Looking into the VAX, West had imagined he saw a diagram of DEC's corporate organization. He felt that VAX was too complicated. He did not like, for instance, the system by which various parts of the machine communicated with each other; for his taste, there was too much protocol involved. He decided that VAX embodied flaws in DEC's corporate organization.
In "The Soul of a New Machine," author Tracy Kidder recounts West's reflections on the VAX system, where he perceives a direct correlation between the machine's complexities and the structure of Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC) organization. West is struck by the intricate nature of VAX, feeling that the communication protocols required between its components are unnecessarily complicated. This complexity leads him to believe that the design of the VAX mirrors the...
