Interesting to compare the tech companies of last century with those of this era.
Kodak employed a whole town, and many more people besides. We're now waiting on a one-person unicorn.
The number of people benefiting from an enterprise has shrunk considerably, with the benefits accruing more tightly within an already wealthy class.
throw0101a · 21h ago
> Interesting to compare the tech companies of last century with those of this era.
The 'tech companies' (equivalent) of the past tended to deal with physical goods, and so needed physical means of scaling to become as large as they did.
More recent tech companies are often software goods and services, where physical means of scaling may not be as important (though see perhaps with Moore and Dennard). Though those which deal with physical stuff do seem to have higher counts; see below.
> The number of people benefiting from an enterprise has shrunk considerably, with the benefits accruing more tightly within an already wealthy class.
Not sure if this is completely accurate. Kodak topped out at 145,000 employees in 1988:
Apple and Microsoft are the 2nd and 3rd largest companies in the US (by market cap), Kodak never came close to that
specproc · 20h ago
Heh, I was musing on something I'd read recently that had Kodak as a case study. It was compared with Instagram which had about 10-15 staff when it was bought for USD 1bn. WhatsApp similarly small.
I hear tech can be big employers, maybe I'm overselling my point a bit there. That said, the trend is very much towards smaller operations, and a large headcount is not at all required for large money.
My overall point is that profits that at one time would require a town, or be a major part of a city's economy, can be made with a small office's worth of staff.
throw0101a · 19h ago
> My overall point is that profits that at one time would require a town, or be a major part of a city's economy, can be made with a small office's worth of staff.
This has been true for most industries even 'with-in themselves': it's called productivity growth.
The number of employees (or man-hours) needed to create (say) a tonne of steel has dropped a lot, so where previously you had 'steel towns', now a plant may just have a very few (and produce more tonnage than they've ever done).
LorenPechtel · 17h ago
Disagree. It's not a small office worth of staff. You're not counting all the jobs involved in providing the data centers.
siva7 · 6h ago
Those aren't employees of instagram or whatsapp
squigz · 21h ago
I don't deny wealth disparity is very much a thing, but this doesn't seem the point to make it. How many people does Google employ? Amazon? Apple? Probably as much or more than a small town.
specproc · 20h ago
Fair point, see my response to the commenter above.
throw0101a · 23h ago
Destin from SmarterEveryDay did a series of videos on making film at a Kodak plant:
> Kodak aims to conjure up cash by ceasing payments for its retirement pension plan.
I assume this means payments to retirees. It's a good reminder that (if you can help it) you should not rely 100% on any external source (including the government) for your retirement income.
throw0101a · 21h ago
> I assume this means payments to retirees.
You assume wrong. From November 2024:
> According to the company, the plan’s liabilities to qualifying participants would be satisfied through a combination of lump sum distributions and an annuity purchased from an insurance company to cover existing obligations. Kodak, like many corporate pension plans, is in a funding surplus; it has significantly more assets than liabilities owed to plan beneficiaries and participants.
> Kodak retirees would receive an annuity from an insurance company. Current employees, as well as former employees who haven’t yet reached retirement, would be given an option to either receive a lump sum of their balance, or an annuity once they retire. Plan participants wouldn’t see a change in the value of the benefits that have been promised to them, executives said.
> Kodak expects to put a new retirement plan in place for current employees if it terminates the pension. The company hasn’t yet determined whether it would provide a defined-benefit or defined-contribution plan, such as a 401(k). The company would need to have a new plan designed and in place within about a year, executives said.
The money in the pension fund, at least up to an amount needed to satisfy current liabilities, is the property of employees and Kodak has no right to it. It is the surplus that was taken back by Kodak last year, and future payments are the ones that are ceasing. Per WSJ above another retirement plan system will be setup for current employees.
mastry · 19h ago
Ah - that's good to hear. Thanks for the extra information.
ddoolin · 22h ago
My grandpa (father's father) grew up in Rochester and that was the first time I visited New York for a family reunion, way back in the early aughts. Kodak was the major employer in town then; he and practically everyone he knew either worked there, had dealings with them in some form, or knew many others who did. When we went, I had the pleasure of touring the place and hearing plenty of stories from my gramps and our family. Good times.
mikewarot · 19h ago
There are lots of hidden dependencies in the world, who knows what depends on the reliable production of polymer/emulsion products.
It could be that we stop being able to make chips, or printers, or something else because of this as a second or third order effect.
moomin · 22h ago
It’s sad to see. As I understand it, digital photography forced camera companies to decide if they were principally about film or about photos and imaging. The competition in the image space was brutal, which phones winning the mass market by a huge margin. Those that quietly moved into recondite but valuable areas of technical specialisation did much better, but they’re not camera companies anymore.
seanhunter · 22h ago
Kodak give the world the first digital camera[1]. It took mismanagement on a gargantuan scale for them to fail in this manner.
