Ex-Dell Employees in Austin, what's the opinion of other companies?
Submitted by gallaghp2 on Sat, 07/26/2008 - 9:44pm.
So you have left Dell and now work for another HiTech company in Austin. For those that found jobs in Austin in the last year, how hard was it for you? What are other employers saying about hiring Dell people?
I heard that having Dell on your resume in Austin is not a good thing, as Dell is full of dead wood and doesn't do anything. What's your opinion - for those folks who have left Dell?
Thanks for reading.
I haven't heard such negative opinions of ex-Dell people. Dell is well known to be a "binge and purge" company that hires lots of people when times are good and lays off lots of people practically indiscriminately when there is even the slightest downturn in their short term numbers. Because of that you can't read much into people who were laid off from Dell as to their quality. And given the general hardships of the job market since the crash many people have had to take whatever employment they could find -- and Dell is a big employer around here.
Can't say much about others opinions, but here's mine--- I was at Texas Instruments here (Austin) from '77 - '92, then Motorola (Freescale) from '92 - '04, Dell '05 - '07. During the Motorola years I worked Somerset, the PowerPC joint venture between Moto/IBM/Apple, so I got a good dose of IBM and Apple culture. Currently I'm contracting with IBM. Thinking back on that, it's hard to refrain from putting out an essay here on the whole Austin tech thing. Especially the general work/business cultural upheaval of the 80's that for some reason no one talks about much, although it was as dramatic a change for the culture of working people as was the end of slavery and the emergence of labor uinions. Someday I'll get that book of wisdom out, but for now back on point. Strictly speaking of Dell, the people I worked with were extremely driven. I believe most of them thought of it as a place to earn a merit badge for their resume. TI was that way in the late 70's. There is a lot of wasted energy and nervousness there, even chaos, but they do get things done. the people there are as professional as you're going to find anywhere, and part of being a professional is the ability to be quick on your feet and adapt to your surroundings. For that reason ex-Dell people should be considered a great choice. From the manic-depressive view however, the last project I worked there was demanding, and the most rewarding job I had in my career. Leaving Dell has turned out to be about the most devastating thing that has ever happened to me. I suppose that has more to do with the current economy and probably my age. It's like everyone else thinks it's time for me to hang it up and retire. To me, I feel like I have a vast inventory of skills and experience and now that the kids are grown, I don't have the distractons of raising a family and all that comes with it to distract me from putting full attention to my work. I'm just now ready to make a focused, intense assault on my career. Crap. Life is just backwards.
Dell seems to filter out the professionals. I perceive stigma against those that stay at Dell, not so much ex-Dell employees.
Freescale (nee Moto Semi) seems to have its share of problems, too. It has good technology and decent products, but too much bureaucracy to get things done.
- John
Good people should know better than to work for Dell. Certainly it's a binge-and-purge organization, but that's only a symptom of its core problem: Dell "management".
I've worked with some good former Dell engineers, so I really wouldn't have any reservations about interviewing and hiring other former Dell employees.
Mostly from my ex-Dell colleagues, I heard no end of horror stories. Years ago, when my work was slow and I had an opportunity to do some short term work for Dell, I asked myself "How many of those horror stories can actually be true?" In the short time I was there, I learned quite a bit, including that the bad things I've heard about Dell are true. In a nutshell: Dell's management is beyond repair.
So, to answer this thread's question: just about anywhere could be better than Dell.
FYI: Having worked for quite a few companies -- including many Silicon Valley startups -- I've become interested in organizational lifespan modeling. Using my simple model, I expect Dell to shrink rapidly starting next year, until becoming irrelevant in 2019.
Whether good people should know better than work for Dell isn't very relevant when you consider the job market over the past 7 years. If the choice is to work for a bad employer or be unemployed you can't blame people for doing what they gotta do to keep from ending up homeless.
As for Dell withering away to nothing... well, I wouldn't bet on it. It seems like there is no karmatic justice when it comes to that sort of thing, so I wouldn't be surprised in 2019 if Dell wasn't still right about where they are now.
My model doesn't include "karmatic justice".
Ultimately it comes down to when the company was established and when it started compromising customer satisfaction. Subtract and multiply by four, and that's the organization's expected lifespan. The first and last eighths of the org's life are negligible, as it's under the radar then. (The mechanisms are incredibly simple, but a thoughtful explanation is lengthy.)
In Dell's case, that's (1994 - 1984) * 4 = 40 years, putting it under the radar again in 2019 and defunct in 2024. That's not a bad run, but all good things must come to an end.
- John
I'm not sure I believe that formula works... Applying it to some other notable companies like GM, Chrysler, Ford, etc. that are in trouble now gives some bizarre results. Does your formula only apply to tech companies?
Hmm... even applying it to some notable computer industry failures doesn't seem to work for me. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.
US auto makers fit my model, and make interesting examples. (Thanks sj!) They are all still big companies with lots of momentum, but clearly all in decline.
General Motors was established in 1908, so it's 100 years old this year. In order to apply my model, we need to determine at which point it sacrificed its commitment to its customers. I'm not old enough to have observed it myself, so we'd need to rely upon some history.
In 1965 (GM's 57th year), Ralph Nader (who apparently was at Austin's city hall today) published his book Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile. Using my model and assuming that GM began its plateau in 1965, the post-commitment point would be about 1/3 of GM's life (to that point, 19 years) earlier, so we could say that GM gave up around 1946. (Gee, that coincides with the end of WWII...) We could then say that GM peeked in 1984 and entered its "rapid decline" phase in 2003. Assuming the numbers are close (and I think that they are), GM faces irrelevance in 2041 (in 33 years) and extinction in 2060.
For Chrysler, if we use 1914 (when Dodge was established) and assume its plateau also began in 1965 (as above), we could assume that Chrysler began its rapid decline in 1999, and faces irrelevance in 2033 and extinction in 2050. (Recall that Daimler bought in from 1998 to 2007.)
Ford started in 1903, so I'd place it's expiration date around 2068.
As for tech companies, one spectacular failure I like to pull from my own resume is Media Vision. My tenure there nicely overlapped its "rapid growth" phase, just more than 1.5 years. Its lifespan, at only about 6 years (4 times the length of the growth period), fits my model pretty well.
- John
Well, I would have to disagree with a few things in that... First, basing anything on that book is folly. I think most people would say that the domestic auto makers didn't start into their decline until the 1970s and if you believe most people, they are doomed to implode a lot sooner than your model would predict, perhaps within the next 10 years.
At any rate, I think the model is just too simplistic -- the up down curves just aren't going to be that smooth or predictable. And they don't take other things into account such as outside forces or the occasional company that is actually able to turn itself around. An example of a company like that would be Apple. They've had huge gaffes where they absolutely did an awful job of building quality products and customer service, and yet they've managed to rebound from it numerous times.
I have definitely run into that sentiment among non-Dell people. Before going to work at Dell, 6 years ago, I considered it a "fall-back" job in case I didn't find anything else. I didn't find anything else, but I was glad I accepted the job and was surprised at the opportunities I had for technical and professional growth.
For me, it became stagnant after 5 years and it was time to go. I'm not saying that the 5 years were great; the company has some serious issues with the work culture for product development, but I did learn a lot and didn't have a problem finding another job.
Here is the trick...don't let people judge you based on rumors and second-hand, vague information. You know your capabilities, so sell them!
-AL
For a long time, Austin was a one-horse town with AMD and Motorola (Freescale). Dell sort of changed everything, but from what I know, most ex-Dell people are pretty cabable.