H-P Sues Hurd After Oracle Appointment | Hacker News Reader

H-P Sues Hurd After Oracle Appointment

online.wsj.com

22 pointsmechanician19 comments

To be expected. I love that hiring by Oracle, by the way. When someone gets a minor disgrace on their record, you have to expect they're going to be trying extra hard to show that they're deserving of playing in the highest echelons.

Fraud, embezzlement, things like that - no way. But c'mon, lots of CEO's do minor things wrong (hard drugs, affairs, escorts, saying not-PC things) - I mean, lots of people have at least one or two things about their life that they'd get in trouble if it came out in the wrong context. Someone that had been recently shamed by something like this would be able to get hired below what they'd normally command and would be likely to work extra hard. Good hire by Oracle so long as they can handle the PR backlash, which is something Larry Ellison never seemed to care about anyways.

Hurd falsified expense reports for personal gain [1]. Not sure what your definition of fraud is, but that qualifies in my book. I'm not saying I disagree with Oracle hiring Hurd, but HP's problem with Hurd had nothing to do with his personal life.

[1] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870330970457541...

"[Hurd] submitted inaccurate expense reports that were intended to conceal... a 'close personal relationship'".

> Hurd falsified expense reports for personal gain [1]. ... "[Hurd] submitted inaccurate expense reports that were intended to conceal... a 'close personal relationship'".

Without knowing the details, this sounds to me like a minor indiscretion and being on the wrong side of politics. The article says - "The amount of money in question wasn't disclosed." Sounds to me like we're talking about a rounding error in HP's expenses - a wrong-doing, to be sure, but one that only makes the ax fall on you when combined with politics.

If I was Oracle I'd do a thorough interview, ask some tough questions about the event, and ask how he feels about behaving squeaky clean at Oracle. Or even having him agree to expense auditing - you could break that in a diplomatic way by saying, "Hey, I want to recruit you, but the board has misgivings. Would you be comfortable having your expense account audited?" If he says yes, I'd be cool with having him onboard.

But again, we don't have the numbers, so I'm just guessing about the nature of it here. I could be dead wrong, in which case I'd change my mind.

> [... ] how he feels about behaving squeaky clean at Oracle

Alternatively, perhaps Oracle doesn't care about this sort of thing at all. The money he misappropriated at HP was probably a drop in the ocean compared to a normal CEO's expense account. Oracle might treat it as such.

Once the board found out their hands were tied. They didn't know exactly what went down, but there was a real possibility of a story coming out implying money for sex.

There are a lot of different versions of the truth here and of what the facts are.

I think most folks believe that the amounts and concealment were not really issues, as neither was either significant or deliberate.

I think the real issue was that the board was too weak to deal with what they expected the media fallout to be after the beating they took in their last scandal.

If he was really fired by HP for being crap at management then they should welcome a competitor hiring him.

It's difficult to think what trade secrets HP has that Oracle would want. That printer ink is actually made from baby unicorn tears and so it's price is totally justified?

With Oracle's acquisition of Sun, they (in theory) compete heavily in enterprise-land. (In theory because Sun hasn't been too competitive for a long while, but in theory Oracle bought them to change that.)

I hope Hurd wins. Not because I like the guy, but because I think non-compete agreements, like patents, must go down in flames.

It sounds HP's suit is based not on a non-compete agreement, but a provision of his $35M severance package in which he agreed not to disclose trade secrets or confidential info.

That's the impression I got from the article, anyway. I suppose it wouldn't be hard to argue that he can work for Oracle without disclosing HP trade secrets.

>argue that he can work for Oracle without disclosing HP trade secrets.

Depends, is "treat engineers like crap until they leave - thus reducing costs" an HP trade secret?

No, at least not according to James Gosling (http://nighthacks.com/roller/jag/entry/escaped_from_reality) and many others who have left Sun after the acquisition.

In my experience that is tough to argue in court.

It seems to me that there are two possibilities, and either way, Hurd should win:

1. It is possible for Hurd to work for Oracle without disclosing HP trade secrets. Then Hurd is not breaching his agreement by working for them.

2. It is not possible for Hurd to work for Oracle without disclosing HP trade secrets. Then the agreement is a de-facto non-compete agreement, and therefore unenforceable.

If this turns out to be the case, the bigger question is whether or not he gets to keep the severance package...

If he does end up at Oracle, I suspect that the money given to him by HP to go away too...

I admittedly don't know the details, but if he has a severance, that usually implies that he was let go. All the non-competes I've ever read were effectively voided in the event of employer termination, unless the severance amount also included a non-compete clause itself.

I'm generally not a fan of non-competes, but if you get a $40m golden parachute, I think it's fair to ask that you not immediately jump to a competitor.

Come to California :)

The article lacks any kind of interesting content and is badly edited at that.

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