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Well… the real irony here is HP embodies zero of what this article talks about. It’s honestly hilarious to me, that Packard ever said any of this considering ho

Well… the real irony here is HP embodies zero of what this article talks about. It’s honestly hilarious to me, that Packard ever said any of this considering how absolutely shit HP is in my opinion. The bit about embracing this for the gateway merger shows how out of touch modern management is with reality. The only thing I’d really glean from this is that Packard and Hewlett were totally shit at establishing a good culture that can last the test of time.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
Hewlett & Packard left the board in 1992. Until then, HP (mostly) had an excellent reputation both for its products and its working environment. Quite a few HP products - like its programmable pocket calculators, and some of the test equipment - were legendary for their engineering. HP Inc is a completely different outfit and seems to have none of the original spirit left. Whether it's even possible to create a broadly positive company culture that can survive contact with modern MBAs and investors is debatable.
- Tempest1981 5y ago
  > modern MBAs I wonder what the reaction is in MBA school when this topic comes up? Does the teacher say it's not applicable in today's world? It's obviously shunned by most. Can any of these ideas still work in 2021?
  - parsimo2010 5y ago
    Most schools teach about successful leaders and companies like HP as case studies on how to do it right. But most schools have pretty low graduation standards and most MBAs end up misapplying the lessons they were taught. So their reaction would be positive, like "HP was such a good company! I love all of their business principles and I'd love to build a corporation known for good engineering, sound financial management, and promoting technically competent leaders." And then most promptly do none of that, focus on short term returns, and run a company into the ground.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      MBA programs are also about more than business strategy, leadership, etc. In fact that's a fairly small part of an MBA program--at least as an explicit topic of study. Depending upon what people are concentrating on, there's also financial accounting, cost accounting, market research, forecasting, organizational behavior, pricing, economics, operations/operations research--to pick a few courses in a typical program off the top of my head. In general, my impression is there's also more focus on "experiential" learning than both case study and non-case study lecture.
    - samstave 5y ago
      >>>Most schools teach about successful leaders and companies like HP as case studies on how to do it right. But most schools have pretty low graduation standards and most MBAs end up misapplying the lessons they were taught. Probably the most succinct setup for the MBA hate I have ever read. Classic.
rrss 5y ago
> It’s honestly hilarious to me, that Packard ever said any of this considering how absolutely shit HP is in my opinion. Are you talking about your opinion of the company “HP Inc” today? IMO it is not surprising that companies change a lot in 60 years (or 40). P.S. the original HP is now Keysight, they are still premier for test & measurement equipment.
- Tomte 5y ago
  There is no one "original HP" anymore. It was picked apart into many different parts. For example, HP Medical was also highly regarded, then went with Agilent and was later sold to Philips.
  - rrss 5y ago
    in my mind, keysight is the original HP in the sense that Hewlett and Packard started an electronics test & measurement company, and AFAIK keysight is the only electronics test & measurement company descended from HP. also, all the archives of the company for the first several decades went with keysight. I think HP probably didn’t start doing medical stuff until a few decades after its founding. but I agree hp was split into a lot of companies, with a lot of good parts scattered widely (except AFAICT no good parts scattered into “HP Inc”)
gshubert17 5y ago
For the past couple of decades or so, you're right. HP was founded in 1939. In its first couple of decades the HP way described management practices that were unusual for their time. Bill and Dave were still visiting the varied HP divisions in the late 1970s (when I went to work for HP in Colorado). Hewlett was succeeded by John Young as CEO in 1978. Both Hewlett and Packard left the board of directors in 1993. It certainly is a very tough job to establish a good culture that can last the test of time. Compared to many other founders, though, I personally don't think they did that badly, though of course many others disagree. While HP itself lost its way in the 1990s, many of these ideals were adopted by other companies or taken to new companies by HP employees.
adrian_b 5y ago
As many others have already said, there is a huge difference between the original Hewlett-Packard company and the companies that still have today a "HP" in their name. I am an electronics engineer. I have learned much more electronics from the manuals of some Hewlett-Packard products than from most University courses. Besides their excellent product manuals, which explained everything needed to understand how their products operated and how they can be repaired or modified, the company also published "HP Journal", which explained in great detail why and how their more important products were designed. The kind of documentation that HP produced was invaluable training for generations of engineers. Looking at the garbage documentation generated now by almost everybody for their products, it seems almost unbelievable that such companies like the old HP ever existed.
AnonC 5y ago
Establishing and retaining a culture over several decades is not easy, especially in publicly listed companies where CEOs and board members get replaced every few years or every decade, each bringing baggage from where they were before. The HP Way was still popular and well known/followed even during the waning years of Carly Fiorina and for sometime after her departure. I don’t understand why this would be a failure of the founders long after they moved out. Look at Google, which went as far as dethroning the “don’t be evil” mantra in its early teens. HP has probably kept its culture for several multiples of that before it was drowned out.
- ghaff 5y ago
  It's complicated. The business climate changes. As you say, CEOs change and HP arguably went through particular tumult in that regard with a generally lackluster Platt and then all the Fiorina-associated drama. (Who lugged "the garage" around from stage to stage but didn't really walk the walk as much as talked the talk.) Times change in other ways as well. It's hard to compare how major computer companies operated and what the expectations were of employees in the 70s/80s compared to today. I expect if you average mid-level Google engineer were dropped into HP, IBM, Intel, or DEC ~1980, they'd probably find a lot to not like.
dang 5y ago
"Please don't fulminate." "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago

Hewlett & Packard left the board in 1992. Until then, HP (mostly) had an excellent reputation both for its products and its working environment. Quite a few HP products - like its programmable pocket calculators, and some of the test equipment - were legendary for their engineering. HP Inc is a completely different outfit and seems to have none of the original spirit left. Whether it's even possible to create a broadly positive company culture that can survive contact with modern MBAs and investors is debatable.

