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This has gone on so much, especially in tech companies for many years now. Why so many refuse to do stock buybacks or pay a dividend to stockholders. They need a big percentage of their profits to cover all the stock options they dish out to the upper management and executives. Cisco is a perfect example of this. Their stock has been dead money going nowhere for years now, but they still refuse to pay a dividend or perform stock buybacks. They continue to have one of the most bloated stock option programs for management in the US corporate industry.

I worked for DEC from 1980 (great company) until 1994 (raped and strangled with its own fiber optic cables by Bob Palmer and his buddies). Managers were totally out of control by 1986, keeping bonuses earned by their workers and shoving any complainers out the door. Right before DEC collapsed, Palmer created an additional 75 new VPs (friends) who had no actual jobs but got platinum parachutes. My group was thrown under a bus. We were grabbed from our offices, forced to sign non-disclosure agreements, stripped of our badges, and shoved out the emergency exits to stand blinking stupidly in the parking lot. Palmer got $52 million. I wonder what Palmer's up to these days...

Same with me (DEC). Robert Palmer was no friend to us and certainly couldn't compare to Ken Olson. IIRC, our software services group of 14 was slashed to 4. The worst performers were let go first and received the best severance packages. By the time they got to me, I was happy to go - just to get away from the bad morale. But, plenty of managers had different experiences ($$$). I'll still consider the 12 years at Digital to be the good-old-days. VMS Internals - true bliss.

Right before DEC collapsed, Palmer created an additional 75 new VPs (friends) who had no actual jobs but got platinum parachutes. My group was thrown under a bus. We were grabbed from our offices, forced to sign non-disclosure agreements, stripped of our badges, and shoved out the emergency exits to stand blinking stupidly in the parking lot.

Not trying to be a wise guy (I know zip about DEC), but how did they force you to sign non-disclosure agreements?

I never worked for DEC, but I did get to know VMS extremely well (had to, I used it for 16 years). I was dragged kicking and screaming into the Unix world (I love it now), because I hated Ultrix and based my estimate of Unix on that.

I liked Ken, but he had lost his vision some years before he left DEC. Shame, really that he couldn't get someone like Jobs or Gates to replace him. I still feel that DEC screwed up by not working with IBM, Motorola and Apple to introduce their Alpha processors into microcomputers. They were so far ahead of everyone else (excepting only Dr. Cray, possibly) in the processor technology curve, they could have put a serious crimp into Intel and MS.