31–40 of 76 posts
Blockbuster passing on the Netflix purchase... Yahoo! passing on Google...
If they were acquired Netflix wouldn't have become the treasure it is today.
They had the Sears catalog, and even more important an entire distribution network all over the US. They shut it down just before the internet became big.
They also had the ISP Prodigy and a credit card company.
With just a slight change they could have been larger than Google and Amazon combined.
Instead.......
I always remember the company who lost all it's assets in one day due to a deployment bug to one of their servers. They were a high frequency trading company, so seconds/minutes to them were obscenely expensive. I feel a cold pit in my stomach putting myself in the shoes of the developer that did the `cap deploy` that day. Yikes!
Umm, Bhopal? Seriously I can't believe it's not even mentioned.
Wasn't that an accident rather than a deliberate mistake?
I know their behavior in aftermath was bad, but the actual incident was an accident, so I don't think it's part of this list.
I always remember the company who lost all it's assets in one day due to a deployment bug to one of their servers. They were a high frequency trading company, so seconds/minutes to them were obscenely expensive. I feel a cold pit in my stomach putting myself in the shoes of the developer that did the `cap deploy` that day. Yikes!
You're probably thinking of this? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Capital_Group
"Hey guys let's do a DB rollback, something went wrong."
IBM selling Thinkpads to Lenovo.
Gerald Ratner, CEO of the Ratner Group, becoming famous for the "Ratner Effect" which destroyed the group and his career. They had 1,000+ stores and multiple brands in UK and US.
He gave a speech to the IoD London in 91 that included "How can you sell this for such a low price?", I say, "because it's total crap."
Obvious and true, but it took £500m off the group share price overnight and a year later, due to a consumer boycott, they were in the process of closing 300+ stores. He was fired by the chairman he recruited in late 92, and the remnants of the group changed name to start rebuilding.
My vote goes to Bayer for knowingly and willingly selling H.I.V tainted medicine in the 1980s just to get rid of their inventory, not caring about the hundreds or thousands of people they infected. Possibly sadder is that the FDA actively helped Bayer to try and cover the whole thing up. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/22/business/2-paths-of-bayer-...
I always remember the company who lost all it's assets in one day due to a deployment bug to one of their servers. They were a high frequency trading company, so seconds/minutes to them were obscenely expensive. I feel a cold pit in my stomach putting myself in the shoes of the developer that did the `cap deploy` that day. Yikes!