Joe Nocera on Hurd & HP | Hacker News Reader

Joe Nocera on Hurd & HP

nytimes.com

I used to work at HP -- it was a very depressing work environment. As the article mentions, Hurd was absolutely despised and his "cost cutting" was very much ridiculous. The employees were left with nothing, salaries/jobs were cut, even seemingly cheap luxuries like tea and water. We moved buildings twice during my tenure there, each time to a smaller workspace.

As an outsider before I joined, I can say its reputation far exceeds reality. Leaving for YC was a no-brainer. On a sidenote it seems the only ones left are the "lifers," all of the younger engineers have moved on. Short the stock.

"In his five years at H.P., every metric Wall Street uses to judge companies had gone in only one direction: up."

And this is the problem. Cutting jobs/salaries/benefits/projects leads to the type of share-bumping profit and cost-cutting figures that Wall Street types love, all while destroying the culture of a company and its chance of long term success.

Key graf:

   One thing I found surprising this week was learning that to many H.P. 
   observers Ms. Fiorina no longer seemed quite so bad. It was actually 
   her strategic vision that Mr. Hurd had executed, I heard again and again. 
   Her problem was that while she talked a good game, she lacked the skill 
   to get that big, hulking, aircraft carrier of a company moving in the 
   direction she pointed. Mr. Hurd was a brilliant operational executive, 
   but had the strategic sense of a gnat, and knew only how to cut costs.

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