Forbes Now Thinks Carly Saved HP 318
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 both? (Score:4, Insightful)
yeah.. some strategies.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course firing every american you can and hiring sweatshop workers will increase your profit margins.
It Was Her Style That Got Her Into Trouble (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
She had to burn the village to save it (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Forbes was always biased towards Carly (Score:3, Insightful)
HP was started by a couple of engineers in a garage. They were the typical Silicon Valley success story. HP, like most technology companies, rooted their sccuess in innovation. Certainly as companies grow they tend to innovate less. Carly Florina wasn't an engineer. She probably couldn't solder her way out of a paper bag. She probably made good business decisions (at least in a typical MBA sort of way) but she obviously didn't know how to manage scientists and engineers. In other words, she was good at corporate strategy, but bad at fostering innovation.
Re:Forbes was always biased towards Carly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:wtf? (Score:1, Insightful)
Amen. Having worked for HP during the Carly years (and Compaq for the Michael years), I can tell you that the talented engineers at HP were migrating out of there as fast as their little feets would take them. The company forgot that you have to attract talent...and keep it... Talent does not, generally, (as Carley once told us) have to be thankful they have a job with a company like HP.
Carley may have had some tough work to do. She may have had to make some difficult decisions. But, having lived through her reign, I can tell you that the way she delivered her message was insulting and she did lasting damage to the engineers and dedicated people that made the company great...so much so that the company still hasn't recovered. Under her rule, the management culture changed to one where pettyness, cruelty, and short-term vision were rewarded.
Get over it. The HP that was, no longer is (and likely never shall be again).
The market spoke on Carly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:wtf? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the actual engineers that make companies like HP and Compaq move forwards.
TRY to run a company with engineers, and see what happens. Engineers build products, not businesses. They just don't operate at that level - it's not a question of intelligence, it's one of focus, perspective, and education. Check out this "fable" [joelonsoftware.com] by Joel Spolsky for a good illustration.
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
It's not the engineers that decide features like weight, batteries, screen... that's what the marketing department should be doing. They determine what the customers want and balance market demand and operating budget with the engineer's estimate of what it takes to build these features and how they impact each other. (At least in an organization that's functioning - I'm making no claims either way regarding HP). They aren't (or shouldn't be) just about trying to "spin" poorly-wrought products.
Some of Dilbert may be right on, but you know... it's not gospel. Some of it is just comedy.
Revisionist history (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Forbes was always biased towards Carly (Score:2, Insightful)
Fortunately, she eventually got fired. I'll never forget what a great feeling it was to see her leave on the glorious day she left for good. Morale at the company went from an all-time low to an all-time high almost overnight.
And, yes, I've worked for some asshole men in my time too. But none of them even COMPARED to the nightmare of working for the women.
-Eric
Re:wtf? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a bunch of crap. I'll buy that a CEO is something you need, but there are any number of business school graduates who'd happily take on a CEO position, and many of them are highly skilled. And there's no way that a CEO is worth 400x what a good engineer is worth.
Forbes thinks Carly saved HP? (Score:1, Insightful)
Well she did two things (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Carly ruined two great engineering companies (Score:5, Insightful)
Um
I've worked for companies that were making money hand over fist, and treated their employees like shit, and I was miserable. I've also worked for companies that were barely making enough money to stay in business, and treated their employees well, and I was reasonably happy ("reasonably" because, of course, if the company is in real trouble, the prospect of a layoff doesn't make anyone happy.) And although it's by no means a sure thing, it does seem to me that companies which treat their employees well are more likely to get through the lean times than those which treat them like cattle, because happy employees are going to feel like they have a personal stake in the company's survival, and work harder accordingly. If your employer is the type that ends up on fuckedcompany.com, OTOH, you're not going to try to do anything to help it; you will, at the least, jump ship for a better job at the first opportunity, and depending on how pissed off you are, you may do your best to screw your current employer before you go.
Re:Forbes was always biased towards Carly (Score:5, Insightful)
Forbes?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember when HP meant High Prices? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Forbes was always biased towards Carly (Score:3, Insightful)
Forbes also a huge supporter of msft and scox (Score:3, Insightful)
IMO: forbes is a zero credibility rag for exec worshiping wannabes.
Re:Perhaps both? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:wtf? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's quite an assumption. As an engineer, I would think you'd be a bit more objective & logical about this. Because I debate an assertion that all managers are bad and all engineers are superheroes who can do anything makes me a "manager type"?
Re:Forbes was always biased towards Carly (Score:5, Insightful)
Women wanted into the workforce, they got into it, and now we should give them a free psycho-bitch pass as they rise in the corporate hierarchy? Baloney. If you're a bad manager, you're a bad manager and you should either clean up your act or expect to get your ass fired regardless of sex because your actions are damaging the company and costing it money. So what if you had to work extra hard to get where you are! If you're a woman trying to function in the male-dominated corporate environment you should expect, from day one, that it's going to cost you. It point-blank does not give you the right to abuse people! Sorry, that one doesn't fly and I don't care if you're a man or a woman, straight or homosexual, God-fearin' or atheist
Re:Perhaps both? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have one word to trash Fioina's job performance. Agilent
On July 19, 1999: Fiorina, 44, becomes president and CEO. On June 2000 HP spins off Agilent Technologies. This is a real stroke of genius. HP since then has just become a computer company.
Agilent has since been spinning off its chips business for 2.6 billion. Agilent also sold both the high growth Lumileds for 1 billion and the profitable Healthcare Solutions Group for 1.7 billion. Healthcare has since become one of Philips most profitable divisions. This spin off as a whole cost HP 4 to 5 billion in cash since HP could have easily made the same money splitting it up. This is really illustrative of weak and innefective Agilent leadership and the incompetence of Fiorina. HP still derives most of it's profits from printers and low margin computers and if they had medical instruments they could have expanded the business into MRI's like Philips has and which Siemens has also done. Instead Philips is carving up the best of Agilent and laughing all the way to the bank. Medical insatruments is a high margin business with fewer competitors. The Hewlett's and Packard's are both right she created a new HP that is totally dependent on computers with very little diversification. HP could have expanded into Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Computed Tomography (CT), X-ray, and ultrasound systems and radiology and general imaging.
Fiorina is a totally incompentent executive who's only claim to fame is the Compaq acquisition. Even then without Hurd it might not have worked.
Google? (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Re:wtf? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Perhaps both? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Carly ruined two great engineering companies (Score:3, Insightful)
You can be in the most successful business in the world, but if your job sucks and is a constant battle against upper management then your morale is going to be in the toilet. Money don't buy happyness.
Carly was far worse than Lew Platt. (Score:2, Insightful)
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 [wikipedia.org], 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 [nyse.com].
Note that Lucent is another company with a female CEO, Patricia Russo [lucent.com].
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 [brillig.com] 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.
Forbes is _NOT_ a credible source! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Ripoff artist and female thug (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Forbes was always biased towards Carly (Score:5, Insightful)
P.S. I've been very happy with and impressed by nearly all the female managers in the company I work at.
Re:wtf? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just for fun... (Score:5, Insightful)
"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. [census.gov]
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.
Re:Forbes was always biased towards Carly (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Just for fun... (Score:2, Insightful)
After all, only a fool would see the same pattern over and over again and still think that it's just a coincidence.
-Eric
Re:Ripoff artist and female thug (Score:4, Insightful)
I proudly present the worlds newest conspiracy theory. May it live long and become ever more unlikely in the telling.
Re:Forbes was always biased towards Carly (Score:3, Insightful)