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David Packard Writes HP Epitaph
ewhac continues: "Today, he shared his thoughts on the merger in the form of a poster placed in the Stanford Theatre lobby:
Hewlett Packard
1938 -- 2002
R.I.P.
The Stanford Theatre still exists today only because of the employees of the Hewlett Packard Company. Without their achievements over the years, there would have been no foundation to purchase and restore this theatre.
Palo Alto might have had one more book store, or perhaps another restaurant. Architects had plans ready for a new "Casablanca Cafe" at this location when the Packard Foundation rescued the theater in 1987.
The Hewlett Packard Company was founded in 1938 in a garage on Addison Street only a few blocks from where you are now standing. Back then, the Stanford Theatre was showing brand new movies. In 1938 you could have seen Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby and Holiday . You could have seen Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood . You could have seen Alice Faye, Don Ameche, Ethel Merman, and Tyrone Power in Alexander's Ragtime Band . You could have seen Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur in Frank Capra's You Can't Take It With You . You still can see these same movies at the Stanford Theatre. Our audiences know that they are truly timeless.
The HP Way also touched many people's lives. Most of us expected that it would last forever -- that it would prove as timeless as a Frank Capra movie. But those entrusted with the duty to safeguard it have exercised their legal right to make another choice. Dura lex, sed lex. The law is harsh, but it is the law.
HP employees are now on a new ship, being taken on a new voyage. The company has even changed its stock symbol to HPQ to stress that the "old" HP is gone. For the sake of the surviving employees, of course I hope for a good outcome. But it is hard to imagine that their leaders can invent something better than what they left behind.
David W. Packard
The Stanford Theatre Foundation.
"The San Jose Mercury News also has a short article about Packard's message.
"Editorial Content: HP's road to the merger has been the subject of much lunchtime controversy out here. As one of the "founders" of Silicon Valley, Hewlett Packard has for decades been a highly respected institution who earned their reputation through solid engineering and research, and by creating a legendary workplace envied the world over.
"Especially in the Valley, people within and without HP came to feel as David Packard did; that The HP Way would survive management fads and fickle stockholders, and serve as a lasting example of How To Do It Right. But HP's current management has won the right to move onward; to where, no one is sure.
"Though the company is still there, the HP mythos and The HP Way seem to be gone. All anyone can do now is watch and see what happens next."
while I don't shed a tear for the end of the "HP Way". What a bunch of rubbish.
Want to get sentimental or emotionally involved in something? Want to invest time, money and personal effort in something?
There are a ton of needs that are of much greater importance than any theater or corporate entity. I know - feel said for many multimillionares who don't see all their dreams realized as much as the next guy. But give me a break.
Comapanies, countries, societys come and go. Deal with it.
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
More high-tech and effective than Slashdot ? Come on...
If I didn't shed a tear for DEC, I'm hardly likely to do so for HP.
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
David Packard illustrated, imho, The HP Way.
By tastefully posting a brief of his position and doing so without mud-slinging. Props to Junior.
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
Carly thinks that since they lucked-out with the laser printer that they are now a consumer products company. I am annoyed with the attempeted separtion from the core values of a test equipment manufacturer with the Agilent spinoff, how many millions were wasted on ads on sporting events for the Agilent brand, a total and complete waste of money. I used to respect HP as a company of smart people, but no more
Free cell phone tracking
This is particularly inappropriate considering the other current thread on news editing & munging.
Aside from that I'm glad to see Mr. Packard sharing his feelings. Did he need to use another means? No, this one was apparently quite effective.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Companies are taken over all the time. What makes the "HP Way" so special that we should all mourn its passing?
If the "HP Way" means releasing vastly unreliable Deskjet printers into the consumer marketplace, then I for one am glad it's dead.
No matter how close you get to a corporation, even if you're related to the founder, PLEASE get some perspective. Company mantras do NOT qualify as religion.
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
Why not get sentimental for a company that actually took care of it's employees and took pride in quality, innovative products?
These companies are being killed/bought/monopolied out of business by the "new" corporate America that cares only about executive and shareholder enrichment. The new corporate America that will fire 6,000 employees on Monday and give "retention bonuses" to "talented executives" on Friday.
There was honor in the way HP did business, an honor that is all but forgotten today; replaced with shameless greed and profits at ANY cost. Nothing is sacred in the cult of Carly Fiorina.
Polaroid. HP. The list will get longer as once good companies are ass-fucked to death by the pirates of the new corporate America.
