Sources Say Meg Whitman To Become HP CEO 277
MrCrassic writes "Looks like HP needed yet another remodeling, as they are tapping Meg Whitman to take Leo Apotheker's chair by this afternoon. From the All Things D article: 'Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is poised to be named CEO of Hewlett-Packard later today after the markets are closed, said multiple sources close to the situation. The full board of HP, which is meeting today in Silicon Valley, has not officially voted on move and the situation could certainly change, but sources said it is nearly a done deal.' Cringely got this one right."
Dreamworks (Score:3, Interesting)
Most people don't know that Meg was with Dreamworks during their heyday and she directed eBay to some amazing success.
She's 100% awesome.
I think this is a great move for HP and I hope that she can fix the company that Leo Apthaker broke, mostly because I really like HP and I was really sad to see them going down the wrong path.
Is this remotely possible? (Score:4, Interesting)
So HP, fresh on the heels of several disastrous CEO tenures, one of which happened to include a certain would-be politician running the company virtually into the ground, decides that hey it's time for a fresh attitude, let's find another failed female politician to come set things straight... Is there ANYONE at HP with a memory that goes back more than 5 minutes?
Re:How about promoting from within? (Score:3, Interesting)
The MBAs took over.
What HP needs? (Score:4, Interesting)
HP (not Hewlett-Packard anymore) needs an inspired engineer or two--with dominant shareholdings--to run the company. They will never get that. They will die. RIP HP.
A company populated with brilliant hardware engineers would be well-positioned to make a fortune as the robotic age dawns. That kind of HP is dead.
Their leadership is dead. Their board is just a bunch of greedheads looking ahead only as far as the next quarter's stock price.
Dreamworks + eBay != HP (Score:5, Interesting)
The vast majority of HP's revenue comes from enterprise markets, which Meg Whitman has zero experience with. Any experience she might have had dealing with end users kind of got a bit less important when HP decided to ambiguously throw the PC division under the bus. HP makes both eBay and Dreamworks look like tiny, insignificant companies. And eBay already had pretty much a monopoly in online auctions since day one; all she did there was not screw it up. (She also bought PayPal, which turned out well, and Skype, which didn't.) By the time she left eBay, as a mature company, it was adrift with no path to growth. HP is already a mature company and any growth is going to have to come the hard way, which she doesn't have any experience with.
I'm not saying she can't pull it off, just that she has no background in HP's primary markets to help her along.
And it wasn't Leo that broke HP. That started with Carly, continued with Chainsaw Mark, and we simply have no idea what would have happened with Leo, since he hasn't had the job that long.
Re:What's with HP and the hard-right republican CE (Score:2, Interesting)
Not full tea party candidates, as that would never really fly in California.
FOOLS RUN THE WORLD (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is American business dying? Because our stinking rich business leaders are now a bunch of incestuousness nepotistic numb-nuts. Hiring Meg Whitman is such a bad idea that I half expect Mr. Packard himself to rise up out the grave and eat the board's brains (as little as they have between them).
HP is all but dead. Tablets are going to eat PC and printer sales and that will be that.
But what bothers me most is that HP is taking webOS, arguably the best platform out there, down with it.