Ex-HP CEO Carly Fiorina Hired By Fox News 256
neutrino38 writes "The International Herald Tribune reports that Fox News hired Carly Fiorina, ex-HP CEO. Such an interesting move will certainly bring support to those who viewed her as the over-hyped CEO who killed the original corporate engineering culture know as 'the HP way.'
The article, off course, does not elaborate on this aspect of things. Slashdot has previously reported her demise from HP and some comments mentioned some HP employee dancing in the cubicles then."
A Question for Current HP employees.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A Question for Current HP employees.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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What a dumb thing to say. Really. I'd hold the engineering talent in my lab up to that of any other top tier organization in any other company. Interestingly enough, and counter to your argument, it's most often the case that when a lab or product line is shuts down (and this is the same for almost any employer), the top 10%-20% are readily scooped up somewhere else within the company. The rest? Well...
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When Dave Packard died, upper management and the bean counters started salivating.
When Bill Hewlett died in 2001, these same people instantly sought to change the "HP Way" to try and get a couple more percent in growth. The rest is modern history.
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I have a slightly different perspective than some other poster, I suppose.
The two way trust between management and the employees that Bill and Dave cultivated went away with Carly. Any HP employee who was there can tell you about the key event that started this shift.
Having worked at HP, and at other places, I do think that the HP Way still has some life in the way employees there treat one another. There is a level of decency in the way people treat one another that - I think - is a remnant of the o
Re:A Question for Current HP employees.. (Score:5, Interesting)
As an employee of HP only because they bought my company, I can attest to the fact that HP is no longer a monolithic institution, but rather a bunch of components jammed up against each other operating largely autonomously.
It's what the stockholders want I guess, and will only become more prevalent as HP continues its pace of rapid acquisitions.
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But speaking as someone who worked in that environment in the past, but now works in a large monolithic company...count your blessings
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As an employee of HP only because they bought my company, I can attest to the fact that HP is no longer a monolithic institution, but rather a bunch of components jammed up against each other operating largely autonomously.
While it's not entirely relevant, HP has never been a monolithic organization. Each business unit was more or less self-contained, so I gather. Carly Fiorina did a lot to consolidate various operations, but I guess that she and her successor never got around to combining everything that HP bought out. The real difference as I see it is that the corporate culture, the "HP Way" (of which I frankly know little despite having worked at HP for a couple of years 1999-2001) doesn't appear to me to be widespread i
In fairness to Carly, she was correct. (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe you could argue that she was just a stupid, bleached-blond bimbo who randomly stumbled upon the correct course of action, but in fairness to Carly, her vision was correct: Only the large [really the massively, monstrously gi-normous] will survive.
HP's choices were to continue to grow [with the acquisition of Compaq] or to die.
[Cf Tuesday's Register article [channelregister.co.uk] about Gateway: Gateway failed to grow, and now Gateway is dead.]
And the stocks have proven that she was correct:
At HP, Carly faced two dilemmas:
1) Everyone is in the business of selling commodity computers these days, and only the largest will survive at that game [in particular, HP needed the higher-margin server business which distinguished Compaq from the rest of the competition], and
2) Like it or not [and most Slashdotters aren't going to like it very much], there just isn't any money to be made in the sale of scientific equipment, as the history of Agilent's stock proves.
Now you can argue that it would be really "nice" if a big company like HP could subsidize a bunch of really "neat", cutting-edge research [the way that AT&T used to do with Bell Labs, back when AT&T was a monopoly, or the way that Xerox used to do with PARC, back when Xerox was a monopoly, or, to a lesser extent, the way that Microsoft & Google appear to be doing now, while they are still monopolies], but Carly's duty was not to the scientific community: Carly's duty was to her shareholders, and her vision proved to be correct.
Heck, just compare the results of her vision with the current state of affairs at IBM, whose stock has been absolutely stagnant [yahoo.com] for the last eight years:
QED.
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Agilent's stock looks very stable to me, and has a low P/E. Why is that a problem? If you're looking for a long-term investment, that's the stock to get. If you're looking to get rich quick in day-trading, HP is a better stock. Obviously, Carly was more interested in joining the dot-com bubble and getting rich on
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Interestingly, you left out Agilent's profit on your linked website:
Gross Profit 2,658,000 2,522,000 3,123,000
Even with lower revenues, their profit has gone up in the last year.
