Posted on 04/10/2010 10:05:21 AM PDT by SmokingJoe
Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Mark Hurd likes things big and simple. His boardroom has a big empty table and a big videoconferencing screen. A large tablet of blank paper leans on a tripod, allowing him to sketch big numbers to seal a point. The room's sole decoration is an outsize cylinder bursting apart with springs. Its label reads, "big can of whup ass."
Hurd has done his share of whuppin' since he took over HP in April 2005. The company had pulled in $80 billion of revenue for the Oct. 31, 2004 fiscal year, a figure scarcely changed over the four years since the merger with Compaq Computer. For fiscal 2009 the take was $115 billion, or annualized growth of 7% over the last five years. Net income during that period has been up an average 18% per annum to $7.7 billion and jolted ahead 25% in the first fiscal quarter of 2010. All this is thanks to dramatic cost-cutting, the standardization of large-scale purchases like semiconductors--and a brutalizing culture of accountability for every penny in and out.
HP's chief has also imposed a ruthless efficiency at the highest levels. By packing the board and senior management with more Midwesterners than Silicon Valley insiders, and adding a lot more hard-core business types than engineers and inventors, he has remade HP more in his own image--people who thrive on dissatisfaction and thirst for expansion. You see it reflected in the August 2008 $13.9 billion acquisition of Electronic Data Systems ( EDS - news - people ) and the recent $2.7 billion grab of 3Com ( COMS - news - people ), the Chinese networking company, and in the relentless push to grab new large customers.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Hurd is a very good CEO. Carly and her idiots almost destroyed HP.
“...and adding a lot more hard-core business types than engineers and inventors...”
Well HP’s earlier years were just the opposite. They were a technology company - hence the previous focus on engineers and inventors. I won’t buy another HP computer. Every one of them I’ve purchased in the past made me sorry. Unreliable and quirky annoying software which is required for their oddball hardware which often isn’t compatible with their other products like printers and scanners...
Well that's the trouble isn't it?
The higher ups make the screw ups (Fiorina et al), then leave with huge multi million dollar “golden parachutes”, while the rank and file get hammered for the screw-ups that the higher ups made.
Personally, I think most CEO's don't have a clue what they are doing, and are vastly overpaid. Case in point, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. While he is not overpaid because he is already rich, he sure as heck is clueless.
Yeah, HP’s consumer stuff is basically overpriced commoditized junk. Used to make great tech equipment, but now that’s Agilent.
HP? Printer ink company, isn’t it?
Their laptops suck, but I’ve had good success with their desktops.
All of my bad experiences were with desktops. Out of probably five computers over perhaps five years, only one still works, and that one I wiped the drive the day I got it and put Win2k on.
I have three running in my office right now. I always wipe them and put either XP or Win2K on them.
Yeah, but you got your cut back as a one-time bonus, and they even matched your 401K up to 4%, right? So what are you complaining about? /s
Oh yeah, and it raised morale enormously. /s
Oh yes, and with all the layoffs and less pay they expect everyone else to pick up the slack. They know they have us in a bind, we are lucky to still have a job...for now. I tell you, we don’t know from day to day.
HP used to make some of the best test and measurement equipment. I wish I still had a copy of the hardbound catalog. It was really interesting.
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