Posted on 09/16/2015 5:06:30 AM PDT by RC one
Everyone overlooks that the 3rd leg of that stool was Digital Equipment Corporation. It was Ken Olsen’s Mormon Management Cult that believed the future was in Corporate Networks run on Main Frame Computers. The idiots at HP shared the same philosophy. HP turned down the Altair from MicroSoft’s Paul Allen when they had first dibs on it. She didn’t get $100 million and she didn’t buy three Private Jets. She returned them. DEC management loved their toys. We had five helicopters at The Mill in Maynard.
I’ll take problem #2 any day. I have not seen much from the younger crowd as far as innovation. I do not call dart boards at work, BS meaningless apps that parrot 1000 other meaningless apps, and dead-end, feel good processes innovation. The generations prior to the last two put men in space, split the atom, created amazing medical devices, and created/improved computers, the last two use those inroads to make video games and Farcebook. They have not had any what I call “hard” achievements by comparison.
I'm sure she will. The fact remains, she didn't leave HP in better condition than when she found it. HP stock fell 50% during her tenure while the industry as a whole only fell 7%. HP stock jumped 6.9% on the news of her termination because she was widely regarded as bearing responsible for HP's declining earnings. That's her record. That's what we have to look at.
Bookmark.
OH WOW.
You’d think she could afford better ‘work’ with $100M. The angry look she’s got now isn’t a function of having aged, it’s just bad work apparently.
What did she accomplish at Lucent?
“Allow me to summarize: she fired 30,000 people, screwed the company and shareholders, was fired for her performance, and then walked away with $100 million dollar severance package and she hasn’t done anything meaningful since.”
In the grand GOP plan, pre Trump, Jeb was to be the nominee and Carly the VP. Carly’s trip through the primaries was all about getting her introduced to the public and ready for the fall 2016 campaign. The GOPe determined a female was needed on the ticket to counter Hillary playing the “war on women” theme. Jeb wouldn’t be able to attack Hillary directly but a female on the ticket could.
Now that Trump has spoiled the plan for Jeb, and Kasich has failed to gain traction as the Jeb alternative, the GOPe seems to be trying to position Florina as their “outsider” alternative to Trump.
Unfortunately Carly is the GOP candidate Sanders wants to run against. If she heads the GOP ticket she will lose to Sanders, Hillary, or Biden.
Such vendor financing deals would have much the same impact on the telecom industry that sub-prime mortgages eventually had on the housing industry. In both cases public companies extended loans to customers who were gambling that the good times would keep rolling (and who were especially glad to make those bets with the lenders’ money). In both cases the loans helped puff up lenders’ short-term financial results and stock prices. In both cases the market inevitably turned and the pile of debt collapsed. (PathNet, after taking on another slug of vendor debt from Nortel, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001 as the industry collapsed.)
Doesn’t speak well of her. She is supposed to be gunning for Trump tonight. They all are.
She’d fit right in in fedgov then.
Only there they can print money till the cows come home. Or the currency crashes. Whichever comes first.
If he can crush one of them tonight, and successfully defend against the rest-he wins. If he crushes one of them bad enough, the rest of them will lose their order of battle. Carly wants to fight? I say take it to her.
The argument can be made that her business practices contributed to the tech bubble and subsequent collapse. I know plenty of people that lost their a55es when the tech bubble burst.
I’ll buy that. She certainly wasn’t the only one but her ‘management’ absolutely didn’t help any of these companies.
I’ve wondered if the bubble wasn’t deliberately fanned and used by big boys.
I had an idea for a Trump commercial, should they go that route:
You may remember when GHWB was running for a second term an advertisement said the following - ‘This was Barbara Bush before she married George (early photograhp). This is Barbara Bush now (then present day photograph).’ It was out of line, but because it was against a Republican, everyone was ‘okay’ with it.
Likewise, Trumps ad should say: ‘This was HP before Carly Fiorina was hired as CEO. This was the state of HP the day she was fired. Do you want Carly to do to America what she did to HP?’
If done right it could end up being mighty embarrassing for her. Just an idea in case anyone in the Trump camp is looking.
She also guided HP through the Tech Meltdown of 2000-01. 30,000 employees is a drop in the bucket compared to the layoffs that occurred at the time within the industry, and is less than other IT companies of comparable size - I can remember IBM firing 10's of thousands of employees at least twice (lived through one of the layoffs....).
Heck, I worked at a completely non-IT manufacturing company, and it laid off 10,000+ people at one shot in 2001 or 2002. The IT dept lost 10% of its workers, in one day. That wasn't any fun.
Frankly, IT never really recovered from the hit that it took in 00-01. Of course, it was ridiculously overblown at the time and needed to be pared back. But it never really recovered from the complete non-event that was Y2K.
And as for her severance package ... HP agreed to it. It's not like she forced them to offer at gunpoint.
I'm not an enormous Fiorina Fan, but smear pieces like this are just wrong.
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