
Why HP Fell - robin_reala
https://mondaynote.com/50-years-in-tech-part-2-why-hp-fell-621c42238479
======
PaulHoule
All of the big computer manufacturers in the 1970s faced challenges in the
transition from minicomputers to microcomputers. Probably Digital Equipment
Corporation was the saddest case.

A review circa 1980 of minicomputer development at DEC indicated their belief
(probably shared by many in the industry) that there was not going to be room
for such a diversity of architectures as there were in the minicomputer age
and the 1980s would wind up like they did, dominated by a few chips like the
6502, Z80 and 8086.

As it was the 1980s were a minefield. With hindsight one could imagine that
DEC could have come out with a 32-bit microVAX-based PC circa 1985. (With
hindsight I don't think anybody thought that it would take another 10 years
for 32-bit OS to be mainstreamed) I'm sure they thought about that, but it was
certain that such a product would have taken a bit out of the existing VAX
business and not certain that it would have caught on.

That doesn't excuse Carly Fiorina for the later problems at HP. Remember that
Carly Fiorina was involved with fraudulent accounting at Lucent in 1999,
personally I lost a few thousand bucks overnight when Lucent restated its
earnings in 2000. Thanks to Carly, a proud American innovator (the former Bell
Labs) got bought by a European bastion of stagnation.

If justice worked for the elite, Carly would have done time in prison and
certainly wouldn't get put in charge of another company, but unfortunately
there is no justice, and she got a chance to run another American innovator
into the ground. At least she demonstrated how tone deaf Republicans can be by
thinking her experience qualified her to run for president.

~~~
clutchdude
>got bought by a European bastion of stagnation

Which then got bought by Nokia, a Nordic bastion of...something.

~~~
romwell
Bastion of sisu[1], it seems, given the perseverance of the people in the
mobile division and their success at resurrecting the brand at HMD Global.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisu)

~~~
Fnoord
HMD Global, sure, don't forget Jolla though [1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolla](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolla)

------
reacweb
At school (1991-1994), we had HP and Sun workstations. The HP were nicknamed
the toasters because they were hot. The Sun were beautiful beasts. After power
failure, we regularly had problems with Sun, never with HP. When we were
downloading games from the net, it was easy to compile them on Sun, but was
always a nighmare on HP (non standard includes, libraries, ...). I think HP is
excellent about hardware, but terrible for software. I often see the similar
problem for car makers: good cars but with a terrible computer.

~~~
pvg
_it was easy to compile them on Sun_

The Sun machines were much more common and a lot of software was tested/built
on SunOS.

~~~
rrauenza
In the 90's and early 2000's Sun machines were pretty much the default for
developing new software during the dot com boom. I was told this was due
partly because Sun sold a lot of hardware on credit (and then this crashed
when the dot com boom crashed.)

I worked at HP during this time helping software vendors port to HP-UX. I also
spent some time on the side compiling open source projects for fun on HP-UX
and then pushing the required patches back to the project's owner.

Anyone remember Pointcast?!
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PointCast_(dotcom)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PointCast_\(dotcom\))

I was assigned to them briefly.

~~~
tptacek
In the 90's and 2000s, Sun machines might have been a kind of default for
_deploying_ new software, but they certainly weren't the default for
developing it. By 1998, you'd be getting a much better machine from Intel than
you could get even in the same ballpark cost as from Sun. If you did work on a
Sun workstation, you probably did it grudgingly (except that they had a really
good C++ compiler for the time).

~~~
rrauenza
The companies I worked with primarily developed on the systems customers used.
You really want to see the issues on your tier1 platform as you develop. Linux
was not tier1 at that time.

This meant that code written on Sun that performed well performed poorly on
HP-UX occasionally -- not because HP-UX was a worse platform, but because
corner cases in architecture could bite you. On your tier1 development
platform you tend to weed those issues out early.

------
dec0dedab0de
I dont know about HP before the late 90s, but I have been working in some form
of tech for 15 years now, and I have developed an aversion to any HP product.
Seeing that logo fills me with dread and anxiety. Early on it was dealing with
printer drivers, and explaining to users that you don't need the full install
to use the device. Then it was painfully navigating HPSM. Then test driving
the HP Stackable Switches which we bricked on the first attempt to update. Now
it's HPNA, which I fear I'm going to be forced by management to port a bunch
of scripts to.

I have known many other people in all levels of IT that have felt the same
way.