Re:In fairness to Carly, she was correct. (Score:4, Informative)
What really did her in was how she ran things afterwards that was the issue. She set unrealistic goals (saying we were going to grow by 15% when the industry was declining). She said something to the effect if we didn't have the bar set high enough, we never would try to beat it. Her over promising the world to the market setup us up for failure, especially considering if would make it impossible to get a company bonus requirements. As a matter of fact, she would never tell us how we were evaluated so we could try to hit them. This was one of many things she did that effected moral in the rank and file. She would change the company's focus several times just when we were gaining steam. This inconsistent direction alienated us even more, to the point where feedback showed we had little faith in upper management.
So even though she was a great speaker, it takes more than a few good ideas to make a decent CEO. I would give Hurd the credit for increasing the stock price and Dell dropping the ball for the last 3 or 4 plays over Carly's few decision that remain today. Now if he would stop reducing our benefits in the name of "Matching the industry average", I would be happier.
btw, I would say there are still some excellent engineers left at HP, and they are helping train the next set of them. The group I'm in is still open working together, mentoring, and trying to keep moral up under our current contraints. We may not have the HP way, but looking at the way the industry is, very few companies that are over 30 yrs old have their original cultures left... But it would be nice it if came back again.
Best of luck! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Best of luck! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure we will.
Now we'll finally get the answer to the question "Which is harder? Running a first rate company into the ground, or being a Bush economic policy apologist?"
For those of you keeping score at home, in this corner, we have the person who helped bring down HP's stock by more than 50% [wsj.com] and missed earnings targets [news.com]. In the other corner, we have the economic policy that turned $250 billion budget surpluses under Clinton into $300 billion budget deficit [nytimes.com] in just two years!
Sounds like a perfect match.
[OT] Re:Best of luck! (Score:4, Insightful)
While I am not a fan of Bush, the deficit slide can't be blamed entirely on Bushes economic plan. The magnitude, sure, but the slide started long before. The forecasters of the OMB were overly optimistic about the dotcom boom and expected it to last forever. When the bust happened, not only did a lot of money dry up, but the expected capital gains taxes forcast dried up too. That and the balanced budget bill lapsed. Congress started spending. So alot of things happened in the span of a few short years some of which can be blamed on President Bush.
BTW, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World by Alan Greenspan has a pretty good overview of that happened in addition to prividing insight into how the guy got to be so smart. It's good reading.
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Funny that he'll veto (revenue-neutral) stem-cell research, but won't use his veto pen to enforce that wonderful Republican virtue of "fiscal responsibility"...
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"Correcting lies on Slashdot since 1999"
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Let's look at the evidence.
In the months leading up to the 2000 election (roughly 18ish), the Fed continued to raise rates despite low inflation numbers. Indeed despite candidate Bush being lambasted for "talking down the economy" for warning of the very recession he would be blamed for in the coming months. There was much discussion about w
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". Its flaws are glaringly obvious to anyone capable of conceiving it. "
You are applying hindsight and finding patterns in noise.
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While I am not a fan of Bush, the deficit slide can't be blamed entirely on Bushes economic plan. The magnitude, sure, but the slide started long before.
Part of leadership is responding to change. How did the Bush administration respond to an impendining budget shortfall? By cutting taxes on the wealthy. How did the Bush administration respond to an actual budget shortfall? By staying the course. How did the Bush administration respond to the increased expenditures required by this unending B.S. war? By
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a) Give me a reference or two.
b) Obviously it didn't increase them enough to keep up with spending, which is what matters.
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Don
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The claim was the recession that followed the Clinton administration that erased the projected surpluses cannot be blamed upon the Bush administration. The economic decline had already begun during the end of the Clinton administration. Had he remained president for a third term, the same events would have transpired. There were numerous layoffs across the economy, earnings were weak, and everyone except venture capitalists and greedy day trader was projecting the end of Greenspan's
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So presumably all a budding exec would have to do would be to carefully watch the show, then go into work and do the exact opposite?
Sounds like a plan to me.
Re:Best of luck! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Best of luck! (Score:4, Funny)
And Lucent. Let's never forget the fine job she did there.
It's an astounding accomplishment to drive two of the world's premier engineering organizations into the ground within a decade. Truly Fox worthy.
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Jeff Foxworthy? [imdb.com] I feel a "you might be a redneck joke coming." Either that or is she smarter than a fifth grader.
