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   Fish of Rage (sun@shitposter.world)'s status on Wednesday, 04-Jun-2025 18:52:34 JST Fish of Rage
   I don't agree with the why bell labs worked article. we just threw away our standards and our cultural values by the 1960s it's as simple as that.
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     SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Wednesday, 04-Jun-2025 18:54:22 JST SuperDicq

     in reply to

     @sun@shitposter.world Even if you disagree with the exact reasons in this specific scenario I still think places where people can just tinker with stuff without micromanagement and the requirement that it is profitable would be a very good thing to have.

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     Linux Walt (@lnxw37j1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} (lnxw37j1@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 04-Jun-2025 22:03:27 JST Linux Walt (@lnxw37j1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864}

     in reply to
     @moon@shitposter.club I worked with a couple of guys who had been at Bell Labs / Lucent (at the end of and after their most productive years) and at Xerox PARC and Rochester research labs (during their most productive years). From what I understand from my friend, the AT&T breakup was the biggest factor. Before that, AT&T was a huge org with guaranteed profits and lots of places to obscure their spending. Afterwards, Lucent had to scramble to be profitable.
     
     And so they refocused most of their research on hardware for the telephone system AND because their competitors were on the "release flawed products and then release patches later" train and they were on design and test until all known flaws were removed, Lucent couldn't compete, so they had layoffs.
     
     Now, I wasn't there, so I can't say whether my friend's recollection was accurate, but that's what he told me.
     
     (The other former co-worker, the one who had worked for Xerox PARC and Xerox Rochester, said that PARC was much more creative because they were far away from the management in Upstate NY, but as we know, most of their inventions were left to rot on the vine unless someone outside of Xerox decided to implement them.)