Slashdot Mirror
Forbes Now Thinks Carly Saved HP
Justen writes "It's been nearly a year and a half since Carly Fiorina was fired as CEO and chairman at HP. Now, Forbes is saying Mark Hurd and HP today are reaping the success of the strategies she developed and decisions Carly made. 'Fiorina's demise was chalked up to bad execution of bad strategic moves, most notably the 2002 Compaq acquisition. But Hurd has always said there was nothing wrong with Fiorina's strategy. He seems to be hewing close to it. He rejiggered the org chart but said he'll keep the company together instead of breaking it up along premerger lines, as Fiorina's loudest critics suggested doing.' Forbes adds that HP's revenues, profit, and market share have held steady or improved since Hurd came aboard, but asks: 'Whose results are these? You could make a case that they are as much Fiorina's as Hurd's. The effects of strategic moves like buying Compaq stretch out over years.' So, which is it? Did Carly kill the HP way? Or did she save what was left of it?"
Perhaps the long-term strategies of Fiorina and the short-term management of Hurd have paid off. A joint effort...
If you had to name the two most popular HP products, I think you'd say these:
*HP Printers
*DL series servers
They are certainly the only HP products I use (at my company we use only Dell workstations). Obviously the DL servers came in with the Compaq merger - and having used a wide variety of Dell, Sun and IBM servers, I'd certainly call the HP DL360 and 380 the most engineer friendly webserver hosts going.
Without Carly where would HPs server arm be, and would I only be talking about the printers in this post?
DRTFA and stopped reading the summary after the word "rejiggered".
....
Look, I know you CxO types are very busy and super important people [sarcasm] but lets not invent new words shall we? All the CEO is supposed to do is look good and say forward thinking things like "We intend to make profits this quarter."
It's the actual engineers that make companies like HP and Compaq move forwards. I don't care how much marketting you spin on your new laptops, if you don't put a screen in [for example] it's not going to sell. Or if the damn thing weighs a ton, or the batteries explode or
Personally I think the executives should be the least paid people in the company. And if they don't like that they can moonlight as an engineer or something.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Wasn't it under this woman that HP started offshoring everything they do bigtime?
Of course firing every american you can and hiring sweatshop workers will increase your profit margins.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
She seemed to thrive on making enemies within the old guard management, including the family (though history will show they are a bunch of nut cases running around California forests naked et. al.), and really how much of it is her being a woman? If a man came in with her attitude, he would be hailed as a financially responsible hero who was out to "save" HP.
That said, there are still some unanswered questions around her dealings at Lucent during the meltdown. She participated in some Worldcom/Enron type dealings while VP of sales and that has somehow been swept under the rug... probably never hear the true story on that period of history of her career.
Carly was a nazi manager. She expected all employees to be "yes-men/woman". If you were an executive and did not agree you were out the door. If your division missed numbers you were out the door, even if it was her fault. Most of the exiled execs went to other companies to kick HP's butt. She lost all respect from the rank and file with her queen attitude and work ethic. Just the typical case of "do as I say, not as I do".
Yes, Hurd probably does not deserve the credit. When Carly left, HP employees litteraly threw champagne parties and were motivated again to work. So I guess the credit goes to the board for finally having the guts to kick her out the door. They gave her way to many chances and they should have done it after her first year with HP. But HP has always been extremely AA sensitive and they did not want to boot the first woman CEO HP had.
Both the Enterprise Server Group at HP, responsible for HP9000 servers, and the DEC Alpha team, were completely decimated by Carly. I spent 7 years at HP, sadly 4 of which Fiorina was in charge. I have never seen such a mass exodus of top-level engineers leave a company. People with 20+ years (often more) IT and computer engineering experience, folks who had technology patents and some of the most novel thinking around computing, OS design, and engineering.
Now, the HP9000 servers are 3rd tier behind IBM and remarkably Sun (which regained marketshare and scrapped their way back into relevance soley because Carly fucked up HP's UNIX system strategy).
The only thing she did right was recognize the Imaging group as a cash cow and not screw with that. But that was because of total fear of the institutional investors backlashing and sending her packing (with her $MM golden parachute) sooner.
