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An Engineer's View of Carly Fiorina's Leadership
prostoalex writes "There is a pretty damning look at Carly Fiorina's leadership while at HP on TechnologyReview.com. The author was working for HP Labs, the center of invention and innovation for the company, only to be told that nothing exciting will happen in the tech market since it's a mature industry. He left the company in 2003. "The lab was never packed with genius marketers. Carly told us we had no business sense, and that every project needed to make a profit within three years or less. She usually said that right before the research budget got slashed again and more lab employees were laid off."" Update: 03/19 03:13 GMT by Z : As detailed on the TechnologyReview page, they have retracted the story on the grounds that they can no longer vouch for it.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Honestly, does this kind of leadership at HP suprise anyone? With the constant garbage they produce and botch-up dealings they make this just explains matters. Alpha anyone?
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
"nothing exciting will happen in the tech market since it's a mature industry"
So is that it with the planet then? "I'm sorry, the planet is mature, nothing more will happen, history has ended. Please make your way in an orderly fashion to the exits..."
What a boring woman!
There is some talk about her running the World Bank.
l /worldbank_wolfowitz/?cnn=yes
http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/01/news/internationa
In mid-2002, HP's labs became solely focused on finding ways for other businesses to save money.
Seems like this kind of backfired on HP's "We re-did NASA" marketing campaign, shortly before the Columbia crash.
Check out the sidebar to that article, printed back in February. You know you're doing a bad job if your ex-employees open champagne upon hearing of your leaving. Wow.
I did a 12 month placement at HP labs in the UK (Bristol to be exact) from Aug 2002 - whilst in the process of merging with compaq and with management slashing the research budget. At least I was insulated a bit from the fray - and it was 'interesting times' but probably for all the wrong reasons. Suffice it to say the project I was doing was miss-managed despite being praised by the upper echelons of the labs. Nevermind, now I've graduated from UMIST (now Manchester Uni), with a BSc (Hons) 2:2 in Computation and I'm earning not much more than I was paid for my placement year. My job is with a small internet company near Manchester. I'm OK, I just wonder about the people still working at the labs around the world- and the rest of HP's staff, never mind the management.
To me, this rabid fixation on short-term profits is a bigger threat than outsourcing -- it is killing our ability to make astonishing things.
This has been the case with many companies since the mid 80s. Their R & D is alot more D than R. Many of the most admired technology companies of the 60s, 70s and 80s are gone because they ate their seed corn.
The rabid fixation with short term profits is a problem cut from the same cloth as outsourcing.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Crack that whip on my pale white ass, make me lick your boots and worship your holiest of holys. Let me be your sex slave!
Who will be next, to take the hopes and dreams of their employees and investors down with them?
- The Valley is a Harsh Mistress
It's at GoingWare's Bag of Programming Tricks.I mentioned two companies that were still alive, but on the ropes at the time I wrote the essay - Be, Inc. and Working Software. Now both are gone, with not even a domain name to mark their graves anymore.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
That at the top of the page, an ad for HP shows up?
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
...all they want is money. Look, Carly got something like a $20million package (maybe more)for getting fired. Would _you_ care if you knew that's what you would get for screwing up?
Possibly, if that mucked up your reputation. But inexplicably, IT DOESN'T. Rumors are she's on the shortlist to head the World Bank? WTF???
Nobody on the board of directors (board of fat cats more like it) really cares either. Or possibly they are impossibly dumb.
Look, how many of the "frontline troops" could tell you that the Compaq-HP merger wasn't any good and would amount to not much?
Unfortunately, it isn't just HP. It's nearly every CEO and board of directors.
Hands up those of you on Slashdot who _knew_ the AOL-Time Warner was going to be bust? Yes, those of us in the field and half a teaspoon of wit knew that didn't make sense and was doomed to disaster. Yet the supposedly "wise and experienced" board didn't see it coming?
Fact is, these stupid maneuvers are are win-win-win for the board, CEO's and the stock analysts. They don't give a damn what happens to the company.
Now Mr. Hewlett and Packard, they wouldn't pull this sort of shit because it was their own baby.
Founder of IBM had some pretty good rules too, they treated customers and employees _right_. But since he went, it's been all downhill (except for profits).
The rot started long before Carly with Robert Palmer's "leadership" of Digital. Having come from the semiconductor side of the house, it was amazing what he failed to do with Alpha.
Not to mention the unholy tieup with Microsoft - anyone else remember the corporate switch from VAXmail/All-In-One to Exchange on his watch? On the world's largest private network, I am sure that helped Microsoft up the corporate ladder...
Frontline troops, also known as pawns.
They don't matter, they're expendable, they're waste of skin but unfortunately necessary -- at least for the time being. That's what I learned when I got my MBA.
I'm posting anonymously because my father works at HP and I have done some work for them and they continue to be a client of my company.
Basically Carly's main failure was a total lack of vision. Her main changes were branding and cost-cutting. And in order to cover her major failing, she undertook the merger which would make success impossible to benchmark for about 3 years or so.
There were also countless re-orgs which also serve to make goals impossible to benchmark. While re-branding HP 'Invent' she did her best to ensure that no actual inventing occured... tying HP closer to Microsoft and pushing the actual inventing to other vendors (the HP iPod anyone?) while trying to eck out a living on those thinner margins by cost-cutting.
Now most business units are facing a 10% budget cut in order to finance Carly's kiss off. I don't need to say that morale is a huge issue and HP is largely rudderless (after being firmly steered in the wrong direction for so long this may be an improvment though)
And there is talk of having her run the world bank. I suppose it is typical in the US this day and age to continuously reward failure as long as it's big enough (Bush, Rumsfeld, CIA, Condi etc.) so Carly fits that bill perfectly.
The whole thing disgusts me really...
This is a damning indictment of the entire industry. And really, if the focus is on software patents, can that be such a shock?
This is why the US software patent system must never be exported: if they want to nothing but sit on their arses and sue each other, let them. The rest of us have real work to do.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
actually, i would rather do it with a crowbar. Each to his own, I guess.
I remember a time when their hardware was second to none, and their software and support were stellar to say the least. I'm serious when I say that I noticed the change in leadership almost as immediately as she took office - and I was just a consumer of their products. Their hardware started going up in price, but failed to move forward. Their software became more bug filled than the Amazon jungle, and their support, well, just stopped existing.
One of the largest problems I saw was how they produced new versions of some of their software packages, writing Windows versions of packages that used to be strictly HP-UX native and then porting them back to HP-UX...this was at best a dumb idea and at worst resulted in programs advertised as being HP-UX native refusing to operate properly, especially anything with a GUI. Program crashes went from almost non-existant to an almost weekly if not daily occurance.
To make matters worse the average hold time I spent on the phone went from less than 10 minutes to as much as 4 HOURS. I'm not making this up! And when you finally did get an engineer on the phone they mostly stalled for time because they knew they had no solution to a problem, or had too much to deal with. As we paid for our service agreement we expected to get prompt service and instead were left sitting for days, sometimes weeks while someone tried to resolve the issue, if it could be resolved. Even when told that issues were absolutely mission critical and costing us huge amounts of money and at times lost data due to failure we still did not notice any change in service.
Like the author, my first calculator was an HP - I remembered being astounded by the ability to graph solutions and solve multi-variable equations. It was one of the first pieces of hardware I learned to program - I wrote a program to switch the in class TV channels back in High School. At one time, before Carly, I even wanted desperately to work for them....I'm glad I didn't.
How Carly ever got into office on anything but her looks(which weren't much) will forever remain a mystery to me. How she was allowed to stay in her position for more than a few months is something I can only blame on investors not having a finger on the pulse of the company. Maybe HP will recover, but they've lost so much ground in recent years, I really can't see it happening.
There was a lot of talk about invention being important-but virtually know rewards for the folks that helped create patents the company owned.
There were entire projects organized that had as their major purpose obtaining as many H-1b Visas for friends and family of managers as humanly possible.
The lack of imagination of the management at HP is really sad-as is the fact that there is very little incentive there to really do accurate forecasting and business analysis.
Managment are in there nature dumb [..] by the time the new plans start showing how crap and wasteful they are the managment have either left or taken a golden handshake, they get there money nomatter what mess they make and in 5 years, more than enough to retire on. If they do well then they either stay another 5 years until they mess up or move onto new pasture's generaly given they can bag a bigger bonus and begin a new 5 year plan of destruction [..] sod saving budgets and planning beyond 5 year goals. or in Caleys case she set herself up for 3 year fall with 3 year plans, cunning but shortsighted, perfect managment.
Doesn't sound very dumb to me then. The only dumb thing would be to still be in place when the shit hits the fan.
Self-centered, greedy, amoral, philistine- yes. Dumb- no.
I'm as cynical as the next guy (and then some), but I think your statement lacks consideration. Management isn't dumb by nature; there are a lot of factors that go into making a dumb manager. The Peter Principle, the MBA shortcut, or "connections." Sometimes, though, management consists of brilliant people that not only offer great people and asset management skills, but everything else that goes into a really successful product, service, company, etc.
Google, Pixar, and Apple - are these companies that succeed despite dumb management?
Google goes out of its way to spend a significant percentage of its time on technology that is innovative first, that they don't know yet how to make profitable. Google News and just about all the stuff in Google Labs only cost them money, but they're smart enough to think longer term than that.