I can't believe all these snotty posts sneering at the end of HP and poking fun at Hewlett and Packard family members for lamenting the loss. I guess that, unless you experienced the old HP, you can't understand why this is a big deal. It's not about "they took away my daddy's company." It's about the end of an era, and a loss of continuity. Or to use an image that may resonate more clearly in our post-literate society: its impact is like the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn, or Michael Jordan retiring. The clueless comments here just show the posters' ignorance.
Arguably, HP started to lose it way when it spun off Agilent.
As for the 'HP Way'- it was about innovating and taking care of employees. Until the last decade, HP never downsized, for example.
In the current climate in the US, producing goods and services are becoming incidental part of the operations compared to branding. Naomi Klein's book No Logo describes this trend... "This formula, needless to say, has proved enormously profitable, and its success has companies competing in a race toward weightlessness: whoever owns the least, has the fewest employees on the payroll and produces the most powerful images, as opposed to products, wins the race."
Shitty PC's
Overpriced (read price gouging) ink jet cartrides
Disposal Printers
etc.
The HP you lament was dead long ago. You just weren't notified. Not that HP / Compaq won't be going down the crapper forthwith...
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
...of the HP way.
/. forget there is a world outside that - it was a company with alot of great products, and one division of the company basically took over and eviscerated the rest.
HP was simply not a company of printers and cheap consumer computers. Or at least, at one time, it was not. I am going to have to buy an extra calculator - they had amazing calculators, once you figured out how to use RPN. MY friend fell one day and broke the display on his 28S, and they gave him a new one. gratis!
They had amazing test intruments. The nicest ocilliscopes were HP. Sure, techtronix has some nice models, but the HP digital scopes kicked ass.
The laser printers were rock fucking solid. I have suffered through brother, samsung, toshiba, etc. I *never* had an HP printer give me trouble. Even the deskjets were not bad - for all those people out there who moan about them, what would they replace them with? Epson? Nice printer, as long as you use it constantly.
I was never fond of the computers, but in fairness, I have yet to meet a consumer machine that I like.
So it's not just the loss of a consumer computer company, although I know sometimes people at
A concept currently out of favor.
Well as someone whose family has been involved with the company for many decades, one who spent many summers working various positions in the company and finally someone who joined the company after university I can say that the company I longed to work for and loved to visit dad at was not what I expected in 2000. I left after less than a year, I wanted to be a geek in THE geek company, however, all Carly wanted was sales and marketing. Salesperson does well, give him/her a fancy car for a year, geek solves customer problem in days that has plaqued them for months, tell him it didn't matter cause the sales guy said it should only take a day.
I would love to go back to the old HP, I suspect Carly will be gone before the end of 2003, all she wanted out of the merger was her massive bonus and raise and to layoff the 15,000 employees who best understood what the HP way was. She will do this and more and find that her synergies will never quite add up to what she hoped and by 2005 hp will look like it did a year ago.
Sad what a BOD/EC and CEO can do to a company, HP sent me dozens of proxies to vote on the merger, but I have yet to receive a proxy of the March Vote on the BOD. This time next year, we can welcome Walter and hopefully a few other intelligent folks to the board and get back on track.
I'd go so far as to suggest that the good that HP did by providing jobs that attract bright people to wherever they have offices is a very important thing. For the purely cynical at heart, it increases the tax base of the community by providing higher paying jobs. For the more realistic among us, the community building didn't stop there, with a wealth of community works projects.
Companies are important. Companies give people places to work, and make money. Good companies give back to their communities, and companies that do this well are rare and shouldn't be taken for granted.
While it's all en vogue to be anti-globalization, it's probably not in anyone's interest long term to be purely anti-commercial. Companies that inspire loyalty from their employees by helping them build neat things are few and far between (rather than buying their loyalty with stock options, ala Enron).
There are good companies and bad companies. Just like people. HP happened to be one of the good companies. We'll see if that spirit is gone now.
Many of the good, progressive things we have cherished about the hi-tech world, such as its egalitarianism, informality, and respect for doing the right thing came directly from these two men.
Why do people bother trying to 'reinvent' themselves when they are already making a profit and will likely continue to do so in that fashion for as long as the eye can see?
HP closed their Calculator Research lab, yet it was making them a profit with each new model of calculator released. Yah really smart that one, closing a PROFITABLE part of your business.