No, Forbes, you're wrong. Carly was the WORST thing that could have happened to HP, next to the Compaq acquisition itself. HP should have bought out the DEC division from Compaq and left the low-margin, low-cost PC business altoghether.
The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. -- Calvin & Hobbes
Of course she burnt down two villages- but let's not get bogged down with nostalgia and "facts".
What is music when you despise all sound?
I think selecting Carly was a symptom of HP's decline, not the cause of it. The company was well down the path of losing its way by the time Carly came along. Look at the history of HP to see what I mean. The original culture and values of the company instilled by Bill and Dave were all about innovation, quality, community, employees ... basically the vaunted "HP way". And this recipe worked extremely well as is evidenced by the financial performance and growth of HP over many decades, through boom times and slow times. No long term debt. Very high margins. Unparalleled customer and employee loyalty (extremely low turnover, no layoffs). Unequalled product quality. This is the company that brought us such hallmark products as the scientific handheld calculator (the venerable HP35 and its follow-ons), the logic analyzer, the inkjet printer, the laser printer, the "Pisces" emulation systems, the HPIB instrument interconnection bus (now better known as IEEE-488), 360-series PC board test stations, phased array cardiac ultrasound systems with color flow for non-invasively measuring blood flow ... the list of notable, first-in-class (as opposed to me-too), commercially successful products is indeed long. But as Bill and Dave moved into retirement the company began to evolve (devolve in my opinion). Innovation mattered less than "time to market". Quality mattered less than "cost". Employees mattered less than "efficiencies". Engineering mattered less than marketing.
So, by the time Carly was hired as CEO of HP, they had already spun out the intruments and medical divisions - basically destroying the diversity of HP, leaving it as a computer company operating in a viscious low-margin market. They had already moved away from the concept of autonomous divisions, towards big, bureaucratic, centralized behemoths. They had already abandoned the fiscal discipline whereby all growth was self-funded and moved towards funding growth with long-term debt. And isn't it obvious that the company that was once HP is now just another computer company - nothing special. Sure, they have lots of shelf-space at CompUSA, and they move lots of boxes for a small profit. But the breakthrough, innovative products are no more. The reputation for quality is gone. I don't blame Carly, nor do I give her credit "for saving HP", since the HP I knew is long dead.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
I had respect for HP. Their products USED to be good. Not perfect, but good and when you needed help, there was an engineer who knew that exact product inside-out and would honestly tell you what and how to solve.
Recently I had a nasty performance problem (especially writing) with the MSA500 external RAIDs from HP (should be old compaq stuff).
The first, second, third and forth thing I was told was that it is MY fault.
First firmware; then configuration; then drivers; at last, they said I had to use Kernel 2.6.9 and RHEL4 because anything else is NOT supported.
For 3 weeks I went thru all loops (they didn't exspect that) with people who would say "please try this-and-that". Quickly I would ask "Can you guarantee me, that this will help?".
The answers ranged from "maybe" to "one can try". Further, no one seemed to know whom to talk to for e.g. the Linux drivers and if there are any issues.
I have never spoken to more frustrating and technically inept people ever. Even upper sales people knew about my issue. After 3 weeks I was assigned a technical engineer.
After I did ANYTHING they told me, in the afternoon the very SAME technican would admit when there were simply no excuses left: "OK, this is highly inofficial. But your numbers are not unusual."
It turns out 1) they knew they have shitty hardware and 2) they are advised not to tell.
That is not what I call a "saved company".
If she was any good she'd be the CEO of another great company instead of doing BS speaking engagements. HP survived Carly.
News for MBAs, business that matters.
She doesn't deserve any more credit for HP's success than she gave to all those she laid off.
Carly was one of the worst things to hit corporate america since Ken Lay. I watched her run HP into the ground and line her own pockets while doing it. Division doing well? They can obviously cut costs and headcount. Look, next quarter, they have higher margins, so give yourself a bonus, and repeat in Q2. Division doing badly? Cut people, and reorg. Tough decisions deserve a bonus.
