I'm genuinely curious what endgame Meg Whitman is planning for HPE, she seems to be divesting most of the 'E' in HPE. So just commodity servers/bladecenters, storage and networking (half of which is already rebranded Aruba)?
Keep selling stuff to keep investors happy...when nothing of value is left, declare victory and leave
Many well-known CS researchers have left (the then) HP over the past 10 years to other companies (e.g., John Wilkes, Hans Boehm, etc.). So, some people saw early there were problems (though perhaps not due strictly to the recent years).