I would say the hp-Agilent split was really the turning point but the seeds were planted much earlier. Apparently the board and various advisors realized that the PC market was going to be huge and wanted to grow that part of the company. hp PCs were okay but splitting off the instruments, which were really the original hp business and focussing the new hp on PCs and consumer products was effectively what ended the original company. It wasn't until the Compaq acquisition (which also brought the old DEC into the fold) that the transformation to consumer was complete.

At that time injket was doing so obscenely well that a lot of mistakes were paid for and papered over from those profits.

I joined right around that time, a few months before Carly was hired as CEO. She was okay at first but got worse and when she left we were singing "ding dong the witch is dead", you could actually hear it throughout the entire floor I was working on. Unfortunately, the CEOs up to Meg were a total disaster, I think with Meg the recovery started and now, after spinning off HPE it's been a super-fun place to work at again.

Despite all the bad press there's actually a ton of interesting R&D going on still but the consumer doesn't really hear about it. It's a deal with the devil when you switch from selling to nerds to grumpy consumers around the world.