Don't Cry For Me, Palo Alto: Fiorina severance package is 21 million bucks

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6939785/

SAN FRANCISCO - Carly Fiorina’s nearly six-year reign at Hewlett-Packard Co. ended abruptly Wednesday as board members forced her out, disappointed by her inability to transform a plodding technology giant dominated by printer sales into a more nimble innovator.

H-P’s stock, which has gone nowhere for two years and is down two-thirds from its peak in 2000, rose almost 7 percent after earlier soaring almost 11 percent on the news of her ouster.

Board members said they fired the chief executive — perhaps corporate America’s most influential woman — because Fiorina failed to slash costs and boost revenue as quickly as directors had hoped.

“While I regret the board and I have differences about how to execute H-P’s strategy, I respect their decision,” said Fiorina, 50, who is expected to collect a severance package worth $21.1 million.

[Anakin Skywalker]

1. This is the woman who

while defending outsourcing, mocked the American workers, something like you do not have a god given right to work. Doh! How will we poor masses buy your fancy computers then, hmm?

[devilgrrl]

5. Yup, just another Lady against Women!!!

Has anyone ever noticed that conservative women seem to be 10 times more evil then conservative men?

[JHB]

13. No, I haven't noticed THAT...

...just that thanks to various ways of clouding their conservative evil it makes more of an impression when it jumps out in the open and can be clearly seen (so it merely SEEMS 10x more evil).

[tjwash]

8. Actually she said...

..."no American has a right to a steady job"

If there was any justice in the world, this person would someday find themselves broke, and living in the gutter with those words constantly ringing in their ears. Of course, there is no justice in the world, so narcissistic robber barons such as this are free to do whatever they want with little or no consequence.

[egoprofit]

19. yeah instead shes filthy rich... millionaires have it made.

[RubyCat]

22. Did she really say "no American has a right to a steady job"?

Is she the type where if she found out what was being said about her, would she want to ethnically cleanse all of us here at DU?

[denverbill]

2. For Christ sakes. Talk about 'class warfare'.

Jebus H Christ. The woman loses stockholders billions. God knows how many employees lost their jobs, probably 10,000. Did either the shareholders or employees get enough money to let 20 people retire comfortably?

She already made 1000 times more than average employees. She screwed up royally.

If no average employee fucks up and gets fired, he's lucky to get 2 weeks pay. But the honchos that destroy companies get paid MILLIONS for doing a shitting job and getting canned.

It's just pathetic.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

3. That's why she's being so "gracious."

I like to think of myself as a principled person, but I've gotta admit...if HP handed me $21 million, I'd probably "service" them too...just like Carly did today in the mainstream media.

She ruined a lot of people's lives, sent the morale at HP straight into the toilet, and will now be able to live the rest of her life like a queen without having to lift a finger.

Yep, we are living in George W. Bush's America...

:grr:

[Cleita]

4. Could be the product sucks, too?

Could it be that overpriced hardware with inferior software and almost non-existent support couldn't quite compete with let's say Lexmark or Epson? Good riddance to bad rubbish and the bad rubbish peddlers.

[Anakin Skywalker]

6. Inferior Software?

You must be talking about the Micro$uck Operating System known as Windoze! :)

[Cleita]

7. I'm sure that has something to do with it.

I always found Lexmark easier to use for a cyber moron like me than the HP software.

[tjwash]

9. The compaq buyout killed them.

they spent way too much on that overpriced stock, and got zip point squat in return...

[ThorsHammer]

11. Exactly, and it put them in head to head competition with Dell

[tjwash]

14. The thing is, they could have swooped in and kicked Dells ass...

...because of the downhill slide in recent years of Dells customer service. If they would have kept their call centers domestic, and concentrated on increased customer sat in the PC market, they could really have nurtured that buyout into something.

Instead, they just got plain greedy, and outsourced their call centers to India, and sold off the remains of Compaq piece by piece until there was nothing left of the original purchase.

Jeez, greedy people...

[ThorsHammer]

10. I hate these golden parachutes

It's insane that an executive can run a company into the ground, have tons of normal workers lose their jobs, and still get a massive buyout as a 'reward' for their screwups. I consider myself fairly capitalistic, but find this whole thing appalling.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

12. There's still no topping Richard Grasso's 187 million NYSE package

that blew all previous records- even Ovitz at Disney

[ThorsHammer]

15. That pissed me off even more

Even more so when they revealed the 'buddy-buddy' nature of the compensation commitee, and how there was no real oversight. I also didn't like how they made him out to be some grand American hero post 9/11.

[Xithras]

16. She should get $0. She destroyed HP

HP used to spend half it's income, HALF, on pure research. Many of the technological advances in the fields of radio, computing, medicine, and electronics over the past 60+ years have come out of Hewlett Packard and their old "build it and the consumers will come" philosophy. It was also a company that treated its employees extremely well because it recognized that it's innovation depended on their well being.

Then Fiorina showed up. Research was killed because it was "unprofitable". Mainstream product R&D was outsourced offshore because "designing products at the lowest cost" became the companies #1 goal. Product lines that had devout (and well paying) legions of fans were arbitrarily killed off because they didn't fit her vision of where the company should go.

And what was that vision? She turned HP, once one of the greatest TECHNOLOGY companies in the world, into Dell Fucking Computers. HP, a company that once built some of the worlds most powerful computers, some of the worlds best medical equipment, and one of the most revered programmable calculators is history (ack, sorry, my geek slipped out there), was reduced to the lowly realm of building cheap PC's and printers for the masses.

Even the children of the companies founders have attacked her publically for destroying their parents vision and creation. Like far too many modern corporate leaders, her forward thinking was limited to the next quarters P&L statement, and not the long term viability of the company or even the industry she was a part of. She admitted more than once, flat out and with no reservation, that PROFIT was the only reason HP existed, and that building profit was her only goal. It's a shame that her vision was too myopic to see that the "unprofitable" research and engineering divisions were what built HP's global prominence (and profitability) in the first place.

[ThorsHammer]

17. Exactly, great post

[tjwash]

20. It's a microcosm of our country.

Where we once led the world in ingenuity and invention, we have slipped into mediocrity, greed, and a narcissistic "me first" attitude.

I have been wondering if what we are seeing and feeling with our country now, is what the average Roman citizens saw and felt a couple of thousand years ago.

[BiggJawn]

18. Carly, will you marry me?

No, seriously, you're beautiful. The 21 megabucks has NOTHING to do with it! Nothing!
:puke:

[RubyCat]

21. That's one hell of an unemployment benefit.

She was there for only 6 years too. If you were a well-to-do person who made $100,000 a year, and you worked your entire lifetime, you still wouldn't make half of what this bandit made off with for getting fired.