DEC Is Dead, Long Live DEC
The Lasting Legacy of Digital Equipment Corporation
by Edgar H. Schein
Recommended by David Kadavy and Steven Sinofsky
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Reading Profile
Should I read this?
DEC Is Dead, Long Live DEC reads like a chronological company chronicle that pairs engineering milestones with corporate drama. It’s most useful as a granular record of how a pioneering firm built technical innovations and how organizational choices contributed to its decline. The early sections are lively with invention stories; the middle can feel episodic and heavy on product and boardroom detail. Limitations: affectionate tone and repetition make the lessons less crisp, and the book lacks hands-on exercises or a modern how-to roadmap.
Read this if...
- •a product manager at an established hardware firm trying to argue for long-term platform investment — helps marshal historical examples of where engineering advantage met commercial reality
- •an engineering manager wrestling with legacy systems and organizational inertia — offers a cautionary view of how pride in engineering culture can collide with market demands
- •an MBA or case-study writer preparing a company-failure analysis — supplies chronological detail and anecdotes useful for constructing cause-and-effect timelines
Skip this if...
- •you’ll likely put it down when chapters drift into dense product timelines, model numbers, and acquisition minutiae — that middle stretch is the most common drop-off point
- •annoying if you prefer short, prescriptive lessons: the narrative is episodic and affectionate rather than a tightly edited playbook
- •not a fit if you want hands-on exercises or a modern strategy guide — lacks practical, step-by-step tools
DEC Is Dead, Long Live DEC tells the 40year story of the creation, demise, and enduring legacy of one of the pioneering companies of the computer age. Digital Equipment Corporation created the minicomputer, networking, the concept of distributed computing, speech recognition, and other major innovations. It was the number two computer maker behind...
Before You Buy
Reading Specifications
Difficulty:hard
Audience Fit
- a product manager at an established hardware firm trying to argue for long-term platform investment — helps marshal historical examples of where engineering advantage met commercial reality
- an engineering manager wrestling with legacy systems and organizational inertia — offers a cautionary view of how pride in engineering culture can collide with market demands
- an MBA or case-study writer preparing a company-failure analysis — supplies chronological detail and anecdotes useful for constructing cause-and-effect timelines
- you’ll likely put it down when chapters drift into dense product timelines, model numbers, and acquisition minutiae — that middle stretch is the most common drop-off point
- annoying if you prefer short, prescriptive lessons: the narrative is episodic and affectionate rather than a tightly edited playbook
- not a fit if you want hands-on exercises or a modern strategy guide — lacks practical, step-by-step tools
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Why recommended
Recommended by 2 sources and appears in Business and Nonfiction.
Recommended by notable people
People and public figures who have recommended this book.
Recommendation Signals
Recommendation proof is sourced from public posts, interviews, reading lists, and cited references.
David Kadavy
“@titterboy2 @pemullen @chrisfralic @RMB Love this book. DEC Is Dead, Long Live DEC: The Lasting Legacy of Digital Equiment Corporation”
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Not sure if this is the right fit?
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“Accidental Presidents offers eight narrative portraits of men who succeeded to the U.S. presidency without election, using anecdote-rich scenes and readable context to show how personality and circumstance interact with office power. It’s strongest as a set of self-contained stories that make succession stakes concrete for non-specialist readers; it does not prioritize dense archival argument or exhaustive methodology, so expect some interpretive generalizations and repeated themes across cases. Use it for fast historical orientation rather than scholarly deep-dives.”
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Each recommendation is collected from a public source — interviews, articles, or curated lists — and linked to its original URL. Books with many verifiable recommendations from respected people rank higher.