Finally watched Origins – the HP documentary on HP and HP Way
After watching the documentary, I was impressed to see that it was consistent with HP the sentiments of people I’ve worked with or for who were former HP alums. Regardless of whether they were VPs, managers or individual contributors when the HP Way was alive and well, they all shared the same sense of nostalgia for a company they used to work for. Those conversations usually ended with, "that was an incredible place to work and to grow."
These friends and former co-workers always mentioned some personal anecdote about how something personal had come up or how some personal emergency would require an extended absence. In every case, regardless of how big or small someone was at HP, the response always seemed to be, "you and your family come first… we’ll still be here when you get back".
Thinking back at things, one of the companies that really espoused the HP Way, while I don’t work at Xilinx anymore, I remember a conversation I had with Wim Roelants, former CEO of Xilinx, and how he was proud to have taken what he learned at his long tenure at HP and transplanted it into Xilinx. To be honest, it was a perfect match. Wim shared many of the same values as Xilinx’s founders, Bernie Vonderschmitt, Ross Freeman and Jim Barnett. They all believed in the same philosophy that innovation comes from employees who feel like they’re contributing to something much greater. As a result, the employees felt more like they were part of a family or a group of close friends than a company, freeing them to innovate and continue innovating beyond the last project.
Learn more about HP and its history at The HP Way at HP Alumni Association, and learn more about Xilinx’s history at Xilinx: Our History.