I didn't know this detail, although I remember how much damage Intel and MS did to many companies back then gulling them into adopting NT and Itanium instead of their previous Risc architectures and UNIX versions. Years before Itanium, Intergraph too got heavy damages thanks to overrated Intel products, adopting Pentium just before the infamous FDIV bug was discovered.

That Belluzzo reminds me of Grima Wormtongue I can't decide whether hating him more for SGI or Alpha. But Carly Fiorina should have spotted him and undone as many of his misdeeds as possible.

Just to avoid oversimplifications, HP, SGI and Compaq all had their big problems back then, but OS' and CPU architectures had nothing to do with them and changing them wasn't the solution: IBM stuck to Power architecture for workstations and used it also to replace previous processing units in its mainframes and it thrived anyway, it's still developing it and Power is the base of all the current consoles' CPUs (including the Cell).

Pardon my being cynical here, but I get a feeling sometimes the entire corporate culture is switching over to a rock star mentality, where the idea is to dangle a delusional carrot in front of people, to offer ONE position and have hundreds compete for it, with the delusional belief that you will make it to the top.  You have it  work like Hollywood, where the idea is to have people undercut one another and have a few make it, and if you can get free labor, you do it.  And you embed yourself totally and completely in the marketplace, make workers disposable, and have it so that everything is by the numbers, and make it cutthroat.  Everything then touches on what you said.  it is all by numbers, and not anyone knowing anyone or their character.  HR is run by a giant machine that resumes are dumped in, and the human touch is lost.  Throw out any degree of loyalty also in the process, and no one understanding the company as an entity.  

The CEOs you mention built the companies up from scratch, and have invested their lives in it.  The understand and know things and what it takes.  But they get replaced by a souless process that eventually has the impact that on them what happened to Atari after Bushnell sold Atari to Warner Communications.  The soul was lost in the process.

Well, I guess this goes with corporatism as the driving market force.  It isn't pre-corporate capitalism either, it is a place where owners of companies don't even have to concern about liability, just maximizing asset inflation... after all, buy low and sell high.

The thing to remember is that if there are (and this is qualified by an IF) allowances for a free market - few regulations to favor companies with lobbyists, no major impediments to create/sustain businesses, and such, then such poor practices will eventually be weeded out. Incompetence at the CEO level should bring about failure in a company. If and when it does not, we have a major problem with how corporations work - how are they existing after such foolish behavior?

Circling around to the issue of hiring and investing in the company, we must understand that if companies don't make the right choices, they can face dire circumstances if they act stupidly - from the CEO, to the executive, to the rest of the entity. One could look at the example of AOL during their heyday and their refusal to invest in post-dialup technologies. After broadband began penetration, they capitulated and are a shadow of their former selves... Then someone had the bright idea to buy out HuffPo which may be the stupidest acquisition ever. In such an example, much like HP's, you can see that leadership will destroy both companies, most likely. But that is how the system should work - and these CEOs should be tarred and feathered for it.

Eventually, the system will work itself out, I believe. Companies will continue to fail that practice very poor leadership and continue rock-star hiring of executives. Companies that treat employees right and are driven by a good vision will thrive. Its always been like this for any and all startups. Of course, after the founder dies, leadership usually passes to people of incompetence, but this is a good thing - it weeds out those that are foolish and cannot run a company.

Here is a situation that pops up as a result of corporate culture itself. Individuals who do the damage will have moved far away by the time the damage is done, and implement things short-term which look great, but cost long term, and no one is watching. I heard one story, at one company, where one manager would keep having his projects end up in crisis mode, and then the people in the team would bail out his mismanagement. He kept getting face time in corporate and actually got promotions due to his exposure and recovering from mismanagement.

And then there is the "need to make a decision from 30,000 feet" which ends up causing a broad stroke which undermines employee confidence that management hires fairly. And you can add on top of that all the stuff found in Dilbert, that happens from actual events in one form or another.

She was on CNBC today. Didn't get to see it though cause the freaking water heater at my store sprung a GIANT leak.

Iwata and his ilk as well, to make a tangental statement for a moment. Some have been calling for his head, but you're really not going to get anyone who views the industry like he does within Nintendo

And its a phenomenon you can see in other gaming companies too, where the programmers get replaced by the suits and then everything goes to pot.

Right. That is the business cycle. Its a continuous thing. Inventors and entreprenours build something to greatness, progress technology in theif field, retire, then someone else usually (not always the case, there are a few exeptions) runs the business into the ground. Although it is sad to see such things take place, there really is no way to avoid it. Of course, the government tries to regulate it and flatten the damage, but usually hurts other startups in the process. Imagine Henry Ford having to deal with the current regulatory structure involving factories and the many requirements of a road-legal vehicle today.

Soon after she became CEO of HP she announced that HP was going to end their long history of pure research in favour of more marketing research and I remember saying "In 10 years HP will be irrelevant" ...

Which is an unfair comparison to make, because Ford was working in what was at the time a frontier market. Regulations come in with regular industries, which he wasn't playing in. That's part of the reason why the big entrepreneurs of a given era are working in frontier industries, because it's a lot easier to set the terms of a market you create, rather than one defined by big competitors and the necessary and unnecessary government regulations (being street legal is about preventing environmental degredation and human death, two things that are pretty inarguably good)

But what if your not in a frontier market and develop a radical departure of technology, yet are still constrained by overburdensome regulations?

For example, the Tesla Motor Company. They are trying to save the environment via superior electric cars, but are getting hit with regulations due to the manufacturing process.

It happens more than you'd think. Look at Rockefeller and Standard Oil. Oil production certainly wasn't new, but he established a radically different shipping and extruding process that drove costs down from $1.00/gal to $0.10/gal in a matter of years. Likewise, Sam Walton entered a very crowded retail market, and developed modern processes for inventory management to work out large volume orders with manufacturers, which led to significantly lower prices at retail stores vs. competitors.

I mean, heck, there are cars out there right now that get 70MPG that aren't legal in the US due to regulations - despite the fact they are running in Europe. Shouldn't such vehicles be allowed in the name of reducing oil dependance and reducing emissions? Yet due to our regulatory structure, such products are banned or require significant modifications that may destroy the price/value proposition or fuel efficency.