Under Carly Fiorina, HP employees....

[Joes Place]

.... used soy-sauce-dispensing chopsticks to game the system

While Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina was CEO of Hewlett-Packard, the company's employees manipulated a system designed to reward engineers for good ideas — and made out like bandits, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The way the system worked was simple. If you had a good idea for a potential HP product, you had to submit it to another employee.
If that other employee signed off that it was indeed a good idea, you got a $100 bonus.
In the early 2000s, HP was moving away from building business software and toward building consumer hardware, like portable music players and digital cameras. This left a lot of bored software engineers with nothing better to do than come up with good ideas for this contest.
One former HP employee, Peter Hagelund, told The Journal that his division spent months in 2002 doing nothing but signing off on hundreds of one another's wacky ideas — including a design for chopsticks that also dispense soy sauce.
Those employees ended up pooling their $100 earnings and splitting them evenly. Hagelund said that with his proceeds, he was able to buy a red Jeep Liberty. After his stint at HP, Hagelund left for IBM, which was a very different culture.
"If I had put forward the chopsticks idea at IBM, they would have laughed at me or walked me out the door,” Hagelund told The Journal.
Add this up with a recent report that Apple cofounder Steve Jobs apparently fleeced Fiorina with a one-sided deal for HP to resell iPods, and it suggests the company was at least in some ways easy to manipulate under her leadership.
​

'President Fiorina'.....Yikes!!

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/under-carly-fiorina-hp-employees-162312955.html

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

Now we know why her first call will be to Netanyahu. She'll be calling so he can tell her what to do. Apparently someone needs to.

 

[sijoint]

.... used soy-sauce-dispensing chopsticks to game the system

While Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina was CEO of Hewlett-Packard, the company's employees manipulated a system designed to reward engineers for good ideas — and made out like bandits, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The way the system worked was simple. If you had a good idea for a potential HP product, you had to submit it to another employee.
If that other employee signed off that it was indeed a good idea, you got a $100 bonus.
In the early 2000s, HP was moving away from building business software and toward building consumer hardware, like portable music players and digital cameras. This left a lot of bored software engineers with nothing better to do than come up with good ideas for this contest.
One former HP employee, Peter Hagelund, told The Journal that his division spent months in 2002 doing nothing but signing off on hundreds of one another's wacky ideas — including a design for chopsticks that also dispense soy sauce.
Those employees ended up pooling their $100 earnings and splitting them evenly. Hagelund said that with his proceeds, he was able to buy a red Jeep Liberty. After his stint at HP, Hagelund left for IBM, which was a very different culture.
"If I had put forward the chopsticks idea at IBM, they would have laughed at me or walked me out the door,” Hagelund told The Journal.
Add this up with a recent report that Apple cofounder Steve Jobs apparently fleeced Fiorina with a one-sided deal for HP to resell iPods, and it suggests the company was at least in some ways easy to manipulate under her leadership.
​

'President Fiorina'.....Yikes!!
OMG She's worse than Obama then? Can't be true.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/under-carly-fiorina-hp-employees-162312955.html

 

[tarheelbybirth]

Well, that's why CEO's get such inflated salaries. They know they can't work for a living.

 

[rocketclone]

She must really have folks worried because the press has really put the full court press on her. Now if we could just get them to focus more on the planned parenthood mess and Hillary breaking the law that would be a full house.

 

[THE_DEVIL]

link from op.
https://medium.com/backchannel/how-steve-jobs-fleeced-carly-fiorina-79d1380663de

 

[Titanhawk2]

Not advocating for her, having worked in large corp you find this stuff almost everywhere

 

[hawkifann]

Not advocating for her, having worked in large corp you find this stuff almost everywhere

This. There are so many failed programs in corporate America (really everywhere, really). If you solicit ideas and are willing to try new programs, incentives, etc., you can have some really big wins, but probably 8 of 10 will fail or be ineffectual. It's life. Again, not sure why anyone thinks this story would sway anyone's vote one way or the other.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

This. There are so many failed programs in corporate America (really everywhere, really). If you solicit ideas and are willing to try new programs, incentives, etc., you can have some really big wins, but probably 8 of 10 will fail or be ineffectual. It's life. Again, not sure why anyone thinks this story would sway anyone's vote one way or the other.

The reason is because she and Trump are touting their CEO credentials as qualifying them to be president. So it's fair to ask if they were GOOD CEOs.

If Ben Carson were to say something like "I'm a brain surgeon. If you want someone with steady hands guiding America into the future, I'm your man," we might like the pitch but we wouldn't really take seriously the idea that holding a scalpel steady is important for presidential decision-making.

When Carly and Donald tout their business experience, they are absolutely suggesting that their performance as CEOs shows how good their decision-making would be as president. They are inviting us to ask whether the decisions they made as CEOs stand up to scrutiny and reflect how we want our nation guided.