Carly was about polishing her own star, from putting herself in front of the company when there was capital to be spent, cash or political, to building a cult of personality. Ask the people shoved out of the way by her bodyguards IN THE HP HQ! Ask the people who installed an executive bathroom in her plane hanger, normal bathrooms wouldn't do there, oh no.
Ask the HP Australia people about the world class logistics operation they built, and then completely outsourced without adequate contract provisions. Look at how much the Magellan contract cost them, and the reasons for losing it. If you want real fun, look at what the board told her before they handed her ass walking papers. Tis to laugh, no tis to feel sad for the greedy ruining the lives of the hardworking.
Hurd, who on some levels I am no fan of, has spent the last year and change completely undoing all the things Carly did. The difference is that Carly had all the shyness and hard working mindset of Paris Hilton, while Hurd gets the job done.
Anyone putting the sucess of HP on Carly rather than Hurd is an incompetent researcher, revisionist historian, or has an agenda. Oh wait, this is Forbes, you know, the ones who are still defending SCO. Replace the 'or' a couple of sentences ago..... Also look at the politics, this has all the hallmarks of a paid for image campaign to prep her Carlyness for a senate run. Forbes isn't shy about politics, and it would take a political strategist with long term thinking in a high place to do this. I won't name names though.
I was privy to a lot more of HPs dirt than I wrote about, and even then, I wrote a lot. I honestly can't think of a more worthless, to the corporation, manager that had the company survive their tenure. The only reason it did was a long history of innovation (real, not MS), good people, and good product lines. Most of that is gone now, but Hurd looks to be bringing a lot of it back. It is an uphill climb, but if you look at Dell vs HP right now, it is the correct thing to do.
The article that prompted this is several shades beyond sad, and completely ignores what Hurd has done. Do the research people, ask HP about the changes, they are real, but they are not spun for the benefit of the general audience like the old days. Then ask yourself why this would be coming out right about now, and from whom.
-Charlie
HP gave Carly a MMPI psychology test before she started. It certainly missed her paranoid disorder.
Having worked at HP at the time she visited our plant, it was very interesting. She had all the
metal silverware replaced with plastic. All the front row folding chairs at her assembly were chained
togethor. She also had a security detail with her.
This is not to say that the managers that she kicked out were not a bunch dinosaurs that had long ago
proven the Peter Principle.
I don't know who saved what but I know that the modern generation-4 HP DL385 server (which borrows heavily from both HP and Compaq technologies) kicks the spit out of every comperable machine out there. Whoever came up with the physical design is an effing genius and I'd like to shake his hand.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
CF was the worst exeutive HP ever had.
She created such ill will that I laugh at the thought of giving her credit for anything.
Now I'm wondering if someone at Forbes might have been paid off to publish such idiotic nonsense. You can't trust any coprporations, governments or media anymore when it comes to honesty and integrity.
And when was the last time Forbes was right about... uh... anything?
1) Ruined Compaq
2) Removed faith in HP as a company. (Hello, my name is Habib, how may I assist you?)
Did I mention the talent lost due to "right-sizing"? Sure I did.
But HP has always been extremely AA sensitive
For those mis-informed souls; AA == Alcoholics Anonymous.
You mean Carly drove the workers to drink?
Figures.
Bored CEO with rather large amount of money need repair on its reputation to make a political or if it does not work philantropy career.
Send proposal to carleton@california_retreat.com
all serious inquiery will be handled in total confidentiality.
serious, if she stayed on we might have gotten ...
a succesor to the HP-48
if these business school graduates are "highly skilled" and experienced they will demand a "competitive" salary as a CEO and will get paid to match the salaries of CEOs at other similar companies in the marketplace. This is the issue with open disclosure of CEO salaries and bonuses/benefits. Everybody knows what each other is getting paid, and they will benchmark themselves against others.
... simple as that.
If these business school grads are skilled but not as experienced, they will get paid less due to their lack of experience, but then you get a less-experienced leader
If I was on the board of directors of a company, i would be suspicious of an MBA grad approaching us and telling us he will work for "free", especially one that has less experience. I would rather put him or her in a lower management role first to test out their abilities. By that time they move up to a position where they can be considered for CEO, they would get paid a typical CEO salary anyway.
