TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Leo Apotheker is out, and Meg Whitman is in.

So, after 11 months, HP’s board of directors fired Apotheker. What’s the reason?

A) They didn’t like that he was transitioning HP to enterprise services and out of consumer markets. If that’s the case, then why the hell did they wait until now to fire him? And why did they hire him in the first place?

B) They fired him because of fallout from his transition out of consumer markets.

I’m not sure which is worse. If the former is the case, they made a poorly considered choice when they hired him, and they’re a bunch of clowns. If it’s the latter, they have no idea where they want the company to go nor the courage to stand behind their guy. And they’re a bunch of clowns.

Maybe Meg Whitman will be a better chief executive than Apotheker, maybe not. But I know this: with these people sitting on HP’s board, they’ve got no chance.

Besides HP’s employees, the people who’ve been hurt the most by this are the Palm guys. They got sucked into a tornado of shit. If this isn’t the best example of why startups and companies should be highly skeptical of being acquired, I don’t know what is.