- Allen Pike
Altering time, one time at a time.
...and others are even dumberer.
I'm not too impressed with the way that the food division is heading either.
Dammit, what about open sauce?
The last things I can remember HP doing right were their laser printers with single digit numbers. (EG. Laserjet II, III, 4 series, and even the 6P - which is a teriffic "small office workgroup" type printer.) The old scanners with single digit numbers were equally well-made and respectable (ScanJet 4 and so on).
But somewhere around the time they decided these products needed numbers in the thousands, quality took a nosedive and then came the parade of garbage "consumer desktop PCs".
Nowdays, I rarely recommend anything with the HP logo on it. Their inkjets have the most outdated print-nozzle technology out there for photo printing. There's still nothing noteworthy about their Pavillion PC line, and even their laptops seem like they're generally the size of bricks. (Those HP laptops with 17" displays are just HUGE compared to something like an Apple Powerbook 17".)
The article's rather short with very very little details. It does should like a rant, however, there's probably truth in it.
He's description of research is pretty accurate:"doesn't have immediate results", "expensive and unpredictable". He is also correct in implying that research is important and often overlooked.
It's a shame that HP has turned out the way it is. It does really seem that its glory days are over. When Carly departed, it was reported that it's not because of her vision which clashed with the directors, but her execution. So, I suppose, HP is going to be like this in the forseeable future. Something drastic's got to be done.
A lesson learnt from the article: Do not let someone with no appreciation of tech manage a tech firm.
But I like this quote:
"Bill Hewlett used to remind us that "The marketing guys said the HP-35 would be a failure because it was too small, and then we couldn't make them fast enough to meet the demand. The marketing folks don't know everything."
Because it was too small. Talk about misreading a market. Computing became ubiquitous entirely because of continuing miniaturization. Of course marketers would argue that they've now learned their lesson. They won't make that mistake again! No. They'll make some other ridiculous mistake. Not because they're stupid people, but because they don't understand current technology limitations and how trends imply change upon those limitations. Presumably, those former marketers thought "bigger meant better". Bigger cars were "better", right? They didn't see the potential utility of a pocket calculator, just as some will miss the utility of some other invention or advancement.
Marketing is fine as a tool for finding products people want. But it's useless for determining if a completely new technology might create or revolutionize a market. See the Dyson vacuum cleaner as another example of marketers misreading how new technology might completely change a mature market. Marketing works best only after the marketers understand a technology and its limitations, in coordination with traditional market analysis. Not prior. --M
A strategy that revolved around marketing smoke and mirrors?
Slashing research budgets and firing the actual brainpower?
And people were happy when Carly left? Why, that just blows my mind. Engineering types always love it when a smooth talking well dressed MBA type comes into the lab and begins talking about direction and uses words like "edgy" and "synergy". How in the world could they hate Carly?m
Sarcasm aside, I gotta get me a job where I can royally fuck up a company and be given a severance package that includes more money than I could ever hope to spend in a lifetime.
ce n'est pas un Sig.
After ruining HP, the Bush administration has suggested her for rui^H^Hnning the World Bank. Read it here. 'Top executives' like herself like to tell us that they need their huge salaries because they take such risks, and if they screw up they are done in the business. Yeah, right. The truth is, it doesn't matter how much they screw up, their own will take care of them anyway.
If you don't understand your own products, you are going to suck as a leader. I don't care what the current nonsense is, but that's something I really believe - perhaps it explains the success of lawyers as politicians?
This is a theme you see in education all the time - you don't need to understand or have a degree in, oh, say physics in order to teach physics. Yeah, right. You can't teach something you don't understand at a fundamental level.
This goes to show that people with pure business backgrounds are not automatically assumed success in any field. Mr. Hewlett and Packard made wonderful products, by and for engineers. You can see it clear as day in what they produced. I love my HP48 calculator. I own oscilloscopes and function generators made by HP that dates back to the 70's and the gear still works flawlessly and looks great.
Watch for intel to make the same kind of mistakes - the best leaders for tech companies are those with BOTH business acumen and technical backgrounds.
Hopefully this Carly FIASCO will scare some brains into those who make the big decisions, but maybe I'm just dreaming. Short term profits, damn the cost!
..don't panic
It's not unlike Hollywood, where actors and actresses live in their own version of reality - pretty far removed from the daily lives most of us have.
When you earn that type of money, and spend your time around peers that do the same, how can you expect them to see these screw-ups as a "big deal", really? Like you said, it's not their own business, built from the ground up - so they're not coming into things with that background of remembering how tough it was to build it.
A lot of these big-wig corporate types pander more to such things as a peer "taking a big risk". They're going to say "Carly, that was a really bold move you made, merging with Compaq. Didn't really work out, but that's the type of thinking and attitude we like to see in a C.E.O.! I think we can find a new spot for you over here...."
In many ways, I think they approach it like gambling. Sure, the rest of us can say "I can't believe that guy just plunked down a million dollars on the roulette table and lost it all. What a moron!" But if he's got the kind of money where that isn't going to put an end to his lifestyle, and his peers are equally rich gamblers, they're just going to cheer him on. They're thinking in the back of their heads that they're "way above" all those naysayers who aren't "successful enough" to even afford to take those types of risks.
HP makes crap... I expected this. Leaders stink, computers stink... it all stinks
http://onticfusion.sytes.net/
I think in a normal world. people would collaberate and fund raise to do RnD - their creations would gain them value and reputation, and that would lead to new opportunities. But we don't live in a normal world, we live in a patent world - a world where companies receive vast rewards for cutting off other companies from new tchnologies. A world where those little inventors (who patents are supposed to help) are premanately locked out.
.... (no big companies). I think if people kicked patents the hell out of they way they'd be supprised what happens. It would free up millions of inventions, to millions more inventors, and create a sunami of economic growth and technology. The fact that inventions can be coppied should be treated like a opportunity, not a threat, or even worse a theft. Patents monopolies (and I mean all of them, not just software) simply half to die and calling them
Yeah, I know the "party line" that one that says no big companies will invent without patent monopolies, but just look at how many items in the average kitchen were really invented by a big company (hint none). Look at the electricity, phone, the PC, the radio, and so on
intellectual "property" is simply fradulent.
First, where's the comparison with the experience at other R&D labs, like Microsoft's.
Plus, the guy's article runs under the assumption that the R&D Lab is holy and that any attempt to reduce, shape, or in someway modify them is evil.
This is not necessarily true. Xerox PARC gave us the mouse, the gui, and ethernet. Microsoft's R&D Lab hasn't done much noteworthy yet has a $1 billion+ budget.
Apple's innovation shouldn't necessarily even be attributed to an R&D Lab. I remember that Apple emphasizes a research-to-product-development cycle. Apples tells its developers precisely that: "these things better turn into products!"
And this makes simple business sense in some cases. Look at what good those innovations did Xerox. Apple took the GUI and mouse, Microsoft took the GUI from Apple, and 3Com took ethernet.
This article's the typical kick-her-on-the-way-out story. "Yeah, I didn't like her either! She didn't increase my budget! I don't need to argue anymore."
Philosophistry
There are a few tech companies that just might make it long term. One I can think of is Rockwell Automation. The CEO is a 30 year veteran of the company and came up through the engineering ranks. Stock price just make an all time high this week. Its not sexy or truly cutting edge but the company has a "better that six months out" mentality.
You mean Farker.
"For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
Slashdot is powerful! On Tuesday I complained about Carly Fiorina in a Slashdot comment, and on Wednesday she was fired. (See the 6th paragraph of the comment, and the subsequent comment.)
...Based soley on the fact that the PRINTER DRIVER I'm installing as I type this needs 400 MB of drive space MINIMUM. The full install is 1 GB!!! Adobe can pull off Photoshop CS with only 177 MB, so if that's not inept programming, I don't know what is-- I say, great, cut the beasts head off at the top. Maybe it will grow a better one.
Not at all like Slashdot users, eh?
... and then they built the supercollider.
And, I find it is disgusting that the Bush administration is putting Fiorina forward for Head of the World Bank, when she was such a failure at her last job. The phony people are in control.
I feel that Fiorina's paying much more for Compaq when it was on it's deathbed than what was recently paid for IBM's PC division says it all. The purchase brought nothing to HP and many people including myself believe that the only reason Fiorina did it was to make a big change that would take a while for the finnancial numbers to react to, protecting her personal position that was extremely in danger of termination at the time. And to see what the HP stock holders are getting stuck with paying her as "severence" after she did such a poor job is just crazy.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Hrm, I read slashdot too much. Its you again. See here.
The Patriarchy will do whatever it can to keep down a smart, sophisticated woman.
Maybe, but what does that have to do with Carly Fiorina?
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
That seems to sum up the "new HP". Before they were pretty much doing thier own thing making specialized computers, test equipment and some damn fine laser printers.
Now 2/3 of thier profits come from ink and toner sales, thier systems are very unsupported, I know I just talked to a really friendly techie from India who couldn't answer my problem (I have just discovered are due to thier thier latest BIOS...grrr).
From what I saw when I booted this machine is that HP is cozying up to any company with money: Microsoft (XP, only XP), Apple (iPod), Symantic, AOL and other services (spyware/adware/Internet/etc). They seem to be using thier PCs hard drive capacity for garnering advertising, tie-in and lock-in revenue.
