Top 10 unlucky IT incidents

Top 10 unlucky IT incidents

No matter how much we tell ourselves that we are rational, scientific human beings, a Friday 13th still sends a tremor up some spines.

This is because we still have an enormous backlog of societal training to be superstitious, something our ancestors gave us because it wasn't a bad bit of folklore. But unluckiness happens no matter what the date.

The following examples of bad luck in the IT industry show that it's not the date that does you in, it's the luck. Even Christmas Day would be unlucky for some of the people and companies below, who seem to have had not just a black cat cross their path, but a pride of pumas locked in their living rooms.

10. Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory (SSL)
Iain Thomson: Back in the middle of the 1950s SSL began the first research into silicon semiconductor technology in Silicon Valley. Back then most chips were made of germanium, but a company called Texas Instruments had had some luck with silicon so SSL set up in California to check out the idea, and met with great success.

But unfortunately the company ran into problems. The boss, William Shockley, had a management style that was described as so hands-on as verging on the paranoid, including lie detector tests for staff.

It didn't help that Shockley was going through something of a turbulent patch that would challenge most men:

1954: Divorce
1955: Remarriage. Set up SSL. Publish Electrons and Holes in Semiconductors, with Applications to Transistor Electronics
1956: Receive Nobel prize for Physics
1957: Get stabbed in the back

While not unlucky in some respects, nevertheless life threw him something of a curve ball and things got worse. In 1957 a group of research staff felt they'd had enough and the so-called 'Traitorous Eight' left and started Fairchild Semiconductors, and began the computer industry as we know it.

Shaun Nichols: This is a pretty good example of a common 'curse' in the IT world. As with so many brilliant scientists and engineers, Shockley lacked the communication and managerial skills to be an effective manager. In the end, it cost him his own projects, and sealed the fate of his company.

Think about the names that left in that 'traitorous eight' episode, people like Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce and Eugene Kleiner, then think about what the industry would be like right now had Shockley not driven those three off. SSL could have built an empire to rival IBM or Microsoft had Shockley just done a better job of managing his employees.

9. George Keyworth
Shaun Nichols: In 2006, George Keyworth was ousted from his 20-year term as a director with HP. The circumstances surrounding his exit would later become one of the most infamous corporate dramas in Silicon Valley history.

Keyworth had for years been leaking stories to the press. This was something executives and directors throughout the industry did on a regular basis. Keyworth, however, was unlucky enough to be on the wrong end of heavy infighting and politicking in the board room led by Carly Fiorina and Patricia Dunn.

Dunn and Fiorina determined to root out the source of the leaks, and the result was the disastrous Kona investigations that led to several executives and private investigators being brought up on criminal charges, but also rooted out Keyworth as the source of the leaks. It was only when fellow board member Tom Perkins came forward on the investigation that the full scope of the operation came to light.

Iain Thomson: Everybody leaks. As G. Gordon Liddy pointed out, the only conspiracy theory that works is when three people know the secret and two of them are dead.

Keyworth seems to have fallen prey to political infighting, and it is only through Tom Perkins's bravery, or his having enough money not to care, that the whole pre-texting scandal came to light. It was a sad end to an executive who had done nothing really wrong, but had just been unfortunate at best and unlucky at worst.