Could HP’s new CEO, Mark Hurd, have timed things a little better? Sprawled across the news this morning is the announcement that HP will be trimming 10% of its workforce (14,500) jobs. Funny, yesterday I read a number of articles about Hurd snagging Randy Mott from Dell as HP’s new CIO…for about $15,000,000 in overall compensation (yes, the number of zeros is correct!).

Quite frankly, I’m not sure which is more disturbing, the fact that one individual could possibly command such a high compensation package, or that a company with such a wonderful history and sense of values as HP would lack the sensitivity to spread the two events out a little. I’m sure Mr. Mott is worth every penny of his compensation package (well, I certainly hope that he is), but seriously folks, what kind of a message does it send to the remaining 135,500 employees? You’re more expendable then you think…

And all of this raises another issue: If the new CIO is netting $15,000,000 in compensation, how much money is being leeched from the company when you add up the entire executive suite’s pay packages? Certainly we all remember the ridiculous amount of money Fiorina left with (hmmm, what exactly did she accomplish during her tenure? An HP iPod.). I’m wondering if HP’s problems could be better solved by axing everyone at the top, and taking the leftover hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild the company to it’s former glory.

Just a thought.

Here are a few articles to check out:

• Hewlett-Packard to Cut 14,500 Jobs
• Hewlett Plans to Announce Revamping
• Randy Mott’s Pot of Gold
• HP Exchanges 15K Jobs for New $15.3M CIO

TAGS: Business Ethics | Executive Compensation | HP | Dell | CIO

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 19th, 2005 at 2:30 am and is filed under Business Ethics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.