Certainly sounds like HP has been reduced to a me-too company, they should expand into the ringtone business, I hear there are big bux there now.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Here are some interesting comments about Carly becoming President of the World Bank.
Yeah, I know the "party line" that one that says no big companies will invent without patent monopolies, but just look at how many items in the average kitchen were really invented by a big company (hint none). Look at the electricity, phone, the PC, the radio, and so on .... (no big companies). I think if people kicked patents the hell out of they way they'd be supprised what happens. It would free up millions of inventions, to millions more inventors, and create a sunami of economic growth and technology. The fact that inventions can be coppied should be treated like a opportunity, not a threat, or even worse a theft. Patents monopolies (and I mean all of them, not just software) simply half to die and calling them
intellectual "property" is simply fradulent.
I wish I had mod points... this deserves to be modded up.
I just wish more people understood this. Patents do more overall harm to our society than they do good. They now serve to inhibit innovation, rather than to encourage it.
The best thing we could do, would be to eliminate patents altogether. At the very least, software and "business method" patents should be eliminated.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
Do this. Go to Sun Research and then go to the US Patent Office and search for patents issued to Sun researchers. You'll find that all of a sudden about 2 years ago researchers who got little or no patents are suddenly getting patents. It seems like they were told to stop just doing research and writing papers and start getting patents and stuff so Sun could license the stuff and make money. While research papers go through a peer review process by people who are considered experts in their fields, I don't think you can say the same about the patent review process. Sun researchers are being measured by how many patents they get. It doesn't look good.
Did you know that in the late 1700s, there was a feeling in the scientific communities (principly physics and chemistry and to a far lesser extent mathematics) that all major discoveries had been made and apart from a few small issues the fields were closed and the game was over? Atoms had not yet been discovered. Declaring a field 'mature' is fine within certain constraints. But as always, people don't know what they don't know. Additionally, historical predictions have been punctured throughout history by the pundit's inability to forsee a revolutionary event in a given field. e.g. the atom, the web, radioactivity , "640K should be enough for everyone", "the worldwide market for computers is probably 6". The list goes on and on. Thanks Carly for cashing-up HP out of a flat spot, but don't presume to be a talented enough seer to declare a field closed. History will remember and ridicule you for that position.
Managment are in there nature dumb.
No, most managers are very intelligent. Sometimes too intelligent, making them arrogant and unwilling to admit when they are out of their element. This applies to both engineers and business people placed in leadership positions.
Companies fail with arrogant business leaders who believe they can market their way out of problems; as well as arrogant engineers, who believe making a great product will just sell itself.
BTW, you should proof-read comments when you are calling people dumb.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
I swear that she and Celine Dion are really one and the same person.
With about the same abilities in their respective fields.
To have ambition was my ambition.
Nor was this story remarkable by Loomis' standards. She covered her own corporate employer, AOL Time Warner, for several years and her reports were characterized by withering sarcasm in reviewing their strategies, finances, and internal politics.
Fiorina may no longer be one of the most powerful women in American business, but Loomis still is.
Carly Fiorina is the potential chief of the World Bank. So while engineers breathe a sigh of relief, the world at large cowers in fear at the next turn?
The most telling paragraph of that piece from TechnologyReview.com is: "Our biggest mistake at HP Labs came from being too cautious. We passed on developing Steve Wozniak's cheap little personal computer. Woz was working in HP's lab, on calculator projects, at the time. We knew the computer idea was great, but we couldn't work out how to market it, so we passed."
The retired HP engineer undermined his point that "a marketing person should not run a tech company" by admitting that tech guys, including him, are no marketing genius either.
Tech industry is a cutthroat business, let's face it. Bashing a failed Tech CEO is a popular game these days, that is why a short article like this gets the Slashdot treatment. But, the smarter people are working on weeknights and weekends, at their basements, in their garages, to come up with the next thing, and I bet they do it quietly.
Sun and Fun
Just license the the mp3 player design (iPod) from a company that can design products rather than try any innovation at hp.
Vote for Pedro
Face it folks, the high value add research jobs are heading East, following the manufacturing jobs that went there 10 years ago.
India / China have the foresight to continue investing massively in Technology and Education, while we moan about taxes, are unwilling to invest properly in education, and run up debt to fund our little consumerist paradise.
I wonder what it'll be like in the US / Europe in 50 years time...everything will be researched / developed / manufactured somewhere else, and we'll have run out of money to buy it anyway.
Better start learning how to make trinkets to sell to the tourists...
Fortunately Carly spun off the test and measurement instrument group into "Agilent". They have always produced the best instrumentation in the industry and continue to do so. It's a shame that they've lost the HP name, but they are still a top notch company.
I worked at HP making drivers and whatnot several years ago. I was there at the time Carly took over until about a year or two afterwards. I can tell you from my experience at HP that she was quite unpopular among the employees, at least around the time I left. A big part of Fiorina getting the axe I am sure is not only because of stock performance, but because she took so much away from the family that was HP and showed nothing positive for it.
Before she took over, the company was very family-oriented, as you would expect since it was family-owned. I loved going to work because I realized that the kind of work atmosphere we had at HP was very rare. There were a couple of policies that employees somewhat questioned that were family-oriented, for instance having to take a mandatory day off, I believe it was every couple weeks. Obviously there were a few grumbles from some over losing money since they could be working. But overall looking past specific policies, there was an overall feeling of appreciation for the top of HP management for creating such a caring work environment. There was just an atmosphere there that didn't just appear overnight, it was the result of careful planning by those in upper management.
Folks loved working at HP, and it showed in the turnover rate, which was stunningly low. This was worn as a badge of pride by the company.
Enter Carly Fiorina. Look at this turnover rate, it's terrible! We need it to go way up, to cycle new people and new ideas in! Day off every two weeks, that's ridiculous, let's get rid of that as well as cut back paid vacation and benefits to help push up the turnover rate! Firings, and resignations sure did lead to a higher turnover rate. HP stopped being HP. Instead of being a very special place to work for, it was suddenly Just Another Corporation. I left a little later, not with the new company environment as the reason, but at that point I was not sad to say goodbye.
The thing is, Carly took that spirit away from the company, she took away that something very special about HP that made it a privilige to work there, all the while promising results that never materialized. Had HP skyrocketed, few would have complained, but no - she took all these intangibles away, and all the company had to show for it was poor performance. She was a poor leader and a bad decision-maker. The Compaq thing and lack of results afterwards was just the straw that broke the camel's back.
On the 0th day, God created C
Excellent hardware, printers that worked, calculators that were better than everyone else's.
Well, things have changed - HP bought DEC, they bought Compaq, they got rid of a decent chip (Alpha), they have printer software that is HUGE and is always bugging me to check for updates, or, at the very least telling me my ink cartridge is "almost empty" (%50 full) - better buy more!
I think HP was better when it was run by engineers who did good work, rather than marketing folks who thought they know what was good.
Well, any company that big will last for a long time anyhow, but I know I won't be buying HP products without checking out the competition first.
Especially printers.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
... real life half life ... potentially the solution to so many of our little problems.
Carly wasn't the root source of problem, the boneheads that hired her and let her run the company into the toilet were and are the problem.
Cringely, in his book, "Accidental Empires" talks about this. Although industry history wise it is starting to get quite dated, I think there is a lot of value in the general, timeless observations he makes.
He classifies R&D to have the fundamental purpose of researching and developing products that will be marketable in the relatively near future, for example 2 to 3 years. All companies do this, how "future" oriented they are about it would be where there are differences. Apple would be more future oriented than Dell, however, they are still both doing R&D.
He then defines "pure research" as research into things that won't necessarily have a near term pay off and may not ever evolve into a product. He says that pure research may add to the company's bottom line in something like 10 to 20 years. The main, immediate product of pure research is "intellectual" capital - having a group of people in the organisation with an advanced level of knowledge, and a patent portfolio, so that, although the rest of the industry may benefit and maybe moved forward by the research, the original company that paid for it can recoop some of their costs. In pure research, finding out something doesn't work is just as valuable as finding out something does.
Very few companies can afford to do pure research, because it costs a lot, and, in the short term, doesn't produce any profit. It may never directly produce a profit at all. Very few organisations can make enough profit that they can through money at pure research and yet still have their investors happy with the profits they produce. Governments can also support pure research, as they don't have to produce a profit at all.
Examples of companies that have performed pure research are fairly easy to identify - they have huge patent libraries. The canonical example is, of course, IBM. Lucent is another, although as a company they are declining, and it is likely that they'll stop doing pure research soon, if they already haven't. The author of this article suggests HP was another, although making inkjet printers smaller really isn't pure research, although not having a defined timeline doesn't quite make it R&D either. Finally, in recent years, Microsoft has created a pure research group.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
"a good idea comes from many ideas." It sounds like Carly Fiorina does not truly understand how research and development is funded. If an exec comes in thinking that all ideas and prototypes that come out of the lab must have an economical payout, then they will commit innovation suicide. Give a little slack and allow the engineers and researchers do what they do best -- create. If you make them worry about their job or their wallet, then that's wasted brain energy that could have been put to good use for creativity.
Some venture capitalists (which I think Carly was before joining HP) truly understand the nature of the beast, which is why we often hear about companies, crazy ideas, or projects the VCs back that should have never had funding in the first place. Fund lots of ideas, one of them will be a great one.
