A Hostile Work Environment

We continue our series on the "Women of HP" (sorry no pics--unlike some less respectable blogs we're not going to stoop to showing cheap T&A just to attract readers) with a book review from Thursday's Wall Street Journal on Carly Fiorina's "Tough Choices":

Ms. Fiorina was recruited with much fanfare in 1999 as the first outsider ever to run Hewlett-Packard, Silicon Valley's legendary printing and computing company. She was sent packing in 2005 with the stock price in tatters and wide doubts about the wisdom of her signature deal, the $19 billion acquisition of Compaq Computer. Since then, H-P's stock and earnings have surged. That leaves room for Ms. Fiorina to contend that her strategy made sense, even though a different chief executive officer was needed to execute it.

But why take the high road when you can settle some scores instead? In "Tough Choices," Ms. Fiorina airs a long list of grievances.

Sounds like Festivus. I can hardly wait to break out the pole again this year.

One of her first post-college bosses, at AT&T, "was having a romantic relationship with a woman upstairs, and he didn't have much time for me," she writes. On the way up, customers were sexist and rude. Other executives undermined her until she made them stop. When she became a CEO and H-P's stock faltered, it was because Wall Street analysts didn't understand her vision.

As Ms. Fiorina marches through her enemies list, the particulars of each new act of villainy start to blur -- and the author's bitterness starts to fascinate. There is little evidence that she made friends or even found reliable allies during her five years as H-P's boss. She became a leader without followers, frustrated with various subordinates, most of her board and all the media. Only her husband, Frank, a retired AT&T executive, cheered her on.

Sounds like a great place to work, don't it? And it again calls into question whether the very attributes that help career-driven women climb the rungs of the corporate ladder don't end up dooming many to failure and misery at the top.

UPDATE-- Robert e-mails to add:

Obviously I cannot mention his name, but a friend of mine is a manager at HP, and his first assignment was to make a case to fire a woman (and member of approved minority groups to boot) who arguably should never have been hired, if her resume was to be believed. Evidently, word had come from higher that such and such a minority/woman MUST be hired, forget the consequences. So the least disqualified applicant...