People who graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in the early 1990s all have a variation of the same story: they know someone or they were that someone who quit a job at Dell Computer in pursuit of allegedly greener pastures. In the early part of the 1990s, a job at Dell was seen as easy-to-get, and gave off the impression of an inability to secure better employment in Dallas, Houston, or beyond.
Readers of course know the punch line, or end result. Around 1996, Dell shares went on the mother of all runs. Memory says six splits. The company that so many left, the company that for all-too-many represented the proverbial “safety school” in the job sense, eventually made a lot of rather young people rather rich rather fast. Austin, TX itself is littered with early retirees who achieved that designation all because inertia, a lack of creativity, a sense of undiscovered greatness at Dell HQ or all three caused them to stay at a company that so many “successfully” and eagerly departed.
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