Ex-Chief of Hewlett Seen as Candidate to Head World Bank

The media made her a hero – a strong woman who fought her way to the top, a rolemodel for young women, a woman able to compete and excel in the “man’s world”. But she got fired from her last gig, after years of driving HP headlong into fiscal disaster.

WASHINGTON, March 1 – Carleton S. Fiorina, who lost her job as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard two weeks ago, has emerged as a strong candidate to become the next president of the World Bank, according to an official in the Bush administration.

That quote isn’t nearly as fun as the one I remembered from http://www.fuckedcompany.com/ F*ckedCompany.com:

“Carly represented the worst of managerial capitalism. She conducted Stalinist purges of political adversaries. Debuted the practice of layoffs, unknown to HP, and ruined 7000 careers. Drove unpleasant, Soviet-style growth-through-acquisition, edicts, command/control, and massive centralization of power. She routinely dismissed the company culture and values. Primping and preening, she appeared at over 1000 conferences in 5 years, hung her portrait next to company founders in reception areas across the globe; all while utterly neglecting and failing at day-to-day execution.

Rather, what is really revolting is the mainstream business press/media saying, with tremendous pride and gratification, that finally, finally!, a woman can compete and achieve ‘just like a man’ in Corporate America. With great joy and delight they point to Carly’s $21M severance package as a major accomplishment, a real corporate watershed, historically achieved only by men, but this time a woman! Wow! What a breakthrough! Now women can loot company shareholders, drive great companies into the dirt, fail individuals and ruin lives — just like a real MANager.”

Let’s hope the current trend to push women and “minorities” (literally translated: ‘non-caucasian’) into important positions isn’t putting the wrong people into power.