
HP CEO: We’re screwed (for the next few years) - zoowar
http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/10/hp-ceo-were-screwed-for-the-next-few-years/
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terhechte
Nothing new there. Good to hear that top level finally sobered up. I've worked
at HP from 2005-2006 (roughly) as an extern, and was always fascinated by its
lack of a main corporate agenda, lest a vision. Remember, back then, they even
used to sell HP branded iPods (by means of a strange deal with Apple that I'll
never really understand) (<http://www.fscklog.com/hpipodback.JPG>).

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systems
And the sad part is we all know what the problem is, because its always the
same problem (more or less) everywhere

Put Designers and Thinkers on top ... not project managers and follow uppers

Those who get promoted and run large organization are almost always not the
smart designer thinker type, but the project manager, follow upper with a good
spirit and cute time management skills

Apple also recently picked a project manager on top, lets see if i will be
proven right AAPL close today at 666.8 (cute number) I think it will go back
to 30 USD in half the time it took it to go up from there (AAPL was selling
for 30 USD in 2004)

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PommeDeTerre
If you put only designers in charge of any kind of a project or organization,
you just end up with a different kind of disaster. Look at GNOME 3, for
instance. It was a design-led initiative. It failed to produce usable
software, it failed to attract any new users, and it actually managed to drive
away an absolutely huge number of existing GNOME users. As it stands, it is
one of the worst OSS disasters we've seen yet.

You need a balanced team. That's the only way to truly succeed.

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flatline3
Anecdotally, gnome 3 attracted me. I now run a Ubuntu system, but I haven't
switched my main desktop to Ubuntu because Mac OS X is still better (for me).

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nekojima
"it's been over 7 years since we've had a new lineup of multifunction
printers,"

I have one of those 7 year old MFPs and it has worked great, but HP has kindly
sent me a new replacement printer because of a cartridge issue I've had in the
last few months. The new printer is three "generations" newer, looks great,
has a few new features, but has significant operating flaws like paper jams
and crashing my brand new (2 week old) laptop and a year old desktop.

Already spent three hours on the phone with HP tech support with the new
printer, after five plus hours on the phone with the old printer, and really
learning how much they need to either be retrained (or trained to begin with,
why do I have to explain what duplex means) or re-shore them to North America.
Already been escalated, now waiting for a local case manager to call back. But
I know that means sending me a new printer, instead of trying to fix this
unit, because they don't do tech support here.

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ShabbyDoo
I have a HP LaserJet 4100 series at home which I bought several years ago on
eBay for < $200. It's amazingly reliable and cheap to print with due to an
abundance of 3rd party toner cartridges -- not that it matters much when we
average perhaps a couple hundred pages a month in usage. Perhaps this device
is so old that it emerged from HP's old school engineering culture?

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JamesLeonis
My dad only recently retired his old HP Laserjet 4 after almost 20 years of
use. I remember using it when his desktop computer was running Windows 3.1.
With a little maintenance that we did ourselves that printer remained a
workhorse for the family for an unthinkable amount of time. I would love to
see HP return to that level of quality.

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philwelch
But then you don't buy another HP printer, which is bad for business. Printers
are the worst market for quality goods; the incentives are all wrong.

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chris_wot
He bought toner cartridges. It's not a zero sum game.

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bduerst
They're fine. HP is probably gearing up for a big bath next year, in which
they can bundle their losses/liabilities from several years in one year, and
then look more profitable in years to come.

I say this because HP has the largest marketshare globally (17.2%), and has
cornered the U.S. government contracts with elitebooks.

A better indicator of how well HP is doing would be their revenue relative to
the industry and relative to the past years. Unlike profits, revenue numbers
are harder to manipulate - and HP revenue is up 11% since 2009.

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zandorg
An ex-graduate of my University came to give a talk in 2003 about his job with
HP, and he seemed unable to tell the difference between revenue and profit!
Hence, HP had a 'profit' of $51 billion rather than a 'revenue' of $51
billion.

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mammalfriend
It must be extremely frustrating to have been an old-time HP engineer or
product designer. To watch the company transition from an innovative
technology company to a gigantic services and ink firm with no breakthrough
products for, well, over a decade now. And to know that inside the walls of
the company HP had early products that weren't too different from the iPhone,
or even 3D printers, but made a conscious decision to do nothing with them and
to effectively stop working on disruptive innovation.

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owenfi
Looks like she opened the first envelope:
[http://www.mondaynote.com/2010/05/30/ballmer-just-opened-
the...](http://www.mondaynote.com/2010/05/30/ballmer-just-opened-the-second-
envelope/)

(Not saying her statements are incorrect, though.)

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ChuckMcM
I'm always fascinated by these sorts of reboot things. Many people have
experienced 'The Purge' where a new CEO is brought in and the 'old guard' is
moved out of the way and the 'new guard' is brought into replace it. Its human
nature I think to change leadership that way. But its fraught with peril. In
particular its dangerous if you do it several times then after a few purges
you don't have enough people who have the skills to lead to pick from.