~~~
sk5t
You'd have to go back to the early-mid 90s for bulletproof printers that never
complained and did not require (or even encourage) installation of horrible
software. HP also made good oscilloscopes, gas chromatographs, and the like,
but of course those weren't shiny enough to keep on making.

~~~
technobabble
Technically the HP division for oscilloscopes and ee equipment still lives on
via Siglent/Agilent/whatever name they're calling it now.

Does anybody know why their test instruments division was spun off in the
90's? Was it to cut down on bureaucracy, or to "reinvent" the company for the
digital age, or something else?

~~~
reportingsjr
Siglent is a Chinese test equipment company.

Agilent is HP's life science division (test equipment for biology folks) and
the electronic test equipment division is now called keysight.

As far as I'm aware these two were spun out since the growth wasn't as good as
the consumer electronics division.

~~~
tannhaeuser
Or to save the crown jewels from going under with HP the IT conglomerate. I
guess a mature IT and consumer mass market requires different corporate
structure, scale, and growth compared to ee and chem lab equipment.

------
mattkevan
I never understood HP's acquisition and rapid scuttling of Palm. What a waste.

The Touchpad was only on the market for just over a month before being
discontinued. Why do that?

WebOS had a lot of potential as a platform, to the extent that both Google and
Apple subsequently borrowed major chunks of the UI.

~~~
repolfx
They borrowed more than the UI. Google hired one of the chief designers of
WebOS to become the chief UI designer of Android (Matthias Duarte).

~~~
johnvanommen
When I worked in engineering at T-Mobile, the Danger Hiptop was the device
that all the engineers loved. At the time, Duarte worked for Danger.

He left Danger to go work for Helio, then Helio was acquired. He left Helio to
go work for Palm, and then Palm was acquired.

Oddly enough, the team that wound up doing the OS for the iPod was in the mix
during this timespan also. They pitched a product to T-Mobile, but T-Mobile
wound up going with a competitor. So Pixo wound up selling their wares to
Apple, and the rest is history.

Source: I am a former employee of T-Mobile, HP and HPE.

~~~
apricot
> Danger Hiptop

(wistful sigh)

~~~
johnvanommen
It was a magical time. I wish I'd taken more pictures. I had no idea that
these guys would go on to create Android and kinda change the world.

At the time, I honestly thought it was all a bit silly TBH! "Why would I want
to take a picture with my phone when I have a perfectly good camera?"

"Why does Paris Hilton have her pictures stored on OUR servers, doesn't she
know that's a security risk?"

Fun fact - all those pics, from all the customers, were stored completely
unencrypted. They were uuencoded for some reason, but if someone wanted to,
they could've hoovered up every last file.

I was working the day that Paris Hilton had her account hacked, that was not a
fun day. It was looking like some heads would roll, and then it turned out the
hackers exploited her account by simply guessing her password. The initial
fear was that someone had penetrated the network.

------
kristianc
Gassée's problem is that he sees everything through an Apple-tinted lens.
There's almost no subject that he can't turn back to his comfort zone of
talking about Apple.

Here we're promised an alternative account of why the conventional story of HP
mismanagement is false, and end up with a lot of handwaving and 'Apple
starting' as an inevitable explanation for HP's decline, despite Apple nearly
going bankrupt in the intervening period.

~~~
astrodust
If Apple had never gotten out of the embarrassment that was the _Performa Era_
with a multitude of largely similar but wildly different priced computers,
Apple would have gone the way of HP and divested itself of different business
units until nothing of value was left.

Instead Apple focused, got its shit together, and did something important. HP
could have done the same, knuckled down and fixed the fundamental problems
with their company, but instead they decided to throw away all their babies
and drink the bathwater.