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Okay. You might be a redneck if you eat Jeff Foxworthy Beef Jerky. (I kid you not. I saw it in a store the other day)
How does that work for you? =]
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What for? (Score:2)
One organization's rubbish... (Score:3, Funny)
They should have got her for Surreal Life [wikipedia.org], but I'm sure Fox News will find something stupid for her to say.
...and here it comes.... (Score:2, Funny)
In other news, Fiorina will push to aquire the "We Network", rename it to "You" to make it more personal, and later merge it with Fox.
The new network, of course, will be:Fox-You
Coming soon to a boardroo^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcable provider near you!
The article, off course (Score:2, Funny)
Keep goin'?! Current battle points: 10
Off course! No, way!
Is this the 'real' Carly Fiorina?? (Score:3, Funny)
I forget the interesting euphemism they had for 'lying' on the phone... anyone remember?
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Obligatory "screw you!!1!" to Carly for messing up the calculator division.
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But you can blame her for completely killing their calculator business for several years. (They left the assembly lines running for a while, but fired all the engineers at ACO). She's also responsible for making sure that none of the good bits of HP were left after the spin-off of Agilent (excepting the aforementioned calculator business she killed) and she is responsible for the assimilation of Compaq (f
Vampire in a company full of ghouls (Score:5, Funny)
According to this comment [slashdot.org], Carly feasted on the souls of thousands of decent tech workers at HP. Where is she going to find a soul at Fox News?
I have visions of her, the arch-liche and Bill O'Reilly, some kind of undead bear, chucking mega spells at each other across the office.
Peter
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Clearly staffing up for battle w/CNBC (Score:5, Informative)
The man they hired to run the new news channel, Roger Ailes, also helped start CNBC.
The WSJ has an agreement with CNBC to provide content. The WSJ also just got bought by Rupert Murdoch's empire, which also owns Fox. Ailes says that there won't be a conflict.
Ailes also gives a lot more info here in this interview:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119160938630350371.html [wsj.com]
Should be interesting.
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It would be a waste to make her an anchorperson (Score:2)
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Maybe he was just calling out the chickens who where attempting to bid the cost up on him. But I'm glad to finally hear that he got it.
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I don't *really* get how they could compete. CNBC is already fully staffed with market cheerleaders, "free market conservatives", and amoral trading shows (not that I necessarily think those things are bad).
It *would* be pretty funny if they created a network that was based on "values investing", or better yet, "socially responsible" investing. Would really show in a brighter light how FOX isn't news, just entertainment for the neo-con crowd.
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Roger Ailes? News? (Score:4, Informative)
I already said my piece(s) (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2003/09/20/hp-covers-up-gulfstream-buys [theinquirer.net]
But sadly I can't claim this piece of genius.
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2003/10/28/hps-carly-fiorina-hates-fags [theinquirer.net]
-Charlie
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Well... (Score:2)
Do you suppose they'll hire someone from Enron to manage programming?
Fox keeps strange company (Score:2)
Let Fox News have her! (Score:5, Insightful)
Carly, you're a FUCKING BITCH! (and go ahead, moderate me down to a score of zero, I do not care. She is a bitch who destroyed lives and everyone here knows it).
Last Days of HP (Score:5, Interesting)
When I started at HP they were much like the way Google is described to be now. While I'd have to say that Google is HP on steroids, since HP offered great coffee, tea, and often sweet rolls in the well-equipped snack nooks around the cubical farms, and a well-subsidized cafeteria -- in contrast, Google offers free meals and transportation, among other amenities -- but the idea was the same. HP employees had a lot of freedom towards arranging their own transportation to other HP sites as they determined their requirements to be, specified and ordered their own personal computer equipment including printers, and generally were given a lot of freedom to do their jobs.
Over the next year and a half under Lew, much of that went away in ways that make it clear it would never return. It was belt tightening time, and a lot of it happened in areas like this one, including two job freezes.
When Carley did arrive, she was very warmly received by all of HP. There was great enthusiasm -- and perhaps not too much looking back at what she'd (un)accomplished at Lucient. Right up to the time I left, pretty much everyone was behind her, and much jazzed about having a woman CEO -- and a relatively young woman at that.
Yes things got worse after that in ways are that well known. But in fairness, I saw the first signs of decline before she ever arrived.
Best Carley joke from that era: After she visited our facility (contractors not allowed to attend the actual meeting) we were told that the lovely palm trees in the courtyard were going to be cut down after Carley had found out that they weren't going to meet their 15% growth target for the next year.
