I never experienced any nepotism, but all the other problems were there in abundance. It’s too bad. There were so many incredibly bright people there and so much potential. As usual, failed management was the problem, as your story clearly points out.

A chef? Really? It’s all very sad, actually.

Thanks for the comment!

I worked very hard there and actually made decisions. The worst management I ever saw. Nepotism, favoritism and loyalty were uppermost, competence never was.

I worked on laser project for over a year, my manager never even knew what a laser was. When I succeeded, they took the project from me and made him the head, I got nothing for it.

When my manager was angry at me, he made me email him every day when I came in and when I left. Was I a kid, no. I had a Ph D in physics and worked for 2 major companies prior to DEC. His qualficaions? He was a good chef. His wife worked there, they were in the clique.

I left in 1992, the best decision I ever made. I went into sales and marketing and travelled the world. I knew DEC was going to fail. It deserved to.

The DEC-10 system was called TOPS-10. There was a follow-on, TOPS-20.

VMS was cool - took a lickin’ and kept on tickin’. I had heard of OpenVMS, of course, but I didn’t realize that HP was still supporting it. Who uses it these days? Is it legacy apps?

While I liked VMS a lot (for what it was) it was the operating system on DEC 10s that was really way ahead of its time. What was that called anyway?

Thanks.

I hope you’ll be happy to know that VMS (now called OpenVMS instead of VAX/VMS) is on version 8.3 and the beta of 8.4 is around the corner…