The problem is not that Gassee sees everything through the Apple lens, but
that very few companies have been like Apple and maintained focus. Tech
companies, ironically, often fail from their wild success: MySpace and Yahoo!
being two notable examples.

Once they have all this money they start to do lots of stupid shit and
ultimately lose their way.

Microsoft was on track to do this, but they seem to have sobered up. Facebook,
on the other hand, will probably fail if they can't regroup and rethink their
purpose. One day some telecom will buy Facebook with pocket change and we'll
all go "Yeah, well, saw that coming."

~~~
vxNsr
_with a multitude of largely similar but wildly different priced computers_

As an aside, they seem to be headed back in this direction once again, with
what appears to be 5 different-but-essentially-the-same phones coming out on
the market this september.

And a whole bunch of wildly priced desktops and laptops that don't seem to
consider anything but the bottom line.

~~~
astrodust
That's the trap. If they want to succeed they have to accommodate a wider
range of use-cases but not without complicating the product line-up.

The problem is that phones are a way bigger deal than computers. If they made
but one laptop model it'd be ridiculous. Having one or two phones isn't a big
deal. Twenty or, like Samsung in its heyday, two hundred is a problem.

------
throw2016
It would be tempting to blame Carly Fiorina and she exemplifies the cult of
CEO, short term thinking, no solutions beyond wall street focused cost
cutting, financial engineering and layoffs, no accountability and exiting with
golden parachutes with no damage to their finances or reputation. This while
the company loses long term viability, sheds talent, focus, and burns,

Robert Nardelli, former Homedepot CEO is also a similar instance of CEOs
making bad decisions with little push back and accountability and exiting with
reputation and big bucks. Neoliberalism and a fawning media and 'economists'
propping up whatever narratives vested interests push has to shoulder the
blame.

No company can survive short termism and a string of wall street focused CEOs.
HPs decline hastened under her 'reign'. They folded from hardware, were
content to sit on printer revenues and DRM and focus on 'services'. None of
these have scope for innovation.

------
throwawayhp
As someone who was with HP since before the Compaq merger, and having drifted
to a spin off, I do miss the old company. The “HP Way” was given importance at
least in many of the groups I worked in. The rules of the garage [1], open
door policy, skip level meetings, etc., were known even to new employees.

The culture fostered by the managers of those times (later displaced and
kicked out steadily after the Compaq merger and the disastrous EDS
acquisition) was what kept people around while the CEOs were busy burning the
company down. That culture is still intact in some small pockets.

Top management since the times of Carly, Mark (a one trick person who couldn’t
do anything other than cut costs by selling and cutting everything), Leo and
then Meg were mostly clueless on running such a large company that had the
capability to create integrated solutions — HP had PCs, laptops, printers,
printing solutions, PDAs, phones (briefly), tablets (briefly), software,
services, security tools, networking devices, storage devices, servers with
PA-RISC/Itanium running HP-UX to servers with x86 running Windows/Linux)...I’m
sure I’m missing many more product areas of HP since Carly’s time and later.

I still dream that HP could do better as one company with many products in
different areas. But management styles that worship Wall Street and look only
at their bonuses can’t handle that.

[1]:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_the_garage](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_the_garage)

------
ahartmetz
The story does not seem very convincing to me. The split between lab
instruments and computers - may actually help fix the next problem. The
disregard of consumer products - partially fixed later when they managed to
sell large numbers of printers and not only business laptops.

So maybe the big problems did start around Fiorina's time after all.

~~~
flyinghamster
Also, past the LaserJet 5, their printers started taking a nosedive in
quality. In my own experience at work, the 1000 didn't last long before it
started spewing toner all over the page, and the 4550N, a gigantic color laser
with extremely expensive consumables, did likewise.

Don't get me started on their inkjets. Nothing like an all-in-one that won't
even let you SCAN when it decides to "expire" a costly printhead.

My policy regarding HP printers: "Never again."

