Ding dong the witch is gone! Yes, a good day for the Silicon Valley when another incompetent CEO is removed from their position. The crowds of reporters, employees, and everyday people on the street in front of their Page Mill facility (just a stones throw from where I work) cheered the news. Despite what the rhetoric makers might say, Carly Fiorina of HP was not fired because she is a woman, she was fired because frankly she didn’t perform the job. HP has lost 60% of its stock value in her tenure and has failed to make a single inroad to new technologies. The merger of one crummy computer maker (Compaq) with HP (another maker of marginal computers) was a joke as well. What resulted is one big crummy computer maker. When HP’s BODs appointed Carley, they forgot one basic reason why the Silicon Valley has been so successful: The rejection of the east coast “top down” management mentality. The Intel’s, AMD’s, HP’s, Applied’s and Lam’s flourished because management realized years ago that the key to success in innovation wasn’t a Harvard educated MBA, but the line engineer, the design physicist from Stanford, and the technician. Listening to their concerns and allowing these people to actually contribute the wealth of the company created the largest expansion in technology in the world right here in a 30 mile radius of San Jose. Funny thing about this whole situation is that a more competent manager was already at HP – a very talented engineer turned executive. (Who happened to also be a woman, but that really doesn’t matter). Carly had already pounded Lucent into the ground during her tenure, why she was hired to do the same at HP is beyond comprehension. Having worked in the valley for over 25 years, I have had the privilege of knowing some of the best and the brightest that the valley has to offer. Old timers would say that when Bill Hewlett and David Packard were alive, they would actually get off their rears everyday and meet with everyone from the dock worker to the design engineer to discuss how to make things better. Instead of relying on “yes” men, these innovators relied, and accepted the judgment of the professionals they hired to do the job. On the other hand, Carley had body guards and jets and rarely met face to face with employees (I guess they were too much the peon to her). Good riddance Carley – we don’t need your type in the valley. It is a new day for HP – and a message to all of those greedy non-technical types who think they can run a technology company to pack up and go back to your east coast roots – maybe they like your management style out there. Just my two…. As a side note: How did a person without and engineering or business background get to become a CEO of a major tech company? (She was an American or French lit major). – hummm… will wonders ever cease!
Well, you were sorta right about her credentials. http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/execteam/fiorina/index.html "Fiorina has a bachelor's degree in medieval history and philosophy from Stanford University. She holds a master's degree in business administration from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland at College Park, Md., and a master of science degree from MIT's Sloan School." I think, as often is the case, that being too far removed from the ground level or failing to have good mid level managers, or failing to make sound decisions based upon seasoned inputs often leads to this type of downward trend. I didn't realize Stanford had relocated to the east coast I really like her undergrad, nothing like the crusades to prepare one for boardrooms.
$21 million parachute As a stockholder in HP I resent the $21 milliongolden parachute payout. As a HP computer owner I saw the HP customer support go from great to virtually non-existant.
Yes, but as a Compaq owner I really appreciate the fact that shortly after the merger I was able to buy a brand new Compaq computer for a song. Got a great deal on a close-out Compaq. Still works great 3 years later
How do you square this with Google's successful-so-far hiring philosophy of relying on computer science PH.D.s? I don't know if their focus is exactly "top-down" but they do brag a lot about going after the most educated and most credentialed people in the field. I don't have an opinion either way, just curious.
Re: Re: Ding dong the witch is gone... Perhaps Google is successful because they hire more computer science PhDs and fewer MBAs?
Re: Re: Ding dong the witch is gone... I believe I implied this. I have always believed that the best tech chief is one that at least has a solid grasp of what the core products are. I don't expect the CEO to know how to build or design a printer (as that is the job for the manufacturing team and engineers); however Carly was merely a flashy marketing person with little real knowledge of technology. If you notice the CEO's of Google, Yahoo, and to a lesser degree Intel, you will notice that not only are they have a firm understanding of business, but understand technology behind the business. That is what truly separates the purely Harvard educated business person with no tech expertise from that of a CEO who was an engineer or technical person. Believe me, a great number of HP employees despised Carley. She was self-centered and definitely self-important. What engineers and techs that were not laid off, usually left for greener pastures. (And in good times, there are greener pastures everywhere in this Valley). That is why HP's core product has lost ground and their inlays to newer technologies have been met with quite a bit of resistance. Google/Yahoo and a few other Valley companies are excellent places to work. - the reasons are simple - engineers as a group tend to be driven and usually don't mind working long hours as long as they have a stake in the company and know that their efforts will be acknowledged. At Google, you have the chance to make a great income and gobs of money in stock options - most line people don't even have the chance for that no matter how hard they work at companies like IBM, HP, or GM.
