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It is probably the unpopular position but I'd like to point out that it is sometimes needed to lay off employees because otherwise a company wont survive. Some

It is probably the unpopular position but I'd like to point out that it is sometimes needed to lay off employees because otherwise a company wont survive. Sometimes this must be done rather quick. I don't know the exact reasons why she had to lay off 30.000 employees but it would look less like a public smearing if the creator of this page gave us some insight into the details and nature of her decision. I just doubt that she is plain evil and laughing at the pain she has caused with this decision.

deleted 11y ago
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Kurtz79 11y ago
It is unpopular because the average employee being laid off will have had much less influence than a CEO on the reasons that ultimately led to the (necessary) measure, but he/she will be the one facing the consequences. The worst that can happen to unsuccessful CEOs is being replaced (IF the situation does not improve after the layoffs) while netting a generous severance pay. I agree that rationally such backlash it's unreasonable, but humans are not rational beings, especially when perceiving something as unfair.
- disposition2 11y ago
  > The worst that can happen to unsuccessful CEOs is being replaced (IF the situation does not improve after the layoffs) while netting a generous severance pay. And then run for office touting your hugely successful time as CEO, just make sure you have enough money to run enough ads to support this claim rather than the realities that are your failures.
smitherfield 11y ago
I agree that sometimes it is necessary to lay off employees for the good of the company. But Fiorina is widely considered to have been a complete incompetent as CEO, of which the layoffs were a symptom, and she was fired by the board of directors. That's enough for me to consider her with extreme skepticism. I must also say that I'm not impressed with business school-grad tech executives who don't know anything about coding or hardware, especially if they're also proven incompetents.
trcollinson 11y ago
It's a bit hard to answer this on mobile and get all of the links in, but there was quite a bit of controversy around these lay offs. The first was that she ordered the layoffs but reopened the same number of jobs in foreign countries, and in many cases more jobs. The work force of HP actually grew significantly over her tenure, just with cheaper foreign labor. This is in contrast to Meg Whitman who, during my personal tenure at HP, laid off far more employees than Carly. Meg though did not try to add back head count in a cheaper way. She was just reducing the work force, which was needed. When I started HP had 360,000 employees, post Carly. (Disclosure: I was laid off from HP during a Whitman lay off). The other thing which made Carly's lay off controversial was that they changed HPs technical ecosystem pretty significantly. For most of HPs history they had been giving employees significant amounts of equity in the company. When Carly came in there were high ranking technologist with quite a bit of voting ability due to their stock holdings. This put a real cramp on the executives ability to make decisions without those pesky engineers using logic to ruin it. When she first came in, for example, she couldn't get board approval to lay people off. To solve the problem Carly did two things. First she diluted the value of the existing stock by merging with compaq. After that the existing power that the engineers held was diluted enough that she could make the decisions she wanted without as much problem. This is where the quote having to do with laying people off quicker comes from. She really had to work for those lay offs by restructuring a company first. Another often heard comment from her was that a business as big as HP should never be run or managed by engineers... We have MBAs for that. She was not well liked.
- mhomde 11y ago
  Should companies be run or managed by engineers? I'm not sure that's actually a good idea as much as I'm not overly fond of MBA types either. I think it's a faulty generalization either way, companies should be run by competent passionate people.
  - trcollinson 11y ago
    The reason a comment like that particularly stung at HP was that for the first 50+ years HP was rather successfully run by Bill Hewlett (Masters of Electrical Engineering at MIT), and Dave Packard (Masters of Electrical Engineering at Stanford). A lot of the people high up at HP while Carly was CEO remember fond lunches and dinner parties with Dave and Bill, they were quite active in the company. I agree that MBAs aren't a bad thing, and HP had many for a lot of years before Carly. But I would argue that it's exceptionally hard to change a company culture so drastically. And it can he detrimental to the organization as a whole.
jroseattle 11y ago
Fiorina is known for leading the acquisition of Compaq Corp. in 2001 in the largest tech merger in history. In doing so, she would show cost savings by layoffs of a certain chunk of employees. "Cost synergies" was the label. I think the expected number at the time was around 10k. http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?id=230610 http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?id=23061... In the next 4 years, Fiorina would sell off the printing business (which had higher margins) and double-down on the PC business (with lower margins.) Timing as it was, the dot-com bubble burst which affected every hardware maker (since tech companies needed to buy hardware to operate.) She basically made the absolute wrong bets, and as a result many jobs were destroyed. Between HP and Compaq, the collective companies lost more than $13 Billion in shareholder value. Other companies did at that time as well, but HP was by far the worst. When tracing the history of HP performance during Fiorina's tenure as CEO, she is arguably one of the worst who has ever guided a publicly-traded US company. A simple before-and-after of the company's position from the day she took leadership until the day she left is not a pretty picture.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- btoptical 11y ago
  She also spun out the original HP business of test and measurement equipment, chips, transceivers, etc as Agilent (now Keysight). I never ever thought of HP as a computer company. To me HP was oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, network analyzers, and lightwave measurement gear. Spinning Agilent out was shocking to many people at the time.
- Eric_WVGG 11y ago
  Yup. Those who say that the firings were justified are probably correct, but if Fiorina is running for a position where she is expected to “create jobs,” her record at this task should be front and center.
- ianbicking 11y ago
  When she sold off printing and spun out Agilent, what were the results? If they did better on their own then with HP, then that was a smart move, even if "HP" as a company was diminished. If she sold them for cash and invested that poorly, then that was not a smart move.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Kurtz79 11y ago