Linux at home
HP: relabel
Carly made lots of money for stockholders. I can personally attest to this.
I bought 26 shares of HP stock on February 1 at 19.75. Carly leaves, and I dump my stock on the 9th at 21.50!!! Woo hoo! I made $45 in just 8 days (minus commission). Just look at that selloff spike. Some of that was me!
Anyone who knew anything about HP was partying that day. Even at Agilent everyone was giddy. If I had known Carly was about to get dumped I would have hurled my life savings into HPQ.
I understand she has a bright future ahead of her in the Republican Party. If the Republicans are smart they'll wait until right before an election to kick her out of the party.
A bunch of shiny, flashy HP "invent" Flash ads right next to the article where the pissed engineer just dumped his concerns about today's culture of feasting on the incarnation of markteers' wet dreams ...
they own a lot, but not more than US citizens. http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/chart ing/2005/0302.html
1 - buy Compaq
2 - wait three years
3 - profit!
You can attempt to justify how good she was all you want. The fact is that since Carly has taken over HP, they have no engineering left. Their support centers are in India- Bangalore to be exact.
.50 cents/hour bitches know a fucking thing about computers.
HP has attempted to go from a printer company to a server company. They failed. The only support you can hope to have within 1-2 days time for critical servers are the 4 hour onsite 24/7 contracts. And yes, that typically take 2 days to resolve.
If you don't have this contracts, HP hardware is absolutely worthless. You will be waiting months to fix your servers. An Indian with a broken British accent, will guide you through 30 steps and then misdiagnose it because none of these tier 1
Every tech, SysAdmin, network engineer, and server monkey that has spoken of her has done so with a big shit-eating grin on their face since she was outsourced.
You find me somebody that thinks she had a purpose other than destruction, and I'll find you and ignorant tech illeterate fuckstain. Have a nice day.
"the can-do attitude was killed by management choices intended to placate nervous investors and board members rather than benefit the company and its workers over the long-term."
Chickens with chutzpah!
One would think a board and the stockholders who have been successful enough to amass enough $ to be influential would know better.
You don't make major changes in a successful business!
I'll say it again.
You don't make major changes in a successful business!
A successful business continually asses it's market, analyzes the possible outcome of changes, implements those changes in a way that will allow measurement of their effect on improving the business, and adjusts accordingly.
A simple example of this is advertising in retail sales. Every advertising $ is tracked for results in terms of it's impact on sales. Expenditures are adjusted to maximize profit. It's a little more complicated because of time lag, shifting market demographics, etc. But, you get the picture.
IMO the board shares the major portion of the blame. 'Nervous board'?. I'd call them incompetent!
Unfortunately, this is the case with many corporate boards these days. Political and business contacts seem to carry more value as a board member than sound business sense. It's all about the deal man. Gotta do the deal! Where's my fucking coke.
to kill off foriegn competition, what else would you call it besides stealing?
And for changing the game, what game? It's over, and we lost. The new game is called outsourcing, and involves pitting one group of desparte poor against another. It's great fun as long as you're rich.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Just blame it on RIO!
I'm going to go anonymous here...
;-). I am convinced that any one of Apple's senior VP's could run any other fortune 500 company.
I'm an Apple employee, and I can tell you that every single Apple VP I've met (six of them so far), is freakin' brilliant. Bertrand Serlet actually reads just about every bug report for any part of the software that falls under his responsibility (that is, the whole OS.) Ron Johnson knows more about selling products in stores to the public, than I had any idea there *was* to know. Sina Tamadon could do the job of any engineer who works for him.
One thing that people haven't given Steve Jobs enough credit for, is the amazing job he does when it comes to executive recruitment (he learned his lesson with Sculley
I've got a pair of 8100DN's with 1.5-2Million pages through each of them (health care office that prints a few thousand pages a day) and they're still humming along just fine. We're about to replace one with a 9000 series, but that's mostly because of the nearly 2x faster print speed.
I don't really see how this is different from what's happening at all the other tech firms: IBM, all the telcos, SUN etc. etc....Show me something impressive that has come out of any of them in 5 years. No, they are all busy packaging reinvented wheels. Carly may have a bitch about it but IBM and all the others are crushing everyone's souls through sheer process and negligence.
"getting the same research"
They're not. Or did I miss the next big thing to come out of the Philipines.
Oh, and BTW, once you've trained everybody in Thailand and China, they'll figure out in 5-10 years that their "masters" back in the U.S. of A. aren't necessary anymore. After all, they're the only ones who know how to build a decent product.
Name a company successful over 10 years that has outsourced its "brains" overseas.
HP?
Hell, look at IBM. They have research labs all over the world, but they keep their biggest lab just a few minutes north of NYC. Its pretty clear IBM "gets it", even if Carley doesn't.
Gee, and here I was thinking that what we really need is leadership and not management. This only confirms it.
Carly Fiorina was pushed out for one reason---HP fell from its top market share spot it earned in the 4th quarter of 2003. Dell beat HP during all of 2004. Fiorina couldn't perform numbers-wise. This is the primary reason why CEOs step down.
Oh, phew... I was worried that she might end up as NASA head, as some previous rumors had indicated. This would've been bad, as NASA is something I actually care about.
Carly may have killed innovation at HP, but it doesn't mean that innovation in America has been killed - just pushed back to the garage.
There has been a truism that is as true today as when it was coined back in the early 1800's: Americans invent as the French paint, or the Italians sculpt.
It is our nature to innovate. If it is not happening at Lucent, HP or wherever, it will revert back to the garage where countless American innovations have started. Analysts that look to HP and Lucent (Bell Labs) for innovation in the future are sure to be blind-sided by the invention they didn't see coming from some garage or shed somehwere in this great land of ours.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
My HP 48GX sucks by comparison. It is relatively harder to use.
The 67 was great too. Why HP never got around to putting a very simple high level language on their calculators around 1979 or 80 I will never know. I guess it was not Carly Fiorina's fault though.
In wartime... truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies. (Churchill)
it's not just me then...
Just remember, HP killed the only viable alternative to Power, Itanium, and SPARC... Alpha... and Alpha was at least 12 months ahead of all of them. Just recall what all of these same folks (IBM more subdued than the others) said when DEC said at the original Microprocessor forum it had a 1Ghz processor.
;-)
The comments ranged from "It'll cause a China Syndrome" to something like "Where are the guys with the White Coats?".
Carly was not yet at the helm at HP, but most of the clowns who advised her at HP during the COMPAQ merger are still there. These are the folks who killed all of the signficant R&D, and competitive effort of redefining O/S and server strategy. They are still there, this is not just a Carly thing, and it is not going to stop. Dump your stock, but personally I would not buy any hardware mfr stock right now except intel and IBM, and probebly only as a hedge. Hey these guys consolidated as they predicted would happen in the mid 90's.
Carly is just one of the MBA educated green eyeshade folks who run American Industries into the ground. Somehow all that matters is "shareholder value", ya know, if we cut 1000 people we save $1 Billion bucks. Fair equation at some level. So if we merge two companies which are marginal we can reduce by "eliminating duplication", we dont have to worry about vision, execution, strategy, customer support, intrinsic value, R&D or anything else with real meaning to the industry, all that matters is the fabricated "savings" associated with cutting "duplication", and 1000 people==$1B of savings. And when this slide starts, everyone pays except the slime making the decisions... they make stock options & grants.
Whare is the shareholder value for riding this equation over the long term. Despite the fact that daytraders, arbitrage, and insiders make mints off this kind of stuff, what about all the working stiffs who, each day are more and more invested in the stock market thru 401k's, money markets, etc. who ride the market for 10 years or more trying to get something like ~10% ROI.
My vote.... be much more critical on who your proxy votes go for when you vote your stock. Don't vote for someone just because of their business acumen, try and pick folks who have demonstrated vision, technical skill, etc.
mdw
Here is a better link to a very critical evaluation of Fiorina as CEO of HP.
r y?id=88655&page=1
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/SiliconInsider/sto
"Those HP laptops with 17" displays are just HUGE compared to something like an Apple Powerbook 17"
.
My 17 inch Pavilion is lots cheaper than the Apple, and more powerful. Runs linux just fine
This sig kills fascists.
Let's face it. She was never up to the task of running HP.
She wasn't good enough to be HP material.
That's because the keys were 2-shot mouldings with the number/letter a different colour plastic in the moulding. Can wear millimetres without damage. Casios of the time were the same.
The modern junk's keys print the character legend on the key, which wears off relatively soon.
One of the comments in the article, which seems more aimed in general at the tech industry as a whole, is the lack of products that make you go "wow"
"People have a little more money but there's nothing they want to buy. There's nothing that makes you say, 'Wow." Ten years ago I was seeing something interesting every month, but now we're touting bloated software and cute case designs as innovation."
Very true. I got into Pcs back when a home built 486DX2/66 was a powerhouse. Back when new products were coming out nearly constantly. Now, we get "fluff" like cases that have some weird helmet design on the front.
Thinking a bit more about it, it seems the auto industry has gone that way, at least some. Living outside Detroit, I used to go every year to the Auto Show, just to see the concept cars. Now the concepts look just like what's already on the road.
Too bad HP-28S calculators aren't selling for hundreds of dollars on eBay, I'd seriously consider selling mine to finance a Hawaiian trip...
