An Engineer's View of Carly Fiorina's Leadership 627
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.
Fiorina's comeback: World Bank? (Score:5, Informative)
http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/01/news/internationa
Oh Woe (Score:5, Informative)
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.
The article does sprout some good stuff (Score:4, Informative)
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.
President of World Bank (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Patents (Score:3, Informative)
intellectual "property" is simply fradulent.
I wish I had mod points... this deserves to be modded up.
I just wish more people understood this. Patents do more overall harm to our society than they do good. They now serve to inhibit innovation, rather than to encourage it.
The best thing we could do, would be to eliminate patents altogether. At the very least, software and "business method" patents should be eliminated.
Sun Labs is in trouble too. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Carly's many failures... (Score:2, Informative)
By the way, can anybody tell me what Lucent does these days? After all the lay-offs, spin-offs and write-offs, I've lost track.
Wasn't very popular (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Does this suprise anyone? (Score:2, Informative)
bullshit (Score:2, Informative)
Ding Dong the Witch is Dead! (Score:4, Informative)
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/SiliconInsider/sto
Re:Does this suprise anyone? (Score:4, Informative)
Ramblings of an ex-HPer (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:No one cares... (Score:2, Informative)
It was always about Carly marketing herself. She had no experience actually running anything even remotely like HP. When she took over it wasn't the HP brand she promoted but the Carly brand. It was, Carly, Carly, Carly. The cult of Carly. Always Carly. Just go back and look at those ads that made it on the air.
Shortly after Carly took over she asked everyone to make a sacrifice that amounted to a 20% pay cut. Bill and Dave used to ask us to do that too. They asked for everyone (including them) to hurt a little so nobody hurt a lot (i.e., losing their job). Less than a week after folks made their sacrifices Carly cut loose with the first ever HP layoff.
It was particularly nasty. An outside firm was hired to make sure that the correct percentage of men, women, older, younger, ethnic, etc. workers were let go so that the company wouldn't be accused of descrimination. It had nothing to do with job performance. Smack. That did wonders to morale.
(Drive-by) layoffs continued almost daily for three years. During this time Carly found it necessary to buy three Gulfstream V's which cost about USD 45M each. Her husband had to be given a job just down the hall. What did he do? Wrote her speeches I guess. Smack. Morale sinks a bit more.
Just when we figured it couldn't get worse Carly, after two previous failed attempts, decided that a merger was needed. And Michael Cappellas was a willing and very good salesman. Walter Hewlett warned of disaster and put up USD 20M of his own money to stop it. Carly spent about double that of HPs money to ram it through. At the last minute she forced the proxy vote to stay open just a little longer so Deutschbank could get their tipping point vote in. A few months later they got a lucrative contract with the newly merged HP.
Carly used to spend weeks "spinning" the quarterly numbers to find just the right pro-forma nuance to misdirect Wall Street from her blunders. When they started to catch on she would respond with "that was last weeks ballgame, we're on a new plan."
Personally, I'm glad she's gone. And her husband too. Both were nasty to the "hired help. So happy were the employees that she was gone that the most popular email subject heading announcing her departure ran something along the lines of "Ding, dong, the wicked witch. Ding, dong, the wicked witch is dead."
As a footnote: Carly "gave" everyone in HP a "reinvention" option grant of 100 shares. Those options vest this summer. The option price is about USD 60. Why I could lose USD 4000 if I actually decided to exercise those options.
Re:Fiorina's comeback: World Bank? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I disagree that innovation is stifiled... (Score:3, Informative)
t 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.
I'm of the opinion that most of the real basic stuff is done. It's going to take Huge Sums Of Money and Large Professional Staffs of Very Smart People to really kick over the next cycle of innovation.
Example: software. Sure: anyone can code stuff, but most of the simple things have been done. I'm sure someone in a garage somewhere will eventually find that one or two points ofentry, but most of the big innovations are going to come at very great expense with large teams of people - some doing programming, others QA, other hardware, bla bla bla, and a support staff and marketing group to make it happen and give it some penetration in the market.
Another example: nanotechnology. I don't see someone in a garage gettin' down with some electron microscope to build micro-buckyball bearings. Heck - he microscoe would eat up most of the garage, never mind the material science machines that made the damn things, andthe hyper-short wavelength lasers, etc. Back in the 1930s - sure - H & P could cobble together some electronics and build a fucking oscillator in a garage, but the kind of innovations in basic research needed today are mostly beyond the reach of some guy in a garage.
don't get me wrong: I truly wish this weren't so, which is why I applaud the parent's attitude. I've just been around long enough and have noticed the trends enough that I seriously doubt we're going to see much value coming out of low-end entreprenuerial efforts.
Which is what makes the historical fiasco that is the person of Carly Fiorina such a complete and unmitigated disaster.
She wasn'tthe undoing of Lucent, but she set Lucent up so that with mediocre management, it could only fail. Which is precisely what happened. And the world (not just the USA, not just Central New Jersey, but THE WORLD) lost a Really Important source of innovative technology that transformed the planet. No Bell Labs? No CD players.
Her greedy shortsighted dismantling of HP and its R&D facilities is just part and parcel of her evil legacy, and shows how she, and all the other self-centered nihilistic freakazoid neocon shitbags like her are really enemies of the People. I'm not being some Commie - I mean what I say in the most democratic (smal d) sense - she and her other plutocratic asswipe buddies are simply pillaging the planet and whatever government or economy stands in their way, and are hellbent on leaving the rest of us "holding the bag" when they (finally) drop dead.
The only thing I can gloat over is:
For all her narcissism and cultivation of celebrity, I can *guarantee you* that she will be forgotten, just like the rest of us. Her priorities are completely misplaced and in the end, she will end up disappearing from the cosmic stage, just like the rest of us.
Unlike the rest of us, she will have left a vast swath of wreckage behind her.
RS
Re:more D than R (Score:3, Informative)
Usually economics are not a zero sum game and I doubt it is in this case.
Mycroft
Research is one thing Microsoft gets right (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,