Re: Biting the hand you want to feed you
Message #26 Posted by James M. Prange (Michigan) on 4 Apr 2005, 5:30 p.m.,
in response to message #25 by Wayne Brown
Quote:
I see it primarily as a living memorial to Bill & Dave,
and secondarily as a sort of playground for the engineers in the
HP R&D labs, and everything else (especially profits) comes third.
I expect that most of the current owners (stockholders) see profit
as the primary (or only) reason for the existence of HP.
Unfortunately, most stockholders and directors seem to take a very
short-term view; never mind what shape the corporation will be in
five, ten, or twenty years from now; what will the next quarter's,
or maybe next year's, situation be?
CEOs and other top management types tend to move on to a "new
opportunites" after a relatively short time, so they also tend to
have a short-term outlook. Maximise their salary and bonuses while
they're there, and if the company is facing disaster after they
leave, well, that's someone else's problem, isn't it? I would that
Carly had seen a "better opportunity" at some other corporation.
We wish that Bill & Dave, or someone much like them, were still in
charge at HP, but I expect that most stockholders, if they even
know who Bill & Dave were, regard them as ancient (and mostly
irrelevant) history. What has HP done lately? Is owning HP stock
likely to result in a good (short-term) profit?
As for the engineers, does their playing around produce something
that's likely to produce a good profit in the immediate future? If
not, those in charge are likely to see them as a millstone around
the corporate neck. Hey, the quality assurance department is a
bunch of expensive nay-sayers who don't produce a damn thing;
let's get rid of them too. And who cares about the "factory rats"
who are actually producing something? Let's outsource production
to the lowest bidder. Let's outsource design too; whoever's
willing to work for the lowest cost. As long as the ones who sit
in well-padded chairs behind big desks in nice offices are happy,
that's all that matters, right? And when it looks as if it's all
about to hit the fan, surely there'll be another company to
plunder; time to move on to "another opportunity".
When a company announces a big layoff, I personally see that as a
sign that's something's gone very wrong and it's in trouble, but
note that the stock price commonly goes up with such news.
Yes, I think that spinning off Agilent was ultimately bad for all
concerned; I expect that HP and Agilent would be stronger together
than they are apart. I wish that the calculator part of the
corporation had gone to Agilent, but I can see the logic of
lumping it with computers, printers, and such "office machines".
I wish that HP would sell the calculator division to Agilent. I
expect that there'd be a return to high quality, both design
quality and production quality. (That said, note that earlier
models had their weak points too.) I'm convinced that a line of
high quality calculators could be an important "profit center",
but with HP's recent offerings, it's on the road to being a "loss
center"; from my experience with the 49g+, I'm not likely to be an
"early adopter" of any new "bleeding edge" calculator. "Brand
loyalty" may carry a company for a while, but customers also
remember bad experiences for a very long time. But who knows? With
the change in management, maybe, just maybe, HP might start doing
things right.
As for the new CEO, I know very little about him. I gather that
NCR has done okay under his leadership, and there's certainly
nothing wrong with making a profit. Certainly giving Carly her
walking papers strikes me as the best news from HP that I've heard
in a long time. Will Mark Hurd turn things around and make the "HP
Invent" logo meaningful? I don't know, I just hope for the best.
Regards,
James
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