Do you see the FNORDS? I refuse to post anonymously, as I am fireproof!
That's all I have to say about her that's civil.
Carly: http://www.paumanokgroup.com/slides/4.jpg
Edie: http://www.readio.com/nywindowgallery/movies/img16 .gif
When I hired on at HP in 2001, they had never laid anyone off, ever. I got a sense that people loved working there. I mean, 30,000 employees volunteered to take a temporary pay cut so no one would have to be laid off. But those vestiges of togetherness evaporated a few months later with the first round of layoffs.
From the start I thought it odd that we didn't actually write our own software. We merely integrated shoddy software licensed at high cost from incompetent vendors. We spent more time "integrating" than we would have just writing it ourselves. And at the end of the day the systems didn't work, and no one (above the engineer level) had the courage to admit we were trying to pound a square peg into a round hole.
In fact no one had the courage to do or say anything that might possibly be considered unorthodox. The witch trials went on, and every quarter or so, more heads rolled.
It was critically important to fulfill the increasingly quixotic demands of The Project Committee, who burned us out on wild goose chases for the sole purpose of jockeying against rival Committees, not for increased budget or employees, but to avoid reductions in budget and the requirement of layoffs. Not that protecting your budget is bad. But when everyone above the engineer level forgets about creating useful products and focuses instead on what Big-Bang, get-rich-quick scheme will help position them more effectively, that is bad.
This atomsphere was only exacerbated after the Compaq merger. All of a sudden every team in HP was in direct competition with its counterpart Compaq team to see which one would get axed. Our normal work week, which already spilled over into our evenings and Saturdays, ploughed on through to midnights and Sundays.
During the years I worked at HP, its spirit and its purpose have both withered, but there were and are still many bright, dedicated engineers working there who still care about HP and take pride in what they do, even if management could care less. If HP is to recover from its malaise, it must move beyond its culture of fear and initiate a return to sanity, a return to caring about its employees and its customers. HP must take its time. Tread slowly, thoughtfully, methodically towards a culture of quality.
Ken Lay was a criminal, like almost all of the executives at Enron. He wasn't a fraud, he was a genuine criminal who didn't even try to run a real business. Raise your hands, everyone who thinks that the Enron executives ran the company the way they did with any intention of it lasting more than another 5-10 years if they could keep it together?
Carly was and is a fraud, and yes she probably was an affirmative action selection. That doesn't mean that she is blame for being put in the position because that blame falls squarely on the lap of the board of directors who were more concerned with being politically correct than taking care of the company (which happens to be their legal obligation). What she is to blame for, are the things she did once she got the position. She tore the R&D lab apart, cut corners to be penny wise, pound foolish and made a merger that really didn't do a damn thing for the company. Let's face it, she's no Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Ballmer or Sam Palmisano.
Why is it so hard for people like you to admit that she was pulled into the position for an obviously specious reason and was clearly not cut out for it? This has nothing to do with her being a woman. This has everything to do with the politically correct disease that permeates America's elites and that causes them to consider her gender a qualification for a gender neutral job. Women can make damn good CEOs, just look at Martha Stewart. That woman is incredibly business savy (her insider trading notwithstanding...) Blame the men who put her there because in the scheme of things, they deserve the blame when there were more qualified men and women for the job.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
I cannot disagree fully with you, however, Carly was the hatchet man doing something that every company of size bends to:
Demands by Wall Street analysts to fit specific criteria, and profits are only part of it. There must be certain profit per employee, the number of "real" employees (vs. contracted workers), the amount and types of benefits offered, and more metrics than I care to know. If you didn't fit this, you were not rated as well in the industry.
Over 100 years old, The Upjohn Company pharmaceuticals, $5B/yr. and profitable, you know, Kaopectate? Motrin? Halcion? Xanax? among many others, was bent by those same forces, ripping a familial workplace and history. The company doesn't really exist any longer, it's R&D taken apart in the two merger/acquisitions.
It all sucks.
I had to buy a calculator for a Financial Accounting class that I am taking. I decided to buy an HP 17 BII+. I went to Amazon and read some of the reviews for this calculator. There were a lot of negative reviews stating that this calculator was a cheap copy of the 17BII. I then went to EBay and found that the 17BII (the older version) was selling at about the 60 to 75+% of the original sticker price. (This also applied for the HP 32?? that I bought in high school in the 1990.) This is surprising considering that some of these calculators are ten to fifteen years old. I bought a 17BII off of EBay.
I know the calculator division is not the biggest at HP, but my personal experience seems to support this engineer's story.
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
I think she was 100% correct. Within 3 years if a project isn't making a RIO, then the developers were a bunch of ID10t's!!!!!!
:(
Or the business group was confused on what the difference betweeen their butt and a hole was.
It is sad that most IT "so-called" professionals will look at the gender and automatically assume a "didn't get it" attitude.
-sfitz
Heh, 0wn3d. The parent's post was so poorly worded and spelled, it's like listening to a retard speak.
The hypertransport technology in Alpha got bought by AMD (from Compaq) before Compaq got swallowed up by HP (and the entrails of Alpha are now owned by Intel). At least the Opteron, Athlon and Sempron have Alpha technology in them. As for technology research, it's now surprise. Business people know business. They don't know shit about innovation. Thinking outside the box, innovation, new products make great marketing sound bytes, but damn them all to hell if they cost more than a penny. The old saying was that a Scotsman dug the grand canyon after losing (and looking for) a penny. I think really it was an MBA on a cost cutting witch hunt, and the molecules of dirt and sand were used as counters to see how many ways R&D budgets can be slashed.
I don't have the heart to tell her that I'm picking up a Brother laser printer in the next week or so. Oh wait, maybe I do.
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
The tech industry has matured. HP is fighting an onslaught of cheap fast Linux and FreeBSD box. On the other front, Canon and Epson high quality ink jet printer. The world is also moving away from calculator and into hand held computer (ie palm and other). PC is a commodities, anyone can drive down to Frys and put together a fast PC or server.
..on the bright side, some of what Confucius said was quite compassionate and noble-minded.
"Bulls**t. When she was hired at HP she had seemingly done a good job at Lucent and clearly deserved a shot at the position.
Turns out she was a fraud,"
It was the overheated, go-go 90's market. Everyone was making money, and frankly, Darl McBride could've taken Lucent to the top. This was the age of the Internet Bubble. It was hard to tell just who was a good manager, and who wasn't, because of strange, once in a lifetime unnatural market conditions, everyone was succeeding, no one was failing. So HP can be excused for not seeing that Carly was a clusterfuck waiting to happen.
But please, don't pretend that her being female didn't give her a leg up on the competition in getting the job. It most certainly did, as HP never missed an opportunity to show how Modern and Progressive they were by flaunting their new female CEO at every opportunity.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The Carly disease is endemic in America and I'm glad I will be long gone when we follow the path of the Roman Empire. It started a long time before she got there but obviously she is a iconic model of a great many powerful players, otherwise she would have never made it in the first place. Todays business model is exactly that told by the unnamed engineer. Sell, exploit or kill the brain pool by purchasing modest lack luster competitors who sell crappy products but have needed patents.
The 5 year ramp up time of new product development is fast becoming just a dream. I work in RD. Management complains about our average age of 55 years. Unfortunately the majority of younger recruits with new degrees take as much as ten years to develop common sense and work ethics let alone a working vocabulary.
The real problems are deeply embedded in our society and educational system. Even though our productivity remains the highest in the world, time is running out. In twenty years the leaders will be China and India. The US will become a Third World Nation with Nukes.
" Carly wasn't the root source of problem, the boneheads that hired her and let her run the company into the toilet were and are the problem."
You're pointing out what everyone else seems to be missing; the board of directors backed Aunt Carly, even against the son of one of the founders. They knew full well her business plan was the slash and burn the place and turn it into an IBM-Dell hybrid wannabee. They approved all the way, and fought on her side during the Compaq aquisition.
Good on them for firing her, but if they give a shit about HP and want to own up to their mistake, their next actions should be mass resignations, and an invitation to Walter Hewlett to lead the new board of directors.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Most CEOs leave with huge wads of cash stuffed in their back pocket, whether or not they've done anything to deserve it (and in all honesty, few actually do deserve it). The article didn't say anything about Carly's golden parachute- my hope is that the board ripped a huge hole in it, and all the cash spilled out on the way down.
...is that it destroyed Compaq. Damn their computers SUCKED.
When the world finaly collapses due to the CEO's greedy thinking/actions, I hope all the poor peasents run up with their pitchforks and guns to the CEOs rich mansions and camp out on the front lawn and pool.
"we were just following 'guidelines' I mean orders" just wont cut it, greed = bad, and you must die for it.
So, keep those CEOs addresses handy once the WW3 starts, you can knock on their door, "hey mr ceo, you made me redundant 8 years ago and ruined my life while you got millions for piddly zero brain effort, got food?"
Are they still bundling WildTangent GameChannel? Because yeah, that's bundled spyware right there.
- A former HP tech support agent (who worked for one of the companies they outsourced it to)
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Man IBM made millions during WW2 when so many companies were banned from doing business in german, IBM just got around it by using subsideries, and funneled the money back into local realestate which they could onsell later.
