I watched this happen from the outside. I bought a Laserjet IV when it was first released; by the time it started to fail, many years later, USB had killed the older printer interfaces. It was a workhorse. I wouldn’t even look at an HP printer today.
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." -- John Rogers
I'm sympathetic to the thesis, but I wish there were more details. For example, what could HP have done differently? Buying Compaq seems like "trying to win" to me--it was trying to expand its PC market share. Was that the wrong acquisition? What would have been better instead?
Fundamentally, however, we know that the markets HP was in were not growth markets: PCs, printers, enterprise consulting, etc. The growth markets at the time were phones (Apple), software (Microsoft), and cloud services (Amazon, Google, etc.) Could HP have succeeded in any of those businesses?
I’ve been trying to verbalize the motives behind the best practices frontend dev influecers preach these days and now I think it’s something like that. Everytime someone falls from his bike we have to install another set of training wheels.
For example,
- We ditched classes in React because someone didn’t bind a handler. Now we have hooks with a ton of best practices.
- Someone got a cascading bug, now we have utility classes for combining two more manageable problems into one big problem.
Keep in mind "Ayn Rand" ended up in the public safety net for care.
It is one matter to embrace selfish neo-libertarianism rhetoric, but the lack of resolve facing the awful reality these people eventually create for themselves is absurd.
Also, HP was a phenomenal company a long time ago, and lazy stewards burned that good will for short-term profit. Process people ruin every large company eventually, as priorities shift away from providing value to customers. =3
I’m not sure there could be something less like the “shrug” in the book and this comparison to corporate decline. It’s an inversion of quite a bit that was central to the theme.
The shrug in the book was people turning their back, walking away— people who thought their talents were either wasted or unequally compensated in some way, or footing an unfair portion of things, and the “shrug” was them walking away. A fundamental individual, not collective and corporate act. The central character felt exploited by the company he worked for.
The book has enough problems without also confusing who the author meant when she said “Atlas”. It wasn’t corporations, it was individuals.
If you’re looking for a link to Atlas Shrugged, there isn’t any, except for the title… and the interpretation of the sentence “Atlas Shrugged” in this piece has nothing to do with the novel.
This seems like a good time to remind everyone of a letter by David Packard, to his employees. There is more morality, common sense and insightful business advice here than in any 1000 business titles you would care to name.
I think that OPs essay identifies that something bad happened at HP but completely misses what it was. Look at this quote:
Around 1997, when I was working for the General Counsel, HP engaged
a major global consulting firm in a multi-year project to help
them think about the question: “What happens to very large companies that
have experienced significant growth for multiple successive years?”
OP says that the findings and recommendations included: "the decade long trend of double-digit growth was unlikely to continue", and "the company [should] begin to plan for much slower growth in the future."
OP then goes on to talk about fighting for resources for investments, a "healthy back and forth" on these tradeoffs, and then losing the "will to fight" following this report. "The focus became how not to lose".
Unlike OP, I did not work at HP. But I have seen up close startups, middle-sized companies, and huge companies, and the transitions among these states. So I feel justified in saying: OP has missed the point. And in particular, he makes no reference to that letter from David Packard.
Look at this quote from the letter:
I want to discuss why a company exists in the first place. ... why
are we here? I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company
exists simply to make money. While this is an important result of
a company's existence, we have to go deeper and find the real
reasons for our being. ... a group of people get together and exist
as an institution that we call a company so they are able to accomplish
something collectively which they could not accomplish separately.
They are able to do something worthwhile—they make a contribution
to society .... You can look around and still see people who are
interested in money and nothing else, but the underlying drives
come largely from a desire to do something else—to make a product—to
give a service—generally to do something which is of value.
I think this is the essence of what it means to do useful and interesting work in any technical field. Unfortunately, there are many, many examples of companies that have lost their way, forgetting this key insight. HP was certainly one of them. I would argue that Google and Microsoft are examples too. Boeing, for sure.
And sadly, there are very, very few companies that actually embody Packard's ideas. I think that JetBrains is such a company, familiar to many HN readers. Another one that comes to mind, from a very different field, is Talking Points Memo -- an excellent website that does news reporting and analysis, mostly on US politics. It started as a "blogger in a bathrobe", and 25 years later, it is a small, independent news organization, supporting itself mostly through paid subscriptions by a very loyal readership.
To me, the saddest part of the essay is this:
In the last few years more and more business people have begun to
recognize this, have stated it and finally realized this is their
true objective.
(This is right before the "You can look around ..." section quoted
earlier.) It seems to me that very, very few business people recognize
the way to run a business, as outlined by Packard.
16 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 49.4 ms ] threadFundamentally, however, we know that the markets HP was in were not growth markets: PCs, printers, enterprise consulting, etc. The growth markets at the time were phones (Apple), software (Microsoft), and cloud services (Amazon, Google, etc.) Could HP have succeeded in any of those businesses?
instead they cut bait quickly. sold off WebOS to LG and that was it.
I’ve been trying to verbalize the motives behind the best practices frontend dev influecers preach these days and now I think it’s something like that. Everytime someone falls from his bike we have to install another set of training wheels.
For example,
- We ditched classes in React because someone didn’t bind a handler. Now we have hooks with a ton of best practices.
- Someone got a cascading bug, now we have utility classes for combining two more manageable problems into one big problem.
It is one matter to embrace selfish neo-libertarianism rhetoric, but the lack of resolve facing the awful reality these people eventually create for themselves is absurd.
Also, HP was a phenomenal company a long time ago, and lazy stewards burned that good will for short-term profit. Process people ruin every large company eventually, as priorities shift away from providing value to customers. =3
That reminded me that BBN started in acoustics. Any other significant tech companies get started in audio engineering?
The shrug in the book was people turning their back, walking away— people who thought their talents were either wasted or unequally compensated in some way, or footing an unfair portion of things, and the “shrug” was them walking away. A fundamental individual, not collective and corporate act. The central character felt exploited by the company he worked for.
The book has enough problems without also confusing who the author meant when she said “Atlas”. It wasn’t corporations, it was individuals.
https://aletteraday.substack.com/p/letter-107-david-packard-...
I think that OPs essay identifies that something bad happened at HP but completely misses what it was. Look at this quote:
OP says that the findings and recommendations included: "the decade long trend of double-digit growth was unlikely to continue", and "the company [should] begin to plan for much slower growth in the future."OP then goes on to talk about fighting for resources for investments, a "healthy back and forth" on these tradeoffs, and then losing the "will to fight" following this report. "The focus became how not to lose".
Unlike OP, I did not work at HP. But I have seen up close startups, middle-sized companies, and huge companies, and the transitions among these states. So I feel justified in saying: OP has missed the point. And in particular, he makes no reference to that letter from David Packard.
Look at this quote from the letter:
I think this is the essence of what it means to do useful and interesting work in any technical field. Unfortunately, there are many, many examples of companies that have lost their way, forgetting this key insight. HP was certainly one of them. I would argue that Google and Microsoft are examples too. Boeing, for sure.And sadly, there are very, very few companies that actually embody Packard's ideas. I think that JetBrains is such a company, familiar to many HN readers. Another one that comes to mind, from a very different field, is Talking Points Memo -- an excellent website that does news reporting and analysis, mostly on US politics. It started as a "blogger in a bathrobe", and 25 years later, it is a small, independent news organization, supporting itself mostly through paid subscriptions by a very loyal readership.
To me, the saddest part of the essay is this:
(This is right before the "You can look around ..." section quoted earlier.) It seems to me that very, very few business people recognize the way to run a business, as outlined by Packard.