Re:Last Days of HP (Score:5, Interesting)
It is true that there was a period of increasing frugality at HP just before C. Fiorina's advent, but that was truly due to economic conditions, and HP was handling the crisis in its traditional way: instead of laying off employees, HP was saving money in other ways. After all, this was the company that once temporarily cut everyone's salary by about 15% instead of having layoffs. (The reductions were restored when times got better.)
It was only under C.F.'s reign that layoffs were first introduced. However, I do not believe that the reasons for these layoffs were primarily economic—they were moral and political. HP had a well-skilled cadre of professionals with high self esteem; these people thought they mattered. C.F. perceived this as a problem; thus, she proceeded to show the technical staff of HP that they were a disposable commodity by decimating them. I use this word in the old, Roman sense: to instill a proper fear of management, to restore discipline to the level desired by the commanders, you kill a tenth of the men at random. This has a most salutory effect on the survivors.
I worked at HP during this time. Like many, I had been an employee of a company that was bought by HP. At first, the change seemed to be benign—HP was not quite as good a place to work as my old one had been, but it was still pretty decent. That changed with the advent of C.F. It's hard to describe the feeling of helpless despair that became prevalent in my workplace as wave after wave of layoffs swept through it like a series of plagues. The first couple were justified as "getting rid of the deadwood", and you were supposed to feel good that you were not classed among the victims. With successive layoffs, the reasons became progressively thinner, until they achieved total transparency. One layoff was actually announced by management as being "random"; we were supposed think that this meant "fair".
As any student of Josef Stalin's methods knows, the best terror is random terror. If people do not know how to behave to avoid being struck down by the Centurion's truncheon, they become paralyzed by fear. They become docile, easily managed victims that have no self-esteem, make no demands, and are neurotically eager to obey their masters. They become perfect corporate employees.
This was not a phenomenon isolated to HP; HP merely furnishes a particularly egregious example of how the corporations dealt with a perceived threat to their sovereignty that emerged in the last two decades of the twentieth century—the rise of a new intelligentsia, composed of technically savvy "knowledge workers" who acquired a sense of empowerment through their understanding of how the new computer and communications technologies worked. This "geek" intelligentsia thought of itself as autonomous, as being outside the old paradigm of boss and peon. But the essence of corporatism is control; consequently, the corporations moved to suppress the intelligentsia using a variety of methods, both subtle and (as in HP's case) not so subtle. Today, their victory seems complete.
Lest I be accused of digression from the topic at hand...I wonder if C.F. had to take a 25% pay cut at her new job, compared to her HP salary, as did I?
Fox Severence Pay (Score:2)
Why not? (Score:4, Insightful)
Fits right in with Oliver North [wikipedia.org], Mark Fuhrman [wikipedia.org], Geraldo [wikipedia.org],etc.
Welcome to the team!
Skank Was Always On the Dark Side (Score:2, Informative)
Not so sure she was that bad - Compaq anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's ponder this (Score:2)
Maybe she believes in karma and wants to undo in Fox what she did to HP. Because, well, Fox is already where she le
FOX needs a domestic spying expert. (Score:2)
Can they also hire Darl? (Score:5, Funny)
Financial shows 2.0 (Score:2)
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So what? (Score:2)
rj
"Economist" on Fiorina Carly (Score:2)
Economist held a generally favourable view [economist.com] of her work. Last year it reviewed [economist.com] her book "Tough Choices"... The second link is freely readable by all.
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>"Ms. Fiorina's past behaviour notwithstanding, the story submission is rather incendiary. Surely a more civil account of the situation could have bdeen found?"
Why? This is Faux News we're talking about. You can be sure that everyone over at CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, BBC, etc., are dancing in their cubicles!
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Re:-1 Flamebait (Score:4, Insightful)
Incendiary would be if it were implied that she and her new employers were going to do something bad to you in the future. Incendiary evokes new negative emotions. Sarcastic just rehashes old ones.
After, this is all just the story of a third rate CEO being hired by a third rate news organization. It's not as if she were being hired by some covert arm of the Republican Party...
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Wow, how clever. Take a broadcast where Mr. O'Reilly refers to NBC and trim out all references then put it up there with a TV capture of the show displaying the Fox News logo.
