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

As someone who worked in the HP company during the Carly, Mark, Leo and Meg eras, I’ve heard some old timers say much better things about the company.

Even when I started, The HP Way was known and alive at least in some pockets of the company. It was what inspired many to give our best despite the changing environment.

After Carly, things only got worse with Mark Hurd. Cutting costs was the one and only trick he knew.

Now the company remains a tiny piece of its former self, having been split and sold to others in pieces.

Any company that looks up to and wants to emulate The HP Way would be good to be employed in.