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HP Board Said to Weigh Ousting Apotheker as CEO
- gentle 15y agoApotheker needs to go. What's happening to HP is a real tragedy and he should be stopped before he destroys the company.
- gvb 15y agoI'm afraid it is much too late. Cringely had an excellent discussion of why and how it is too late: http://www.cringely.com/tag/bill-hewlett/ http://www.cringely.com/tag/bill-hewlett/
- joeblossom 15y agoThe same could have been said for Ford, and several other large companies. However, under good management, you'd be surprised how much "bad" can be undone. HP still brings in a ton of money a year and has a huge market share in several different markets. It can be fixed, however they have to find someone extraordinary to fix it. Meg Whitman probably isn't quite the right person, she doesn't seem to be the "let's turn this place around" type person.
- protomyth 15y agoYou're absolutely right, HP right now is in better shape than Apple was in 1996. So, I cannot imagine that it cannot be fixed, but I don't believe it will stay one company.
- gentle 15y agoThat's a great article. Thank you for pointing it out.
- Steko 15y agoCringely had an even better call in February: http://www.cringely.com/2011/02/why-leo-apotheker-will-be-fired-from-hewlett-packard/ http://www.cringely.com/2011/02/why-leo-apotheker-will-be-fi... He can be a bit of a nutter sometimes but man was this spot on with the Whitman call and Apotheker's hail mary of a huge enterprise acquisition: "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? You can only get so many pedicures. She’ll eventually get around to hip-checking Apotheker and taking his job. Meg can knock back brewskies as well as any man and will probably fill those CEO shoes even better than Apotheker. I know I am speaking early about this but that’s why I get the big bucks. There is only one chance Apotheker has to save his job and that’s by buying his old company, SAP. "
- 0x12 15y agoIt's downright scary how accurate that prediction is.
- DrHankPym 15y ago> American firms have been laying-off their engineering staffs for years. In today’s world of MBA-managed companies, R&D is perceived as not being a good use of money. I love this guy's writing.
- sunchild 15y agoIt seems like the beginning of the end was the EDS integration. My guess is that the "Global IT Services" group is behind this "new" strategy (which is the same strategy IBM Global Services implemented more than a decade ago to great success). These companies consume their own young, and watching them hack themselves to pieces is not pretty.
- mbesto 15y agoYup. The EDS integration was a mess. I've spoken to several HP employees about this. Just the mindless switching of e-mails and corporate structure was enough to get them disgruntled.
- originalgeek 15y agoIMO the one chance they had in the Enterprise space was to differentiate themselves by creating an app stack that ran anywhere: desktop, thin client, tablet, phone. WebOS would make that happen. But with todays reports of laying off 525 WebOS devs, apparently, they are just flushing WebOS down the toilet.
- gamble 15y agoThe board should fire themselves.
- raganwald 15y agoAnd not just for past incompetence. Let’s say their super-smooth CEO headhunter flies into Toronto and takes me to breakfast. “What the board wants,” he will say, shooting his cuffs, “is a visionary who will have the courage to take strong action.” “I see,” I will murmur, swirling the dregs of espresso around the bottom of my cup, eying the way the perfect crema lines the exquisite porcelain. “And am I to understand that if my ‘vision’ doesn’t meet with immediate public acclaim or if I can’t restructure the future of the company AND hit immediate sales targets, you’ll be having breakfast with someone else?” How is this board going to hire anyone capable of making bets if they fire Leo before his bets could pay off? Who would want a job working for people like this? If they didn’t like his moves, they should have exercised governance and let him know what he could and couldn’t do. If they were doing their jobs and they let him make these kinds of moves, they should support him and not throw him under a bus.
- alexqgb 15y agoThey won't. Instead, they'll call Meg Whitman.
- jrockway 15y agoWho would want a job working for people like this? How much does it pay? Assuming you are guaranteed a year's salary and that that salary is in the $millions range, it doesn't seem like a total waste of time. I volunteer myself for this job.
- PakG1 15y agohttp://www.businessinsider.com/soon-to-be-canned-hp-ceo-apotheker-will-get-94-million-for-his-lousy-year-of-work-2011-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/soon-to-be-canned-hp-ceo-apot...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- vailripper 15y agoSo he's doing a bad job, and their solution is to bring in....Meg Whitman? Seriously?
- RexRollman 15y agoThat's crazy talk.
- redorb 15y agoAgreed I took it as a joke. Honestly I think anyone that you would give the CEO title to at a multi billion dollar company should also be given the trust to pursue the chosen strategy that the board approved. On the other hand, its a huge turn for HP to sell off the leader of a segment and try software.
