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HP Names Meg Whitman President and Chief Executive Officer

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Re: HP Names Meg Whitman President and Chief Executive Officer

#51

Post by r00fus »

slantyyz wrote: post #19
jordan0day wrote: post #12

I'm sure the HP board is full of smart people, so my question is: what's next? Over the past decade they've seemingly made so many more poor decisions relative to good decisions, I have to imagine they feel a lot of heat to do something... redeeming? I mean, they're still a very large and very powerful company, and I think predictions of their impending doom are highly overblown, but they've certainly been dealt some…

HP's board might be full of smart people who make stupid decisions. HP's board started the decline by hiring Carly Fiorina, being a part of the pre-texting scandal, hiring and then firing Hurd, and now hiring and firing Apotheker. Perhaps it's time to clean house at the board level.

You do realize that 8 of the 14 board members were only here since 2010, right?

So they've pretty much reshaped the board in the past year or so already... I'm not sure a 2nd "reboot/reshuffle" will do much.

Re: HP Names Meg Whitman President and Chief Executive Officer

#52

Post by tobtoh »

alttag wrote: post #38

I said earlier Whitman would be on my short list of bad choices for the job. I spent some time today thinking about who I would pick. Someone with experience at a product company, that had to oversee design, manufacturing, and logistics. (Ebay is clearly not this.) Also, someone with experience at a services company with a track record of success. (Despite service--and SaaS--experience, Ebay "survived" rather than "s…

Exactly my thoughts. Whitman only has experience managing a business that was dominant in their area and due to first-comer advantage, basically had virtually no other companies that could come close to their effective monopoly position.

Yet - as you said, Ebay survived rather than succeeded. HP is a whole different kettle of fish - beset by rabid competitors on all side and without any significant advantages over any of them. At this stage, Whitman seems a really poor choice who will be immediately out of her depth in running HP.

Re: HP Names Meg Whitman President and Chief Executive Officer

#55

Post by jonnathanson »

0x12 wrote: post #8

HP is as good as dead. It will take a long time to die but they're now officially the Yahoo! of hardware. Brand damage this severe is going to be very very hard to fix.

Probably, but not necessarily. They're dead in the water on the consumer side, but enterprise can be turned around. I'd heard tell they were working on some uber-high-end scientific and government hardware, too, and maybe that becomes their cash cow eventually. Government contracting has certainly been kind to other hardware companies in the past.

They might be able to pull out of the race to the bottom / razor-thin-margins that is the non-Apple PC market, build up a high-end image doing cutting-edge industrial hardware, then (possibly) reconsider a consumer relaunch as a high-end, high-margin brand.

Re: HP Names Meg Whitman President and Chief Executive Officer

#56

Post by jfischer »

shalmanese wrote: post #47
alanh wrote: post #10

Robert X Cringely quote† from 7 months back, posted earlier today by Gruber‡: > Then there’s Meg Whitman, who expected at this point to have resigned from the HP board to spend all her time running California as governor. But that didn’t happen, so now what is she to do? [...] She’ll eventually get around to hip-checking Apotheker and taking his job. † http://www.cringely.com/2011/02/why-leo-apotheker-will-be-fi... ‡…

This strikes me as an excellent demonstration of the "make as many wild ass predictions as possible until one of them hits and then have everyone think you're a visionary genius".

Yes, Cringely can really be out in left field sometimes. A good example was his recent theory that Tim Cook is only a temporary CEO and that Steve Jobs has a secret hand-picked successor that he will name in the future [1]. I read Cringely partly for the entertainment value and partly because he really does think out of the box. When the strange happens, at least we're not surprised.

[1] http://www.cringely.com/2011/08/cupertino-two-step/

Re: HP Names Meg Whitman President and Chief Executive Officer

#57

Post by njloof »

jeroen wrote: post #41
markokocic wrote: post #13

Not a good move. He started his job by doing some hard upfront decisions that he hoped will play in HP advantage in the long run. And the board cut him off at the point when he didn't even started the transformation. Now, who knows what will happen. The other possible explanation is that he knew that he is going to be scraped, and had enormous compensation for receiving the blame.

His total earnings from these 11 months seems to be $35 million. $9.8M in salary, signing bonus, etc, and $25.2M severence in cash and stock. source: http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/22/technology/hp_leo_apotheker_...

Nice work if you can get it.

Re: HP Names Meg Whitman President and Chief Executive Officer

#58

Post by [deleted] »

alttag wrote: post #38

I said earlier Whitman would be on my short list of bad choices for the job. I spent some time today thinking about who I would pick. Someone with experience at a product company, that had to oversee design, manufacturing, and logistics. (Ebay is clearly not this.) Also, someone with experience at a services company with a track record of success. (Despite service--and SaaS--experience, Ebay "survived" rather than "s…

[deleted]

Re: HP Names Meg Whitman President and Chief Executive Officer

#60

Post by alexqgb »

r00fus wrote: post #50
Element_ wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article in the NYT today reported that the board fully supported the decisions he had made but didn't like the way he was communicating the changes inside and out of the company. Whether or not that is the real reason they fired him is anyones guess I suppose.

It's the only way they come out looking competent, so I guess that's what they're running with. I don't see how Leo would go rogue... he was clearly a fall guy and he might have been ok with it.

As a creature of the board - as opposed to an internal hire with a built-in power base - he's actually the last person you'd expect to go rogue. Indeed, the big criticism of high-level external hires is that they're insufficiently independent and easily manipulated.

For a guy whose credibility was already in tatters, $35 mm to be a fall-guy for hire seems like a pretty good deal. I suspect he felt the same way when he signed up. I just wonder if he realized the payout was going to come so swiftly.

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