It is unpopular because the average employee being laid off will have had much less influence than a CEO on the reasons that ultimately led to the (necessary) measure, but he/she will be the one facing the consequences. The worst that can happen to unsuccessful CEOs is being replaced (IF the situation does not improve after the layoffs) while netting a generous severance pay. I agree that rationally such backlash it's unreasonable, but humans are not rational beings, especially when perceiving something as unfair.

disposition2 11y ago
> The worst that can happen to unsuccessful CEOs is being replaced (IF the situation does not improve after the layoffs) while netting a generous severance pay. And then run for office touting your hugely successful time as CEO, just make sure you have enough money to run enough ads to support this claim rather than the realities that are your failures.

smitherfield 11y ago

I agree that sometimes it is necessary to lay off employees for the good of the company. But Fiorina is widely considered to have been a complete incompetent as CEO, of which the layoffs were a symptom, and she was fired by the board of directors. That's enough for me to consider her with extreme skepticism. I must also say that I'm not impressed with business school-grad tech executives who don't know anything about coding or hardware, especially if they're also proven incompetents.

trcollinson 11y ago

It's a bit hard to answer this on mobile and get all of the links in, but there was quite a bit of controversy around these lay offs. The first was that she ordered the layoffs but reopened the same number of jobs in foreign countries, and in many cases more jobs. The work force of HP actually grew significantly over her tenure, just with cheaper foreign labor. This is in contrast to Meg Whitman who, during my personal tenure at HP, laid off far more employees than Carly. Meg though did not try to add back head count in a cheaper way. She was just reducing the work force, which was needed. When I started HP had 360,000 employees, post Carly. (Disclosure: I was laid off from HP during a Whitman lay off). The other thing which made Carly's lay off controversial was that they changed HPs technical ecosystem pretty significantly. For most of HPs history they had been giving employees significant amounts of equity in the company. When Carly came in there were high ranking technologist with quite a bit of voting ability due to their stock holdings. This put a real cramp on the executives ability to make decisions without those pesky engineers using logic to ruin it. When she first came in, for example, she couldn't get board approval to lay people off. To solve the problem Carly did two things. First she diluted the value of the existing stock by merging with compaq. After that the existing power that the engineers held was diluted enough that she could make the decisions she wanted without as much problem. This is where the quote having to do with laying people off quicker comes from. She really had to work for those lay offs by restructuring a company first. Another often heard comment from her was that a business as big as HP should never be run or managed by engineers... We have MBAs for that. She was not well liked.

mhomde 11y ago
Should companies be run or managed by engineers? I'm not sure that's actually a good idea as much as I'm not overly fond of MBA types either. I think it's a faulty generalization either way, companies should be run by competent passionate people.
- trcollinson 11y ago
  The reason a comment like that particularly stung at HP was that for the first 50+ years HP was rather successfully run by Bill Hewlett (Masters of Electrical Engineering at MIT), and Dave Packard (Masters of Electrical Engineering at Stanford). A lot of the people high up at HP while Carly was CEO remember fond lunches and dinner parties with Dave and Bill, they were quite active in the company. I agree that MBAs aren't a bad thing, and HP had many for a lot of years before Carly. But I would argue that it's exceptionally hard to change a company culture so drastically. And it can he detrimental to the organization as a whole.

jroseattle 11y ago

Fiorina is known for leading the acquisition of Compaq Corp. in 2001 in the largest tech merger in history. In doing so, she would show cost savings by layoffs of a certain chunk of employees. "Cost synergies" was the label. I think the expected number at the time was around 10k. http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?id=230610 http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?id=23061... In the next 4 years, Fiorina would sell off the printing business (which had higher margins) and double-down on the PC business (with lower margins.) Timing as it was, the dot-com bubble burst which affected every hardware maker (since tech companies needed to buy hardware to operate.) She basically made the absolute wrong bets, and as a result many jobs were destroyed. Between HP and Compaq, the collective companies lost more than $13 Billion in shareholder value. Other companies did at that time as well, but HP was by far the worst. When tracing the history of HP performance during Fiorina's tenure as CEO, she is arguably one of the worst who has ever guided a publicly-traded US company. A simple before-and-after of the company's position from the day she took leadership until the day she left is not a pretty picture.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
btoptical 11y ago
She also spun out the original HP business of test and measurement equipment, chips, transceivers, etc as Agilent (now Keysight). I never ever thought of HP as a computer company. To me HP was oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, network analyzers, and lightwave measurement gear. Spinning Agilent out was shocking to many people at the time.
Eric_WVGG 11y ago
Yup. Those who say that the firings were justified are probably correct, but if Fiorina is running for a position where she is expected to “create jobs,” her record at this task should be front and center.
ianbicking 11y ago
When she sold off printing and spun out Agilent, what were the results? If they did better on their own then with HP, then that was a smart move, even if "HP" as a company was diminished. If she sold them for cash and invested that poorly, then that was not a smart move.