We shouldn't brush off that scrutiny.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think having failed in business, dragged down your company or played the bankruptcy game multiple times necessarily disqualifies you. But I think if you want to run on that kind of record, instead of defending your failures, you probably ought to be explaining how those experiences made you more trustworthy and a better decision-maker. But neither of them is doing that. Instead they are trying to put lipstick those resume pigs.

 

[NoleSoup4U]

The reason is because she and Trump are touting their CEO credentials as qualifying them to be president. So it's fair to ask if they were GOOD CEOs.

If Ben Carson were to say something like "I'm a brain surgeon. If you want someone with steady hands guiding America into the future, I'm your man," we might like the pitch but we wouldn't really take seriously the idea that holding a scalpel steady is important for presidential decision-making.

When Carly and Donald tout their business experience, they are absolutely suggesting that their performance as CEOs shows how good their decision-making would be as president. They are inviting us to ask whether the decisions they made as CEOs stand up to scrutiny and reflect how we want our nation guided.

We shouldn't brush off that scrutiny.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think having failed in business, dragged down your company or played the bankruptcy game multiple times necessarily disqualifies you. But I think if you want to run on that kind of record, instead of defending your failures, you probably ought to be explaining how those experiences made you more trustworthy and a better decision-maker. But neither of them is doing that. Instead they are trying to put lipstick those resume pigs.

Not supporting Trump, because he's a ridiculous blowhard, but his bankruptcy situations isn't the same thing as Fiorina's situation. Fiorina is an idiot (and just look at that face!) while Trump is a smart businessman who gamed a bad system. People harping on his bankruptcies don't really understand the bigger problem with his situation.

 

[TJ8869]

They should have designed them so that one stick dispenses soy sauce and the other one dispenses duck sauce. Because now you've got something.

 

[Joes Place]

This. There are so many failed programs in corporate America (really everywhere, really). If you solicit ideas and are willing to try new programs, incentives, etc., you can have some really big wins, but probably 8 of 10 will fail or be ineffectual. It's life. Again, not sure why anyone thinks this story would sway anyone's vote one way or the other.

Because it demonstrates a woeful lack of competence in understanding the 'unintended consequences' of putting a policy in place w/o any form of controls. Controls such as: having someone at a manager/director level sign off on the 'innovations' as being relevant to the company's business model or technology - someone with NO financial incentive in the loop; or limiting the number of 'innovations' or amount of money any individual could obtain from the program within a month or year.

This was really really slopping management practice, and not having the strategic thinking skills to understand how the policy could be abused is pretty astonishing for a CEO (or upper-level manager, for that matter).

 

[22*43*51]

Because it demonstrates a woeful lack of competence in understanding the 'unintended consequences' of putting a policy in place w/o any form of controls.

Sounds like she is ready-made for Government office.

 

[Titanhawk2]

The reason is because she and Trump are touting their CEO credentials as qualifying them to be president. So it's fair to ask if they were GOOD CEOs.

If Ben Carson were to say something like "I'm a brain surgeon. If you want someone with steady hands guiding America into the future, I'm your man," we might like the pitch but we wouldn't really take seriously the idea that holding a scalpel steady is important for presidential decision-making.

When Carly and Donald tout their business experience, they are absolutely suggesting that their performance as CEOs shows how good their decision-making would be as president. They are inviting us to ask whether the decisions they made as CEOs stand up to scrutiny and reflect how we want our nation guided.

We shouldn't brush off that scrutiny.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think having failed in business, dragged down your company or played the bankruptcy game multiple times necessarily disqualifies you. But I think if you want to run on that kind of record, instead of defending your failures, you probably ought to be explaining how those experiences made you more trustworthy and a better decision-maker. But neither of them is doing that. Instead they are trying to put lipstick those resume pigs.

Getting to be a CEO, for the most part, is proof of success along the way. What's "good", what's "bad"? Stock prices go up and down. Real estate markets go up and down. After 9-11 you could term 95% of the CEO's as bad. Everybody layed people off in the aftermath. Every stock took a hit - the dow went to 7,000. All the candidates say the blah, blah, blah though.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

Not supporting Trump, because he's a ridiculous blowhard, but his bankruptcy situations isn't the same thing as Fiorina's situation. Fiorina is an idiot (and just look at that face!) while Trump is a smart businessman who gamed a bad system. People harping on his bankruptcies don't really understand the bigger problem with his situation.

I probably agree with you. But HE needs to explain that, not you or me.

Moreover, UNTIL he does explain it, all we can really take from his background is that he's likely to put the US into bankruptcy - perhaps several times.

Now there could be some who would approve of that. There are quite a few, for example - and not just conservatives - who said we should have let the US economy tank, and corporations and banks go under in 2008-9 rather than bailing them out and engaging in quantitative easing.