~~~
Scarblac
What's a brand of printer that _doesn 't_ sell the printer at a loss and then
has you pay through the nose for tiny cartridges of ink? I made the mistake of
buying a Canon once and now I'm looking for a new printer.

~~~
opencl
If you don't do a lot of photo printing I'd highly recommend getting a laser
printer. Far more reliable than inkjets, never dry out, and the toner is
cheap. I got an $80 black and white Brother nearly a decade ago and it still
works fine. These days you can get color laser machines under $200 and the
toner remains far cheaper than ink cartridges.

The other way to avoid paying through the nose for tiny ink cartridges is to
get a printer with refillable ink, i.e. Epson's EcoTank branded models or one
of the many third party refillable cartridge solutions. But these always end
up drying out and clogging if they're not used frequently enough.

~~~
ams6110
I second the laser printer for people who only print occasionally. I have a
cheap Samsung ML-1710 laser printer. Bought it for under $100. Unfortunately
neither Apple nor Foomatic include drivers for it any longer so it's become a
doorstop. If anyone knows where to find a working driver from a reputable
source I'd love to know.

Edit: Apparently splix driver works for this one.

[https://www.openprinting.org/driver/splix](https://www.openprinting.org/driver/splix)

I swear the ML-1710 model did not show up last time I checked the printer
list. Maybe I just missed it.

~~~
mpol
Samsung gives out drivers for download. A simple search found it:

[https://driver-samsung.com/samsung-printer-ml-1710-drivers/](https://driver-
samsung.com/samsung-printer-ml-1710-drivers/)

I own a ML-1660 for now 7 years and the drivers still work fine for me. Just
no duplex printing, which is a shame.

~~~
ams6110
Yes but the drivers they have don't work on current MacOS. Mac OS X (Tiger)
v10.4 is the latest.

~~~
secabeen
Interestingly, this is to some degree an Apple problem. Microsoft has no
problem supporting printer drivers from Windows 7 (or before) in Windows 10,
or Windows XP drivers in Windows 7. It's so very Apple to regularly throw out
history.

------
erikb
I'm working in a company that is exactly in this same position, that HP was in
apparently around the 80s. The thing is that these big companies one or two
generations after the founders are mostly staffed with people who know nothing
else. They did their university internships in this company, they wrote their
final thesis in this company, and now they work in this company. Of course
that makes them super loyal, but that fact also makes it impossible for them
to see that the company as a whole is currently colliding with an iceberg. I
mean, it will probably still exist in 50 years and make a lot of money. I even
own stock in my company because I believe it's strong. But it's quite unlikely
that 10-20 years down the road it will still be the powerhouse it is now. The
market is not continuing as it used to, but the company can hardly turn its
course. People are not even recognizing that fact and confidently continue on
the same path that worked for their mentors in their corresponding youth.

~~~
technobabble
Based on your perspective, what can the company do to either prevent hitting
the iceberg, or minimizing the iceberg damage as much as possible?

~~~
erikb
I don't think there is anything that can be done, honestly. There are reasons
for the current way of decision making: keeping the people in power who have
been in power since the beginning. If the way of work changes, then also the
leadership will change. And the current leadership isn't that fond of such
ideas.

I'll keep an eye on how well behemots like Microsoft or Saudi Arabia can
really change under new leadership and build my hope on what I'm seeing there.

------
bsder
As much maligned as COMPAQ's acquisition of DEC was, you have to remember that
DEC's enterprise side was still printing cash to the tune of something like a
billion dollars a year.

Intel, for example, ran _every single fab line_ on VMS at the time. There were
other customers with similar requirements and monetary outlays when they
needed something _reliable_.

Considering this, you have a business that you can simply milk for cash profit
for 10-20 years as it slowly winds down.

The fact that HP couldn't figure this out is a _gigantic_ failure of
management at the board and CEO level.

------
babypuncher
My HP Zbook at work is the worst laptop I've ever used.

Most of the time, telling it to shut down doesn't do anything except kick you
back to the login screen (seems like a bug with ACPI, not Windows).

Behavior with the Thunderbolt dock is abysmal. Simply plugging it in does not
work. In order to get my monitors and peripherals working through the dock
consistently, I have to boot the machine while disconnected, log in to
Windows, put the machine to sleep, connect the dock, then power it back on
using the power button on the dock.

The fans run loud enough wile idling that I have to keep this thing tucked
under my desk so that it's not blasting in my left ear.

HP didn't fall because of bad luck, or failing to adapt to a changing market.
HP fell because they make worthless crap.

------
Annatar
Perhaps HP’s biggest sin is how they ditched their super-cool, PA-RISC high
quality workstations and servers, how they charged premiums for the hardware
and the software, how one couldn’t get HP-UX, its compilers or even the
mirroring software unless one was an approved HP “strategic partner”... while
a busted-ass, barely good enough, cheap, intel-based PC tin bucket was eating
their lunch.

