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I was present at a speech Princess Fiorina gave to some troops. It was one of the things that helped me to decide to leave. Bill and Dave made simple statements that enabled everybody to help steer in the desired direction. Fiorina beautifully delivered obscure MBA speak that left people mystified and asking each other what it meant. Fiorina was indeed atrocious, however...? For several years the zeitgeist (originating in the board and diffusing downwards) was that a "50:50" company was desirable. That was shorthand for $50e9 annual turnover and 50e3 employees, presumably derived from some dubious MBA calculations. It implied employee layoffs and/or company split. It also implied focussing on the medium term. Consequently HPLabs fell out of favour, with statements being "why should we pay so much when we could simply use that money to buy a small company with a successful product".? Consequently HPLabs was forced to gamble on a small number of high-risk high-payoff concepts (e.g. conpletely new classes of computer concepts centred on memristors), and inevitably failed. After ousting Fiorina, the board implemented the "buy small successful company several times", and my, didn't that turn out well (for lawyers, that is). Fiorina's record at HP was sufficient for her to convince herself to run for president. She got nowhere, I presume because too many people quietly discussed how she had behaved and her lack of success. Times change, but that's not a subject for here. On Sun, 13 Apr 2025 at 02:05, jim via <ab7vf=[email protected]> wrote:
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