Conference nyoss1::market_investing

612.0. "Where are they now?" by VMSDEV::HALLYB (Fish have no concept of fire) Tue Nov 09 1993 09:39

                                 -< MARKETING >-
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Note 57.7                 Pat Sweeney to leave Digital                   7 of 13
32956::graham                                        61 lines  27-OCT-1993 15:09
                    -< Pat Sweeney lands in "realityville" >-
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I have been in touch with Pat Sweeney.  Here is his latest update....he makes
no bones about me passing this on.

Kris...
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Date: Wed, 27 Oct 93 14:56:26 EDT
From: [email protected] (Patrick Sweeney)
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Please add to my farewell note in Digital
Cc: [email protected]
Content-Type: X-sun-attachment

It seems fitting that I would be writing to my former colleagyes at
Digital on the anniversary sixth anniversary of my Software Services
Excellence Award and the sixth anniversary of the market crash of 1987.

First, let me set your minds at rest that I was able to find a job.  I
have joined the Wall Street firm of Lehman Brothers where I am a group
manager of software development for a segment of the trading floor.

The job market in New York for people with UNIX, C++, and Sybase skills is
particularly strong so results may vary in your location. 

Digital as evidenced by the earnings report released this month didn't return
to profitable growth.

There's special insights that can only come from interviewing and taking
a new job that I'd like to share with the employees of Digital, or at least
the ones who still care.

There are companies that talk about it and there are those who
just do it.  "It" refers to the common corporate virtues of putting
the customer first, care for the employees, empowerment, etc. Digital is
all talk.

Digital "rationalized" itself out of servicing a growing market in which
corporate spending on information technology is at
record levels and corporations have had years of consecutive profitablity

Yet, that happenned to me and my former manager, so it's impossible for
me to guess what other market segments wouldn't be "rationalized" out
of existence from Digital's point of view at least if you are in the field
creating solutions for customers.

The flip side is Digital itself is approaching a sort of irrelevance to the
open systems market.  If Digital vanished the open systems market (ie
UNIX and Intel-based PC's) would hardly notice.  Lehman Brothers with
about 8,000 employees has about 1,800 Sun workstations and servers.
Other firms where I interviewed had a high saturation of PC's.  Where Digital
was in the picture at all it was in a "transition" so some sort of
UNIX- or PC-based system.  And perhaps if Digital continues to downsize it
will be sucessful in a small way with small pieces of the UNIX and PC hardware
pie sold through distributors and mail-order.

Patrick Sweeney
[email protected]

    The preceding note was originally posted in MARKETING and DIGITAL.
    Reposted with permission.
    
    While we're on the topic, does anybody know how to contact Jud Burt?
    
      John

    Jud Burt's whereabouts are disclosed in:
    
    http://www.shadow.net/~richmond/jud.html