Hamp Vacates Toyota CCO Role as Drug Investigation Continues

Sums up the past seven years.

So what's your excuse?

@Pch101 For?

@28-Cars-Later When I think of first-class minds, Jacob ain't one of them.

@Pch101 Ah.

@Pch101 Is that supposed to be a witty retort?

@Pch101 More like an accurate assessment. This woman is more accomplished than you are. Even if she has a drug habit, she still outshines you.

@Pch101 I'd say me not picking up a drug shipment at an international airport is a pretty solid case of me "outshining" her. And don't be surprised if a government pressures companies to hire and promote people purely on the basis skin color or gender that you're going to get some people that don't really deserve it. After all, that means someone else was DISQUALIFIED purely because of their race or gender.

@Pch101 If the best thing that you can say about yourself is that you haven't been busted for drugs, then you'll have to forgive me for being even less impressed than I was ten minutes ago.

@Pch101 "This woman is more accomplished than you are." Thanks to her privilege.

@Pch101 I guess I didn't know this was the forum where people listed all their accomplishments in life. Let me know when you pass the milestone of no longer listing "student" as your profession and you can legally buy a beer.

@Pch101 "Thanks to her privilege." Judging from her bio, she got a job and eventually got promoted, which is what most other people do. "I guess I didn’t know this was the forum where people listed all their accomplishments in life." I don't need to see your resume to know that you aren't very bright.

@Pch101 "Judging from her bio, she got a job and eventually got promoted" ...as part of a program with the specific objective of promoting people based on gender.

Evidence? To angry white men, every hire of anyone other than a white man is automatically an affirmative action hire. You know, it's actually very possible that people other than white men might be legitimately qualified for jobs.

@Pch101 Not my industry, but as far as I can tell, she was pretty hot s**t in the PR world. I'm not seeing any evidence that she wasn't capable.

@dal20402 If you read the background, her hire was specifically in response to an affirmative action program the current Japanese government is undertaking where 30% of all top Executives need to be female. So it's not even an open question why she was given the job.

@Crosley Even if you were a woman, you wouldn't have been given that job.

@Pch101 Hmm... he *does* have a kind of willowy grace and large, sensitive eyes...

@Crosley I've read the background. I've seen nothing about any numbers from the Japanese government, except among angry white men on websites. I have seen in many places that Toyota was making an internal effort to diversify -- for business reasons. It felt, among other things, that its slow and ineffective response to the unintended acceleration fiasco was attributable to the isolation and homogeneity of a top management team that consisted entirely of older Japanese male engineers.

@Pch101 damn... old pch is white-knighting this one pretty hard. She's a pr lady, not the CFO or COO so excuse me if I dont get too impressed with her credentials. She also appears to be an Oxy-fiend like Rush Limbaugh, so I'm not going to get too misty-eyed at what this means for "women" in management, they were told to hire a woman, they looked around and figured she couldn't do much damage in CCO position and the old guard got lucky that she turned out to be a drug addict. So yeah, that's all on her. Good job lady, you just made it 10x more difficult for the next women who come along and are qualified without career-ending addiction problems biding in the closet. Don't worry though, the internet white-knights got yer back, m'lady.

@dal20402 Reuters did an article about the fiasco, clearly they thought she was hired to comply with that program also. Probably also a bunch of angry white men making stuff up http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/18/us-toyota-executive-arrest-idUSKBN0OY14S20150618 "Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has called on corporate Japan to appoint women to 30 percent of top jobs by 2020. Women account for only 11 percent of mid- to senior-level management jobs in Japan and 1 percent of executive committee members, according to researcher McKinsey."

@dal20402 "Called on" does not mean there is a legal requirement or a "program." I haven't seen anything indicating that the government, not Toyota itself, made the decision to diversify.

@dal20402 Even if you were a woman, you wouldn't have been given that job. She had worked at GM and another Fortune 50 company (PepsiCo.), highly ranked in the PR world. She wasn't flipping burgers at Steak n Shake or changing oil for a living, unlike some of the rest of you.

@Pch101 I'm not defending her, I'm mocking the beta males who want to feign superiority.

@dal20402 A government can apply pressure without formally passing a law. The idea that her hire had absolutely nothing to do with filling a quota is simply absurd. That's another big problem with affirmative action, it puts a question mark over every "minority's" accomplishments in life because it's a system designed to promote based on arbitrary metrics like skin color or gender. So the people that would have gotten the job regardless of the program are being lumped in with those that were given preferential treatment. Whether she deserved the job is irrelevant, she will always be looked at an an affirmative action hire by her peers because that's exactly what she was. People that defend affirmative action will scream when anybody questions if somebody was given preferential treatment, when that's EXACTLY what the program was designed to do.

@dal20402 "Whether she deserved the job is irrelevant, she will always be looked at an an affirmative action hire by her peers because that’s exactly what she was." Or you could, you know, evaluate her based on performance rather than pedigree. If she performs, who cares if she came in through affirmative action? If she doesn't perform, then her problem is low performance and she should be counseled, moved to another position, or fired. It's amazing how far people will go to preserve the notion that only white men (or, in the case of a Japanese company, Japanese men) should be taken seriously. If anyone else is not capable, it reflects on his or her entire identity group and is just another sign that white men should really run things. If anyone else is capable, it doesn't matter because he or she must have been originally hired "to fill a quota."

