“In January 2002, when I was still Editor of the technology business magazine Red Herring, I conceived an open letter from the editors of that magazine to Carly Fiorina, the CEO of Hewlett-Packard. It’s first line: ‘Dear Ms. Fiorina, Please Resign.’ Wednesday’s announcement that Fiorina had been pushed from the executive suite provided only the grimmest of pleasures. I was gratified to be proven right. But the company will probably never be what it once was. That’s as close to a tragedy as business offers,” Brad King and Michelle Delio write for TechnologyReview.com.
“The letter was written during the contentious debate over whether HP should purchase the ailing computer manufacturer, Compaq. I felt sure the merger was a terrible idea. But my beef with Fiorina went beyond the Compaq merger. She represented all that was wrong with celebrity CEOs and their fixation on Wall Street. More, her management style was horribly incongruous with the traditions of HP,” King and Delio write. “I love Hewlett-Packard because the company founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard was egalitarian, technologically minded, and geeky. For decades, HP was the ideal of Silicon Valley entrepreneurialism to which all other companies aspired.”
“Just after the official announcement came down that CEO Carly Fiorina would be sacked, corks were popped and bottles were opened. There was little time for empathy. No pangs of sadness. Inside the company, workers openly celebrated their liberation from “Her Royal Horribleness,” a nickname bestowed upon Fiorina for her abrasive treatment of line workers. There was little love lost between the CEO and the 151,000 HP workers who have, almost consistently since 1999, made hating their boss a very personal, full-time mission. ‘When the news was officially announced this morning, people were dancing — literally dancing — around their cubicles,’ an employee in the business division writes in an email,” King and Delio write.
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Hewlett-Packard ousts CEO Carly Fiorina, and what was with that ‘Apple iPod by HP’ deal anyway? – February 09, 2005
Additionally, I cannot garner any dates.
Would anyone want to wager why?
I always know when I’ve won the argument when people start posting under my screen name in a sophomoronic attempt to, well, to do what I do not know. Anyway, such is the case directly above.
Great, now there are two imposters impersonating me.
Please disregard the above 2 postings.
oops,
The above imposters are unfortunate, with that said…
yes, my baseball analogy is referring to organized sports, but organized sports is a reflection of society. Baseball only acted on the values of society. Those values, incidentally, also affected women.
Anway, your viewpoint is on one extreme, and feminists are on the other. I do not agree with either. I just think life in general is a little easier and enjoyable when people are not needlessly cynical about matters. If it can be proven that women are threatening the survival of mankind, then I would completely take your side. If it can be proven that man is the source of human’s ills, then I would side with the feminists. Since I doubt either is the case, I am going to enjoy life in the middle where I assume the best of people and their abilities until proven otherwise. Hopefully your philosophies are not adding unnecessary anxiety to what seems to be an already tense life.
What can I say? My opinion draws raised eyebrows.
I really don’t believe the drivel I am spewing. It’s just to raise discussion, that’s all.
There are not two imposters. There is only the one. Someone is playing childish games for lack of anything better to do. The two posts above that begin with “Additionally…” and “Great, now there…” are both from the same clueless wonder. And any additional posts made here by “Oops” will also be made by the idiot because my work is done here and I won’t be posting anymore on this subject or on this thread.
Carly screwed up. Period. Over 10,000 people lost their job because of a moronic acquisition and a lack of a coherent strategy.
She deserves to be fired for her failed execution and strategy.
And it’s not because she is a woman. It’s because she failed miserably.
Hey, Oops;
My offer stands for you too. Come on over to my place and I’ll give you everything you need. I’m Triumph. I got it goin’ on, baby. I’m not keeding. And no — I won’t poop on you. Well, not unless you’re into that.
And come to think of it, why not hook up with Vulva-Train and Ruth up above before you get here. That way we can make it a real sweaty, humping foursome. Come onnnnn, you know it’s what you need!!!
Retro cat:
People lose jobs in mergers & acqusitions – that’s one of the many reasons why the sums add up.
As for the lack of a coherent strategy, I don’t even follow HP that closely and I could tell what she was trying to do – namely turn HP into the “digital hub” company of the WIntel world.
The problems for Carly were that a) if one of your major costs is fixed and difficult to negotiate (i.e. Windows of whatever flavour), there is a pricing base below which you cannot compete and that b) if you have Dell, Gateway and others continually cutting prices to remain competitive, you ultimately run into people who understand the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
The Wintel market is – at the end of the day – a tank full of piranhas who are intent on devouring each other, which is why Apple should be thankful that it has key differentiators that keep it away from the cess pit that is the “mainstream” industry.