Don Hoefler, who coined the term
By 1975, Fairchild's long decline was well set in.
In 1961, co-founders Sheldon Roberts, Jay Last and Jean Hoerni, who invented the planar process, had left.
In 1965, Bob Widlar, the genius analogue designer responsible for the 702 and 709 op amps, had left.
In 1967, Charlie Sporck, who ran the manufacturing side, had left to take over National.
In 1968, Bob Noyce, Gordon Moore and Andy Grove had left to found Intel and, the same year, Jerry Sanders had left to found AMD.
Les Hogan had been recruited from Motorola to run Fairchild in 1968. Six years later, in 1974, Wilf Corrigan took over as President and CEO of Fairchild.
Nothing Hogan or Corrigan did was able to stem the decline.
Then came the low point when Fairchild carried out its November 1975 cull.
As Hoefler reports:
'Thanks to the marvellous medieval mentality of Fairchild top management, in some parts of the plant yesterday, people sat cringing in fear of hearing their names broadcast over the public address system, with a message to pick up their final check and head for the nearest exit.'
I was working for a former division of Fairchild that made testers to test integrated circuits which had been sold to Schlumberger in the 1980s. That mentality carried over into a layoff there.
One morning as workers arrived, they were barred from entering by security guards who instructed them to remain in the area. After everyone had arrived, an HR rep came out with a portable bullhorn and announced that everyone was to go to their desks. Anyone who had a box on their desk was to place all their personal items in the box and go to HR for an exit interview. Those without a box were supposed to get to work.
Needles to say, not much useful work got done that day.
Some companies I've worked for also have this mentality except that you always checked if your name was on the phone list on a monday morning.
At another it was a standing belief that forms were preprinted with employees names but the date left blank.
At one whenever the owner was away someone was always for the chop - no appeals!
When I went the production staff knew before 10:00am, I found out at 2:00pm, that explained the odd looks.
Horrendous George, No wonder Schlumberger spent $1.5 billion buying, and investing in, Fairchild only to sell it on for $122 million.
Ghastly, Dr Bob.
When a friend was at Aeroflex, the system was quite fun.
every one was told to be at their desk at say 10:00 and an email would come round then.
If you got the email you were out.
then at 10:10 a second email came out to the rest, saying get back on with work.
My God, dr john, it gets worse. Almost makes you feel good about the ever-increasing power of HR departments.
Makes one yearn for the good old days of proper HP with Bill and Dave running things.
They didn't ban redundancy lists, just stated that they expected to see the name of the manager needing them on the list as well. Concentrated the mind wonderfully on finding alternatives in a downturn.
Worked for 50 years until outsiders took over the company.
What a brilliant approach, Mike, says a lot about why they built such a fantastic company.