November 30, 2025
Consultants, printers, and orcs—oh my
Atlas Shrugged
From HP colossus to cautionary tale—the comments are savage
TLDR: An ex-HP insider blames a consultant-fueled crisis of confidence for the company’s slide. Commenters roast HP: some fault consultants and the Compaq era, others mourn LaserJets, while typo cops and orc memes crash the party.
An ex-HP insider paints the company as a colossus that shrugged, blaming a consultant-led rethink in the late ’90s for a crisis of confidence. The backstory: HP’s three pillars—test gear, computers, and printers—plus the mythic HP Way made it a Fortune 25 star. Then came the doubt and the slide.
The comments? Absolute fireworks. mnky9800n fires the opening salvo: HP “destroyed its empire by listening to consultants,” tapping a nerve that never heals. wduquette brings receipts, praising the LaserJet IV as a tank and swearing off modern HP printers—“workhorse then, won’t touch them now.” thunderbong derails the thread with a correction—Ayn Rand, not “Ann”—because even typos get a trial. cratermoon quotes the viral orcs line, dunking on the Atlas Shrugged framing with meme-grade energy.
As the blame game escalates, nostalgia wrestles cynicism. Some point at leadership and the Compaq era; one commenter lobs an unverified Fiorina commission rumor for extra spice. Others shrug at the shrug, saying market shifts (hello, USB) made old-school excellence hard to keep. It’s corporate history retold as a comment-section courtroom—equal parts roast, lore, and geek theater. And yes, the HP Way gets eulogized like a lost band, while consultants play the pantomime villain today, loudly.
Key Points
- •The author joined HP in 1993 as a financial analyst and later served as Senior Director overseeing IT and Finance Operations in HP’s Legal Department.
- •HP’s Legal Department had about 300 people and spent roughly $50 million annually on outside counsel, functioning like a mid-sized law firm within the company.
- •HP’s three major business groups were Test and Measurement (originating in the 1930s), Computers (entered in 1966), and Printing & Imaging (laser and inkjet printers).
- •HP’s first product was an audio oscillator, and Disney used these devices to test audio equipment for Fantasia in 1940.
- •In the early 1990s, HP was a Fortune 25 company with multi-year double-digit growth and widely recognized management practices known as the “HP Way”; around 1997 it hired a global consulting firm to study large-company growth challenges.