The $7 Billion Delusion
from the the-importance-of-asking-questions dept
Wired Magazine has (yet another) good look at the failure of Excite@Home. It goes slightly beyond the usual “culture clash” explanation and looks in more detail at just how badly everyone seemed to misunderstand some aspect of what was going on. It seems that both companies had huge problems in that they didn’t understand the business they were in. Adding to that a completely new and different business entity that they knew even less about was not helpful. It seemed there was an awful lot of wishful thinking going on all sides of the deal. Update: Meanwhile, there are reports that what’s left of Excite@Home is trying to change the promised severance packages they told workers they would receive if they stayed to the bitter end.
Comments on “The $7 Billion Delusion”
Severance
Interesting tidbit about the severance packages. Seems similar to what’s happening to Enron ex-employees now. I had always thought that employees’ paychecks had priority in bankruptcy cases, and, by extension, so would promised termination packages, but I guess that’s a pretty naive assumption.