Comment by jpdoctor

I'm a Bell alum. First off: It really was an amazing place. The guy across the hall won the Nobel while I was there, but even going to lunch could result in learning about state-of-the-art in something or another. The data rate of average discussions was quite high; Both parties usually had PhDs.

> What were the reasons why it started to lose that magic?

I could write a book on this. Much of the problem is that the metric-of-success changed and the organization was not prepared/couldn't make the transition. Measuring output in $$ might be good for biz, but is not good for certain types of R&D, nor is it good when it comes time for annual review. Eventually, many of the young capable people realized that they were going to make much more money by leaving Bell, and as the meltdown in 2001-3 showed, they weren't even going to sacrifice "the stability of a big company". (There was terrible turmoil around that time. The fact that developers were going to turn Holmdel into condos threw many alums for a loop. It was quite a loss.)