- mbesto 15y agoIt'll be interesting to see who will pick him up next. He's part of the CEO boys club right? FYI - even though he "resigned" from within SAP in Sept 2010, everyone I've spoken to said he was politely asked to leave.
- chugger 15y agoHP and Yahoo have the worst board ever. Both of these companies should hire a young product-oriented visionary as their next CEO.
- hello_moto 15y agoIf that person is not a technically and socially genius person, he would be eaten alive quickly by politics.
- bauchidgw 15y agoor they should merge into "Hahoo" ... yeah, i know this would solve nothing
- ilovedelphi2 15y agoNo you're right they should merge and they have been planning to for months and after giving $10,000,000 to a marketing firm the board decided on YewPoo.
- jeffool 15y agoNo, but following around board members (or the CEO) would make a FANTASTIC reality show!
- yuhong 15y agoIn particular, they should look in other sources like the startup world.
- siglesias 15y agoI don't get it. Apotheker has already done the damage and realigned the company to his competency, enterprise software. How is firing him going to make things better?
- felipemnoa 15y agoit could get even worse
- jobu 15y agoEnterprise software may be Apotheker's core competency, but I don't think it has been proven this is HP's core competency. Maybe they expected Apotheker to do more in building the enterprise before he started killing HP's consumer business.
- ternaryoperator 15y agoI expect that once they fire him, they'll unravel many of his moves, such as retaining the PC division. WebOS, though, is probably done regardless of what happens at the CEO level.
- chugger 15y agoFormer eBay CEO Meg Whitman Being Considered for HP CEO Job to Replace Apotheker. http://allthingsd.com/20110921/former-ebay-ceo-meg-whitman-being-considered-for-hp-ceo-job-to-replace-apotheker/ http://allthingsd.com/20110921/former-ebay-ceo-meg-whitman-b...
- rbanffy 15y agoThe real question is whether the damage Apotheker did can be undone. I think it can, but the window is closing fast. By the time the engineering talent departs to greener pastures, it will be too late.
- ghshephard 15y agohttp://allthingsd.com/20110919/layoffs-at-hps-palm-division/?mod=huffpost http://allthingsd.com/20110919/layoffs-at-hps-palm-division/...
- rbanffy 15y agoThey can always hire back those who didn't find better employment.
- davidw 15y agoSo - the 80% that did 20% of the work? Maybe not quite that, but... not a great strategy.
- rbanffy 15y agoReally, no. It will take a lot of effort to undo Apotheker's stupid moves, but it's doable.
- 0x12 15y agoThe ones that didn't find better employment are likely not the ones at the top of their game. And seriously, after your employer pulls a stunt like that would you go back?
- rbanffy 15y agoIt depends on what the CEO got. What bothers me is that it doesn't matter how incompetent Apotheker is and how suicidal his decisions at the helm of HP were, he'll leave it with a lot of money. If we reward failure like this, how can we expect people to make the effort needed to succeed?
- georgekv 15y agoSomeone should snap up the PC division pronto ... in order to sell it back to HP at a 300% markup. At this point, I'm sure the board would approve it.
- dr_ 15y agoWhat kind of nonsense is this? It's the board of directors that needs to be dismantled and reorganized. I'm indifferent to HP as a company so it doesn't matter to me what their corporate strategy is. However, if you bring in a new CEO to run your company, how can you fire the guy in less than a year, before that strategy has even been given a chance? He wants to focus on the enterprise software business, and I'm sure thats something he must have told them before he came on board. So then let him do it.
- commandar 15y ago>However, if you bring in a new CEO to run your company, how can you fire the guy in less than a year, before that strategy has even been given a chance? You can do it when the market has clearly responded to the new strategy by absolutely brutalizing your stock price[1], and when investors are in turn suing because the new strategy flies in the face of everything you've been telling them about the company for the past eighteen months. [1] http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1316635200000&chddm=25024&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=NYSE:HPQ&ntsp=0 http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1...
- jbooth 15y agoSure, you can do it but it's just CYA for a mistake of the board's. I mean presumably they discussed this strategy with Apotheker before bringing him on, right? He didn't just go rogue on them? So they approve the plan, bring him on, and then when people don't like it, jettison him as a scapegoat. Which is fine, don't play in the big leagues if you think life's going to be fair. But the board are at fault here.
- chollida1 15y ago> I mean presumably they discussed this strategy with Apotheker before bringing him on, right? He didn't just go rogue on them? Yes this is a certainty. No CEO could make a 10 billion dollar acquisition without board approval.
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- desireco42 15y agoYou can oust them all you want now that he wrecked HP. Who brought him and let him do this should take a blame.
- jmount 15y agoF'ing pick Bartz.
- Raphael 15y agoThat would be quite the promotion.