductions in. HP became more interested in being PC, exemplified by hiring "that unqualified Fiorina woman," and they were broken up. VERY successful companies came out of it and I've made a lot of money on what they tossed out as well as following some good people who went to competitors. Luckily I sold most of my HP stock loooooong ago as it hasn't gone anywhere... much like Cisco never returning to its 2000 glory. I think what happens after awhile is you get so much NIH (not invented here) mixed with arrogance that anyone can do it better.... then Musk comes along and blows the doors off the auto industry. My only thought is I have not heard it is a great place to work... and I used to do a lot of work at HP Labs that became their HQ building, hiking distance from my house. Facebook spent a lot of "capital" making it a "fun place to work" for geeks who liked to pull all nighters working on software! I'd never fit in there because in college us hardware and device physics geeks were brutally mean to software geeks... not "real engineers" and scientists.... but they sure were successful building on their core culture. Google was much like HP... many young, smart people I know went there. They could do a lot of personal engineering projects on company time just as I was allowed at HP... I went to a high end audio shop and saw some of the products they designed inhouse just for themselves hooked up to some high end speakers and amps as a way for the shop to sell those to the Googlers just blocks away. They were also into autos, racing, etc. just like we were at HP... culture.

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