For what it's worth, I flip around the various news stations. My observation is that many of the commentators on Fox News have conservative/traditional views. What I don't see are commentators going to bat for Republicans acting badly just because they are Republicans. In fact, Fox News is more critical of Republicans than other
Reporter group-think (Score:3, Interesting)
It is unlikely that this will come as a surprise if you try watching Fox News over the course of a single day when a controversial news story is in progress, rather than flipping through the channel. Commentator after commentator will not only pull up the exact same tu quoque examples to deflect criticism of Republican officials, they'll use the exact same words and catch phrases. That's basic propaganda: if an opinion is shared by many people, it appears more credible, so the propagandist arranges that his voice speaks through many mouths.
Dude... this happens *between* news channels. CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, FNC, MSNBC, etc will all use the *same* language to describe something the President or Congress did that day. Rush Limbaugh has great fun putting all these little phrases together into a single sound clip. I remember one example where every major news organization (including Fox) mentioned Bush giving a verbal "fratboy towel snap" to someone (reporters?). The "towel snap" and "fratboy" words were used almost exactly with each reporter.
R
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Ask yourself in an era of declining subscription rates, how is the different from just about any other media outlet? They all try to coddle their viewer/readship and reinforce the worldview that keeps them(the reader) buying the paper/tuning in etc.
Re:Fox News the News you want to hear. (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, some stations carry blatantly left-wing programs like "Alternative Radio". But nearly every station carries "Marketplace", a financial news show that takes as an axiom "an unfettered free market is ultimately a public good". That's a center-right position. The news shows (All Things Considered, Morning Edition) tend to be fairly middle-of-the-road, since they mostly just give the news without a whole lot of spin. The few "opinion" segments, by people like Daniel Schorr, tend to be pretty nonpartisan.
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NPR is a moderate news post. They piss off both sides. They also deal with many subjects that almost no other news outlet will deal with, as they are not mainstream news (sex, violence, pestilence, gore, ...) If you sit to the right, they look left (so we know where you sit), and if you sit to the left, they look right. That is the way news used to be. Balanced. Maybe not entirely fair, but balanced. I have heard as much news on NPR that was pro-neo-con as I have that was pro-humanity, and normally,
Re:Fox News the News you want to hear. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except NPR does it on the tax payers dime.
So does Fox News, just with a level of indirection. You think many of their corporate advertisers aren't sucking the public tit dry? That the farm bill doesn't subsidize ADM, or the perverse medicare prescription policy isn't a handout to Big Pharma, etc.?
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You can swap out "Fox News" with pretty much any/all "news" media outlets, local, regional, and national. If the news was reporting just facts without slanted commentary, from any side, 6 people may watch the news. People watch based upon their belief system, if Fox fits the bill, they watch Fox, if CNN does it for them, they watch CNN, and
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Well at least she is doing something wich doesn't matter. Fox News is just for people want to hear what they want to hear. They are not interesting is differnt views just conferming what they think is right so they feel good.
Well, at least she is doing something *which* doesn't matter. Fox News is just for people *who* want to hear what they want to hear. They are not *interested* *in* *different* views, just *in* *confirming* what they think is right so they feel good.
Whew. Now, that doesn't actually make your statement grammatically appropriate, but at least now it can be read.
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Hmmm... Which are the DNC-oriented media outlets you describe? I'm curious; it would be interesting to know how the news I'm seeing is being shaped.
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Someone linked to NPR (National Public Radio, for the non-American readers)'s story about Reagan's funeral, and said "When Clinton dies, if you can find me a Fox News anchor that describes him as a 'great American', then you can talk to me about the liberal media."
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Show me a single news channel half as left-wing as Counterpunch.org and I might believe you.
Oh wait, you can't. [whatliberalmedia.com]
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Would you care to contrast that with the other media outlets who are currently run by major contributors and/or political beneficiaries of the DNC?
Media is the currency by which political capital is exchanged in this country. If you want an informed opinion you have to form your own.
FoxNews was founded to fill an entertainment gap. A news channel with a fundamentally conservative outlook, in contrast to the liberal outlook promulgated by most other outlets.
Who modded this guy insightful? Inciteful, perhaps, meaning troll.
Re:Fox News the News you want to hear. (Score:4, Insightful)
They are a propaganda/entertainment channel, no more, no less.
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LOL, my thoughts exactly. Fox News is the Colbert Report minus the sarcasm.
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Literacy is a dead art.
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Indeed. One wonders how Taco, et al, call themselves "editors" with a straight face.
Says PB, who knows from experience that part of being an editor is copyediting ...
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My only hope is that she brings the same quality of guidance and direction to Fox News as she did to HP.
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Don't say its name. It might show up....
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