Carly Fiorina was about as bad a CEO as is humanly possible. And she basically represents

[DanTex]

a lot of what is wrong with the economy and corporate culture.

She took over HP, one of the great American technology companies, and wrecked it. First, she pissed off the employees by trying to change the culture -- the "HP Way" that placed value on employees -- and made it more corporate. Then she decided to buy Compaq, a deal which even at the time everyone knew was a bad idea, so much so that HP stock tanked when it was announced.

The merger went horribly, and finally she was fired after HP's stock dropped by over 40% during her tenure, significantly worse than the NASDAQ, the S&P, and her major competitors. For this utter failure, she got $21 million dollar golden parachute, plus more in stock and other benefits. Meanwhile, HP's stock price has still not recovered.

Rather than take responsibility for the debacle she presided over, instead she blames the board (which was against the merger, and almost succeeded in preventing her from destroying the company). And she uses laughably false statistics to try and whitewash her leadership. For example, she says she "doubled the size of the company", which is true only in the sense that she bought another huge company, and the size of HP when she left was about equal to the combined sizes of HP and Compaq before the merger, minus of course all the people that had to be laid off because of her incompetence.

And now the GOP wants to put her out there as some savvy businesswoman. It's crazy.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

1. What is to be made of her claim that a board member apologized to her and 'admitted they were...

...wrong to fire her'?

[DanTex]

2. That would be Tom Perkins, who apparently is supporting her campaign now.

He's also the guy who compared progressives "demonizing" the 1% to Nazis. I don't put much weight in his opinions.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304549504579316913982034286

[47of74]

23. He's probably angling for a cushy admin post

Like Michael "Heck of a Job Brownie" Brown.

Fuck him.

[uponit7771]

26. So it was ONE board member and he's on her campaign now... lol

[mcar]

4. I don't believe anything she says

And even if it happened, that's one board member out of how many?

[DanTex]

5. The board member is Tom Perkins, the same guy who compared progressives to Nazis,

who are "persecuting" the 1% the way Nazis persecuted Jews.

[mcar]

6. Well there we go then

A wonderful representative for her campaign.

[Aerows]

11. I don't think anybody can say

with a straight face, unless they are getting paid a hefty sum, that is, that she was anywhere even approaching competence at HP/Compaq.

She seems to have the reverse Midas Touch - anything she touches turns from gold to shit.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

17. And it's not like plenty of "Board Members" aren't complete idiots.

Seems to me sitting on boards of directors was GWB's line of "work" for a while until even his Daddy & co. couldn't find any more takers.

[Quackers]

20. She was the best damn CEO ever! She lead the way for HP to become a global leader!

You're right! No one can say that without laughing. I tried!

[smirkymonkey]

28. She must be completely delusional to think that she actually has anything to offer.

Because as far as I can see, she comes with absolutely nothing to recommend her.

[hobbit709]

3. She helped to destroy Lucent too.

[Aerows]

12. Yep.

I wouldn't put her in charge of a elementary school bake sale. The cookies would probably end up poisoned and the school would likely be sued for 7 figures multiple times.

[TreasonousBastard]

7. She was also responsible for some terrible decisions at Lucent, but...

left to run HP before the shit hit the fan.

Essentially, she loaned far too much money to flaky customers to spur excessive Lucent growth-- during a bubble no less. Not only did she finance shoddy startups, but she found a way to lend them other money not destined to buy Lucent stuff. She left to run HP into the ground before Lucent was barely saved by Alcatel.

Please ignore the apparently obligatory Trump mention here-- the meat of the story comes later in the article:

http://fortune.com/2015/09/16/donald-trump-fiorina-lucent/

Lucent, BTW, was what was left of Bell Labs after the AT&T breakup.

[SharonAnn]

19. I held some Lucent stock (originally it was ATT) and lost more than $100K. It went to from 80 to 11

Silly me. My broker told me to sell it before the debacle and I didn't. Lesson learned! BTW, it never came back and was eventually sold to Alcatel for peanuts.

