Digital alumni serve as resources for one another
By Martha E. Mangelsdorf, Globe Correspondent, 6/29/03
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Tricia Baglio, a former Digital employee
who now owns an event management business in Ipswich, says "95 percent of all my
business has been direct contacts or referrals from former Digital employees." |
John Henning found a job at a company he wanted to work for. Tricia Baglio launched her
own business. And Fran Delaney and his friends and family raised $1 million for research
to find a cure or treatment for Lou Gehrig's disease.
Henning, Baglio, and Delaney had something in common as they each achieved a goal: They
were former employees of the late Digital Equipment Corp., which was based in Maynard.
And, in each case, networking with former Digital colleagues proved an important step in
turning the goal into a reality.
Call it one of the ironies of the early 21st century work world. In today's
fast-changing markets, companies - even large corporations - may come and go. As a result,
it is possible for corporate alumni networks to outlast the companies that spawned them.
Such is the case for DEC alumni. ''As an economic entity, DEC is dead,'' said Edgar
Schein, an emeritus professor of management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. ''As a
culture, it lives on in its alumni. A culture can be stronger than an economic unit.''
Schein is lead author of ''DEC is Dead, Long Live DEC: The Lasting Legacy of Digital
Equipment Corporation.'' In his book, scheduled for release this summer, Schein examines
and analyzes the rise and fall of Digital, a company that, he writes, ''became the number
two computer company in the United States with $14 billion in sales at its peak'' and had
a ''culture of innovation.'' Schein said he was a consultant to Digital and its founder,
Ken Olsen, from 1986 through 1992. Compaq Computer Corp. bought DEC in 1998, and
Hewlett-Packard Co. acquired Compaq in 2002.
In 1992, DEC employed about 130,000 people worldwide, with about 30,000 of those in
Massachusetts, and 10,000 in southern New Hampshire, estimated Peter Koch, president of
Digital Alumni Inc., a group based in Harvard. That number has shrunk dramatically; today,
Koch estimated, perhaps 6,000 or 7,000 people in Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire
work for what once was Digital.
Koch, who worked at Digital for 25 years until 1992, now runs the Digital alumni group
as a part-time business. (He recently started a new job in higher education.) Former
Digital employees pay $25 a year to join, and benefits include a quarterly newsletter and
access to a members-only directory at the organization's website, www.decalumni.com. Koch said he has between 2,000 and
2,500 active members. Lately, Koch said, he has seen ''a big spike in my new membership.''
Digital Alumni members looking for jobs, he said, look through the directory to find
contacts among former colleagues. ''It's a way for people to get in touch with each
other,'' he explained.
And the alumni network isn't the only way some former Digital employees stay in touch.
Kenny House, a hardware senior staff engineer at Sun Microsystems, worked at Digital, and
then Compaq, from 1982 to 1999. House maintains an informal network, which he estimates at
more than 200 former employees in various workstations groups at Digital. The informal
workstations alumni network has a website and has held get-togethers at a pub in Maynard.
And House has played a part in helping three people - including Henning - find jobs at
Sun.
Henning, who worked at Digital and then Compaq for 23 years, recalled that, in June
2001, Compaq said it would be moving away from a microprocessor technology known as Alpha.
After that news, Henning said, he knew he didn't want to stay on at Compaq. Henning
contacted three people he knew at Sun - two former Digital colleagues, and someone he knew
through a professional association. ''Sun was my first choice'' as a potential employer,
Henning said. And, he added, ''Kenny turned out to be the right referral'' - and that
referral led to a job. Today, Henning works for Sun Microsystems as a performance
engineer.
The Digital workstations alumni group helps people stay connected socially. ''We had a
pretty tight group of folks that worked very well together,'' recalled Fred Roemer, who
managed a workstations engineering team at DEC and is now a senior program manager at
Advanced Micro Devices in Boxborough. Roemer said it was ''amazing'' how many different
companies his former colleagues have gone to work for.