The lady who is now in charge of HP, it says her mission goal is to "Make HP into a innovative internet company."
Uh WTF??
Internet companies suck, period. You make a printer you sell a printer and you have yourself a profit. Guarn-friggin-teed.
Hell I think that this is one case where some CONSERVATIVE management could actually have came in handy.
Imagine the PHB's conversation for awhile if you will;
PHB-1: Are we making any money?
PHB-2: Yah tons of it.
PHB-1: Ok, lets keep on doing what we are doing and make even more money!
Compared to what seems to have actually happened;
PHB-1: Are we making money?
PHB-2: Yah tons of it.
PHB-1: Ok then lets completely restructure the company go through a big merger close down our operations assloads of profitable sectors and go with something completely new and untested!
And people wonder why I have such disdain for business majors. . . . .
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
The HP Way, as I understand it was to give the employees of the company a free hand in deciding what products needed to be developed, and what parts were needed for those products. From the equipment they initially built and sold to the Walt Disney company, through their decision to let "The Woz" take his computer design with him as he left the company, they showed an interest in those products that they believed would be profitable, and letting engineers have a free hand to do what they wished, including leaving for greener pastures.
While I am not sure that the new company will exhibit the same "Way", I do not see anything preventing new startups from using this method of operations.
As I understand it, parts of this "Way" have been used in other companies. There has been much talk of the "Apple Way" which encourages people to try new things.
We may never see another large company that works the way HP did. If so, I think the world will be a poorer place. On the other hand, as companies are looking into more and more Open Source projects, I suspect that the philosophy of Open Source will propigate into other parts of corporate operations.
Then again, I could be wrong.
-Rusty
You never know...
I think the roadmap looks fine, since a lot of the HP desktop/mobile lines were crap compared to compaq. Look at the numbers -- people perfer the compaq lines -- and that's why a lot of the HP divisions are going to be trimmed.
I only buy compaq notebooks lately, since they're easy to fix/upgrade/maintain if you get the right line. HP laptops? I never considered... I've tried half a dozen other OEMs for PC laptops, but never HP. It seems looking at the sells figures I wasn't alone.
As for backend systems and consumer desktops it's not even close, Compaq is #1 b/c of their branding and deals with PoVs like rat shack. HP should've made better products at better price points. BTW I only use IBM for my workstations, sorry guys. I wouldn't mind a nice Proliant however if we weren't locked into Dell at work.
I'm sorry Packard, but even Carly is right sometimes.
So... two struggling companies with ineffective, clueless CEO's come to the only decision that'll keep them in a position of power for another year or so..
The deal was masqueraded in bunches of buzzwords and double-speak. They claimed it would allow them to leverage all sorts of synergies for their customers. Of course, they never told their customers exactly how the joining of two alike companies would be beneficial. We were just suppose to trust Carly and Mike that it would. They even tried to coax Wall Street's blessing by saying that the merger would allow them to (gasp!) compete with IBM and its Global Services Division! Goodness knows that was so very re-assuring to the thousands of HP customers who were left in the dark for months and who were lied to about the e3000 line of servers.
So now, Compaq and HP shift from the HP Way to something more akin to the Woolworth Way, which goes something like this: let's sell as much crap as we can, as quickly as we can, before we go under!
There have been a lot of Slashdotters comment negatively about David Packard's eulogy for the HP Way. I've seen numerous comments that say it's just a company, not a religion and other such rubbish. But for tens of thousands of HP employees, the HP Way was as much a part of their lives as religion. It gave them a sense of belonging, a sense of security and a sense of honor, all at the same time.
This week, one man and one woman have succeeded in absolutely destroying the lives of tens of thousands of people, all in the name of corporate profits and non-sensical words like "synergy."
Take a minute to respect that and to think about that, because a very unique and wonderful chapter in American business history was just closed.
(It's actually a serious criticism I've got of market forces these days: far from being an engine of diversity, they seem to be driving the United States toward a rather boring and bland monoculture. I look at changes in Palo Alto, and I can think of a dozen bad losses, and one gain, and that's the result of a non-profit organization...)
But anyway, if you happen to be hanging on the Bay Area peninsula for any reason, definitely check out the Stanford Theater on University Ave. With any luck, you may get to see Edward Everett Horton and/or Eric Blore.
(One complaint though: David Packard is a little too tasteful for my tastes. Silicon Valley needs more bad SF movies. I want to see a Roger Corman festival. )