IBM was the MS on the 00s to 40s alright.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
...someone else in this thread made the same point. I haven't tried one so I'll simply plead ignorance on that matter. --M
The 15C was the first thing I got from HP. I still have it, within arms reach. I've had it something like 20 years and the only other calculator I really thought of getting to replace it was the 28C if I recall right.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Yeah, well, the author probably could not have met a payroll to save his soul.
I think it goes back to the ideas in "Good to Great". If you bring in outside people for high level management the company is doomed. That person doesn't understand the company's culture. Carly had no idea of the culture, at best she might have had some knowledge of Lucent's (I can't recall how long she was there).
Outsiders to a company need time to absorb and understant the culture of the company. Otherwise they just go with what they know which is usely not good for the company.
Yes, there are times when a cheap, disposable product can make sense to both the producer and consumer. ... But in general I don't think electronics are in that category.
I think "real world" evidence in the market shows that among consumers and manufacturers you appear to be in the minority here. JMO. --M
I wonder what the "real world evidence" would be if consumers knew their purchase, especially of cell phones, was financing fighting and death in the Congo.
Militias Create Crisis in Congo Fighting Over Minerals, UN Says Or Militias Create Crisis in Congo Fighting Over Minerals, UN Says
FalconShould there be a Law?
A former HP tech support agent
So how was bangalore then?
the age of the garage inventor is long over.
no individual enterpreneur can navigate the minefield of patents and survive. only huge megacorps with vast arsenals of patent WMD can enter new markets anymore. any innovative individual inventor is instantly annhiliated when a corporation feels threatened.
Doesn't this research lab worker sound like he is entitled to spend company money without producing anything?
It's funny how almost every rant about someone's grammar contains a grammar or spelling error. It's "more dumb," not "dumber."
Look at the electricity, phone, the PC, the radio, and so on .... (no big companies).
/. threads on patents for example.
Didn't IBM invent the PC? Don't know what the poster could be thinking of as a small inventer of the PC.
But as to the larger point, the useful invention patents mentioned were done a century ago when MegaEvilCo Inc.'s were more interested in monopolizing real assets such as oil and railroads than ideas.
Those monopolies were broken up because they stifled business. It took a law to do that. It will take another law to put some sense back into the patent process, implementing the many good ideas posted in previous
I don't care so much about patents granted, though public reviews of pending patent approvals to provide potential prior art was one of the ideas that needs to happen, but making a review and upholding of a patent a practical matter is where the law needs to be changed if we ever want to see another Edison or Bell in the US again.
rd
Whoa. You mean that some materials used in manufacturing come from conflict regions? And companies buy these materials on the cheap instead of paying fair wages? Do they promote murder of indigenous populations too? Sheesh! I guess I'll go to ebay and bid on one of those long lived HP15C calculators now. Hmmm... wonder if we could fit an IP stack in 48K? TRS-80 time! And hey, who needs wireless cell phones when Bell Labs just released the push button telephone only forty years ago!
Luddism reigns until worldwide justice is achieved for all!
"The last things I can remember HP doing right were their laser printers with single digit numbers. (EG. Laserjet II, III, 4 series, and even the 6P - which is a teriffic "small office workgroup" type printer.) The old scanners with single digit numbers were equally well-made and respectable (ScanJet 4 and so on)."
You find me a good printer that isn't an HP. Cannon? Epson? Brother? Come on. The best printers you can buy are HP. They're reasonably priced too.
It's pretty silly that HP tries to do the "oh, we do computers too" thing. Don't ever buy an HP computer. But they make some damn fine printers.
Where's the '-1 Godwin' moderation....can't seem to find it.
I don't know why you're modded down. You're honest and hilarious, two attributes that are truly rare on Slashdot - especially from the same user!
The threads above all mourn the loss of Research in American technology companies. It's interestsing that one of the most despised companies on /. is also one of the few that is still doing a massive investment in primary research. Just last week Microsoft had its annual TechFest and showed off much of what it is working on. It is doing research on everything from Teddy Bears with face recognition to rootkit detection to new display technologies. Sound like they, at least, are getting it right. If someone like HP failing to invest hurts the U.S. economy, does someone like Microsoft inveting save it?
1 77 2515,00.asp
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,
Look at the electricity, phone, the PC, the radio, and so on .... (no big companies).
"Didn't IBM invent the PC? Don't know what the poster could be thinking of as a small inventer of the PC."
My bad. I took PC too literally. The microcomputer pioneers are a good example of individual and small company innovation.
rd
I've read a bunch of the comments... is this fucking news to you?
hey, it's great, well written, clarifying, but this was obvious about Carly for a fucking ever.
the fucking HP way... it's like Buddha died bastards! Fine a fucking Hewlett before it's too late and the hula is lost forever!
HP is one of the single reasons why America OWNED TECH... yeah they are already dead, but bullshit on that... Fiorina is gone! Maybe she's discredited the non-HP way. HP was about great engineering, often meaning inexpensive too! quality for the dollar was a part of that, much more than IBM in its golden years. Fiorina was obviousoly killing it day one, and not in the "well things have to change way" but like pissing all over profitable things to do cheesy marketing MBA-head things...
if she runs the world bank, she will screw that up too... the emotional loss won't be as serious as with HP, but the world wide depression will be.
I could only loathe Fiorina more if they actually had pictures of that time she ate a baby.
-pyrrho
I am not saying this with the authority of someone really knowing the detailed version, I've known many people working for HP and whatnot over the years and HP was legendary for good reason not just for good engineering but for having a company philosophy that GENERATES GOOD ENGINEERING... think about that software engineers who watch good ideas totally get screwed over and over because the company philosophy doesn't jibe with how good engineering happens.
Anyway... my simplistic but accurate simplification: old HP, chugging along, struggled to have that flashy experience... when the 90s came along they watched this internet boom and remembered their own growth days and thought, why can't we have that action--- holy hell look at them returns---- look at that darling technol--- no there! flashy lights!" And they couldn't handle it and they knew their old quality ridden ways wouldn't do it... slapdash was the way to go! rapid innovation and a million buzzword theories to justify it. Just enough grain of truth in the idea that there were some new approaches developing to justify a much more radical thing.
They wanted the 90s and got it, they wanted the internet boom experience and got it... a lot of heat and motion and ultimately failure of stupid promises with many things of value trashed forevermore.
-pyrrho
Let's wish her an equally successful tenure as CEO of the World Bank.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Bring back the HP-11c (1981-1989)! [this link is a good picture of it]
Add more features and memory (but don't overdo it) and keep it in the US$100 range. DON'T change the appearance, key layout/feel or display.
I know lots of mechanical, civil and electrical engineers that loved this little mid-range beauty and are frustrated that they cannot buy a new one (I'm on my second now, they are very sturdy).
Dobro pojalovat k moemu miru
(welcome to my world)
The Sales and Marketing groups have done more to destroy the advancement of technologies and services in general than ?????
For some odd reason, companies like putting Sales & Marketing (S&M pun intended) in charge of the business model. Hey, look at MCI/WorldCom!! I could detail a bunch of little nasties, just to bring in the money. In the long run, it cut everyones throat.
I do not undrstand this hysteria.
I do study engeneering at the university and
I do meet people from other fields like economy,
law...
The problem is that people in economy and law
had never done enything with their hands, and never
actually use any tools either (compilers, math
programs, any tools... so on).
They do nat see walue in good tools, becouse they
do not need it and do not understand it. All they
see is numbers. It is not possibile to explain
to them other walues then stockholder opinions...
The point is that if we have such people in high
positions, than it goes as it goes.
Carly Simon's position as the most successful Carly is safe once again.
Nobody really thought Carly was topdrawer. It was affirmative action. I mean that in the sense that she didn't have the chops to get that job.
She was a marketer at Lucent who did okay for a short period of time.
The board hired her because they enjoyed basking in the glow of the press telling them what a great choice and "isn't it time a woman was the head of a large company?"
But I heard the woman talk at 2 separate Gartner Symposiums in Orlando... a couple things were clear...
First, in comparison to Balmer and McNeally, *she was simply out of her league*. She was at best VP material. You could tell this with her grasp of HP, what she thought the strategy should be (which were always vague in that corporate-speak way).
Second, when asked pointed questions, Carly would get pissed off. She would glare at the interviewer. Take a drink of water, all to let this person know that Carly didn't appreciate being asked questions like that. By contrast, no matter how outrageous he question, Balmer chuckled, and would say stuff that made you think "Holy shit. Balmer may be the spawn of Satan, but the guy is smarter than anybody I know". Same for McNealy. Not Carley. She clearly thought that common folk had no business asking her questions that were uncomfortable.
Third, when Carley was asked about HP's business strategy, she made a point of saying all the enterprise computer stuff was not making as much money as she'd liked, but really seemed to like printer ink. An unkind person might suggest it was because she didn't have a clue about complicated computers. But I suspect if Carley had her way, they would have dumped everything and made computer ink, just because the return was a little better.
I had no opinion until I heard her speak. Then I knew that HP was doomed. And if I could pick that up, then certainly the board did know. But she was a women, so they hired her anyway. Its really outrageous. And it makes it worse that people like you defend her by comparing her to the 2 biggest crooks in corporate history. As if pointing to Bernie Ebbers suddenly makes it okay that HP's board hired a senior VP to be a CEO.
"but statistically speaking the odds are 100 to 1 that the vacation, promotion and seniority rules at your workplace make it much harder for a woman to succeed than a man"
No, they're the same for men and women.
