May 15, 2026
Drills, Deals, and a Meltdown
Power Tools Got Worse on Purpose. Who Owns DeWalt, Craftsman, and Milwaukee?
One tool giant spent big on quality while another got roasted for cutting corners
TLDR: Milwaukee’s owner won praise for investing in better tools and jobs, while DeWalt/Craftsman’s corporate parent was cast as the cautionary tale for buying brands and trimming too hard. In the comments, readers turned it into a bigger rant about modern products getting worse on purpose — with side-eye, jokes, and one very famous battery microwave.
The article’s big plot twist is almost too neat for the internet: two giant companies went on shopping sprees for famous tool brands, but only one seems to have understood the assignment. Techtronic Industries, the Hong Kong parent behind Milwaukee and Ryobi, gets showered with praise for pouring money into research, keeping teams in place, and turning Milwaukee from “solid but mid-tier” into a job-creating, product-launching powerhouse. Stanley Black & Decker, the owner of DeWalt and buyer of Craftsman, gets painted as the villain of the aisle: buy brands, mash them together, cut costs, and somehow end up with more shelf space but less love.
And yes, the comments absolutely turned this into a broader late-capitalism hardware support group. One poster basically said, “welcome to everything,” comparing tools to microwaves, washing machines, and toasters: same conglomerate vibes, same factory roulette, same sinking feeling that the good stuff now costs a fortune. Another commenter fired off the simplest dunk of the thread: “you can also compete by investing in quality.” Ouch.
But Hacker News being Hacker News, there was side drama too. One user ignored the corporate battle entirely to drop a spicy shopping tip about importing bizarre dream tools from Japan, including the gloriously absurd Makita battery-powered microwave. Another got mad at the title formatting itself, invoking the Hacker News guidelines like a hall monitor for headlines. And in perhaps the pettiest subplot, one reader complained the article’s clipped writing style felt suspiciously AI-ish. So the verdict from the crowd: people aren’t just mad that tools got worse — they’re mad at the whole machine, and they’re making jokes while they say it.
Key Points
- •Techtronic Industries acquired Milwaukee from Atlas Copco in 2005 for about $626 million, while Stanley Black & Decker acquired Craftsman from Sears in 2017 for $900 million.
- •The article says TTI kept Milwaukee’s engineering organization in Brookfield, Wisconsin, and invested heavily in R&D, including $206 million in a single year.
- •Milwaukee introduced product platforms and systems including M12, M18, FUEL, ONE-KEY, PACKOUT, and MX FUEL after the acquisition.
- •Milwaukee expanded its U.S. footprint with new campuses and facilities in Wisconsin and Mississippi, and the article says it now has over 10,000 employees globally and roughly $8 billion in revenue.
- •The article says Stanley Black & Decker pursued more than $6 billion in acquisitions, accumulated overlapping brands, and experienced leadership turnover in its tools division, including the June 2023 hiring of Chris Nelson from Carrier Corporation.