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I think his interpretation of the facts is very plausible. Sadly, Larry Ellison was absolutely right when he said, at the time of Hurd's scandal, "the HP Board

I think his interpretation of the facts is very plausible. Sadly, Larry Ellison was absolutely right when he said, at the time of Hurd's scandal, "the HP Board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple Board fired Steve Jobs many years ago." Good CEOs who can revamp stagnant companies are hard to come by, particularly in the consumer space. Hurd was that CEO, Apotheker is not. And getting out of the consumer space, at a time when there are several paradigm shifts going on, means missing huge opportunities.

runjake 15y ago
Firing Steve Jobs was the best thing Apple could have done, long term. Apple is where it's at today because of what Steve Jobs learned and grew from his "failures".
- DeusExMachina 15y ago
  This is true also because Steve Jobs speaks about it in his Stanford speech, but it's a rare event that you cannot know in advance. No company fires the CEO to let him learn more and then come back to rescue the company. Moreover Apple went on the verge of bankruptcy before Steve Jobs came back. So it was still a bad decision for the board to fire him.
  - bad_user 15y ago
    The board of directors fired Steve Jobs because of the company's poor performance. It wasn't as if it went downhill only after Steve left.
    - j_baker 15y ago
      No they didn't. They fired Steve Jobs because they didn't get along with him. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/06/06/why-i-fired-steve-jobs.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/06/06/why-i-fired...
      - RyanMcGreal 15y ago
        FTA: > Sculley wrestled with low Macintosh sales and a need to bring some order to the creative chaos Jobs had unleashed. Sculley found that he couldn’t rein in Jobs—and decided he had to go. Sounds like both explanations were true.
tlogan 15y ago
I wonder what do you think Hurd was a good CEO? I understand that HPQ stocks were going up but the raise was based on eating the future. Hurd made HP very toxic place to work (I know that first hand): and how the heck you can compete with Apple when your engineering force is demoralized? Also what would be HP future under Hurd helm? As of Larry's comment... Larry talks his book. He does not care what will happen to HP and he needed a guy to clean up Sun hardware division. So of course he will praise Hurd.
blinkingled 15y ago
Firing Hurd was the right thing to do - I will argue that they were late. Hurd was seen as aligning with Oracle and making decisions that did not conflict with Oracle. EDS, conveniently missed Sun acquisition, consumer focus in lieu of enterprise paints a consistent picture. There is a reason Hurd now works at Oracle and Larry did not like him getting fired. Besides show me what he did apart from cost cutting. Apotheker comes from Oracle's competitor SAP. To that effect he isn't shy of focusing on interests that happen to conflict with Oracle's. To that end, what Gruber is saying is right - the board always wanted more Enterprise focus and that required going against Oracle. That's what Apotheker is doing. As for missed opportunities - it does not matter. HP just does not have the DNA to do great in the already saturated PC and phone/tablets market. Not having to deal with that means they can focus their resources and capital where they are well oiled to do great. It only mattered if HP managed to get a CEO that can change its DNA - Neither Hurd nor Apotheker were into that. If they could have found a great consumer focused CEO with proven and relevant record, then it would have been worthwhile to risk competing in consumer space when it meant losing focus on Enterprise. Otherwise its just not really smart. And they are still not giving up on webOS. But the only catches here are they don't yet know what to do with webOS and the Oracle/Itanium problem. With PSG off their bottom line they could now afford to ignore webOS until they find the right thing for it and focus their hardware resources to sell more proliants and fix the Itanium problem. That's the idea.
- palish 15y ago
  Wait --- what? They fired Hurd as a direct consequence of him paying a hooker. What's that got to do with strategy? Or are we claiming that it's "okay to lie" about why someone is being fired..?
  - technoslut 15y ago
    I wonder if Hurd stayed, regardless or not of personal issues, if he would've been fired for job performance. To me it doesn't change, the HP board guided this company towards ruin.
  - blinkingled 15y ago
cwilson 15y ago
"And getting out of the consumer space, at a time when there are several paradigm shifts going on, means missing huge opportunities." For HP, at this time, I'm not sure I agree. Why? It's as simple as Apple is in that market as well and nothing HP (or anyone really) has done has stopped or caught up with their momentum. In fact I think it's smart for them to transition to the enterprise world entirely. We don't hear about it often on HackerNews or Techcrunch, but that market is massive and HP has been acquiring companies within it for years. They likely make more money in the enterprise market (security specifically) than in the PC business. Hell, they just bought a company called Autonomy for 10 billion dollars. What do they do? Enterprise search and information management.
- DanielN 15y ago
  I would agree with your assessment. But it's not just Apple that's making life difficult for HP. Simply put (and this has been happening for four or five years now) Assus Acer and Lenovo are eating HP's lunch on the low end and Apple is eating their lunch on the high end. All the while they are playing second fiddle to Dell ( and to an increasing extent to Assus) in between. Additionally HP would need to play serious catch up to Apple, HTC, and in the international market Lenovo (maybe even Motorola although I don't know how that is going to work post acquisition) in mobil. And as Dell has learned, playing catch up in mobil requires throwing a lot of money down the drain without a guarantee for positive returns. (This last part about Dell is just my perception. For all I know Dell's margins on mobil have been stellar, but I don't think that's the case) I understand the market's reaction to HP's pivote, although I think a lot of it is panic and hedging bets and some bad timing on HP's part, but that is what markets are suppose to do. I don't so much understand the tech industry's reaction to the move.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
technoslut 15y ago
I think his explanation is more than plausible. I don't believe Gruber's post happened coincidentally. I came to the same conclusion after reading a post on Hacker News by Cringely in February of this year. I would've posted Gruber's post but I felt it was redundant on this forum. What happened didn't change. The blame rests on the HP board, regardless if the members changed over the years. I believe the Apple board got lucky when they re-hired Jobs because he was the perfect man for the job.

runjake 15y ago

Firing Steve Jobs was the best thing Apple could have done, long term. Apple is where it's at today because of what Steve Jobs learned and grew from his "failures".

