BINGO.
In 1988 I started work for Digital Equipment Corporation(DEC). The second largest computer maker in the world with 125,000 employees. DEC missed the PC wave and died because of it. Not even 20 years later it is a footnote in history. It is the way business works. Adapt, change, and make good choices OR die.
Not entirely true. The DEC hardware is long gone (learned to program on a PDP-8E, it was so much fun), but vestiges of VAX/VMS live on as Windows 7. IIRC.
I started with DEC in 1977. By 1988 we had the first inkling that the end was coming. By 1990 is was a certainty, just a matter of time. I bailed in 1994 while the gettin’ was still good.
“DEC missed the PC wave and died because of it”
DEC missed ALL of the waves, not just the PC wave! They stuck with VAX/VMS until the bitter end, ignoring the PC revolution, ignoring the Unix revolution, and ignoring the SPARC revolution. On top of that, they were in the perfect position to be Cisco before Cisco was even born, and they blew that too.
And all of these massive management failures can be summed up in two words: Ken Olsen.
Did you also go through the Compaq and then HP transition? That must have been a fun ride.