Nope, never worked for HP either. However, when I see a company treat people worse than I treat my dog; well, that tells me something about their value of human life, a level of self-importance, and mostly the utter lack of compassion.
I believe that a company's most valuable asset ARE their employees. Without a team of employees, a company is nothing more than a brick and mortar building. It's the employees who work, who dedicate their life to working to make the company successful. They throw their energies into making the company successful, and in exchange have several expectations. They are expected to be loyal to the company - and the employee SHOULD have the expectation that the company will have some loyalty returned to them. That is a team, that is what a partnership is. A reasonable person thinks that their job will enable them to make their house payments, support their family, pay for their children's education, allow them to contribute to their 401K, work hard and get a raise/promotion.
If you look at companies like IBM, HP (after Carly), the US Military and precious few other companies - that mindset continues. This mindset allows people to live the american dream. Work hard, be honest, improve yourself - and you'll be rewarded. But, that thought has been perverted by people like Carly - who take that trust, and use people for their own benefit, then discard them.
20,000 families were discarded - so Carly could have 7 Lear jets. What did these 20,000 do to deserve this? How could they have prevented this punishment? They could not do a thing to prevent this, and a great many lost their homes, their savings and their retirement - so a manager wouldn't have to fly on a commercial jet.
While I’m no huge fan or Carly I believe your assessment is a tad harsh. True she got fired from HP but it had to do with the political enemies she made within the company. At the time, the HP/Compaq merger was troubled *but* in the end the merger turned out positive for the company and the market.
Carly’s problem at HP was that she didn’t focus on the core competency of HP, building computers. Under her the quality of HP consumer computers went downhill as manufacturing was moved overseas with lax QC. Also, she stretched the company into markets traditionally HP has never been in, Tv’s/digital cameras/HP branded iPod’s/etc.
To say that Carly’s leadership caused or started HP’s downsizing due to her squandering corporate profits is simply unfair. HP, like most high-tech companies expanded (bloated) during the .com times so when bad times hit in 2001 that bloat weighed the company down. In the years after Carly, Mark Herd has cut far more people and trimmed benefits/pay more than Carly ever had dreamed. If Carly could turn in the market numbers that Herd does now she would still be CEO.
Again, I have no love for Carly but I do understand Palin’s position here and I agree with it. This is Kalifornia and the target is Babs Boxer and no matter how conservative Devore is, he simply has no shot against Babs. Hell, if you cloned a younger Ronald Reagan he couldn’t beat Boxer in Kalifornia today. This is the deepest of blue states that will take YEARS of reforms and a hell of a lot of pain before a true conservative could win the state. From a financial standpoint Carly is as strong a conservative as you’re going to get. She has name recognition, is very media-savvy and a ton of money to bring into battle.
I think we as conservatives need to be realistic in our outlook here. Our country has not fallen to the current level overnight and it won’t turn-around over night. I know some think that conservatives win everywhere when they espouse the right message but honestly it takes more than that.