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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 ord

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.
  - mhomde 11y ago
    Yeah I agree, HP had a very engineer centric culture and history so that must have been hard. I guess the dream of a company is always to find those unicorns that are both Engineer/MBA/Leader/Designers etc. In the end business people can be competent, but people with domain knowledge can be visionary (Scully vs Jobs for example)
- Zombieball 11y ago
  My impression has always been that many MBA folks were engineers to start with. A lot of MBA programs are structured to teach business acumen to folks that didn't take a 4 year business / commerce degree to start with.
  - toyg 11y ago
    > My impression has always been that many MBA folks were engineers to start with. You were very lucky in your meetings with MBAs. > A lot of MBA programs are structured to teach business acumen to folks that didn't take a 4 year business / commerce degree to start with.. Yeah, and in most cases they didn't take a 4 year engineering degree either.
    - Zombieball 11y ago
      So what you are saying is... fine arts major + MBA = recipe for success!
- MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
  I can only speak about the german car industry, and over here, every manufacturer is lead by an engineer. Let that sink in for a minute. Ferdinand Piëch said in his autobiography: "[The leader] must have a technical background, as a development- or production technician. He has to have an integral (not quickly acquired) passion for cars and be able to think ten years ahead. The technical foundation is required in order to develop the necessary phantasy." I think the "develop the necessary phantasy" is the interesting part, as I think this matches Steve Job's approach, too. No engineer could bullshit him, because he knew exactly what was possible. He knew when it was possible to build the iPhone, when the RIM CEOs didn't even believe it when it was revealed to the world.
  - asddubs 11y ago
    I was always under the impression that Steve Jobs did not have much of a technical background
    - MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
      After realizing he could always make a living as a halfway decent engineer while working for Atari, he just chose a different path. Maybe seeing Woz in action helped him make that decision.
DominikR 11y ago
Thanks for this insight, I absolutely agree that diluting the value of stock was a bad move by her. Regarding the first point you made I'm somehow split. The mere act of laying off employees to hire more cheap labor in other countries can in some cases make sense from a business perspective. How you feel about that comes down to the personal value system you have. I think most people would agree that one important task of any business is to benefit the community. (by paying wages, taxes or creating cheaper services and products) The question here is how much benefit to the community is enough. From a purely legal perspective paying taxes and obeying all laws is sufficient. One might also argue that she created jobs oversees where now other communities benefit. For me personally it was wrong to do what she did, as long as it wasn't necessary for the survival of the company, but I also recognise that I can't demand from any business to follow my personal value system in addition to the laws we have.

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.
- mhomde 11y ago
  Yeah I agree, HP had a very engineer centric culture and history so that must have been hard. I guess the dream of a company is always to find those unicorns that are both Engineer/MBA/Leader/Designers etc. In the end business people can be competent, but people with domain knowledge can be visionary (Scully vs Jobs for example)
Zombieball 11y ago
My impression has always been that many MBA folks were engineers to start with. A lot of MBA programs are structured to teach business acumen to folks that didn't take a 4 year business / commerce degree to start with.
- toyg 11y ago
  > My impression has always been that many MBA folks were engineers to start with. You were very lucky in your meetings with MBAs. > A lot of MBA programs are structured to teach business acumen to folks that didn't take a 4 year business / commerce degree to start with.. Yeah, and in most cases they didn't take a 4 year engineering degree either.
  - Zombieball 11y ago
    So what you are saying is... fine arts major + MBA = recipe for success!
MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
I can only speak about the german car industry, and over here, every manufacturer is lead by an engineer. Let that sink in for a minute. Ferdinand Piëch said in his autobiography: "[The leader] must have a technical background, as a development- or production technician. He has to have an integral (not quickly acquired) passion for cars and be able to think ten years ahead. The technical foundation is required in order to develop the necessary phantasy." I think the "develop the necessary phantasy" is the interesting part, as I think this matches Steve Job's approach, too. No engineer could bullshit him, because he knew exactly what was possible. He knew when it was possible to build the iPhone, when the RIM CEOs didn't even believe it when it was revealed to the world.
- asddubs 11y ago
  I was always under the impression that Steve Jobs did not have much of a technical background
  - MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
    After realizing he could always make a living as a halfway decent engineer while working for Atari, he just chose a different path. Maybe seeing Woz in action helped him make that decision.

DominikR 11y ago

Thanks for this insight, I absolutely agree that diluting the value of stock was a bad move by her. Regarding the first point you made I'm somehow split. The mere act of laying off employees to hire more cheap labor in other countries can in some cases make sense from a business perspective. How you feel about that comes down to the personal value system you have. I think most people would agree that one important task of any business is to benefit the community. (by paying wages, taxes or creating cheaper services and products) The question here is how much benefit to the community is enough. From a purely legal perspective paying taxes and obeying all laws is sufficient. One might also argue that she created jobs oversees where now other communities benefit. For me personally it was wrong to do what she did, as long as it wasn't necessary for the survival of the company, but I also recognise that I can't demand from any business to follow my personal value system in addition to the laws we have.