The fact is that HP was turning around before Fiorina was booted. In the end the board of directors told her: Thanks Carly for doing the dirty work that we wanted you to do; your last duty is to be the scapegoat for the destruction of 'good ol' HP'.

The silly myth about HP is that the 'old' ways could've somehow  continued forever if Carly hadn't done her witch/bitch routine (oh yeah, misogyny was a weapon against her hard-faced self, similar to the Hillary hating we've seen in the last year or so but just on retail level). But in fact HP had just sold the division of the company where the old ways might've still been possible -- the technical, measurement and medical instruments division. It's called Agilent. That division could afford humongous profit margins because it was making unique, 'no competition' products.

In the real world, Dell had made PCs low-profit-margin products, and it was impossible for the HP 'high-profit-margin culture' to compete with that. Basically, Fiorina took over just  another PC company that was getting its tail whipped by Dell. But HP still had its ace in the hole, the enormously profitable industry standard printer (and printer ink) side of the business (run in a different 'culture' by an HP maverick in Boise).

What to do with the printing side profits? Continue to subsidize the old culture side of the company for a few more years, as market share and profits slid? Or overthrow the old ways but nonetheless fairly soon -- stock price depressing statements for at most a year or so -- satisfy the shareholders' lust for profits? (Another idea was to keep just the printing division and sell off the dinosaur unprofitable parts of HP, perhaps the most profitable option but one neither side in the HP war wanted.)

The board chose to overthrow the old ways, and employed Fiorina to get the dirty work done. When she left, Fiorina had made the PC division a fairly successful, 'normal' low-profit margin division (and had started to outsource a mountain of  jobs), and in the process destroyed the old HP culture. She hadn't done much regarding the printing division, 'renowned' when she arrived and the same when she took the fall as the  scapegoat.

HP has had a happy ending for stockholders but not for laid off  employees or for the U.S. economy. The villain, as always, is  the Reagan-era corporate board's single-minded demand for maximum profitability (and our politicians completely sold out to corporations and not stepping in and forcing corps to work for the society's overall good). That's not the way to run any aspect of our society. We obviously need to change corporate boards so they empower workers, government, and creditors as well as  investors. And/or free the political system from slavery to corporate power.