Re: Re: Ding dong the witch is gone... Even Brin and Page hired in an experienced tech vet to be the CEO. More to the point, they hired somebody who'd moved up the ranks through the technical side, not the sales side. Where HP went horribly wrong, as anybody in the business would have told you at the time, was they they appointed a sales droid to the top job in a tech firm. Sales droids have their uses (somebody's got to buy the engineers a drink), but they should never get the top job in a tech firm because 9 times out of 10 they simply don't understand the technology well enough to make informed choices about the strategic and developmental options presented to them by the various divisions of the firm. Google hiring CS PhDs is simply common sense for the firm. They rely on the quality of the algorithms and the software to keep their place at the top of the pile. Take away the programming and algorithmic nous and they're just another crummy search engine cum portal, just like all the others that I've used in the past decade and who no longer exist. Mr Engineer added that: I have to add that quite a lot of the rest of the industry despised her just as much. Whilst HP has had some dogs in the past (I started out in the field using X10 on an HP bobcat running HPUX and it made me a convinced lover of Sun's engineering workstations for life ;-), a strong HP is good for the industry. But every one of Carly's decisions over the years have been about the short term numbers and not about the long-term profitability of the company. Angela
"Sales droids " too funny, but so accurate. I also like how sales individuals dress up their titles with "Sales Engineers" when involved in tech industries. Unfortunately they don't like the technical questions when in negotiations and discussions. Kevin
You ought to hear what we call them when they don't buy the drinks! At least the ones who don't like the technical questions are fairly safe when you let the out on their own. The really dangerous ones (and Carly's a good example of the breed) are those who think they know what they're talking about. The latter breed have a nasty habit of saying "oh yeah, of course it does that, it'll ship with it when we send it to you", where "it" is a functionality that will either a) break the system, b) take the next six months to build, c) requires you to redesign the data architecture, d) is so bloody stupid that only a moron would want it or e) all of the above. They really seem quite hurt when you start foaming at the mouth and threatening violence. Angela -- currently reviewing options after 18 years in technology
My impression at hearing the HP Compaq merger plans were that Carly wanted to leave her mark on business world, and this boffo deal was going to be her monument.
Mr. Engineer: If you cannot see the relationship between incompetent arts majors supervising scientists and engineers and your political philosophy, then you are truly out of touch. Ask any scientist who worked for the federal government during the 8 years of Clinton-Gore. You can start with NASA. Perhaps you would like to research how the Mars rover came to be named "Sojourner."
Re: $21 million parachute When was the last time an engineer got a $21 million golden parachute? Engineers just get laid off. Companies seem to go through a life cycle. They are started by people who understand the company's products and services, and who often have new and exciting ideas about how to improve them. The companies succeed, the founders get rich, and the thing eventually goes public. Boards of directors proceed to force out the product oriented creative people that built the company and demand that the company be handed over to "professional management". Steve Jobs is forced out of Apple and replaced with a soft-drink executive. So you have executive suites filled with people who are basically unfamiliar with the details of what the company actually does. They hire subordinates to worry about that stuff. Engineers, and all the people that actually produce the company's goods and services become commoditized, interchangeable employee-units to be hired and fired, assembly-line style. (Or outsourced.) When problems inevitably occur, executives respond by adjusting and re-adjusting their organizational charts. But none of their decisions ever seem to include anything that enables what have become the the insignificant company grunts to serve their customers better. So the company slips into senescence and starts to get its ass kicked by newer hungrier competitors with the cool new ideas that the senile company just can't seem to create any longer.
Interesting how the thread shifted to "salespeople suck!" I have to add in that as the manager of a 100% production office I currently have zero contact with salespeople. At first I didn't understand why. My supervisor once told me that salespeople really had very little clue about what it was my production office did. I asked him, when I was on a trip to headquarters, whether I could give a presentation to them to get them better informed. He told me that would be a bad idea.... basically, he was worried they would get confused about the technical details and start massively over-promising to clients. Any information they got had to be filtered with incredible care! I also see the dichotomy I asked about was a false one -- credentials vs. hands-on -- when technical vs. corporate sales/finance was really the issue. Obviously a company needs representation in this area at the top keeping an eye on practical issues and the bottom line. But when they go bad they really go bad! Another parallel is HR. At their best they attract workers and keep them safe, healthy, legal and happy. At their worst they go power-mad and start instituting insane procedures that manage to simultaneously decrease productivity AND piss off workers.
My thoughts exactly. I have always wondered why any President would appoint an ambassador to a important country who doesn't even know the language or culture of that country. What agency do you work for FED?
I am neither in sales nor technology but my .02 stems from a statement I heard many years ago when I was in accounting: "It doesn't matter how good it looks or how well it works if it isn't sold the plant and company will close." Maybe we should give the sales folks a little more credit.
The Feb. 12, 2005 'San Jose Murky News' has a front page story on Carly Fiorina's pay and severance package. Fiorina's total personal take during her 5 1/2 years at HP? $188.6 million dollars. (That's a lot of printers.) I think that's an abomination, and she isn't alone among top corporate execs looting their companies of those kind of bucks. I mean, what would really be more productive for HP? Shoveling truckloads of money into Carly's bank account? Or hiring a younger hungrier executive at 10% of her compensation (still a hefty $3.43 million/year, so nobody's going to the poorhouse) and then hiring 617 additional $50K/yr employees for 5 1/2 years with the savings? People who might actually design something or offer HP's customers some service.
At dell they where called Dellonaires.... i never knew of any tech people that made it to that level when i was there but we did have two ferrari's in the parking lot. I used to park my hoopty 1980 thunderbird next to them just to make them nervous....
