I can't say firsthand whether this is true or not since I was in diapers during it's heyday, but I'm told that when DEC died, it's unwieldy, monolithic culture leaked all over the northeast. With 150,000 employees, it was basically the anti-startup. And it's pretty shocking the percentage of older programmers that were at DEC at one time or another here in Mass.
As someone currently in a large cubicle farm chock full of senior ex-DEC code monkeys, your statement rings true.
As I used to work for a startup, I can definitely feel a real cultural deference from the old timers, who are all brilliant hackers but just can't imagine anything other then a DEC-like work environment.
My second job in Boston was at OpenMarket, a now long-dead internet bubble 1.0 startup that was founded by DEC CRL alumni. I enjoyed my time there, but your term "unwieldy" might be a good explanation for why it didn't survive. The company enjoyed some initial success, but did seem to have trouble changing direction, which made survival difficult once the 1.0 hype was fading.
I don't think it could have made a critical difference. Oracle and Intel have been leaking their bureaucratic corporate culture all over Silicon Valley for decades.
I think it does. It's the culture the leakees take with them. DEC tried to stamp out entrepreneurialism, but most of the SV companies tolerated it or encouraged it. My first customer at my first startup was a former employer. When I moved to SV from Boston decades ago, I remember how impressed I was with the informality, no suits, ties, deference, that kind of stuff. Equally impressive was the infrastructure, from Wilson, Sonsini to Frys to an entrepreneurs club to all the little companies that had just what you needed.
If you look around Silicon Valley, you see a lot of companies that have a culture similar to HP in its heydays, when the "HP Way" was still going strong. HP was one of the early companies to succeed in the Valley. I suspect other early companies in the Valley also had strong cultural influences on startups in the Valley. We know, for instance, that many startups emerge from individuals that worked for established companies, and what better way to transmit a culture than through individuals leaving one company and starting another.