Thanks Carly!
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
When did Forbes become a credible source on technology? The old Forbes was pretty good source of business info & investment ideas. Stevie-boy's rag has agendas other than helping its readership, IMHO. I won't touch it anymore.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
We where and HPUX and SOlaris shop. Now we're a IBM/ SOLARIS shop. HP's desision to kill PA-RISC and replace it with itanium on there large "superdome" class machines. And we have orders for lots more of these expensive (high profit margine) machines in the future. This is going to cost HP millions on going and we're just one shop.
FTFA: Her decision to drop an exclusive arrangement with Intel on server chips and align with Advanced Micro Devices proved to be extremely timely as Intel subsequently stumbled in its server line.
Funny how they get all this "gee wow!" credit for making what was an obvious and long-overdue decision that any dumbass here on slashdot would have made on day one.
There was a time when the market valued innovative technology and outstanding design. That time has passed. "The HP Way" evolved in an environment where companies could sell premium products at premium prices. That environment no longer exists. If customers want low prices and are less concerned about quality, manufacturers will churn out low priced shit. When specialty businesses become commodity businesses, the high quality/high cost producers tend to get squeezed out. Carly didn't cause this shift in the marketplace, she just didn't have a fucking clue how to respond to it.
The key sequence to access my Slashdot bookmark in Firefox is Alt-B-S. I don't believe this is a coincidence.
If it were not, she would never have been hired. The HP Way was about substance over style, and hiring the best people. Carly fails on both accounts. The tenures of Carly and Hurd have continued to erode what was left of the HP Way. Employees can't help but be saddened about this, and many smart people have left as a result, but Carly and Hurd have worked to turn HP into just another big company that is capable of surviving with cheaper, lesser quality employees, so it may work out in the end for the shareholders.
She was smart, well spoken, and made solid decisions for the *long run*, not knee-jerk decisions, that are typical of CEOs of public companies. She made hard decisions that will keep HP going for a long time to come. Long-term thinking is a rare comodity in an increasingly A.D.D. world. The next time someone jumps all over a CEO on Slashdot for making rash decisions driven by "what the stock market needs this week", I hope they think back to Carly's reign at HP and see the difference.
One effect of buying Compaq - getting a larger retail presence for HP - was much needed. But there were cheaper ways of doing that than buying the whole company. Even though retail has lower margins, it is important for mindshare and understanding customer preferences in different ways. HP should have focused on retail sooner, but better late than never.
Carly Fiorina saved HP but she had to go for one obvious reason. There was something missing between her legs. And I mean literally, not figuratively.
I don't know what it is with forbes, they love to suck up to big name execs, and look straight down their stuck-up noses at lowly techies. Forbes seems to absolutely despise anything F/OSS.
IMO: forbes is a zero credibility rag for exec worshiping wannabes.
They probably think this post is about them.
Oh wait, that was Carly Simon.....
I quote others only in order the better to express myself. -- Michel de Montaigne
Who cares? It's now a boring company that makes boring products.
As a nerd who cares about "stuff that matters," what HP chooses to do or not do is about as interesting to me as what Whirlpool Corporation or Caterpillar, Inc. or Citicorp do.
If I'm buying a computer, sure I'm interested in whether HP's product is marginally better or cheaper than Dell's. If I'm investing money, sure I'll pay attention to whether it's making money or losing.
But when I'm wearing my nerd hat, nothing HP does is likely to matter very much to me. The days of engineering innovation are long over. Whether that's good or bad for the bottom line, I wouldn't know—although, looking at U. S. automakers, I'd at least suspect it's good in the short run, bad in the long run.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
"In the language of Orthanc, 'save' means 'slay' ".
It's possible that HP had to change with a changing market and that any change would have disoriented and hurt people steeped in the old ways, but that's no excuse for "We had to destroy the village in order to save it".
Maybe you should look at who Hurd has worked for in the past and the legacy of his predecessor, Lars Nyberg. If you think Carly was bad, this guy may just bring the 1990's NCR disasters over to HP instead of bringing back the "HP Way". With the company gutted after Hurd and Nyberg, he's proven himself to have a worse reputation. He had a chance to prove himself different, but he failed in that respect up to this point.