Oh wait, I just found the line in the company rules:
"This vacation policy will ensure that men enjoy their vacations more than men".
Please enough bullshit and changing the subject. Carly got the job because of..I don't know. It wasn't business, it wasn't because of genius, it wasn't because of sex appeal. Hell, I can't figure out a rational reason for making her CEO.
Being a good party member was far more important than your skill level, and so my boss was a man who had been a pig farmer. After decades spent raising hogs, he suddenly was supervising dozens of machinists, most of whom had engineering degrees and had built bridges and buildings until we were reassigned to "practical and useful" work -- making parts for factory machines.
Working for Carly Fiorina reminded me of my days working for that farmer.
After overthrowing communism, good old America has nothing better to do than establish a similar system, just replace party cronies by CEOs or other pseudo-jobs.
"An outside firm was hired to make sure that the correct percentage of men, women, older, younger, ethnic, etc. workers were let go so "
As a women who got her job via political correctness, it would make sense that she'd like to pass that "gift" down to the rank and file workers.
She got "lower ratings" because she was, um, lower rated.
Events have proven that.
And looking back at it, I find it amazing that you would defend either Carly (who is indefensible), or the hiring process.
At least have the guts to stand there and say "Hell yes, she got the job because she was a woman, but that's not her fault!".
Its also fascinating that you don't find fault with a board that gave her a lot more leeway because she was an inexperienced woman. I guess they were covering their own asses.
Care to name one of those "pretty good songs"?
You just might be gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that...
A woman with no talent, made tens of millions of dollars and her shortcomings weren't found out for years.
An amazing success story by any standards!
when's the last time you heard of a garage inventor who went on to make it big? the early 80s maybe...
it just doesn't happen anymore.
Yes they are.
A friend got an HP machine, and asked me to go through it first. It took nearly an hour to get the machine in a spyware-free, advertisement free, non-HP interfering state.
Of course, hardly anybody just ships their computer ready to use without lots of crap on it. I got a Dell, and I had to basically redo it. Fortunately, Dell includes a recovery disk that makes adding that crap optional. HP forces you to just reload from a hidden partition with all the crapware installed.
I just got my kids an iMac. Really terrific computer. Just fired it up, and... Wow. no ads. Just a computer like in the old days. If people finally get fed up with the crap we're force-fed these days, they'll start buying Apples. But in my experience, people are actually starting to enjoy crapware loading down their computer. Scary.
Wow, that must be some kind of record.
Monica Lewinsky should be jealous...
Can't wait to see what happens to the world bank.
A business school did a study on this a while ago. The results were later printed in the Economist.
Like compensation boards everywhere, the ones setting salaries for higher execs would inevitably start with a range of comparable salaries divided into quartiles. The salaries averaged out would include more than just those for companies in similiar industries - after all management skills are flexible, right?
Then they'd offer their new CEO a salary in the highest quartile - after all, let it not be said that they hire second rate management. This would completely ignore the fact that in some industries the annual growth would always be relatively low and so the impact of leadership would be much smaller.
This more than anything else was responsible for the massive increase in CEOs salaries during the 90s and 00s.
-- ac
While you're talking about HP and Lucent... don't forget, she was instrumental in killing the last great product from DEC as well. Oh, Compaq swore that dumping it was their idea, but it was right before the takeover that they switched from "We'll stand behind Alpha come hell or high water" to "Look at this shiny new Itanium!"
It's true! My beloved HP-11c was run over by a big rig and it still worked!!! To turn it on ya just had to twist it a little. I used that calculator in for another couple years before it finally gave up the ghost. That calculator was awesome! I purchased a HP-41CV as a replacement and to this day it still does daily work. Gotta love the old HP calculators!
The good news is that Carly is gone. HP is actually three great companies that have been fused together:
HP bought Compaq and Compaq bought Digital. The strength that HP should have is the ability to create. Carly gutted that, sold most of it off with Agilent and then proceeded to count on ink-jet and toner cartridge sales for long term profit while watching Dell eat their lunch in computer sales.
The new slogan "invent" was ment for the marketing department and not for engineering. Thanks Carly for gutting one of America's best. Idiot.
-- $G
she is on the right track
"Carly told us we had no business sense, and that every project needed to make a profit within three years or less."
I was a contract worker for HP for about 1.5 years (I left on my own - work sucked too much).
I was in charge of a team of programmers where we created test tools to test some cool stuff the engineers were creating.
Since I was in charge of the programmers, I was involved in the interviews. Once, a brilliart fellow was applying to be a programmer - his hope was to become a perm staff at HP, cos of all the good thinks he has heard of the "HP way". Did not have the heart to tell him the HP way was dead. He left a few months after he joined us, unhappy with how HP was doing.
The whole R&D lab I was in got outsourced to an external company - we were all in the same locations, except our bosses changed. We used to interface directly with the engineers who created the stuff, so we can provide feedback when something was broken. Now, HP outsourced the managment of the lab and all the employees there - with the end result, we told the new managers about what was broken, and they tell the engineers. And of cos, things got misunderstood at times, and stuff slow down. Yeay for a cheaper, slower R&D department.
My contract was extended for another year, but I left a few months later - could not stomache being there with all the design requirements being changed every few days.
Oh yeah, this was in Singapore.
PCs are shipped a few hours after the parts arrive. Practically no inventory sits around very long. No other PC maker can compare. Again, as I understand it.
HP has a very different histroy. HP used to an engineering company, not a consumer product manufacturer.
They're those big, 18" diameter jobbies.
:-O
BTW, in Scotland the word "jobbies" means "turds", and I really *don't* want to think what an 18" diameter jobbie would be like.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
"And the manufacturer is perfectly capable of getting good repeat business through selling cartridges."
Not unless they "chip" them.
In this case, a denial that the research department was smarter than the marketing department, and an active effort to harm them.
A parallel effort at H-P in particular was to get rid of the Alpha and Precision architectures, which threatened the "common knowledge" that Intel was the only successfully chip designer in the universe.
Another recent example, and one which might well be related, was the "everyone will run NT 4" fad, where a smart marketing department (Microsoft's!) convinced a number of short-sighted companies that there was no future outside of WinTel. One of my favorite companies, Mips (SGI) was killed by that one.
In fact, the marketing department works in the present, and the research department in the future. The wisest company I know (NBTel) had them both reporting to the same person. Net result? He had better connectivity in his entire suburb than I have at work. And he had it years earlier than I did in Toronto.
So I voted with my feet, and went with an employer who is isn't much respected here, but who doesn't believe the unconscious lies of marketers and stock analysis, looking for the "quick profit" that never comes.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
"Guess you can see that inventing is not fun anymore once you try to bring an invention onto the market and instantly have hundreds of patent lawyers on your neck demanding money for things like a progress bar in your application. You are right, the ideas are there but having them realized can cost you your last remnants of money you still have."
It doesn't seem to have hurt Linux any.
"Don't forget that all of us have a huge lead on H&P in terms of knowledge availability (through the Internet), education and tools. You can build your own scanning tunnelling microscope, for example. To build something innovative today takes a greater achievement than it did in the 30's, but we have far more to draw on."
And yet the F/OSS community has yet to build a GPU to compete with Nvidia, and ATI.
" No... most of them have not been patentet but to realize them you have to rely in existing technologies. Even good ole Newton knew that and that is the deadly game in garage inventions. You have the idea you realize it bring it to the market and wham you are hit with numerous patent trials before you can say, lets do something else, because you had to rely on something different than the wheel or the fire. (pretty much else already has been sold out by the EPO and USPTO) "
And let's not forget all the "Information just wants to be free" people out there, slowly pouring sand into the "engine" of your creation.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
"Did you know that Japanese employees tend to stay with the same company their whole life? And that the management you see at the top is usually old because they _worked_ their way to it from within the same company."
And did you know that's no longer true. Just like lifetime employment is no longer true. The world changes, even for the Japanese.
The other thing people don't know is that Toyota has a lot of auto plants here, because of the presence of US tariffs (protectionism turned on it's ear)
Do you only have your vet engineers and a bunch of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed kids? I would figure you'd have everything in between too... bring in young talent, get them experience and train them up. The good ones coming into their own as the old ones retire to tinker in their garage.
:)
The rot can be in engineer core too....
My dad was a great tool engineer at Boeing (with it was owned by MacD&D before that). He was brilliant at finding ways to save that companie's butts. But there were engineers there, in other departments, who resented that because it could often make them look bad.
My dad would see problems and find unbelieveable solutions. For example, they used this very expesnive and dangerous process of pumping molten metal under pressure to create custom bushings per screw hole in parts the F15. My dad, in our basement, created a jig to do the same thing with inexpensive and entirely safe hot glue. A simple hot glue gun and a wooden rig.
It took forever to convince them to even try it. He had to get everyone to sign off on the thing, from the materials guys (what the hell good is hot glue?) to the people who would look foolish if it worked. Eventually he managed to get a trial setup. They'd use his system to create a bushing and drill a hole with it and see if it meet the extreme tolerances required.
While doing the experiment, one of the engineers who'd end up looking foolish for "inventing" the molten metal process reached up and nudged the drill as it was making the hole. He tried to be sneaky, but everyone saw it. Never-the-less, the experiment was a success and the whole was perfect, even with the attempt at sabotage.