So maybe an argument can be made for having a president who understands the way to manage bankruptcies. But is Trump actually making that argument? How does playing the bankruptcy game with his real estate and gambling ventures translate into governing the richest, most powerful empire the world has ever known?

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

Getting to be a CEO, for the most part, is proof of success along the way. What's "good", what's "bad"? Stock prices go up and down. Real estate markets go up and down. After 9-11 you could term 95% of the CEO's as bad. Everybody layed people off in the aftermath. Every stock took a hit - the dow went to 7,000. All the candidates say the blah, blah, blah though.

By similar logic, failing at being a CEO, for the most part, is proof of the Peter Principle.

If promoting her to CEO of HP put her one step above her level of competence - requiring HP to ease her out to save the company - do we really want to promote her one MORE step above her level of competence and make her CEO of the US Federal Government?

 

[NoleSoup4U]

I probably agree with you. But HE needs to explain that, not you or me.

Moreover, UNTIL he does explain it, all we can really take from his background is that he's likely to put the US into bankruptcy - perhaps several times.

Now there could be some who would approve of that. There are quite a few, for example - and not just conservatives - who said we should have let the US economy tank, and corporations and banks go under in 2008-9 rather than bailing them out and engaging in quantitative easing.

So maybe an argument can be made for having a president who understands the way to manage bankruptcies. But is Trump actually making that argument? How does playing the bankruptcy game with his real estate and gambling ventures translate into governing the richest, most powerful empire the world has ever known?

He has explained it. And moreover, if these last two assholes haven't bankrupted the country, how are we ever going to be bankrupt? Our future bankruptcy is going to determined by whether or not the world chooses a different currency to back. Otherwise we'll keep inflating our money supply to fund wars, helping the MIC and the banks make trillions off the backs of the American taxpayer. The poor and middle class will continue to take the brunt of it, because inflation is much harder on you the farther down the income ladder you are.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

He has explained it. And moreover, if these last two assholes haven't bankrupted the country, how are we ever going to be bankrupt? Our future bankruptcy is going to determined by whether or not the world chooses a different currency to back. Otherwise we'll keep inflating our money supply to fund wars, helping the MIC and the banks make trillions off the backs of the American taxpayer. The poor and middle class will continue to take the brunt of it, because inflation is much harder on you the farther down the income ladder you are.

The world will choose another currency. Eventually. But that will almost certainly happen gradually and gently - simply because the other nations don't want our collapse to drag them down with us. So even those who hate us or view us as their worst competitors for markets or power won't push too fast. Unless we force them too.

There are only a couple of countries or trading blocs that could force the issue. The EU, China, a few others. So we have to play fairly nice with them.

The way we have pushed Russia, I wouldn't put it past Putin to try to undermine the dollar. But Russia alone lacks the clout.

China could do it, but they depend too much on selling to us to absorb the blow if we can no longer purchase a lot from them. That's a huge part of the reason why China is working so hard to expand its domestic economy and to set up Asian trade associations.

 

[bagdropper]

I'd be willing to bet Carly had absolutely no idea whatsoever about this at all for it wouldn't show up in her bucket. Like she knows what every division is doing in cases such as this.

After working for corporate America for 20+ years, I can tell you, employees will always try to game the system to their advantage. Maybe you should be looking at them, or really the division head (director and/or VP most likely) - and not the CEO as far as assigning "blame, leadership competance, or responsibility".

 

[NoleSoup4U]

A trashed US economy would be bad for other countries' exports...unless someone stepped into our place.

 

[pablow]

Trump had a huge disadvantage in the private sector - he couldn't print his own money.

 

[hawkifann]

The reason is because she and Trump are touting their CEO credentials as qualifying them to be president. So it's fair to ask if they were GOOD CEOs.

If Ben Carson were to say something like "I'm a brain surgeon. If you want someone with steady hands guiding America into the future, I'm your man," we might like the pitch but we wouldn't really take seriously the idea that holding a scalpel steady is important for presidential decision-making.

When Carly and Donald tout their business experience, they are absolutely suggesting that their performance as CEOs shows how good their decision-making would be as president. They are inviting us to ask whether the decisions they made as CEOs stand up to scrutiny and reflect how we want our nation guided.

We shouldn't brush off that scrutiny.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think having failed in business, dragged down your company or played the bankruptcy game multiple times necessarily disqualifies you. But I think if you want to run on that kind of record, instead of defending your failures, you probably ought to be explaining how those experiences made you more trustworthy and a better decision-maker. But neither of them is doing that. Instead they are trying to put lipstick those resume pigs.

