Tough Choices: A Memoir by Carly Fiorina

This memoir is mainly focused on Carly Fiorina’s experience as a CEO of Hewlett-Packard company, and her business life seems to begin when she worked as a receptionist at the  Marcus & Millichap after she dropped out of law school. She described her difficulties as a woman realistically and vividly. Unlike these days, working women in the 80s and 90s, especially women working at a company, might have to make much more effort to prove their abilities than women these days.

I couldn’t fully grasp the meanings of many business and technical terms and abbreviations in this book. (Mentioned many companies and people’s names were quite unfamiliar to me, as I don’t have background knowledge on IT business due to my limited work experience and interest.)

She tried to convey what she valued or prioritized, and what she actually did in HP as a CEO. I guess she must have devoted all her energy, worked extremely hard, and been at a peak of her business career in HP. From my point of view, she is, as a successful businesswoman, strong that she is open to debate and undisturbed by others’ ill-found criticism. However, as officially known, she was fired from a CEO of HP as a Board’s decision, and this firing seems to hurt her deeply, as unpredicted and unprepared. Power struggling at a company seems fierce which makes people hard to accept any unwanted decision. As job security is weak compared with public sector or school, executives and employees at a company are liable to feel more stressed and unstable about their position and future.

This August, I moved from one university’s clinic outside a metropolitan area to one private clinic in Seoul. Outwardly, my job, doing outpatient practices, is the same as a previous clinic. However, my experience and feeling at this private clinic, even though I have worked for only one month, is quite different from before. First of all, it is imperative that private practitioners have enough clinical skills and can handle patients’ problems more quickly and efficiently, as patients are quicker to decide whether they should visit this clinic again or search for other clinics. This can be felt like stress, but in another perspective, it helps a doctor make a steady and persistent effort to improve his/her abilities.

As time wears on, I will get to know more about my job.  I hope my experiences at this clinic widen and deepen my perspectives on the world in the end.

Written by Shim G.