I spent some of the formative time in my career at Lexmark. They sponsored my GEM Fellowship for grad school, and I worked there for 4 internships in 4 years in the mid 2000s. It was an interesting window into the business world.
- Lexmark came into existence when IBM wanted to spin off their declining printer, keyboard, and typewriter businesses, which were headquartered in Lexington, KY, hence the name.
- According to some of my coworkers, IBM brought all the most dynamic leaders back to the mothership, so Lexmark was left with whoever stayed behind or was left behind. These folks weren't highly respected by the engineers I knew, but I can't really judge, personally.
- As many of you all know, some IBM/Lexmark manufacturing folks arranged a deal to take the keyboard business independent, as Unicomp.
- In a major settlement with HP over patents, the two companies had a full exchange of printing technology, resulting in Lexmark gaining cutting edge laser printing tech. According to people I know, this turned a moribund company into a player.
- Lexmark became most well known for bringing the "razor blade" business model to consumer inkjet printing. They would literally give printers away with a manufacturer's rebate, hoping to make the money back on supplies (e.g. ink cartridges). Unfortunately, there were so many printers floating around that many people would just throw out the old one when it was out of ink. It was a catastrophe.
- When I was working there, one of the major initiatives was to create the cheapest possible inkjet printer. On the other hand, there was still a lot of pretty cool R&D going on. Just nowhere near the level of investment HP was making.
- Lexmark became infamous for attempting to enforce DRM on its supplies to prevent people from refilling ink cartridges, forcing them to buy high margin supplies. While I was there, we were shipping cartridges with write-once memory for tracking usage.
- In parallel to consumer inkjet, Lexmark had an almost completely separate business unit doing business printers, based on laser printing technology. In this market, you sell full on documents capabilities and services, with the printer merely being the central piece of hardware.
- A few years after my last stint there, Lexmark exited the consumer inkjet business and became solely B2B. I didn't follow the company closely after this point.
Working at Lexmark was one of the things that convinced me to leave tech for education. I enjoyed my short stints there, but just found the environment completely uninspiring as a place to really establish my career. Being my main exposure to the tech career (along with previous internships at manufacturing companies), I assumed that this was what the whole industry was like. (I returned to tech a few years later, but that's a whole other story.)
The short story is that teaching is, by far, the hardest thing I've ever done. It was also extremely rewarding, and I'm very grateful I did it. But it was not going to be sustainable for me. I journaled my experience here: https://acjay.com/a-former-teachers-story/
In my second and final year of teaching, I knew I couldn't go back, so I decided to go back to grad school for a second masters, in Music Technology, at NYY. I felt it would buy me some time to figure out my life, while easing me back into tech and being fun. I cofounded a startup when I was there, which failed, but introduced me to the NYC tech scene in the process.
I worked on the laser printers in the early 2000s when they transitioned to Linux for the OS. They were hiring Linux nerds and I fit the bill. It was a fun place for a while, but the IBM legacy was an albatross. I left for Google and didn't look back.
- Lexmark came into existence when IBM wanted to spin off their declining printer, keyboard, and typewriter businesses, which were headquartered in Lexington, KY, hence the name.
- According to some of my coworkers, IBM brought all the most dynamic leaders back to the mothership, so Lexmark was left with whoever stayed behind or was left behind. These folks weren't highly respected by the engineers I knew, but I can't really judge, personally.
- As many of you all know, some IBM/Lexmark manufacturing folks arranged a deal to take the keyboard business independent, as Unicomp.
- In a major settlement with HP over patents, the two companies had a full exchange of printing technology, resulting in Lexmark gaining cutting edge laser printing tech. According to people I know, this turned a moribund company into a player.
- Lexmark became most well known for bringing the "razor blade" business model to consumer inkjet printing. They would literally give printers away with a manufacturer's rebate, hoping to make the money back on supplies (e.g. ink cartridges). Unfortunately, there were so many printers floating around that many people would just throw out the old one when it was out of ink. It was a catastrophe.
- When I was working there, one of the major initiatives was to create the cheapest possible inkjet printer. On the other hand, there was still a lot of pretty cool R&D going on. Just nowhere near the level of investment HP was making.
- Lexmark became infamous for attempting to enforce DRM on its supplies to prevent people from refilling ink cartridges, forcing them to buy high margin supplies. While I was there, we were shipping cartridges with write-once memory for tracking usage.
- In parallel to consumer inkjet, Lexmark had an almost completely separate business unit doing business printers, based on laser printing technology. In this market, you sell full on documents capabilities and services, with the printer merely being the central piece of hardware.
- A few years after my last stint there, Lexmark exited the consumer inkjet business and became solely B2B. I didn't follow the company closely after this point.
Working at Lexmark was one of the things that convinced me to leave tech for education. I enjoyed my short stints there, but just found the environment completely uninspiring as a place to really establish my career. Being my main exposure to the tech career (along with previous internships at manufacturing companies), I assumed that this was what the whole industry was like. (I returned to tech a few years later, but that's a whole other story.)