Monday, October 13, 2014

HP is dead... now stop molesting the corpse...

So, some of you know... and it's actually in my FB profile, that I'm a former employe of HP.

I've also worked with them extensively for many years as a subcontractor, as a strategic partner, and as a vendor that I had a very close relationship with. I've had a lot of great friends and colleagues in HP, and we've done some very interesting and innovative things together.

Over the past week or so, I've been thinking about what to say about HP's... really Meg Whitmans... plan to split the company in two.

I finally figured out what I have to say... and it's really simple.

The company that Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard built is finally and definitively dead... It's been mostly dead but vainly struggling for breath for several years, and with this final stroke, it's truly gone.

Now that there is no more hope, and the plug is being pulled, the faster we can bury the corpse, and reallocate the assets to something useful and productive, the better.

I'm sorry, I wish I could say something better... I wish the HP I loved working with for many years was still with us, or had any chance at all.

It doesn't, it isn't, and I can't.

Meg Whitman has continued to do what Carly Fiorina started... gut the company one quarter at a time, doing anything to temporarily prop up stock prices (and the executive managements bonuses) at the expense of the company as a whole, it's future business, and its customers.

This was the final cut. There is no more. It's over...