Hurd's HP legacy: Dell racer, IBM chaser Somewhere in California, Carly Fiorina must nearly have choked to death from laughter while stumping for a US Senate seat as news of her successor's sudden departure broke following a sexual-harassment probe. It has not been an easy five years for Mark Hurd, the former president, chief executive officer, and chairman of HP, …
For those that may be indignant about Herd's behavior, take a deep breath. Companies like HP are all about the big game. Assuming that young Mark was naughty, but not quite enough to breach the rules, why not settle with the said sexual partner, and everyone moves on?
My take is this is an excuse to cut the boy Mark lose - he was after all a one trick pony (cut deep and often). And recent interviews on the Palm acquisition suggest that he did not know his arse from his elbow when it comes to rationalizing both the Palm deal ( an operating system for printers - WTF) and technology - he came from an ATM company where products have less intelligence that a digital watch.
So when this came up they must have figured that it was worth the stock price dive, and the $52m he took in his goodie bad to get rid of him. Having said that, the staff at HP must be heart broken that two of two CEO were strike outs.
I can't actually see many HP people being sorry about this development. And what a development - a contractor taking Hurd out of the picture!
Bill and Dave must be swivelling like crazy in their last resting place. They left a wonderful legacy behind them, and successive CEO's have screwed it up.
Can we have John Young back please? Lewis Platt popped his clogs a few years back, but Young was in the hot seat before him and was actually a damn good guy - he did his stuff whilst Bill and Dave were still operational.
Agilent, not HP, is arguably Hewlett-Packard's successor. Given what the computing and printer division had become by then, 1999 was actually rather late to spin off Bill and Dave's own love into a company without the soap opera drama of Compaq. Yes, Agilent has had its ups and downs, but it's doing real R&D and producing real test innovation without the Fiorina and Hurd melodramas.
I never thought I 'd ever look forward to going to work at HP on a Monday until now.
This is outstanding news. Not only has the grasping autocrat gone but he's gone in the most humiliating fashion - expenses anomalies made public and with his lack of dick control having made him lose his job.
I'm overjoyed. Still I suspect the $142m he's creamed while sacking US and European workers and sending their jobs to India must be of some comfort. Let's hope Mrs Hurd bins him and sues for at least half of it.
Let's also hope that whoever replaces him knows what investment, service and innovation mean. It's time for an end to slash and burn.
Bye Turdy
If this had been a normal employee they would have been summarily shown the door.
Why does Mark Hurd get to resign and benefit financially?
This is yet another kick in the teeth for hardworking HP employees who have gone without a pay increment for 3 years while he's been lining his own pocket.
Excellent question, but the answer is surely well known? In the kind of case where the ordinary working person gets dismissed for cause and loses any chance of benefits, why does Hurd get a nice golden goodbye?
Same reason HP get to bribe their way out of the DoJ case?
Money talks? Power corrupts? It's one rule for them, and one very different rule for the rest of us.
Freedom for Tooting?
The big failure of HP and its leadership is to create a truly diversified IT services company. IBM's revenue are very roughly one third each for hardware, software and services. It is well balanced and it is quite good at software sales. Most of HP's revenue is derived from low margin PCs. HP would probably be better financially off exiting the PC business and investing the money elsewhere; the return on assets would be better. HP while selling lots of PCs have never managed to implement the Dell lost-cost supply chain. take a look at the HP Shopping web site and compare it with Dell's. HP have swallowed up a small number of software companies but have not managed to generate any real value from the cost of acquisition. They have all been effectively loss-making deals.
The purchase of EDS gives them a managed services/outsourcing edge as well as providing a home for billions of HP hardware in sites managed by EDS.
HP is just a bundle of unfulfilled potential.
... Is that you can fill rooms and rooms full of HP servers (if that's what your customer wants) but the name on the door still says 'IBM'.
*Sell* a room full of servers, and earn $750,000: *manage* a room full of servers, and make $7.5M - and no one can shout 'monopoly' at you, since you're actually, one of your own competitor's, biggest customers.
We have an HP 8150 printer, built to withstand Armageddon and roughly 10 years old (probably older). We recently purchased a HP 4515 printer. Built to withstand a light breeze but only if we hold its cheap little hand. In 3 years, we'll have an HP 8150 printer and be looking for a new printer. I think that about sums up the state of HP.
Ditto.
My first HP printer was a DJ500, in the days when HP really did "Invent". My other half still has my DJ970, because it's built like a tank, and uses moderate quantities of moderately priced ink., and does auto duplex. There were other HP printers in between.
Back then, based on that history, I recommended other consumer-oriented HP printers to a few friends and neighbours. But after the third or fourth mistake (broken printers, ridiculously overpriced ink) I gave up on HP printers, and so should everybody else.
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