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Michael Dell Steps Down as CEO
A whole lot of readers made sure we knew that Michael Dell is calling it quits as CEO of Dell, and has named Kevin Rollins, the current president and chief operating officer of Dell, as his successor. Rollins will retain the title of president, but Michael Dell hasn't left completely. He's still planning on sticking around as chairman of the board.
Dell has gone a long way in the industry and has helped computing for the masses under Michael Dell's leadership. However, I'm hopefull the new CEO will increase the declining quality of Dell's products. I believe that their cost-cutting measures have really injured their corporate following; they aren't perceived as being as high of quality as they once were.
Maybe under this new leadership Dell will stop it's massive pay cuts to ensure it will have enough money for it's "10K A Day Giveaway."
I would know. My dad is one of the best Dell's licensing sales rep in his building and went from making bank (compared to what he used to make at Circuit City) to making near $60,000. Not only was it shocking at the time, it was appalling when two days later Dell announced it's "10K A Day Giveaway," not to mention the massive payroll cuts a few weeks after that.
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. -- Larry Wall
Yeah, but for many people (especially CEOs, after a while) such decisions have nothing to do with pay. Many of these CEOs work up the ladder (or establish the company, in Dell's case) put in the effort and the hours, earn hundreds of millions of dollars, and don't see any reason to continue working, even though they might make $500K, $1M.
It says that he had softened his role previously, working on big picture issues, and all the things that are sort of fun to do and don't necessarily generate a hard product, so it probably won't change anything. Probably he just got burned out and wanted to do regattas, Larry Ellison-style.
I wonder if he will simply take time to enjoy life, or perhaps he has a new pet project that has piqued his interest.
Best wishes Michael, and thanks for all the magazine covers.
I once got to speak with a fairly high-up person in Dell. Our VP was keen to switch from Compaq (pre HP merger) and had known this guy for years. So I call the guy, and he asks why I preferred Compaq. One of the reasons I cited was Compaq's history of contributing technology and otherwise pushing the industry forward a little bit. His reply: "Yeah, our strategy is pretty much to let Compaq do the work and then just copy them and sell it cheaper."
Now, this didn't really surprise me, as I've been in the industry a long time and knew that was pretty much the case. What stunned me was that he not only admitted it, but seemed proud of it. From that point on, I had yet another reason to never buy from them.
I can only hope that Mr. Rollins has the balls to step up and start supporting Linux. Dell has always been so wishy-washy about it... especially since they are known to get the largest discounts from M$. Perhaps a new CEO will mean new life for a new millenium and we'll actually get better Linux support across more of their product line.
BTW: anyone notice that Dell's latest snail mail ad catalog was offering RedHat? So was Gateway's.
The only thing necessary for Micro$oft to triumph is for a few good programmers to do nothing". North County Computers
Are you sure you're not confusing "Dell" with "Disney"?
:)
Because that's what happened to Eisner at Disney. Except he got a no-confidence from the shareholders (40+% abstained). He was still elected by default because no one ran against him. The Disney board decided to split the positions with seperate people as Chairman and CEO. Eisner is still the CEO (because he has that position contractually until 2006) and Mitchell is now the Chairman.
Or is it because they both start with the letter "D"? I'm sure that's what confused you...
"This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence" - Vyvyan "The Young Ones"
Ted Waitt did the same thing at Gateway three or four years ago, to pursue his interests in sexual violence prevention and equitable access to technology. Oddly enough I work on both of those, and have had the chance to meet him several times. Waitt's intelligence and money have helped in these areas, and I can only hope that Michael Dell might think about doing something similar.
Online citizen journalism from the inner city: The View From The Ground
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
This isn't much of a paraphrase. I've heard similar things from the inside of Dell in regards to Compaq's well-known and well-developed R&D division (now part of HP, but still intact as an R&D division last time I checked, which was admittedly many months ago).
Compaq's R&D may be bleeding edge, but to say that it's "yet to be proven to fulfill a need" is just plain ignorant. Just because a SMB (small- to medium-size business) doesn't need systems running RAID arrays that can survive multiple simultaneous drive failures [which Compaq pioneered], or systems employing "RAID memory" technology and can survive on vanilla Dell boxes, doesn't diminish Compaq's contribution in any way. Nor does it elevate Dell's position in the market.
Dell's best market is the ability to cater to the masses at a reasonable cost. However, those of us who have been working in and supporting the Intel server market (and those who've been around longer that have worked with mid-range systems) for more than a decade more clearly recognize the benefits of choosing a Compaq-level service/support/research organization BECAUSE of its R&D division. High-class R&D almost always breeds high-class products, and certainly breeds an environment of TESTING before release. I can name off only one or two faux pas from the Compaq server line (one with a RAID array firmware conflict, the other with a mobo firmware problem) from those 10+ years; I can point out that many problems in only 3 months of my last job where I supported a room full of current Dell's.
In my opinion , Dell does a great job repackaging the latest Intel processor in a vanilla, reference-level server-class [loose term in this usage] motherboard and shipping it out. What I DON'T see from Dell is the requisite testing of those systems together to provide a stable overall level of quality in those servers.
Compaq servers may be slightly behind the bleeding curve because it takes time to properly test hardware and software. If you skip testing, or do a poor job of it, of course you can be first out the door with the latest and greatest. But it's not worth it to me.
Real-world examples:
Company 1 - major 3-letter acronym subsidiary. Could not buy XXX servers internally because mfg couldn't keep up, so we bought Compaqs. We had a high-availability, enterprise class, global infrastructure that almost NEVER failed in 5 years. We had a few Dells in lab and development environments that required a fair number of repairs over the same timeframe. (Yes, this is anecdotal, I know.) For what it's worth, we paid less externally for Compaq servers than we would have internally for XXX servers, which is how I was able to run it right through the XXX CFO's office. :)
Company 2 - Anecdotal, and YMMV, but I've seen this repeated so many times... don't even get me started on the Dell workstations. If I ever have to call Dell Support and get another bonehead in India, I will go postal! Hands-down, the worst tech support I've ever dealt with was Dell's workstation/laptop folks in Bangalore (circa September 2003, and swore never again would I call!)...