Dell was great before EMC. I'm sure EMC was just fine before Dell. What did Dell in was going public. Period, end of story. You can thank the likes of Silver Lake and BlackRock. This was a money grab, pure and simple. Chuck helped to orchestrate that money grab and then ducked out while everything was ablaze. Second biggest mistake was selling off VMware.
This is 100 percent it. @ztp+1o1NatPw got it right.