Kodak managed the film and camera market about as well as they could. The mismanagement was a failure to diversify. The total digital camera market excluding cell phones, would be a fraction of Kodak's film business back in the film era. The film and camera story is a popular one but is fundamentally wrong. The shrinkage of the camera/film market was inevitable. You can look at Fujifilm who does sell cameras and basically owns the remaining film market with instax, however neither of those sustain the business they are effectively a chemical and medical manufacturer who dabbles in photography now.
Kodak on the other hand attempted to diversify to those markets in the 80s and 90s but made some terrible investments that they managed poorly. That forced them to leave those markets and double down on film just in time for the point and shoot boom of the 90s and the early digital market. Kodak was a heavy player in the digital camera market up to the cell phone era: they had the first dSLR and were the dSLR market for most of the 90s, they had the first commercially successful lines of digital point and shoots, they had the first full frame dSLR in the early 00s and jockeyed for positions 1-3 in the point and shoot market until the smart phone era. They continued to make CCD sensors for everyone during this time. Ya they missed the CMOS change over and smarthphone sensor market, but that was well after they were already in the drain.
heeton · 21h ago
We all know that being first does not mean success, and it’s not “gargantuan” mismanagement.
It’s rare to be first AND the leader 20 years later.
kjellsbells · 8h ago
Kodak's failure to capitalize on their invention of the digital camera is so often cited as the cause of their downfall that it has taken on the air of truth. Whether it really was the cause of their demise or not, I'm not so sure. Suppose theyd come out with a line of digital cameras. Would that have saved them? That seems unlikely.
Looking around at similar companies, Nikon and Zeiss became specialist lens makers, for (eg) medical devices, specialist optics like binoculars, and yes, phones. Fuji got into medical imaging, x rays etc. Its almost like they all realized they were in the image business but in different ways.
One peer I find especially interesting is Corning as they were a similar one-trick pony (glass) in upstate New York. But Corning survived, and Kodak didnt. Gorilla glass for phones, fiber optics, etc are a million miles away from pyrex and labware. Why were Corning able to pivot and thrive, and not Kodak?
dtagames · 22h ago
Kodak itself was the first to demonstrate a digital camera in 1975.[0] There is no one else to blame for any decisions.
From the article it sounds like they had strong market share in Digital Cameras in the early 2000’s. What really killed then was phones becoming the dominant form factor
xhkkffbf · 20h ago
It's true. I chose Kodak digital cameras and was happy with them. They were simple, well-priced and pretty nice all around.
It's just that the cell phones took over that job. (And a dozen other ones too.)
DerekL · 13h ago
But switching to making digital cameras wouldn’t have helped much, because selling cameras was never really their business. Their main business was selling film, photo paper, developer, etc.
intrasight · 14h ago
Kodak could rightfully lay claim to having been the first tech platform company. With the Brownie camera - released in 1900.
My father worked there for 33 years. I did an internship in 1984. My boss took me on a tour of one of the buildings at our site - where all disc cameras were manufactured. When I did my internship, the single site where I worked employed 14,000 people. Our start and end times were staggered in five minute increments to manage traffic.
NuclearPM · 20h ago
With
mytailorisrich · 22h ago
Yes, this is a classic case of "innovator's dilemma". [1][2]
It was Rochester's largest employer for so long. Now it's become a bit of local trivia, much like Xerox. Both of them struggled to deal with changing markets.
iancmceachern · 5h ago
They literally invented the digital camera
siva7 · 6h ago
I'm confused. Isn't kodak a printer company?
impish9208 · 20h ago
Pitbull (Mr. Worldwide) will be sad to hear this. Picture that with a Kodak.
FireBeyond · 13h ago
And for us a little older, Paul Simon. After all, Kodachrome gives us those nice bright colors, and the greens of summers.
beardyw · 22h ago
Even my DSLR is gathering dust.
physicsguy · 23h ago
It's not really the same company it was... just a name now.
kodak spun off Eastman Chemical decades ago (my dad owned some of their stock and held it to their bankruptcy).
But looking at it, kodak shareholders were given 1 share of Eastman chemical for every 4 shares of Kodak they had. Eastman chemical has split once since then. Eastman chemical is now $60. Kodak ended 1993 (the new company was created jan 1 1994 I believe) at $56 a share.
So that would imply that eastman chemical, that was viewed as 1/5th the value of the combined company in 1994 is now the value of the parent that was left over then (and no longer really exists).
genman · 22h ago
The most important aspect is to save/conserve the equipment and knowledge so it would be possible for somebody else to take over. Something like this happened with Polaroid - a group of enthusiasts got Polaroid equipment and managed to partially restore the development of Polaroid integral instant film (the one where everything is packed into single package). Unfortunately the much more beautiful and photo like "peel apart" instant film was already scraped by both Polaroid and Fuji. I would even consider this a cultural vandalism, similar to destroying important cultural artifacts.
Kodak employed a whole town, and many more people besides. We're now waiting on a one-person unicorn.
The number of people benefiting from an enterprise has shrunk considerably, with the benefits accruing more tightly within an already wealthy class.
The 'tech companies' (equivalent) of the past tended to deal with physical goods, and so needed physical means of scaling to become as large as they did.