To pick an example from recent memory, look at Apple during its great
withering. Sculley -> Spindler -> Amelio -> Jobs. Looking at how Jobs re-
created that company from the inside out was fascinating.

I don't know if Meg Whitman can accomplish that much but she has the basic
resource. HP's expertise is wide and deep. I wish her luck.

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WiseWeasel
Jobs had the benefit of a relatively huge amount of credibility with the rank-
and-file employees and management, of a very compelling vision to execute on
(the transition to OS X and then post-PC computing), and the focus to bring it
to fruition.

It's not clear whether Meg Whitman shares any of those benefits, nor if the
desperation of her company's board is to the point that they might give her
the level of leeway afforded Jobs at the time.

~~~
ryanpetrich
Jobs was also able to bring a lot of talent that he was familiar with into
Apple via the NeXT acquisition.

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tsotha
I'm assuming Whitman has a pretty impressive rolodex as well.

But HP doesn't need to swing for the fences like Apple did. They need someone
to create focus. HP has too many product lines, is in too many markets, and
hasn't had a huge amount of cost discipline for a long time. Whitman can fix
HP just by being a competent CEO, assuming she has the support of the board.

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fruchtose
I think HP has major problems, many of which stem from the board of directors.
The fact that the BoD selected Léo Apotheker is one of the biggest indicators
of this. Hiring Meg Whitman will not fix HP if the BoD stays.

~~~
ShabbyDoo
I bet she's a woman who is already too rich and powerful to go down without a
fight. HP needed her much more than she needed HP. I can't imagine that she'd
put up with nonsense given her power -- the ability to walk away and likely
tank the stock. Someone without fuck-you money might stick around and
compromise. However, she must either be doing this to cement her legacy as a
successful CEO or for a massive increase in wealth. Accepting mediocrity
doesn't allow her to achieve either.

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thaumaturgy
From the outside, looking in, HP appears to have tremendous infrastructural
problems that at this point are no longer a matter of "We haven't been using a
compelling customer management or CRM system for years". (I know that wasn't
the only point in the article; still, it seemed like an odd one to have there
at all given what we see of HP.)

HP's printers are ... OK. Not exceptional, not market leaders, but OK. But,
their printer driver and AIO software is _renowned_ in the tech industry for
its awfulness. It is truly, exceptionally terrible. One of the strangest
workstation issues we ever had to diagnose was caused by a messed-up HP
software installation, where the HP drivers for one printer interfered with
the HP drivers for another printer (<http://www.robsheldon.com/puzzlepage>).

HP's had multiple consumer laptop lines with a stupid overheating issue which
consistently cooks the graphics chip almost exactly 14 months after purchase,
due not to a manufacturing defect but a _design_ flaw. (A thermal pad is being
used in a space which is too large for a thermal pad -- there are seriously
guys on eBay making decent side money selling copper shims for these things.)

We recently had an HP AIO workstation in the shop with a bad BIOS. The chip
seemed fine, but the BIOS software had become corrupted ( _possibly_ due to a
virus attempting to re-flash BIOS, although I haven't heard of that actually
being tried in quite a while). On a Dell system, this is an easy problem to
fix: we go to Dell's services & support page, enter the service tag number of
the system, hit drivers & downloads, select the BIOS flashing utility,
download and run and done. HP? Not on their website, and their technical
support -- while sympathetic -- couldn't help either. They literally had no
BIOS flashing utility for that model. Our customer, a student, was out several
hundred dollars on an otherwise fine computer because of that.

We've been making a point of warning our clients _away_ from HP for years
because this kind of crap just keeps happening over and over and over. They'll
call us asking for a recommendation on a new system, we'll give them some
specific options, and if it sounds like they want to go shopping, literally
we'll say, "Just don't buy an HP, whatever you do."

What a shame. HP used to have a well-deserved sterling reputation. I have no
idea what their enterprise business looks like, but it's hard for me to
imagine a consumer line being that through-and-through screwed up without also
corrupting the enterprise side.

I honestly was relieved -- and heard the same from a number of other support-
level companies -- when scuttlebutt had it that HP was going to get out of the
consumer market. I think they should have stuck with that plan, scrapped their
PC business entirely, gotten the rest of their higher-profit-margin business
back in order, and then a few years later re-launched their PC business when
they could do it right and without all of the added baggage of a stinky
reputation.

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rdtsc
> —with a full rebound not in sight until 2016.

They obviously have more data and information to predict the future, but to me
this sounds like a death march. The general has to tell the troops "We'll Win!
Attack!" while everyone can sort of see the end is near and this is a losing
battle.

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lobster45
The HP Proliant servers are better designed than the HP PowerEdge servers, but
that is about all from HP that I would recommend

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chris_wot
Man, if HP is this screwed, imagine how bad it must be at EMC!

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catshirt
with the lead-in about the debate i was hoping Meg Whitman was referring to
the United States generally and not HP