The Digital diaspora helped Tricia Baglio, who worked at Digital from 1983 to 1998,
when she started her business. Baglio, who said her last title at DEC was worldwide
director of trade shows and event management, is president and owner of Meet with Success
Inc., an Ipswich meeting and event management business.
Baglio still remembers how, in the fall of 1998, she had all her materials ready for a
mass mailing about her new business. But she decided that wasn't the best route. Instead
of mass-mailing marketing materials, Baglio made a list of former colleagues she knew -
and where they were. She distributed those marketing materials personally; she would
either call a former colleague and then send the material as a follow-up, or make an
appointment and bring the material.
The approach paid off. ''I'd say 95 percent of all my business has been direct contacts
or referrals from former Digital employees,'' estimated Baglio, who said her business has
been profitable every year. What's more, former colleagues do work for her as independent
contractors. ''All the people that are my consultants right now either worked for me or
with me at Digital,'' Baglio said.
That said, networking with former colleagues isn't magic, and won't always yield good
results. ''You may get disappointed,'' Baglio warned. ''Not everyone will put their hand
out.'' And even well-meaning former colleagues may not know of anything that's a good fit
for people who contact them.
What's more, the reputation you had at your former company counts. Greg Erman,
president and CEO of MarketSoft Corp, a Lexington enterprise marketing software company,
is ambivalent about his experience at Digital, where he worked from 1986 through 1994.
Erman said he loved his job in national account sales, at a time when ''Digital made the
greatest technology in the world.'' But he said he later ran one of the product management
groups in Maynard. In that job, ''I saw the bowels of the company,'' Erman recalled. ''And
they weren't pretty.'' In fact, Erman credits his frustration with DEC's slow
decision-making with giving him the impetus to move into software start-ups.
Although Erman has mixed feelings about Digital, that didn't stop him from hiring one
of his former colleagues there, Bill Butler, as his vice president of worldwide sales at
MarketSoft.
Erman said the Digital connection helped Butler ''enormously'' in the hiring process,
because Erman knew Butler had a great reputation. The lesson? ''If you had a good
reputation, it could certainly help you,'' Erman said.
Former Digital employees don't just network about jobs. Fran Delaney, 52, was diagnosed
with Lou Gehrig's disease (also known as ALS) a couple of years ago. ''I was stunned and I
was pretty scared,'' recalled Delaney, who said he began working at Digital in 1968 and
had worked his way up to be vice president for customer services for North America at
Compaq. Delaney learned that patients with Lou Gehrig's disease live an average of only
about two to five years after diagnosis, and there is no cure for the disease, which
attacks nerves in the body that control movement.
Delaney called together about 25 family members and friends for a meeting - including,
he said, about 15 of his Digital and Compaq colleagues - and they launched the Fran
Delaney Fund (www.frandelaney.com), with a goal
of raising $1 million to donate to ALS research. Since that time, Delaney said, the fund
has held 32 awareness and fund-raising events, and a majority of its senior leadership
team consists of former Digital or Compaq colleagues of Delaney's.
Lou Kobbs, a Digital/Compaq alumnus who is director of operations for the Fran Delaney
Fund, estimates that 60 to 65 percent of the money the fund has raised has come from DEC
alumni and current Hewlett-Packard employees. Kobbs now has a job as director of patient
outreach and special projects for the ALS Therapy Development Foundation, a
Cambridge-based research nonprofit group.
The Fran Delaney Fund hit its initial fund-raising goal of $1 million earlier this
month. Appropriately enough, the goal was hit at the third annual Digital Alumni Golf
Tournament to benefit the Fran Delaney Fund. Kobbs said the three DEC alumni golf
tournaments alone have raised more than $300,000 for ALS research. ''I was very touched
and I was very thrilled when we hit that million dollar target,'' Delaney said.
And Delaney knows that his former colleagues played a big role. ''The disease and the
money might create the headlines, but to me this story is really about some very special
people,'' he said. ''And most of them are people I grew up with at Digital or Compaq.''
Martha E. Mangelsdorf is a business writer and editor. She can be reached at (m_e_mangelsdorf@hotmail.com).