More recent tech companies are often software goods and services, where physical means of scaling may not be as important (though see perhaps with Moore and Dennard). Though those which deal with physical stuff do seem to have higher counts; see below.
> The number of people benefiting from an enterprise has shrunk considerably, with the benefits accruing more tightly within an already wealthy class.
Not sure if this is completely accurate. Kodak topped out at 145,000 employees in 1988:
* https://rbj.net/2017/09/13/kodaks-decades-of-decline/
Apple has 164,000; Microsoft has 228,000; Amazon has 1,610,000.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers
I hear tech can be big employers, maybe I'm overselling my point a bit there. That said, the trend is very much towards smaller operations, and a large headcount is not at all required for large money.
My overall point is that profits that at one time would require a town, or be a major part of a city's economy, can be made with a small office's worth of staff.
This has been true for most industries even 'with-in themselves': it's called productivity growth.
The number of employees (or man-hours) needed to create (say) a tonne of steel has dropped a lot, so where previously you had 'steel towns', now a plant may just have a very few (and produce more tonnage than they've ever done).
* https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjHf9jaFs8XXcmtNSUxoa...
I assume this means payments to retirees. It's a good reminder that (if you can help it) you should not rely 100% on any external source (including the government) for your retirement income.
You assume wrong. From November 2024:
> According to the company, the plan’s liabilities to qualifying participants would be satisfied through a combination of lump sum distributions and an annuity purchased from an insurance company to cover existing obligations. Kodak, like many corporate pension plans, is in a funding surplus; it has significantly more assets than liabilities owed to plan beneficiaries and participants.
* https://www.ai-cio.com/news/kodak-considers-terminating-over...
> Kodak retirees would receive an annuity from an insurance company. Current employees, as well as former employees who haven’t yet reached retirement, would be given an option to either receive a lump sum of their balance, or an annuity once they retire. Plan participants wouldn’t see a change in the value of the benefits that have been promised to them, executives said.
> Kodak expects to put a new retirement plan in place for current employees if it terminates the pension. The company hasn’t yet determined whether it would provide a defined-benefit or defined-contribution plan, such as a 401(k). The company would need to have a new plan designed and in place within about a year, executives said.
* https://www.wsj.com/articles/kodak-prepares-to-terminate-u-s...
The money in the pension fund, at least up to an amount needed to satisfy current liabilities, is the property of employees and Kodak has no right to it. It is the surplus that was taken back by Kodak last year, and future payments are the ones that are ceasing. Per WSJ above another retirement plan system will be setup for current employees.
It could be that we stop being able to make chips, or printers, or something else because of this as a second or third order effect.
[1] https://www.kodak.com/en/company/page/photography-history/
Kodak on the other hand attempted to diversify to those markets in the 80s and 90s but made some terrible investments that they managed poorly. That forced them to leave those markets and double down on film just in time for the point and shoot boom of the 90s and the early digital market. Kodak was a heavy player in the digital camera market up to the cell phone era: they had the first dSLR and were the dSLR market for most of the 90s, they had the first commercially successful lines of digital point and shoots, they had the first full frame dSLR in the early 00s and jockeyed for positions 1-3 in the point and shoot market until the smart phone era. They continued to make CCD sensors for everyone during this time. Ya they missed the CMOS change over and smarthphone sensor market, but that was well after they were already in the drain.
It’s rare to be first AND the leader 20 years later.
Looking around at similar companies, Nikon and Zeiss became specialist lens makers, for (eg) medical devices, specialist optics like binoculars, and yes, phones. Fuji got into medical imaging, x rays etc. Its almost like they all realized they were in the image business but in different ways.
One peer I find especially interesting is Corning as they were a similar one-trick pony (glass) in upstate New York. But Corning survived, and Kodak didnt. Gorilla glass for phones, fiber optics, etc are a million miles away from pyrex and labware. Why were Corning able to pivot and thrive, and not Kodak?
[0] https://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/kodak-engineer-ha...
It's just that the cell phones took over that job. (And a dozen other ones too.)
My father worked there for 33 years. I did an internship in 1984. My boss took me on a tour of one of the buildings at our site - where all disc cameras were manufactured. When I did my internship, the single site where I worked employed 14,000 people. Our start and end times were staggered in five minute increments to manage traffic.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma
[2] https://innovationmanagement.se/2017/05/24/the-innovators-di...
* Eastman Kodak
* Kodak Alaris
* at least four separate Kodak licensees or more all also making photographic products among other plastic sludge: https://www.engadget.com/general/a-tale-of-four-kodaks-17304...
But looking at it, kodak shareholders were given 1 share of Eastman chemical for every 4 shares of Kodak they had. Eastman chemical has split once since then. Eastman chemical is now $60. Kodak ended 1993 (the new company was created jan 1 1994 I believe) at $56 a share.
So that would imply that eastman chemical, that was viewed as 1/5th the value of the combined company in 1994 is now the value of the parent that was left over then (and no longer really exists).