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End of a hatchet woman
Hewlett-Packard's ousted CEO Carly Fiorina destroyed a great company's creative soul and trashed its business.
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By Lawrence M. Fisher
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Feb. 10, 2005 | Carleton S. Fiorina's fall from grace was dramatic, as was most of her career. But don't cry for Carly; her way of doing business remains ascendant, and has already triumphed over that quaint set of humanistic values known as "The HP Way."
I well remember my first meeting with Carly, who from an early date seemed destined to be one of those first-name-only stars like Cher or Madonna. Months before Hewlett-Packard named her its chief executive, the company had invited me and John Markoff, my friend and colleague at the New York Times, to spend a day with the engineers at its legendary research labs. But midway through our morning in nerd nirvana, Carly paid us a "surprise" visit.
She was, of course, charming, well-coiffed and coutured, as nearly every article at the time would mention. And as I watched her perform, amid an awkward group of guys who really were wearing short-sleeved sta-press shirts with pocket protectors, I realized I was seeing the new and old faces of Silicon Valley, up close and personal.
From early in her six-year reign, Carly's mendacity was breathtaking, as she methodically eviscerated HP of everything the company once stood for. Is that too harsh? Recall the "invent" campaign, launched soon after she joined, where she plastered billboards and ads with the image of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard's sainted Palo Alto garage, even as she was slashing the company's research budget and laying off scores of real-life inventors. After all, tinkering with the outer reaches of particle physics may be cool, but it's hardly a bottom-line contributor, not this quarter anyway.