[LittleBlue]

8. She sounds suicidal on foreign policy. She said she wanted to provoke Russia

Fiorina wants to park a carrier group off Russia's shores in the Baltic. Utter madness. She's hell bent on causing a nuclear confrontation.

Carly will take down this country like she took down her companies.

[Jim__]

9. I doubt she'll get the chance to take this country down.

I heard a pundit say this morning that she has no campaign organization. It's all TV. Apparently she runs a campaign about as well as she runs a company.

[moonscape]

21. Hopefully she doesn't become a VP running mate ... n/t

[hamsterjill]

16. I felt that way about her, too.

My thought was that she was trying to sound "tough" because she's a woman, but she almost came across as maniacal.

[cascadiance]

10. Steve Jobs is smiling in his grave on how he suckered her and HP to OEM the Ipod...

... which heavily failed in the marketplace, and destroyed tons of HP efforts on building competitive devices and destroyed HP's relationship with many other third parties that were looking to partner with HP on those devices then too.

Instead Apple just leveraged that surrender that was a stupid personal management decision by Fiorina against the will of a lot of management at HP to build even more of a monopoly for that device for Apple, before the next generation of smart phones came out.

[47of74]

22. Yeah I heard about that.

She wanted it done her way so much and really fucked up in the process.

[angryvet]

13. She frequently states

that she started as Secretary. The inference is that she started a HP as a secretary. Secretary was either her college or grad school job.

[octoberlib]

14. She's a facile liar. I think she's a sociopath.

[nichomachus]

31. You just described most CEOs nt

[Number9Dream]

15. Fiorina forced soon-to-be fired employees to train their outsourced replacements

A 2008 article in Entrepreneur Magazine touched on the employee morale during Fiorina’s reign: "A survey of 8,000 employees revealed widespread unhappiness about poor communication and poorly implemented decisions...Some workers booed the CEO at company meetings.” Even during her run for Senate last year, Sen. Barbara Boxer released a viral ad claiming Fiorina fired thousands and “tripled her salary, bought a million dollar yacht and five corporate jets” as CEO. HP cut her loose and offered a $42 million severance package to never come back. After hearing the news, employees rejoiced and supposedly proclaimed, “The witch is dead.”

[HughBeaumont]

18. "$42 million severance package" . . .

Like, "Good Riddance, that'll show HER!"


Unbelievable. The modern CEOs are a cult of grand larceny. You get multiple lotteries no matter HOW good or bad a job you do.

[SoapBox]

24. ...another delusional PukeBagger.

That lies and lies and lies to the American people.

She can kiss my ass.

[DonCoquixote]

25. Dantex

normally I feud with ye, but this is one time you put a nail on the head.

[passiveporcupine]

27. If I'm not mistaken

HP is laying off more people as we speak. I'm not sure if it's still a result of her management and choices, but has HP recovered at all since dumping her? Or are they just offshoring more?

[smirkymonkey]

29. Another 25 to 30k employees. Sickening.

Most of these people will never find jobs making comparable salaries again. The race to the bottom continues. The thing that kills me is that corporations wonder why people aren't buying their products, why their earnings are down. They don't get the fact that when you decimate the middle class - the people who do most of the spending in this country - you aren't going to continue to generate more and more revenue every year. What don't they get about that basic economic concept?

[nichomachus]

32. No, this is Meg Whitman's doing

When Meg took the job, she took a $1 a year salary, but tens of millions in stock options. The stock options are ready to be exercised. The only way she makes money is if thr stock price goes up. The quickest and easiest way to make the stock price go up is to fire tens of thousands of workers.

[passiveporcupine]

33. Is this what women in business means?

Trying to act like the men? They seem to be just as greedy. Look at the Waltons.

[ThoughtCriminal]

30. To GOP primary voters Rich=Worthy of Worship

In every rational measure of leadership she is obviously greedy and incompetent, yet republican voters are incapable of noticing. But even if they did, consider the other choices. Proven failures, sociopaths, liars, idiots.

Do not try to get in the head of GOP primary voters, it will damage your mind.