Yale professor stands by his words. Carly is catching heat.
“Yale professor stands by his words. Carly is catching heat.”
Shouldn’t Sharia-compliant “Yale” be enough of a warning? I worked at Compaq when Carly managed to overcome the recalcitrant Hewlett or Packard (I forget which one) son on the board who did everything he could to undermine Carly. HP was an enormous mess then as was Compaq, which itself was trying unsuccessfully to digest Digital Equipment Corp, once the second largest computer company in the world. Carly orchestrated and managed the acquisition. Yes they called it a “merger” but that was sophistry.
Carly fought fearlessly to overcome the special interests, family being the most intent on getting her out so that power structures would remain unchanged. If you’ve worked for big companies you’ll know that organizational entities are a natural battleground. When product development and sales flag the local managers fight with every tool to survive. That is capitalism. Carly was a breath of fresh air, knowing that the fiefdoms sucking the life out of HP, as it had at DEC and Lucent, needed to be stirred to introduce competition. That is why our framers and founders intended “The People’s House” to be a temporary job, with Congressmen returning to their “real” careers after serving a term or two.
You think college professors, the world of tenure and protected infighting among the privileged who need produce nothing, is interested in or understands the necessary cacophony of relatively free markets? Carly is a s+++ disturber and we would do well to have a pair and accept that she does too, with very few candidates in her league. They are very good at steering through the minefield laid by other major party and partisans in the Republican party who see someone as a threat. For them their speeches are best analyzed by listening to what they avoid.
Compaq did know how build to PCs and after being absorbed, became the largest PC manufacturer in the industry. I’m amazed that HP has survived, but credit Carly with its relative health. HP had a cash cow in inkjet ink (the printers were and are mostly a loss leader). The HP son on the board wanted to make HP more of a printer company because printing revenue was largest then. Even looking at a decade of high tech shows the danger in betting the farm on PC’s. DEC’s founder once said PC’s were toys, and would never replace real computers. Carly prevented HP from betting the farm on the proposition that HP, in tony Palo Alto, would survive competing with Canon, Epson, Fujita, Ricoh, etc. etc. She understood that the diversity of HP’s portfolio kept options open. She saved HP, and I foolishly had bet money, my corporate stock options which the financially astute, salespeople, sold as soon as they were allowed, on that proposition. She saved me from my naiveté about the stock market.
Carly orchestrated the merger with Compaq, largely replacing the tired PC division at HP, a darling of the HP scion, who never worked a day in his life with P&L (profit and loss responsibility). If HP failed he remained a billionaire. She did it her way and recognized that her detractors would do everything to remove her. How different from most of the senior managers, some of whom I knew, and who quietly cheered her efforts but wouldn’t dare stand up to be counted in the boardroom or media. She is a fighter, reminding me a bit of Allen West. West was punished for acting impolitely to save his troops, firing a weapon to scare an enemy under interrogation resulting in the identification of IEDs that might have killed or maimed his men. She will challenge openly and has the strength to take the consequences. Her objective is not higher office but a flourishing enterprise.