~~~
acdha
The interesting thing is that a single executive had a large share in killing
both HP and SGI as major players. Richard Belluzzo was the guy who decided
that HP should switch from HP UX on PA-RISC to Windows NT on Itanium, and then
moved to SGI to preside over the decision to turn SGI into a Windows reseller
and gave the SGI 3D graphics team — which at the time had a legendary
reputation — to nVidia along with their patent portfolio.

~~~
johnvanommen
WOW. I did not know this. And now NVidia is far more than a "gaming" company.

~~~
acdha
Yeah, there's a really interesting alternative history of computing where
SGI's management was anywhere near the same caliber as their engineering.

~~~
Annatar
SGI engineers designed and implemented mind-blowing stuff: inst(1M) software
management subsystem is still lightyears ahead of any other, even today, and
how long has IRIX been out of production?

Unbelievably mind blowing engineers.

------
poulsbohemian
The Mercury and other software acquisitions were so poorly handled. There was
solid software there, plenty of good engineers and consultants, but R&D was
underfunded. Sales turned into a revolving door, customer support had no
training, and partners (who actually understood the products, customers, and
had the expertise) were mistrusted. Sad all the way around.

------
corerius
It seems simple enough to me.

Over time, these hardware companies grow or die. Their products have to get
cheaper, hopefully due to economy of scale. Company management never wants to
kill the old products with new ones, plus it's pretty hard to guess exactly
where to go.

Everyone eventually falls off the treadmill.

Years later, of course, management has amazing 20/20 hindsight.

------
johnvanommen
I've worked for successful software start ups, and I've worked for Hewlett
Packard.

Here's what I noticed:

In the startup that I worked for (BladeLogic), we started small and we grew
organically. Many of our early customers were very small, but eventually we
grew big enough to sell thousands of licenses to companies like Target and
Bank of America.

By growing organically, it gave us an opportunity to improve the software
without 'sinking the ship.'

IE, if you sell fifty thousand licenses to a company like Target, you better
have your software sorted out before they sign the contract.

At Hewlett Packard, we didn't start small at all. From day one, we were doing
huge deals, and selling software that was just months old. If I had it my way,
I would've started off slowly, worked out the bugs, and then followed with a
wide release to the big customers.

~~~
Someguywhatever
I've seen the same thing. Here is my take on it:

Everybody at [Big Software Co] knows the software is buggy and bad, but the
client doesn't, [Big Software Co] just hopes it works well enough that the
client doesn't reject it outright or refuse to pay.

While [Big Software Co] works out the kinks in it's software at the clients
expense it blames the failures on implementation problems user error or
whatever it can to keep money coming in while it fixes the software. [Big
Software Co] hopes that the client eventually sinks so much money into the
software that they can't leave and also X months into the deployment it works
just well enough to keep them on the hook.

This pattern repeats over and over and over again in almost every industry.
You see this same type of thing in construction too, where [Big Construction
Co] deliberately underbids to get the contract, then runs up the cost WAY
beyond what anybody expected over time, the municipality, or whomever
contracted with them can't leave as they've already sunk so much money into
[Big construction project] that they can't cancel and have nothing to show for
it.