He is not the "blue collar" person that you think he might be. He was one of those who helped destroy that part of NCR.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The logo ought to be in India's colors and say "outsource", or "offshore" as that's the only accurate way of stating HP's flawed new direction.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
No, but it'll take your retirement 5 years after you use it.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Absolutely. HP was viewed as a company who made stuff that supported think tanks. Today... mention HP and the associated phrases are "ink prices", "pedestrian junk", "walmart", and "grossly average". They've completely disavowed the $10,000 "brain" market, and are instead targeting the $10 "ipod user" market.
From a business perspective, they might not be wrong. Is it easier to find a guy with $10,000? Or find 1000 guys with $10?
Still, HP is dead, and has no reputation left.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
Carly axed HP's calculator division. The division now making their calculators is a completely different one. I sort of recall hearing it was one of their consumer laptop divisions, but I could be wrong. It's been a while.
What I can find is at http://www.hpcalc.org/hp49gplus.php, which implies that HP calculator development is now outsourced to a third party.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
"Seem" is the operative word. If you look at their hiring pages, it *seems* like Google is 50% women. If you actually go to their offices, however, men far outnumber women. And people I know who work there admit that it's a problem, and complain that they can't get enough women to work there.
They're a bit better than most tech companies, probably, but it's not the feminist utopia that google.com/jobs/ would have you believe.
That's not to say women can't run companies well -- just that Google isn't a good example of this, for or against.
I had the impression Hurd was a breath of fresh air now that Carly is gone.
But now with Hurd backing up Carly, does that mean HP employees will be dancing in the aisles when he gets the axe?
.
.
Well don't you know about the Hurd?
Well, everybody knows that the Hurd is the word!
A-well-a Hurd, Hurd, H-Hurd's the word
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
[repeat to fade]
(thanks to the Trashmen for the awesome lyrics)
Can never by definition build something new. They follow the market, they make things bigger, smaller, lighter, faster, slightly easier to use or with a fashionable new case but they never, ever do anything new. That's fine, but the irony being that they're then desperate to find that "innovation" which they lost but have absolutely no idea why.
Deleted
... No matter how much Forbes is trying to rebrand her character.
Before she came over to HP she had done her fair share of gutting Lucent by actively overvaluating their stock and putting fake profits ahead of engineering quality.
She may be one of the worst things to ever happen to American Technology.
Why is anyone reading Forbes? A publication whose senior editor Daniel Lyons has written numerous articles supporting SCO and troll baiting Linux users. One of Lyons' masterpieces begins with "Linux zealots...". Lyons is senior editor.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
It doesn't really matter. I'm still keeping my parking spot.
M Hurd
Judging from the outside, HP's CEO before Carly, Lew Platt, was a terrible manager. But Carly was far worse.
While HP was under Carly, our company stopped buying HP products because we would discover large problems within the first few minutes of installation and use. If the disconnected-from-reality mood of HP's technical support was any guide, things were VERY weird at HP while Carly was there.
A lot of HP's ability to make a profit comes from selling inkjet ink for $8000 per gallon and from people who learned long ago that HP had the best products, but have not updated their understanding.
Carly's former job was at Lucent Technologies, another company on the way down. Lucent has gone from about 165,000 employees to 30,500 employees, and from $84 share price to $2.37.
Note that Lucent is another company with a female CEO, Patricia Russo.
Both Carly Fiorina and Patricia Russo are heavily involved with Bush league politics. They inhabit a parallel universe in which they are considered a success while their organizations are on the way down, just some have considered the the U.S. government a success as it has been on the way down since Bush was elected. Losers find each other.
Some people think that someone with no technical experience, and little respect for technical experience, can run a technical company. I think that belief is hogwash.
This is _Forbes_ running this piece. They had Dan Lyons who thought that SCO would win. Based on, what? Well it sure as hell wasn't research and it read suspiciously like they were reprinting SCO press releases in lieu of doing actual investigative work.
In other words, they're trolling again because they want more people to read the insipid article. But don't worry, you're _not_ missing anything. You'll never miss anything by not reading them. They're clueless halfwits who regurgitate press releases and attempt to stir controversy just to get noticed.
