Grizz doesn't need me to step in for him, obviously. But as with most things, I think the truth lies somewhere near the middle. While I do think the negative evaluation of her tenure as CEO is overstated, so are her successes. I will say I think on the whole, she was a net-negative performer as CEO. I was going to outlne a lot of the individual points, but I'll let the associate dean of Yale Business School do that:
Here are the facts: In the five years that Fiorina was at Hewlett-Packard, the company lost over half its value. It’s true that many tech companies had trouble during this period of the Internet bubble collapse, some falling in value as much as 27 percent; but HP under Fiorina fell 55 percent. During those years, stocks in companies like Apple and Dell rose. Googlewent public, and Facebook was launched. The S&P 500 yardstick on major U.S. firms showed only a 7 percent drop. Plenty good was happening in U.S. industry and in technology.
It was Fiorina’s failed leadership that brought her company down. After an unsuccessful attempt to catch up to IBM’s growth in IT services by buying PricewaterhouseCooper’s consulting business (PwC, ironically, ended up going to IBM instead), she abruptly abandoned the strategic goal of expanding IT services and consulting and moved into heavy metal. At a time that devices had become a low margin commodity business, Fiorinabought for $25 billion the dying Compaq computer company, which was composed of other failed businesses. Unsurprisingly, the Compaq dealnever generated the profits Fiorina hoped for, and HP’s stock price fell by half. The only stock pop under Fiorina’s reign was the 7 percent jump the moment she was fired following a unanimous board vote. After the firing, HP shuttered or sold virtually all Fiorina had bought."