This is almost SOP for every giant company in every industry anywhere, often
times these companies are so big that the left hand doesn't even know what the
right hand is doing so to speak, as the two are separated by so many internal
layers / business units or whatever.

The only reason people get into bed with these giant companies is that whoever
is signing the cheques on the buy side irrationally feels that [Big Software
Co] can actually deliver _because_ they are so big.

------
danans
A current anecdote that somewhat echoes the article:

My wife has an HP Chromebook. She loves it.

She has no idea that it's made by HP. If I told her she would probably forget.

Now she wants to replace it with a newer, high end Chromebook. It might be an
HP, or it might not, but either way she doesn't care.

------
tonyedgecombe
I was always surprised they let Microsoft come in and commoditise their
business, why wasn't there an HP operating system to compete with Windows?

~~~
yardie
There was WebOS. Which I felt was really ahead of its time. But an OS takes
time to develop because of the chicken and egg problem. Once Hurd was fired it
no longer had C-level interest. They sold it to Samsung, who renamed it Tizen.
The UX designer went to Android. And the engineers were scattered across the
mobile ecosystem.

~~~
maxsilver
I agree that WebOS was great and ahead of it's time, and agree with almost all
of the above.

But just for clarity: HP sold webOS to LG (not Samsung), and it (mostly) kept
it's webOS name through various aquisitions and rebrandings. See
[http://www.lg.com/us/experience-tvs/smart-tv-
features](http://www.lg.com/us/experience-tvs/smart-tv-features) and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebOS#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebOS#History)

Samsung's Tizen is it's own thing -- not some acquisition or rebranding of
webOS.

~~~
yardie
Wow it didn’t realize that and you are correct. Was using a SmartTV and the
interface felt awefully close to WebOS that I thought it was a derivative.

------
paulcarroty
Love their business laptops, good and reliable machines.

~~~
linker3000
As well as a live fleet of about 30 units, we have about 5 HP Probooks at work
in different states of dismantlement; they fell apart or broke in various
mechanical ways and are cannibalised to sustain the working ones. In my
previous role we were a Dell shop and the XPS laptops were much more reliable
by comparison.

~~~
patrickg_zill
They've been building laptops with failure prone fans since I bought one with
Windows ME on it 15-16 years ago. Other manufacturers don't seem to have this
problem.

------
mdellavo
Along with board and ceo problems, the they were fighting a battle on two
fronts for computer sales. The kush high end server market was undercut by the
rise of linux while they floundered with Intel on IA64. All the other
proprietary unixes fell in this time too. Meanwhile Dell was undercutting them
for consumer PC sales.

------
mark-r
My introduction to programming was around 1973, with a Teletype connected via
modem to an HP 2000C minicomputer. I've always had a soft spot for HP.

------
madengr
Typing this on a new HP EliteDesk (corporate shitbox) that came with a frigg'n
chiclet keyboard. Yes a POS chiclet keyboard, with stickey keys, that probably
cost $1 to manufacture. This is how far HP has sunk.

Fortunately my Unicomp keyboard will be here soon.

------
anthonybsd
I remember shortly after Compaq disaster, Carly Fiorina pioneered this
initiative called "Adaptive Enterprise". She went on CNET to do an interview
about it. The interviewer kept asking her to explain what "Adaptive
Enterprise" meant and she danced around the question talking about synergies
and such. That's when a lightbulb went up in my head "This woman is a Category
5 moron".

~~~
selimthegrim
Her first husband said the only book she ever read was “Dress for Success”

~~~
skrebbel
So? Is reading books the only way to grow?

~~~
tabtab
Not reading is certainly a yellow alert in my book (pun semi-intended). If not
books, at least trade magazines & publications.

------
amelius
Does anyone know how to make the annoyingly large Medium top-bar, and "open in
app" button (hovering over the article) on mobile go away without installing
anything?

Edit: found one solution:
[https://outline.com/SV3V7N](https://outline.com/SV3V7N)

~~~
martinpw
Reader view in Firefox cleans up the Medium cruft nicely on mobile.

~~~
masklinn
Likewise Safari's (mobile or not).

