Same Old, Same Old at HP? 72
theodp writes "Computerworld Editor-in-Chief Don Tenant expresses astonishment at HP's cluelessness in the wake of its boardroom leak investigation fiasco, noting that HP CEO Mark Hurd's choice for a new Chief Ethics Officer was Hurd's go-to guy at NCR when the boss wanted internal leaks investigated." From the article: "It seems incomprehensible that no one at HP could foresee that appointing a former Hurd colleague to the ethics oversight position might be perceived as a shameless attempt by Hurd to keep from being further sullied by the scandal. But there's another dimension to all this that's even more baffling. Nearly two weeks before HP announced Hoak's appointment, BusinessWeek ran a story that recounted how Hurd had to deal with a number of internal investigations at NCR, including probes of leaks of sensitive information on Yahoo message boards."
Re: (Score:2)
On the flip side, this is the first time someone called me "gay". I usually get called "fat"! Kiss my F.A.Q. [creimer.ws]
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I can barely contain my laughter. Well done, sire.
Is his decision so bad? (Score:5, Informative)
The Computerworld story seems unfair in characterizing this decision as cluelessness - who wouldn't bring in their most trustworthy colleagues to solve their toughest problem?
Re:Is his decision so bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
To appoint one monumentally bad CEO is unfortunate. To appoint two... smacks of carelessness.
Re:Is his decision so bad? (Score:5, Interesting)
This decision isn't neccesarily bad either, it is just unfortunate given the recent scandal; the problem is that it doesn't do anything to convey that the problems are being fixed, not that it is a problem in and of itself.
Re: (Score:2)
Or were you referring to Fiorina and Dunn?
If so, I'm not sure it will be borne out that Dunn was a "monumentally bad" CEO.
Re: (Score:2)
They're doing "a heckuva job"?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know about you but... (Score:1)
Re:I don't know about you but... (Score:5, Funny)
Dell- Phone call took 5 minutes. I told the guy the error code on the test that I ran on the hard drive using their diagnostics disk, he got my address and contact information and then the call was done. The part was shipped to me the next day. Guy I spoke to was from Georgia and although he had an accent neither of us had problems understanding each other
HP- Three... god... damn... hours on the phone with these people. There systems are slow as shit, I can't understand what they are asking me to do, they can't understand me. Ask to get transferred? You either end up in the wrong department or disconnected. EVERY TIME! I called in 5 times just asking to speak to a manager and everytime they either hung up on me or transferred me to their television department. Finally I was able to bully one of the techs into just sending me a hard drive.
Guess which PC company we are going with for our next set of stores?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Typical HP Technical Support Experience (Score:5, Interesting)
2)Customer looks for tech support number on web site. No luck. (all you can find is a completely worthless FAQ that is missing even the most basic of questions and answers, alongside a Knowledge...er Know-Nothing-Base)
3)Customer finds the support number by looking in the company's domain registration record.
4)Customer calls number. After being re-routed and bounced and made to call other numbers, customer finally reaches tech support.
5) Customer waits 37 minutes to talk to someone.
6) Customer gets a filtering person, who creates a service record after giving the customer the third degree (When the process is repeated, the filtering person always has to re-create the service record because the previous one forgot to save it)
7) Tech support person asks what the problem is. Customer describes. Support person asks customer to be put on hold. The company disconnects customer after 10 minutes of waiting.
8) Repeat #5,#6,#7 several times. Usually in the same order, but not always (because you so often get staff people who hang up on you instead of transfer you).
9) Real tech support person on the phone! He asks: "Xvswwwovv wavvwat qzxwzvxx?".
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
10) let you 'order' a CD that has the drivers for your printer, camera, burner, or scanner for $20.
After getting burned on that one a few times, I know I'll never have an HP logo on anything I shell out cash for again.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Go to www.hp.com
Click on Support & Troubleshooting (left-hand side)
Under Additional Resources on the right-hand side, click on Contact HP
Under Call HP, U.S. phone numbers for: click on Technical support after you buy.
No luck? I am based in the U.S. though.