DeusExMachina 15y ago
This is true also because Steve Jobs speaks about it in his Stanford speech, but it's a rare event that you cannot know in advance. No company fires the CEO to let him learn more and then come back to rescue the company. Moreover Apple went on the verge of bankruptcy before Steve Jobs came back. So it was still a bad decision for the board to fire him.
- bad_user 15y ago
  The board of directors fired Steve Jobs because of the company's poor performance. It wasn't as if it went downhill only after Steve left.
  - j_baker 15y ago
    No they didn't. They fired Steve Jobs because they didn't get along with him. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/06/06/why-i-fired-steve-jobs.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/06/06/why-i-fired...
    - RyanMcGreal 15y ago
      FTA: > Sculley wrestled with low Macintosh sales and a need to bring some order to the creative chaos Jobs had unleashed. Sculley found that he couldn’t rein in Jobs—and decided he had to go. Sounds like both explanations were true.

tlogan 15y ago

I wonder what do you think Hurd was a good CEO? I understand that HPQ stocks were going up but the raise was based on eating the future. Hurd made HP very toxic place to work (I know that first hand): and how the heck you can compete with Apple when your engineering force is demoralized? Also what would be HP future under Hurd helm? As of Larry's comment... Larry talks his book. He does not care what will happen to HP and he needed a guy to clean up Sun hardware division. So of course he will praise Hurd.

blinkingled 15y ago

Firing Hurd was the right thing to do - I will argue that they were late. Hurd was seen as aligning with Oracle and making decisions that did not conflict with Oracle. EDS, conveniently missed Sun acquisition, consumer focus in lieu of enterprise paints a consistent picture. There is a reason Hurd now works at Oracle and Larry did not like him getting fired. Besides show me what he did apart from cost cutting. Apotheker comes from Oracle's competitor SAP. To that effect he isn't shy of focusing on interests that happen to conflict with Oracle's. To that end, what Gruber is saying is right - the board always wanted more Enterprise focus and that required going against Oracle. That's what Apotheker is doing. As for missed opportunities - it does not matter. HP just does not have the DNA to do great in the already saturated PC and phone/tablets market. Not having to deal with that means they can focus their resources and capital where they are well oiled to do great. It only mattered if HP managed to get a CEO that can change its DNA - Neither Hurd nor Apotheker were into that. If they could have found a great consumer focused CEO with proven and relevant record, then it would have been worthwhile to risk competing in consumer space when it meant losing focus on Enterprise. Otherwise its just not really smart. And they are still not giving up on webOS. But the only catches here are they don't yet know what to do with webOS and the Oracle/Itanium problem. With PSG off their bottom line they could now afford to ignore webOS until they find the right thing for it and focus their hardware resources to sell more proliants and fix the Itanium problem. That's the idea.

palish 15y ago
Wait --- what? They fired Hurd as a direct consequence of him paying a hooker. What's that got to do with strategy? Or are we claiming that it's "okay to lie" about why someone is being fired..?
- technoslut 15y ago
  I wonder if Hurd stayed, regardless or not of personal issues, if he would've been fired for job performance. To me it doesn't change, the HP board guided this company towards ruin.
- blinkingled 15y ago

cwilson 15y ago

"And getting out of the consumer space, at a time when there are several paradigm shifts going on, means missing huge opportunities." For HP, at this time, I'm not sure I agree. Why? It's as simple as Apple is in that market as well and nothing HP (or anyone really) has done has stopped or caught up with their momentum. In fact I think it's smart for them to transition to the enterprise world entirely. We don't hear about it often on HackerNews or Techcrunch, but that market is massive and HP has been acquiring companies within it for years. They likely make more money in the enterprise market (security specifically) than in the PC business. Hell, they just bought a company called Autonomy for 10 billion dollars. What do they do? Enterprise search and information management.

DanielN 15y ago
I would agree with your assessment. But it's not just Apple that's making life difficult for HP. Simply put (and this has been happening for four or five years now) Assus Acer and Lenovo are eating HP's lunch on the low end and Apple is eating their lunch on the high end. All the while they are playing second fiddle to Dell ( and to an increasing extent to Assus) in between. Additionally HP would need to play serious catch up to Apple, HTC, and in the international market Lenovo (maybe even Motorola although I don't know how that is going to work post acquisition) in mobil. And as Dell has learned, playing catch up in mobil requires throwing a lot of money down the drain without a guarantee for positive returns. (This last part about Dell is just my perception. For all I know Dell's margins on mobil have been stellar, but I don't think that's the case) I understand the market's reaction to HP's pivote, although I think a lot of it is panic and hedging bets and some bad timing on HP's part, but that is what markets are suppose to do. I don't so much understand the tech industry's reaction to the move.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

technoslut 15y ago

I think his explanation is more than plausible. I don't believe Gruber's post happened coincidentally. I came to the same conclusion after reading a post on Hacker News by Cringely in February of this year. I would've posted Gruber's post but I felt it was redundant on this forum. What happened didn't change. The blame rests on the HP board, regardless if the members changed over the years. I believe the Apple board got lucky when they re-hired Jobs because he was the perfect man for the job.