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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.
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
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...
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
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.
...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
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.
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.
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.)
The difference here is that with Google, the original founders of the company are still in control and thus they have a personal stake in the company (not just financially as its still their "baby"). The other companies that have been mentioned in these discussions, the orginal founders are no longer in control (bit hard to keep control when your dead), and there have been management "drones" put in place. You know the type, completely interchangable between industries because all they care about is the pseudo-science of managment which all boils down to maximise the profits at the end of the quarter. But of course the reason that these management drones can exist is the fact that once a company lists, everything becomes about profit for the quarter. Thus if upper management is just worried about a maximum of 3 months out, all long term thinking/planning is banished as it will most likely have a negative impact on the next quarters results (resulting in a negative impact on the management drones performance -> reduced bonus for them).
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
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.
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
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.
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.
Gee, and here I was thinking that what we really need is leadership and not management. This only confirms it.
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.
Here is a better link to a very critical evaluation of Fiorina as CEO of HP.
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http://abcnews.go.com/Business/SiliconInsider/sto
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.
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