Comments on: Carly Fiorina Couldn’t Run a Major Company Either

By: JoeBuck

JoeBuck — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:14:43 +0000

Correction: Carly Fiorina messed up HP badly, but she wasn’t forced out for wiretapping her own board members. That scandal happened under her successor.

The reason that she was forced out was that the board thought she was doing a crappy job. On the other hand, that same board bears a lot of responsibility for the failures: they approved the Compaq deal, and they cheered Carly on as she proudly gutted the “HP Way” (Hewlett and Packard’s humane, employee-centric management style).

By: leftdcin72

leftdcin72 — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:03:35 +0000

The spin off was a disaster

By: leftdcin72

leftdcin72 — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:02:02 +0000

Why is it that we have such a bunch of incompetent women running around the top of politics such as Fiorina, Clintons, Palin, Pelosi etc. I guess thart can be traced to the equally or more incompetent men at the top except Obama. But we have a systemic decline in the Unites States due, in large part, to a non-existent press.

Fiorina, before she got to HP completely screwed up at Lucent with the Lucent/Phillips joint venture authored by her. It was so bad that it had to be undone. The level of BS in national politics, a la Clintons continues to amaze and confound.

By: siri

siri — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:46:09 +0000

I never, so far anyway, miss your posts Ian.
Please don’t “burn out” and have to quit writing here (I’ve seen that happen to others).
I learn sooooo much from you and would sorely miss your sound voice of reason!
Thanks for this post. Simple, brilliant, yet the entire Rethug party and mainstream media totally missed it, or neglected to point out the facts!

By: sdrDusty

sdrDusty — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:24:57 +0000

Lots of business guys love her, though.

I think we live in Cartoon World- where admired characters are nothing more than absurd exaggerated morphs- i.e. hyper-masculinity, arrogance, pugilism, ignorance, etc.
Carly seems to fit many business ideals of what a female executive should look/sound like… but it’s all cartoon- no content.

(Except, she -unfortunately for herself- nailed it on the head about McCain and Palin!)

I hated what was done to HP- used to be so good.

By: shell

shell — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:59:16 +0000

Ah. Carly Fiorina. Darling of Hewlett-Packard. Yes, HP finally fired her ass — but, as you noted, gave her millions in “severence.

I know Americans don’t like to hear this, but American companies aren’t the best in the world. I applied for a job at HP about 10 years ago. Let’s just say they were EXTREMELY inefficient. They lost my resume, asked me to come out there (20 miles from my house) to give them another one. No, it couldn’t be faxed because there were too many attachments, and mailing it just wouldn’t do! It would take too long! They needed it TODAY! Of course, it took them another 2 days to even look at it. By the time they offered me the job, I told them to F off — in a businesslike way, of course. From start to finish, they were VERY sloppy, and not impressive.

And I don’t want to pick on HP too much (even though they were the worst). Almost all corporations I applied at, and worked at (including TRW, CSC, etc.), were pretty lame. And no, I am not whining — none turned me down. I know you will not believe this, but it is true. Despite all its bureaucracy, the State of California was the best place to contract for.

By: newtonusr

newtonusr — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 07:29:04 +0000

And if my interpretation is correct, saddled HP with the unwise Compaq merger, retarding it’s recovery for a good long while.

By: Ian Welsh

Ian Welsh — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 07:27:33 +0000

Before Carly, HP was known for having the very best customer service in the industry and in many cases, the most reliable hardware. She destroyed the HP way and gave the company nothing in return. I despise the woman, and never pass an opportunity to mention what a waste of space she is. Lots of business guys love her, though. Blech.

By: JGabriel

JGabriel — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 06:50:43 +0000

…. forced out in 2005 for wiretapping her own board members.

Correction: Fiorina got tossed for being a crap CEO. It was the CEO who followed her (forget the name right now) that got tossed for wiretapping.

By: wmd1961

wmd1961 — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 06:23:09 +0000

I liked my former company’s CEO’s take on the HP/Compaq merger - slow motion crash of two garbage trucks.

that said HP is doing some fine research and HP labs has the garage spirit from the original HP.

Carly on the other hand got her reputation from spinning Lucent off from AT&T and then doing a lot of job cuts.