Joe Nocera, in 2006:
“The earnings numbers, though, tell only part of the story. “From the time she came to the time she left,” said Benjamin Rosen, the former venture capitalist and Compaq chairman, “based on the organization she built, the performance of the company, and the return to shareholders, it was not a good report card.”
The stock declined 50 percent during the five and a half years she was in charge. Although she said she was making employees accountable, she put in place an organizational chart with so many overlapping responsibilities that nobody seemed to be in charge. She larded the place with bureaucracy. She merged the highly profitable printer division with the struggling personal computer division, another questionable move.”
“But even putting that aside, look at how she carried it out. Michael D. Capellas, the chief executive of Compaq, was supposed to be her No. 2. There are many people on Wall Street who say that he was the one who really sold the merger to the Street — and, because of his operational background, gave investors confidence that it might work. But Ms. Fiorina never had much use for him, and he left within six months. In her book, she belittles him at every turn. She also took over his job as company president and head of operations, a role for which she was completely unfit. Her entire career had been spent in marketing and sales. Nor did she do much to keep other top Compaq managers. In short order, almost all of them left — and almost all of them landed big jobs with important technology companies. Most of them had skills she lacked — but she neither understood that, nor cared.”
Source: Carly Fiorina’s Revisionist Chronicles – NYTimes.com