Re:I don't know about you but... (Score:4, Insightful)
You make the product only as good as you have to in order to avoid mass revolt from your customer base, with the support to match. The fact that most consumers will get pissed off but not actually do anything about it allows this business model to remain viable.
People are more tolerant of crap computers than they would be of, say, a dishwasher. People are used to their computers crashing, getting infected by malware, and losing their data. If their dishwasher stopped running in the middle of a cycle, failed to sanitize their dishes so someone got sick, or destroyed all their dishes, you can bet your ass the dishwasher manufacturer would have torches and pitchforks outside their doors. But the average HP computer buyer (on the consumer machines anyway) would rather get a cheaper computer than one that runs correctly.
Re: (Score:2)
The one who sold you the hardware that didn't need to be replaced. Scratch Dell (because their hardware falls apart all the time, which is why their people are very quick at replacing it) and HP (who are having difficulty figuring out what hardware is and if they sell it, so you're lucky if you get shipped a computer and not a walnut or something). Go to another vendor. Have you considered Lenovo?
Re: (Score:1)
The fault with the laptop was straightforward - the internal modem had failed, pointing to a motherboard fault, something I diagnosed in about half an hour before shipping them the laptop. Despite promising a 5 day turnaround, it took HP over two months to actually get a working laptop back to us. I made dozens of phone calls, and ended up with nearly 20 pages of notes tr
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
-Mike
Re: (Score:2)
I have an HP Pavillion 750n desktop and a Pavillion zt1130 laptop, both about four years old, still working nicely. I've never had any problem with them other than getting the sound card on the laptop working under Linux, which is hardly an HP-specific problem. Back in the late 80s and early 90s when I used them, HP's 9000/300 series workstations were really nice. Maybe in the past few years things have gone downhill, but until a few years ago at any rate HP computers were fine in my experience.
Re: (Score:2)
This has got to be an improvement ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Getting the facts straight (Score:5, Informative)
1) The probe started before Mark Hurd became CEO.
2) The Board of Directors, specifically the Chairman, was directing the investigation.
3) Internal council, external council and the Chief Ethics Officer (doh, he obviously wasn't qualified for his job) worked closely on the investigation.
4) Hurd was probably a bit more worried about profit and revenue, not some board room soap opera.
5) No one has said that NCR's investigations were in any way illegal or unethical.
6) The illegal activities were performed by a number of other firms.
Ken Lay is speaking from the grave? (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
How these peope came to run HP (Score:5, Insightful)
So why do they have millions of $$ and all the perks and you little? A large part is chance.
Assuming you are reasonably competent with a good attitude, you will surely be a project manager. With success, you will oversee all projects in your division, and then probably become division manager. Now, if your division is successfull, you will be promoted fast to corporate leadership, and again, now you need success of the whole corporation to get further, and with that you will quickly run the company.
You can at any time, and you should, jump ship, and continue the career for a new company, just like playing frogs.
The catch in all this is simple: Luck and Selection. If your first project is a failure, your career stops. It does not matter what the reason was. This is true all the way, so:
1. Only work for a company that sells what you do. Only than can you reach the top. An IT guy in a hospital will never run the hospital. Physicians will.
2. Only pick sure successes.
3. Jump ship if neccessary, and do it early. Dont ride a failure to the bottom.
The HP managers just lucked out on the above due to good times or other random global events, and managed not to screw up early on.
Just go for it.
Re: (Score:2)
It sounds to me like good advice, if your goal is to become a CEO of a large company. What you're perceiving as "bitterness" is simple pragmatism; this is the way the world works. Nobody said it was fair, equitable, or even rational. I don't think any sane person could argue with the fact that the people who succeed aren't always the smartest, best or most worthy. Luck is as big a factor as desire, motivation, talent or enthusiasm.
What you have to decide is if that goal is worthy of th
Re: (Score:1)
Re:How these peope came to run HP (Score:5, Insightful)
Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, newly arrived on American shores, enlisted in the Manhattan nuclear weapons Project, and brought face-to-face in the midst of World War II with U.S. flag officers.
So-and-so is a great general, he was told.
"What is the definition of a great general?" Fermi characteristically asked.
I guess it's a general who's won many consecutive battles.
"How many?"
After some back and forth, they settled on five.
