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back to article HP insists Whitman is new broom to clean up execution

With HP’s latest quarterly earnings looking so poor, you’d expect the traditional financial analyst’s call to be dominated by concerns on the minutiae of performance. But every question was on leadership. HP’s chairman Ray Lane said that the company had been “jolted” by the departure of Mark Hurd, and the board had made the …

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  1. Voland's right hand Silver badge
    Devil

    Interesting

    Someone finally noted the starving of R&D in a big tech company. That by the way is not a legacy of "Leo". That is a legacy of the Hurd.

    It will be interesting how they go along on fixing that because it is much more difficult than fixing "execution". It is easier to re-establish R&D from scratch than to fix R&D that has been starved into obsolescence through a million of budget and headcount cuts combined with "business relevance" requirements.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    “HP really matters – it matters to Silicon Valley, California..."

    No, I don't think so at this point.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: “HP really matters – it matters to Silicon Valley, California..."

      Agree, I don't see how making boxes for Intel's chips and Microsoft's software is all that important for Silicon Valley (read: innovation). It is more of a distributor than a technology company at this point. Hiring a marketer, again, instead of an engineer was a poor move if the focus is on R&D and regaining their technology edge.

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  3. Turtle_Fan

    Someone explain....

    So, Apotheker, who was by most accounts a one-man wrecking operation wherever he was (copyright and data theft @ SAP, his moronic decisions @HP) was booted out in less than 12 months since taking over. He lost investors and HP a few billions in market value in the process.

    And yet he went away with more than 30 million worth of compensation.

    If that's the reward for doing disastrously bad for just under a year, I wouldn't mind being fired...

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Someone explain....

      Simple - he was entitled to the money as it was in the terms of his contract of employment.

      CEOs operate in a somewhat different world to mere mortals. Often, to recognise the fact that they need time to get up to speed their first year's targets are assumed to have been achieved, and bonuses payable, hence the payouts for short-lived CEOs.

      The only way to avoid this is to fire them or 'terminate for cause' as the terminology goes. This would likely lead to a court case and few boards are brave enough to do it anyway. Instead they would rather hand over a few million to make the problem go away quickly.

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  4. Gordon 14
    Flame

    If you are a member of the 1% you can always Fail upward, (fail at oil company -> fail at BaseballTeam ownership -> fail at being President).And even if you don't fail upwards you can always fail at multiple endeavours and get rewarded for it. (Whitman, Fiorina, Apotheker) becuase since you're travelling in the rarefied air of the Right Kind Of People you are obviously placed there by (god/Providence -delete as applicable) not merely luck or someone's bad decision, and deserving of all the priveleges of being The Right Kind Of People, blamelessness, entitlement, hoocoodanode, and all your failures dropped into the memory hole. You get paid for success because you must be a success or you wouldn't be in that position. It's circular logic intended to show that our betters are virtuous by dint of all that money they have. it's a product of equating money as resource with Money as reward Where Reward is a measure of Moral standing.

    HP is doomed.

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Execution?

    The last thing HP needs is a leader focused on operational excellence and execution. That was what Hurd did at HP. The problem is you can't run a supply chain or manufacturing operation efficiently enough to make up for having products with no technology value add. They need R&D and IP differentiation, not the ability to pump out a million PCs and servers faster than Dell.

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Printers

    They are totally in denial about printers/ink as well. How long can they continue to say that the problems in print/ink are related to the economy and not because no one prints anything anymore.

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