So move along, there's nothing to see here. As usual, Forbes doesn't know what the hell it's talking about so I certainly hope you're not looking to them for investment advice. I'd rather trust monkeys with dartboards than Forbes.
Nice Revisionism, Forbes. I forget... what *is* it that HP does these days, besides manufacturing printers, toner cartridges and PC clones, that is?
HP had to pay this person tens of millions of dollars just to get her to go away. At the same time they were firing long-term dedicated employees and offering them re-hirement only as perma-temps with no benefits! This was Carly's policy. The woman is a thug and thief. Good riddance.
Now I realize that this standard operating proceedure for America's managerial class. But it doesn't change the fact that it is insane. We had all thought that this plantation mentality didn't hold with the high-tech industry. Boy were we wrong! They wiped out the entire industries stock value and threw away the best workers like used toilet paper.
Carly is simply the flash point of this madness. At least she wasn't assassinated like Kenneth Lay in order to keep her from talking about where all the money went and which politicians got paid off under the table.
(Posting anonymously for obvious reasons. Read on ...)
... All under Mark's leadship.
...etc.)
...etc.)
I can't comment on Carly as a CEO since I never worked at HP. However, I can comment on Mark Hurd's past career.
Mark took the helm at NCR after being groomed by Lars Nyberg, one of the worst CEO's NCR had in its 130+ years. Lars came to power following another (perhaps worse) CEO, Jerre Stead. Jerre was a televangelist type who was all showmanship and nothing else. He tried the motivational angle, and co-authored a book (Flight of the Buffalo) with another corporate consultant (Jim Belasco).
This was when NCR was an AT&T company. Jerre jumped ship when the numbers were really going south, leaving the company for a year in the hands of someone from AT&T who did not care, and fled to the mother ship as soon as the trivestiture (where AT&T spun off Lucent and NCR) was announced.
Lars was a cost cutter in the real sense of the word. He shutdown or sold much of NCR's computer division to focus on ATMs, Point of Sale and Teradata. We froze development on NCR's UNIX SVR4, and stopped making PCs, servers and pretty much anything in generic computing. Teradata has been bought by NCR when AT&T took over, and had really neat technology, albeit a niche market (decision support).
Lars made Mark Hurd head of Teradata, after being in sales for 20+ years. We kept hearing every quarter and year: Teradata is our flagship product, Teradata will pickup, Teradata will change things, Teradata this, Teradata that
The stock value under Lars continued to languish, and while tech companies were making money from the bubble, NCR was stagnating (we did not capitalize on our presence in banks,
A few years ago, Lars was evicated by the board (remained on the board) and Mark replaced him. The word in the company from people who worked under him is that he "decided to be a rock star".
Hurd co-authored a seemingly content-free book with his mentor Lars Nyberg. Here is a brief on the book The Value Factor: How Global Leaders Use Information for Growth and Competitive Advantage, and here is the Amazon link. The Register made fun of it because it had things in it like "information isn't aligned". The book is of course influenced by Teradata being the information store of a corporation, and how it can be analyzed and capitalized on. It must have helped advertise Teradata too.
To his credit, NCR's stock climbed and even split under Hurd, in stark contrast with the Nyberg era. This may be due to his rock star approach and getting more media and analyst attention.
NCR's size is about the size of HP's printer division alone. HP is too big for Mark, around 10X as big.
So, Mark cannot take all the credit. His advent may have boosted morale in HP because Carly was much hated, but her strategies are the ones in effect today (merger with Compaq,
...let's replace every reference to "women" in your post with "black", and see how it sounds.
"I know I'm going to get modded down as a "racist" for saying it, but this is hardly uncommon with black bosses. The last company I worked at had a black CEO, and he was an absolute NIGHTMARE to work with (as were the other two black people I had worked under in the past). He was an absolute control freak, could take NO criticism, let his personal vendettas rule his hiring/firing/demoting decisions, etc.
And, yes, I've worked for some asshole white people in my time too. But none of them even COMPARED to the nightmare of working for the black people."
