Palm VP of Design follows parade of former employees out the door

HP may have purchased Palm for its best asset, the WebOS operating system, but the company isn’t doing much to stem the departure of people involved in its creation. Palm has lost several high profile members this year, including the lead of the user interface design team, the man responsible for its webOS notification system, and the VP of software. Now its VP of Design is joining the conga line out the door.

TechCrunch reportsthat Peter Skillman, VP of Design prior to HP’s purchase of Palm last month, is leaving the company, though there’s no word on where his next job will be. Skillman was heavily involved with the design of the Palm Pre, a device that was critically praised but not commercially viable enough to make Palm rebound the way it had hoped.

In the run up to and since HP purchased Palm for $1 billion, HP hasn’t managed to make much of Palm’s key team members stick around. Then again, there’s no guarantee if the company wants them to. Is this a wise strategy? Say what you will about the Pre’s struggles to compete in the mobile phone market, webOS was definitely not the issue. As HP prepares to strengthen the operating system and extend its capabilities on tablets, you’d think that the company would keep a few folks around to ease the transition.

Maybe HP’s focus has been pulled to other, shall we say,more pressing matters?

Read [TechCrunch]