@dal20402 "It’s amazing how far people will go to preserve the notion that only white men (or, in the case of a Japanese company, Japanese men) should be taken seriously." If you didn't have much going for you and wanted to blame everyone else for your inadequacies, then you would, too.

@dal20402 Its been my experience that forum posters who shout loudest about other people being "burger flippers", "oil changers" and "beta" males are typically the most useless and least accomplished excuses for human beings that one could imagine. I'd love to be proved wrong.

@dal20402 It's my experience that those who would use a car website as an outlet for their misogyny are merely mourning the loss of a system that used to reward them more handsomely for having pale skin and a Y chromosome. Talk about affirmative action...

@dal20402 Yes, how dare Mark use his privileged position as EIC to select and promote this miserable article which is clearly misogynistic in tone and intent! Thank goodness the white-knights see through this sham and can bring truth and reason to the rest of the forum. Well done PCh, grab some cheetos and a big gulp, sit back and bask in the reflected glory of other's accomplishments! Well done. Well done!

@dal20402 Some folks need to hone their reading skills. The article is fine. It's the, er, genius of some of those who comment here that is worthy of a few chuckles. The irony of some mediocre minds whining about a woman who has outperformed them even at her low point is amusing.

dal20402 So we should simply lie and pretend there's not a system that makes hiring decisions based on skin color and gender? Or that someone perhaps more qualified was not hired because they had to fill a quota? Is that not also an injustice? If a person was a part of the "Old Boy" network, but did a great job, should society also then look the other way? The idea of "positive discrimination" should be a problem for everyone who wants to live in a colorblind society.

@Pch101 PCH is once again covering himself with glory. Clearly, everyone that disagrees with him on any political issue must be a burger flipper in real life. Considering he knows nothing about anyone here. Usually when the personal insults start flying that have nothing to do with the topic at hand, the person has lost the argument.

@dal20402 Crosley, we don't need to lie, we just need to focus on what's relevant. And what's relevant with an employee is not how they were hired but their value to the company after they were hired. In isolation to one employee, yes, if an employee came from the old boys' network but performs well, we should ignore that too. But what Toyota found is that when all its employees came from the old boys' network it had a business problem. It couldn't respond quickly and creatively to new challenges. I have no problem with putting a thumb on the scale for women in hiring for management positions when they are still at a single-digit percentage at the top levels. In addition to being the right thing to do, it's valuable from a business perspective. But, once they are hired, judge them on performance just like you would anyone else. Then there is no issue about how they got the position.

@Pch101 If you don't want to be mocked, then do something that doesn't make you worthy of mockery. She may be the best PR person on the planet or the worst, but her gender does not disqualify her from doing the job. Your desire to presume that she is inadequate because of her gender tells us more about you and your inadequacies than it does about her. You're a petty little resentnik who doesn't have anything to brag about; try working on yourself for a change.

@dal20402 Some folks need to hone their life skills. I like the way you're beginning to focus on performance and ability as a measure of competence, that's a good start for clarifying your thinking if you'll stick with it. Some people have too much emotionally invested in the answer they've been given being 'correct' to even wonder if its the correct answer. Ive seen nothing to change my opinion about the type of forum user who would trot out "burger flipper", "oil changers" and "beta" as insults to others. Says a lot more about the mindset of the complete cretin saying it than the job does about the person doing it.

@dal20402 "Emotional investment" would be a good way to describe the sentiments of those who go out of their way to ignore this woman's relative importance in her field and to ascribe all of her alleged flaws to her gender.

@dal20402 "Complete cretin" would be a good way to describe someone who mocks others based on the job they hold. It's behavior indicative of a special kind of entitled personality that's beneath contempt.

@dal20402 If you're going to assert your superiority in the workplace while looking like a fool on this website, then expect to be belittled for it. I've read Jacob's comments here off and on, and he's not exactly a shining star himself. I'm willing to bet that Ms. Hamp would do better work while high as a kite than Jacob would while sober. And it might be nice to remember that she is innocent until proven guilty.

@dal20402 I dont know anything about Hamb and even less about Jacob but I do know that in white-knighting this topic you've let us all see the complete deficit of character you possess as a human being. Mocking someone, as you've done, based on the work they do is completely amoral and entitled behavior. The fact that you're not even self-aware enough to recognize it after its been pointed out to you is in the realm of narcissistic personality disorder. Quite contemptible.

@dal20402 That's right. I lack character because I don't judge her more harshly due to her lack of a Y chromosome. We should all aspire to be chauvinists with room temperature IQs who lash out at women because they are women. Affirmative action is for white guys.

@dal20402 The He Man Woman Hater's Club is like an internet infestation of little yappy dogs. They won't shut up, they won't ever change their tune, but they *will* remain little.

@dal20402 Yappy, indeed. A synonym for female dogs would be oddly appropriate.

Classy, Buickman.

Well said, Thanks for a positive comment about her, We don't know anything for sure other than she is in trouble and now is out of a job. Hopefully she can pull through OK.