If you had written the above post, it would get modded down to -1 so quickly it would make your head spin. Furthermore, I'd go so far as to say you wouldn't even bother writing it, because you would immediately be shunned by the people responding to your post, and it wouldn't be taken seriously.
So how is it that you get modded as "insightful" by saying something that is obviously anecdotal, and furthermore, applies to 50.8% of the population? Something that you likely wouldn't even dare apply to the 12.8% of the population that is black.
I am sure there are women boses out there who are tyrants. There are male bosses out there who are tyrants. There are black, white, yellow, red, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and God-knows-what-else bosses out there who are tyrants. The fact is that your anecdotal experiences regarding more than fifty percent of our population cannot be applied as a blanket statement.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
So are you some kind of "Carly Lover" or aren't you?
I remember Gil Amelio saying the same thing back in 2000. Apple's success was due to Amelio's plans, not Jobs.
My simply opinion is she killed HP. If for no other reason than during the Compaq merger it was decided that the design and manufacture of HP calculators would be killed off.
These calculators were/are fantastic. I especially liked the 16C during high school for its simplicity and ruggedness. Still wish I had it but I lost it somewhere. I also owned a 28S and liked it for its advanced features, basic graphing and the fact that it was a clamshell which protected it from the oils, chips and other environment contaminents from the machining environment that I worked in a lot of the time back then. Also wish I still had it but, again, I lost it somewhere during the last ten years.
But HP just makes basic crud now along the lines of Dell, Gateway or Lexmark.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
I've always maintained that Carly's overall strategy was sound. HP since the merger, in my opinion, produces better, more forward-thinking PC's than Dell or IBM/Lenovo. The HP laptop I'm currently using is running an AMD/64 processor, 2GB ram, w/ britescreen; the AMD chips and brite screen are features that you still can't get from Dell. The merger was a good idea; it upped the ante for HP's PC manufacturing, bringing them neck and neck w/ Dell, allowing penetration into more storefronts, etc. It was a great way to diversify their business away from just printers. Hurd is obviously reaping the rewards of Fiorina's successful management of HP.
Why, HP did just that- Bill and Dave were engineers. Every CEO until Carly had an engineering background. ANd until she became CEO, the company did well. Hmm, I wonder if there's a connection.
<joke>
Why, HP did just that- Bill and Dave were men. Every CEO until Carly was a man. ANd until she became CEO, the company did well. Hmm, I wonder if there's a connection.
</joke>
Hehe
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
Nope.
... It goes against everything rational and ethical, but hey, that's life ...
As I said, never worked in HP, so can't tell.
My post was mainly about Mark Hurd, and his history prior to being at the helm of HP.
Draw your own conclusions.
As a side note: the corporate world is really a strange one. It is the only job where you can screw up and get loads of money, while peons get the axe if they screw up less
You could make a case that they are as much Fiorina's as Hurd's. The effects of strategic moves like buying Compaq stretch out over years.' So, which is it? Did Carly kill the HP way? Or did she save what was left of it?"
This assumes that executives are more than very, very weakly related to a company's success and failure.
There is no correlation between executive pay and company success--this is well-known and well-documented. So why does anyone think who is at the top makes a difference to how the company does? Is it the generals who win the war, or the foot-soldiers?
Or is it neither? Do factors like being well-established in the market, having a great diversity of product offerings, and a rudimentary ability to exploit opportunties that come up now and then make far more difference than anything else? That is, is corporate success due as much to luck and circumstance as anything else?
If you look at the success of second-time entrepreneurs, people who've made big money on their first business and are looking for another opportunity, you'll find that they have a success rate that is no better than average. If CEO ability really mattered, this is not likely to be the case.
Also, if you look at how often companies do really, really badly and whose CEOs go on to other CEO jobs, it should be clear that no one really thinks success is due to CEO activity. Or rather, a bunch of faith-based managers think that CEOs should take credit for success but not be blamed for failure.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Yep, Carly came in and got paid millions to fuck two companies at once.
As someone that worked for both HP and the spin off Agilent, the HP way went to Agilent.
Much of this discussion has been related to the change in corporate culture at HP.