I have no problem with her being judged on the totality of her tenure as CEO. I just think this is basically judging her on a snippet of an anectdote. This story shows that a handful of developers exploited a loophole for several months, apparently costing the company a loss registering somewhere in the 10s of thousands. Ok, that's not great, but the story does nothing to put it in any larger context. Since they only did it for "several months in 2002", management apparently did catch it and either end the program or close the loophole. Also, were there any ideas coming from that program that ultimately proved to be money makers for HP? I don't care much if a program gets exploited a bit to the tune of 5 figures if it generates ideas that are ultimately going to make me many multiples of that.

Her answering to the path of HP during her tenure, debate over her impact on HP's stock price and what HP pushing her out the door means for her leadership capabilities are all fair game. I just think that digging for these little "gotcha" moments in a company as big as HP is a little silly. This kind of incentive program probably didn't even require CEO sign-off.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

I have no problem with her being judged on the totality of her tenure as CEO. I just think this is basically judging her on a snippet of an anectdote. This story shows that a handful of developers exploited a loophole for several months, apparently costing the company a loss registering somewhere in the 10s of thousands. Ok, that's not great, but the story does nothing to put it in any larger context. Since they only did it for "several months in 2002", management apparently did catch it and either end the program or close the loophole. Also, were there any ideas coming from that program that ultimately proved to be money makers for HP? I don't care much if a program gets exploited a bit to the tune of 5 figures if it generates ideas that are ultimately going to make me many multiples of that.

Her answering to the path of HP during her tenure, debate over her impact on HP's stock price and what HP pushing her out the door means for her leadership capabilities are all fair game. I just think that digging for these little "gotcha" moments in a company as big as HP is a little silly. This kind of incentive program probably didn't even require CEO sign-off.

If this were the only or the biggest gaffe of her CEO tenure, I'd agree, it's a pretty silly reason to reject an otherwise good CEO. But it isn't the only or biggest gaffe, and it isn't at all clear that she was an otherwise good CEO. It's one of a number of stories we are hearing that suggest she was not a very good CEO. Those stories start with her being fired.

 

[hawkifann]

Again, though, I was picking nits only with this particular piece as a standalone piece of evidence. I've worked for companies as big or bigger than HP and a lot of these programs are business line-driven initiatives. I'm not saying don't criticize Fiorina, I'm just saying pick better stuff to criticize.

 

[CeMar_Clone]

.... used soy-sauce-dispensing chopsticks to game the system

While Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina was CEO of Hewlett-Packard, the company's employees manipulated a system designed to reward engineers for good ideas — and made out like bandits, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The way the system worked was simple. If you had a good idea for a potential HP product, you had to submit it to another employee.
If that other employee signed off that it was indeed a good idea, you got a $100 bonus.
In the early 2000s, HP was moving away from building business software and toward building consumer hardware, like portable music players and digital cameras. This left a lot of bored software engineers with nothing better to do than come up with good ideas for this contest.
One former HP employee, Peter Hagelund, told The Journal that his division spent months in 2002 doing nothing but signing off on hundreds of one another's wacky ideas — including a design for chopsticks that also dispense soy sauce.
Those employees ended up pooling their $100 earnings and splitting them evenly. Hagelund said that with his proceeds, he was able to buy a red Jeep Liberty. After his stint at HP, Hagelund left for IBM, which was a very different culture.
"If I had put forward the chopsticks idea at IBM, they would have laughed at me or walked me out the door,” Hagelund told The Journal.
Add this up with a recent report that Apple cofounder Steve Jobs apparently fleeced Fiorina with a one-sided deal for HP to resell iPods, and it suggests the company was at least in some ways easy to manipulate under her leadership.
​

'President Fiorina'.....Yikes!!

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/under-carly-fiorina-hp-employees-162312955.html

Can't do worse than the idiot in the WH.

 

[aflachawk]

She must really have folks worried because the press has really put the full court press on her. Now if we could just get them to focus more on the planned parenthood mess and Hillary breaking the law that would be a full house.

Hillary breaking the law? No big deal..... HP employees find ways to cheat their company? Grounds for the CEO to be jailed. It's pretty obvious the press is afraid of her against the Dem candidate.

 

[Joes Place]

Hillary breaking the law? No big deal..... HP employees find ways to cheat their company? Grounds for the CEO to be jailed. It's pretty obvious the press is afraid of her against the Dem candidate.

When the FBI pops up charges on her for this, I'll be in complete agreement with you.

I do think the information coming out about 'shortening' the storage timeframe for emails on her server is rather interesting - I would hope our FBI and DOJ would handle this aggressively if these allegations are true, and if there is a clear indication this was done to obstruct them.

 

[lucas80]

She must really have folks worried because the press has really put the full court press on her. Now if we could just get them to focus more on the planned parenthood mess and Hillary breaking the law that would be a full house.

She is gaining attention because she rose in the polls. She doesn't seem to like the heightened scrutiny. Like a lot of CEO's she doesn't like criticism and pesky people asking questions that she can't just have fired.