"What fraction of American generals are great?"
After some more back and forth, they settled on a few percent.
"But imagine," Fermi rejoined, "that there is no such thing as a great general, that all armies are equally matched, and that winning a battle is purely a matter of chance. Then the chance of winning one battle is one out of two, or 1/2; two battles 1/4, three 1/8, four 1/16, and five consecutive battles 1/32 - which is about 3 percent. You would expect a few percent of American generals to win five consecutive battles - purely by chance. Now, has any of them won ten consecutive battles... ?"
The problem with the business world - especially in America these days - is that it's absolutely filled with climbers, idiots with loads of ambition and not a lot else. A few of these baboons get promoted to the executive ranks based largely upon politicking and thanks to random chance - as Fermi correctly observed 60 years ago - and then promptly go about looting the entire organization they run.
HP, having been hijacked by Carly Fiorina and her ilk, is a prime example. They've surrendered HP's position as an industry and technology leader and are now simply cashing in on decades worth of work by engineers and more competent managers. They're eating the seed corn. Look to Detroit if you want to know where this folly will leave America's technology industry.
Re: (Score:2)
Either managers can actively do harm or they can't. If they can't, we're indifferent to who winds up in charge. If they can (and HP's previous leadership seems to have clearly demonstrated that they can), then your stochastic model goes out the window.
Me, I could do without all that stress and am happy to just have a job where I can criticize other people's math every day...
Re: (Score:1)
I'd rather have some banging techno than a bunch of crap American cars anyday!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I love the conclusion "and with that
Re: (Score:2)
Jump ship "if necessary", AND "do it early"? So which is it?
Both - identifying a pig and doing it quickly is a serious career skill.
Re: (Score:2)
You need look no further than the very company we are talking about to see that this is not entirely true. How does a CEO who rode not one but two companies (in a row, even) straight into the ground still have any career at all?
Re: (Score:2)
your rights online? (Score:1)
Can they borrow and change the Google slogan? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hurd's teflon. (Score:3, Interesting)
Thing is, Mark's beloved by investors for righting (however temporarily) the sinking ship of HP. He's also better at eating shit than Ms. Dunn, as anyone who watched the congressional hearings can attest. Looks like he's home-free at this point.
I hope karma pays him back, because I don't believe he knew nothing about the Nixonian extent of the spying undertaken in HP's name.
-Isaac
2001 called. (Score:2)
2001 called. It wants its business news headline back. It seems like you took an old Enron story and switched Lay's name with Hurd's....
I've always wondered about this. (Score:4, Insightful)
My theory is that there are two components. In the case of a public company, the CEO and board are under constant investor pressure. This is one of the only downsides of the internet and instant access to information. In the 50s, 60s, 70s and before, almost no one was individually in the market (though their pension funds might be.) The worst thing a board had to worry about was a bad article in the Wall Street Journal. Even then, some guy on his yacht or in his country estate would get the news a day later, and ask Jeeves to call the broker and sell. Now, all that has to happen is for one disgruntled employee or board member to post something on Yahoo Finance. Instantly, every trader in the universe starts selling within seconds and you have a 20% drop for the day. Look at what happened with Airbus after the fact that the A380 was behind schedule and way over budget. If I were a CEO, the climate would tempt me to make some decision, any decision, to keep the investors from selling.
The second thing has been around forever. No one in a company, unless they are really fearless, wants to stand up and tell the executives they're wrong. Some companies are more tolerant than others to this, but I've worked in a lot of dictatorships.
Re:I've always wondered about this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
My observations have usually been that the company owners are likely to repeatedly make bad decisions that get "fixed" by people further down the corporate food chain. Most people working for a p
Re: (Score:1)
"HP overtakes Dell in PC Sales" (Score:1)
HP Ethics Chief Went After Press to Quash NCR Leak (Score:5, Interesting)
You misunderstand how this all works (Score:2)
In other words, Patricia Dunn's biggest sin wasn't breaking the law (allegedly), it was getting caught.
Chief Ethics Officer? That must be.... (Score:1)
Where do I sign up?
Re: (Score:2)
Nyberg School of Nonethical Business Conduct (Score:2)