I am curious whether the spinoff companies such as Agilent maintained any of the original culture. I'd be interested in hearing thoughts from their engineers. Maybe the "HP Way" carries on in some of the businesses that were jettisoned.
Took a look at the Agilent corporate site, and they expound on their HP tradition: "While, physically, we have outgrown HP's garage, we continue to live the values handed down from Bill and Dave: uncompromising integrity; trust, respect and teamwork; and innovation that makes a difference."
...business "analysts" have no fucking clue what they're talking about. And people believe them.
... I start a week on Monday :)
I've known some people who have designed some -really- cool products under the past CEO.
http://www.ideo.com/portfolio/re.asp?x=11176131
http://www.ideo.com/portfolio/re.asp?x=88834
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Hey! I think you're being unfair to Caterpillar here. Maybe Whirlpool, too. There's still some tech in both their products.
Wish I could still say the same about HP.
That is all.
Why the hell did we let one run HP into the ground?
Look, I used to spec HP hardware because it was reliable. After the merger with Compaq, their hardware is no more reliable than any other white box producer. Why would I spec it to my customers?
No, all Carly represented was that infamous "race to the bottom", where the only thing that mattered was price and NOT quality, reliability or performance. Good riddance! America doesn't need her kind or her philosophy right now!
I agree about your statement - but usually, it seems that the key manager leaves, then a few months later the key engineers start to leave.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
I am sick of hearing about "The HP Way" in relation to this "dot-com" HP. The HP Way is alive and well at Agilent Technologies, where it was spun off so the HP name and goodwill could be used by money-grubbing dot-com newbies.
I don't know if this was part of her policy, but what I really hated about HP is how things disappeared so quickly from their website.
About 4 or so years ago I went up to the site to look for a rack kit for a large DLT Tape Drive that we had bought new a little over a year before. I found very minimal information on the tape drive. I did get the information after making a request, but was also told that since the drive wasn't being sold anymore it had reached end of service and soon would be disappearing altogether from the site.
I was absolutely stunned. I could not only get part numbers but drivers and documentation from IBM for our 10 year old servers from their site. I guess HP was trying to save on hard drive space or something. So f-ing annoying.
We haven't bought from HP since so I don't know if this has changed.
In my mind, Forbes is a couple notches below People magazine.
The HP Way is dead. No longer do CEO's come visit the various R&D sites and talk to individual engineers about what they're working on. When Agilent was split off, a large percentage of the core engineering geeks were split off as well. HP used to be a great company with great products. Now it's a company of perma-temps and mostly-useless outsourcers whose products have become mediocre at best. HP used to reward success and pay for intelligent and thoughtful people. Today if you're one of the random job cuts, there is no regard to previous accomplishment.
HP has become a rotting eye sore to the souls of the now-dead founders. It has strayed from their most basic tenets.
HP is now a manufacturer, and completely out of the innovation side of things.
Engineering, research, and a business that tried to be a family are all things that Carly killed at HP. The company that now carries that name is no longer remotely related to what Hewlett and Packard founded.
Agilent, on the other hand, at least still has some spirit. Thank god they were spun off before The F-monster swooped in.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Suppose we invert the example and make all the fuss over working with *white* people:
If such a post were made, would it get shunned? If so, can we interpret that to mean that people don't believe there is such a thing as rational discourse about potential differences as mapped to race?If the post DIDN'T get shunned, could we conclude that people feel it's ok to discuss one group but not another?
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Why should we notice that another company with failings has a female CEO?
There are many suuceesful companies with female CEOs on the helm, thus your inuendo is puerile, unjust and unnecessary.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I have used 3rd party cartridges for ages with no problems with several models.
Epson IMHO is not bad.
Lexmark are litigious bastards that should not be rewarded with your custom.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You part from the incorrect assumption that there is only one way of being a CEO and only one way to be a boss.
That is wrong in so many levels that I will not waste any more time to explain why it is nonsense.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Not sexist. Russo's company is on the way down. Look at the stock value for the last year.
We need to consider why Carly Fiorina and Russo are allowed to run highly technical companies when they don't know much about technical things. Reverse discrimination?