... cultural vacuum which they proceeded, with amazing speed, to fill It was Dell money —and massive amounts of it, in the hands of people like former CFO Tom Meredith, former CEO Kevin Rollins, former ... visibility in the 1990s.” (Like so many other Dell managers, Eckert left Dell to start his own business.) Today the city has more than 1,000 technology companies, a direct legacy of Dell and its ... Austin with homes and people—the number of local employees at the company would hit 22,000 and the company’s local suppliers brought in tens of thousands more—but it was pumping wealth into the city...