He ran into that sort of thing all the time. Management was less of a problem than just bad, don't-rock-my-career engineers. Of course in this case, management just shelved the idea anyway and didn't use it. At least not at first.... one day, a few years into retirement, my dad gets a call for boeing asking if he'd ressurect that process. They suddenly needed to be able to do things cheaper, get the winning bid on whatever-the-heck, and his process would be key. My dad, being the kind of guy he was, created a detailed how-to for them and mailed it off never asking for anything in return (despite the millions this meant to their bottom line).
Not sure if they ever ended up using it, but it was just one of many things he inveted there. Some of them had far reaching affects on how they built their aircraft. I wasn't able to follow his adventures in engineer after they moved him into Black World and he couldn't talk about what he did, have visitors or even bring home anything. But I'm sure it was exciting.
-- David
David Whatley
Just do a Google search entering ["world bank" critique].
Read a few articles and you will see:
SHE WILL FIT RIGHT IN!!!
"I know lots of mechanical, civil and electrical engineers that loved this little mid-range beauty and are frustrated that they cannot buy a new one (I'm on my second now, they are very sturdy).[Emphasis mine]"
Apparently not.
You might want to keep in mind that English is not the primary language of a lot of Slashdotters.
-R
They aren't all in India. I worked for an outsourcer here in London, Ontario, Canada.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Having lived, worked and studied in Japan I can also vouch for their high level of R&D.
In fact when the bubble burst they doubled their national R&D budget, and now, about 10 years later it is starting to pay off. Not many countries would have the cool to hold out that long. Japan does. Routinely.
Chinas educational system is tough and elitistic, and many their best come to the US for their PhD studies. Then they stay on, or used to. Now many return to China which is rapidly gaining importance in the semiconducting business.
So yes, R&D labs in China is feasible. It is even common.
Who is the idiot, the CEO who deep-sixes innovation, or the board that sets her incentives that way?
And of course the board can't help it, because their incentives are ...
"But all your emitter and collector are belong to me!"
I'm wondering if I should send my resume in for Carly's old position.
I have no executive management experience, so I have no bad habits to un-learn. As an outsider, I have no polical axe to grind, so I can make changes that need to be made without repercussions.
I'm willing to take the job for only two million dollars a year. I'll even pay to relocate myself. The board will love the cost savings!
What I do have is vision -- I want HP to make good products again. No more rebranding, no more crap that breaks just by looking at it. I'd make Compaq it's own division, and transfer all servers to it. I'd get out of the consumer PC business, concentrating instead on business-grade computers & peripherals. I'd invest in the calculator business, because even though it would lose money, it would gain mind share amongst college students, engineers, and techies. The idea is that it would act as a halo (like the iPod does for Apple) and sell other higher margin HP products.
Chip H.
eom
arent is right. If even 20 percent of Chinese PhDs in Silicon Valley went home the place would close down in a few months time.
US high tech is dominated by Chinese and Indian graduates. Whitebreads do marketing, law and telephone sanitizing, tech is a dirty word it seems.
Business Sense ???
Is that why I'm seeing hip and trendy ads for hp blade servers during Movie Night in Canada on the CBC? Cause you know, the general public of Canada is all about running out a buying blade servers...
Who runs this company?
-- Bored? Check out my Portfolio
Well, after reading a couple of very good points, I couldn't resist but add this comment. But first, let me state that I have never worked for HP but have had interractions with them while working for several different employers over the last 5-10 years.
What I've noticed is that HP used to be a place of engineering driven projects. At that start it went something like this:
Here's a problem, here's a business case, now let the engineers go and do their jobs. If there was a problem, you could reach a person who had infact worked on the impacted area, could offer solid advice or even provide a fix.
Today (and I'm sad to say) it is something like this: here's a problem, deny it outright. Shove HP 'Support' at the customer. These guys suffer from 'little knowledge'. Their recommendations are bad to incompetent and they will stall for weeks knowing full well there is a defect/fault at hand. The problem remains where it is. Issues are escalated to management where finally at the 11th hour some fix is provided (at great risk to both HP & the client company). Often time, this results in additional churn.
As others have mentioned, CEOs play games. But then if we step back, who isn't? The Board of Directors are often hand picked by CEOs and have no independent power. The stock holders consist of big firms (who have their agendas on profiteering) vs. an extremely diluted pool of investors who bear the brunt of the stock price and are in a rush to make an easy buck. So to answer my own question, the only person who 'cares' in this whole vicious circle are those whose livelihoods depend on the company. Yet, these are the people who have no say in the system.
Summary: the system is broken, everyone who has any power exerts it in the way they can. The people whose lives are impacted have no say. What Mr. H & Mr. P started out way back then was to provide an environment for the workers yet that spirit was lost after these vultures/hyenas descended upon HP. To be honest with you, this is not only an HP problem, it is everywhere. The saddest realisation is that how many lives are hurt by people like Carly yet there is no accountability.
I put some thoughts on this article on Citizen Chris.
For those to lazy to click, the gist is that capitalism can be as stupid as communism in setting priorities.
evanchik.net
happy ones. I worked for Lucent Technologies before it went into the crapper because of a bunch of thieves in upper management (Rich McGinn). She was not adored there either.
If I am ill, Celine Dion songs will make me feel worse (no joke).
And if I was brave, I'd say it to your face, not anonymously 10,000 miles away.
But a guy liking Celine is almost like a signal. Sort of like if you didn't like sports, or tend to look at guy's asses.
....who keeps crapping in the recycling bin. Will you please quit that, it bothers the janitors!!
_________________
Huh?
And big time.
They are the first ones I remember offered tailored PCs via the Internet (i.e. 0 human intervention, live access to inventory, personal service).
Maybe it is now par of the course, but back then it was a hell of innovation.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Deal with it. Those SUVs, expenditures in Imperial adventurism, grossly over eating, etc. sooner or later added all toghether were going to catch with your economy.
Get fit and mean again (getting rid of a dilapidator like BUsh would have been a great first initial step, but you guys like big goverments as long as the big bulge of your deficit is in the military...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You almost literally said only USians can innovate.
To pretend otherwise is completely dishonest.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Honestly, in which planet do you live?
The Japanese pretty much command high tech in the houselds of every person on this planet. Even the cheap imports from China normally have Japanese design and innovation in the back.
Car industry? Japan.
Eletronics? Japan.
Robotics? Japan.
Even entertainment, Japan controls both the generation and reproduction of muscial and filmographic content.
Frankly I don;t know what you are smoking, but many people will be very enthusiatic to get such quality stuff....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... until very recently, Japanese workers did not lose their jobs. If they were not really needed any more they were given a menial job where they could not hurt profits and be respected for their previous contributions to their company.
It may not make financial sense, but shows where the long term thinking is. Compare such attitude with the typicaly USian way of getting rid of somebody: escorting the employee out of the building like a criminal. If that reflects any long term thinking (removing all vestiges of a corporate memory) then I am Batman, the awesome cape crusader.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
True, but most of them can't write in their native Perl, either.
And there's talk of Bono (yes, of U2) being named President of the World Bank, too.
This surprises you in 'today's world' ?
After Italy had a hostage reporter almost killed by US troops, are you surprised that Italy ISN'T pulling out of Iraq? I'm not, considering that their Prime Sinister is great friends with Rupert Murdoch (FOX Network) - It's all a club for the rich and famous to remind those who aren't that they won't ever be a part.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =6372056442#ebayphotohosting
I just read that sig as : Ideal is the bacon..
me gets it
"Didn't IBM invent the PC? Don't know what the poster could be thinking of as a small inventer of the PC."
Good question. IBM did most definantly not invent the Personal Computer, even if todays computers are a legacy of the IBM 286 circa 1982. All that IBM did was made a mistake in not purchasing the MS-DOS operation system from Bill Gates, instead licensing it from Gates, which allowed 3rd parties to also license the OS from Gates and produce computers that were all compatable.
from wikipedia:
"In 1973 the TV Typewriter, designed by Don Lancaster, provided the first display of alphanumeric information on an ordinary television set. It used $120 worth of electronics components, as outlined in the September 1973 issue of Radio Electronics magazine."
"The Altair was featured on the cover of Popular Electronics for January, 1975. It was the world's first mass-produced personal computer kit, as well as the first computer to use an Intel 8080 processor."
From my reading of history, this is mostly because the United States has been in a permanent state of war since 1941. After WWII ended, we went straight into the Cold War with the Warsaw Pact nations. (I consider the Cold War to be WWIII, and Korea and Vietnam to be the two times that the Cold War got "hot".) By the time the Soviet Union crumbled on Christmas 1991, we were already at war with these stupid neo-Muslim fanatics, but Bill Clinton dodged it for 8 years. GWB embraced the terrorist-hunter legacy, and now we're involved in a global conflict against them, which is essentialy WWIV.
The federal government indeed defends the states against foreign powers, and has been for 63+ years in a row now. That tends to leave things lopsided. I tend to believe that, should the rest of the world finally stop trying to kill us, federal powers will eventually flow back to the states.
Of course, that'd be after the defeat of neo-Muslim terrorism, and presumably Chinese totalitarianism...both big ifs. And assuming our economy survives globalization (our own idea, no less). I had always assumed law would never get outsourced, but it has. Now nothing is safe.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
Debunked here (and many other places)
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent