Apparently Former HP CEO Mark Hurd "Was A Thug"

Among all the talk about former HP CEO Mark Hurd came this particular gem: He “was a thug” and nicknamed “Mark Turd” by folks who’d worked for him.

These interesting names and characterisation come from the blog of Chuck House, a former long-time HP employee:

This guy was a thug, nicknamed Mark Turd by ex-HPites who worked directly for him — stories that have circulated in the Valley for three years. He raped HP employees (figuratively, without violating the sexual conduct code at HP) by eliminating the sixty-five year concept of profit sharing, preferring to move to obscene bonuses for himself and his five top minions — a mere $US113 million payout for them in a year he chopped everyone else’s pay by 5% plus profit-sharing. These were raises for some of the five people by as much as 400% — a tidy uptick.

He was profane, a bully, autocratic, threatening, demeaning, vindictive, and rude. Blogs over the weekend by current employees said “Hooray, the tyrant is gone!” I couldn’t contain my glee on the 11pm news — best news for HP in a very long time!

The Voice of the Workplace, HP’s thirty-five year historic ‘measure’ of employee feelings (done every five years) showed in April an astonishing finding — more than two-thirds of HP’s employees would quit tomorrow if they had an equivalent job offer. Not a raise, not a promotion, simply an alternative. That number never used to be in double digits. Other companies in the Valley have reported an amazing rate of HP resumes being submitted; one large company saying, “we didn’t know they had that many people working there”.

There’s lots more to “worry about”, and it is easy to imagine that the HP Board was worrying about all of them, but didn’t know where to “pin the blame”. This “non-sexual” harassment was simply a convenient foil…

Pretty harsh words about a man we’d barely heard about until recently. [HP Phenomenon via BI]