Tempest1981 5y ago
> modern MBAs I wonder what the reaction is in MBA school when this topic comes up? Does the teacher say it's not applicable in today's world? It's obviously shunned by most. Can any of these ideas still work in 2021?
- parsimo2010 5y ago
  Most schools teach about successful leaders and companies like HP as case studies on how to do it right. But most schools have pretty low graduation standards and most MBAs end up misapplying the lessons they were taught. So their reaction would be positive, like "HP was such a good company! I love all of their business principles and I'd love to build a corporation known for good engineering, sound financial management, and promoting technically competent leaders." And then most promptly do none of that, focus on short term returns, and run a company into the ground.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    MBA programs are also about more than business strategy, leadership, etc. In fact that's a fairly small part of an MBA program--at least as an explicit topic of study. Depending upon what people are concentrating on, there's also financial accounting, cost accounting, market research, forecasting, organizational behavior, pricing, economics, operations/operations research--to pick a few courses in a typical program off the top of my head. In general, my impression is there's also more focus on "experiential" learning than both case study and non-case study lecture.
  - samstave 5y ago
    >>>Most schools teach about successful leaders and companies like HP as case studies on how to do it right. But most schools have pretty low graduation standards and most MBAs end up misapplying the lessons they were taught. Probably the most succinct setup for the MBA hate I have ever read. Classic.

rrss 5y ago

> It’s honestly hilarious to me, that Packard ever said any of this considering how absolutely shit HP is in my opinion. Are you talking about your opinion of the company “HP Inc” today? IMO it is not surprising that companies change a lot in 60 years (or 40). P.S. the original HP is now Keysight, they are still premier for test & measurement equipment.

Tomte 5y ago
There is no one "original HP" anymore. It was picked apart into many different parts. For example, HP Medical was also highly regarded, then went with Agilent and was later sold to Philips.
- rrss 5y ago
  in my mind, keysight is the original HP in the sense that Hewlett and Packard started an electronics test & measurement company, and AFAIK keysight is the only electronics test & measurement company descended from HP. also, all the archives of the company for the first several decades went with keysight. I think HP probably didn’t start doing medical stuff until a few decades after its founding. but I agree hp was split into a lot of companies, with a lot of good parts scattered widely (except AFAICT no good parts scattered into “HP Inc”)

gshubert17 5y ago

For the past couple of decades or so, you're right. HP was founded in 1939. In its first couple of decades the HP way described management practices that were unusual for their time. Bill and Dave were still visiting the varied HP divisions in the late 1970s (when I went to work for HP in Colorado). Hewlett was succeeded by John Young as CEO in 1978. Both Hewlett and Packard left the board of directors in 1993. It certainly is a very tough job to establish a good culture that can last the test of time. Compared to many other founders, though, I personally don't think they did that badly, though of course many others disagree. While HP itself lost its way in the 1990s, many of these ideals were adopted by other companies or taken to new companies by HP employees.

adrian_b 5y ago

As many others have already said, there is a huge difference between the original Hewlett-Packard company and the companies that still have today a "HP" in their name. I am an electronics engineer. I have learned much more electronics from the manuals of some Hewlett-Packard products than from most University courses. Besides their excellent product manuals, which explained everything needed to understand how their products operated and how they can be repaired or modified, the company also published "HP Journal", which explained in great detail why and how their more important products were designed. The kind of documentation that HP produced was invaluable training for generations of engineers. Looking at the garbage documentation generated now by almost everybody for their products, it seems almost unbelievable that such companies like the old HP ever existed.

AnonC 5y ago

Establishing and retaining a culture over several decades is not easy, especially in publicly listed companies where CEOs and board members get replaced every few years or every decade, each bringing baggage from where they were before. The HP Way was still popular and well known/followed even during the waning years of Carly Fiorina and for sometime after her departure. I don’t understand why this would be a failure of the founders long after they moved out. Look at Google, which went as far as dethroning the “don’t be evil” mantra in its early teens. HP has probably kept its culture for several multiples of that before it was drowned out.

ghaff 5y ago
It's complicated. The business climate changes. As you say, CEOs change and HP arguably went through particular tumult in that regard with a generally lackluster Platt and then all the Fiorina-associated drama. (Who lugged "the garage" around from stage to stage but didn't really walk the walk as much as talked the talk.) Times change in other ways as well. It's hard to compare how major computer companies operated and what the expectations were of employees in the 70s/80s compared to today. I expect if you average mid-level Google engineer were dropped into HP, IBM, Intel, or DEC ~1980, they'd probably find a lot to not like.

dang 5y ago

"Please don't fulminate." "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html