Apr 03
As of today, this blog is under new managment.
Everyone should take their hats off to the founders, and wish them well as they embark on a new phase of life.
You may notice a few changes as we catch up with our favorite tennis-loving executive.
But let’s start things off right with a big…
…FUCK YOU!
Mar 17
Two proxy advisory companies, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis are recommending to HP Shareholders that the vote agains some of the current board of directors. There are movements to remove G. Kennedy Thompson and John H. Hammergren (two long-time directors). Board chairman Ray Lane, as well as directors Marc Andreessen and Rajiv Gupta are also being targeted in one of the campaigns. Read more about it here.
Many of HP’s problems today can be traced back to a board of directors that isn’t doing its job, going back to the Pretexting Scandal. Some of the board member apparently couldn’t be bothered to meet Leo before hiring him as the CEO. Some shareholder feel that the board didn’t due the proper due diligence before agreeing to buy Autonomy.
HP has paid out $80 Million in golden parachutes since 2005, while at the same time they have laid off- or pledeged to cut about 75,000 workers! Paying huge salaries and bonuses to executives while laying off employees is not the way to build a strong company.
During past elections we’ve heard lots of people say to vote the bums out. Dear Shareholders, you now have a chance to vote the bums out. Who knows if Ray Lane will be a good Chairman for HP in the long term, but hiring Leo and approving the Autonomy purchase, really call into question if he is the person to lead the Board of Directors. G. Kennedy Thompson and John H. Hammergren have been around for a while and they should go. G. Kennedy Thompson was CEO at Wokovia and played a part in the Financial Crisis, why on earth is he still on the HP Board?
Shareholders should demand that rules be put into place that put better qualified people on the Board of Directors. Shareholders should demand that boards limit the number of other boards that directors can serve on. Shareholders should demand that executives and management don’t get bonuses and huge salary if the do workforce reductions to reach their targets or numbers! If the situation at a company is so dire that layoffs are needed then bonuses should be out the window! HP shareholders, employees, and customers deserve executives and management that have a vision for future, not just bean counters that have forgotten how to innovate and only seem to be able to waste money on buying companies and playing games with excel.
Bill and Dave would be not recognize the company that they founded and they would ask what happened to the HP Way? They would be outraged! Dear Shareholders you should too! Make your voice heard at this year’s Shareholder meeting on March 20th!
Mar 17
HP Germany annonced on February 1, 2013 that it was closing the Ruesselsheim location, effecting 1,100 employees. Sadly this was announced to employees via email sent out at around 3:30 pm Central European Time. One of the local news organizations had reported this shortly before management notified employees!
Publicly, HP Enterprise Services can say that the site is being closed because General Motors is insourcing their IT, but employees in Ruesselsheim have been supporting a wide range of other clients for a while now. Also the location includes employees in other business units, beside Enterprise Services and HP employees in Ruesselsheim wonder if Germany management really thought about the ramifications of closing the entire site and its impact on HP’s clients, not to mention the local economy and the employees?
Ruesselsheim was the home of EDS OS in Germany prior to EDS (Electronic Data Systems) being bought by HP. This was the largest EDS site in Germany and the employee works council has been tradtionally active at this location. If HP is able to close this site without any major problems, it will become increasingly easier to close other sites in Germany (and over the world for that matter). It would also mean another large nail in the coffin of the once proud and successful EDS.
With all of the damage that HP has done to EDS and its employees since they bought EDS, you have to wonder what was HP thinking when the bought EDS? HP had publicly said that buying EDS would give HP’s own services a big boost, but you need people with knowledge to do services. HP got rid of 24,000+ shortly after buying EDS and has had a few rounds of layoffs since then, including the latest drive started last year. HP also took a charge for billions of dollars for the value of EDS last year, of the $13+ billion dollars they spent they were now writing off around $8 billion dollars. It takes some serious effort to destroy that much value in such a short period of time. This leads me to ask again, why did HP buy EDS?
There is an online petition requesting that HP Germany stop the closure of Ruesselsheim. The petition is available in English, German, and Spanish at the moment. Since 2005 HP had laid off or plans to lay off 75,000 employees. Please take a moment to let HP know that you don’t approve of their endless assault on their employees. The petition can be found at:
Mar 17
Hello everybody, life has kind of pulled us away from this blog for a while, we won’t bore you with all the details. However, during this time a lot has happened so we thought that we’d give you a quick update on some of what has happened…
These are some events that have happened while we were away. We could go on about so many of those things but this brings you up to speed. Don’t you just wish that you could wake up and find that this was all just some bad nightmare? Unfortunately, sometimes our nightmares do come true!
Jan 05
Well well no surprise, no surprise at all. Jodie Fisher long-secret letter was released last week. It shows that Mark Hurd, in addition to being a prick in general, is a womanizer and sleazeball. Don’t take my word for it, you can read all about it here.
I’m no lawyer, but was it sexual harassment? Sure sounds like it. Well, at least from the lens of the training Mark Hurd made me fucking take, but obviously didn’t take himself.
Some of the more racy items:
Hurd’s a boozer: “You were drinking at this dinner excessively and seemed to get more friendly and personal the more you drank. You were always looking around decidedly aware of the fact that someone might recognize you because you are so well known.”
[update: New York Times has a great article titled In H.P. Tale, a Question of Truth or Titillation]
Oct 06
Steve Jobs is no longer with us. Steve worked right up to the end. And left us with a legacy. Some stars shine brighter than others, and those that do often burn out instead of fading away.
Steve was one one of those stars.
Thanks, Steve for what you’ve left behind. Where would we start? The world’s greatest music player (iPhone/iPod touch)? The best OS (Mac OSX)? I think I’d settle for something that would make Steve very happy. Steve, thanks for making products that “just work.” They weren’t the flashiest (though they often were). They didn’t have the best specs (“What no camera?” “What, no floppy drive?”). And yes they were expensive. But wow, they always worked.
By comparison, we have Mark Hurd. Oh Mark, what did you reap? What did you sow? Fucking nothing. If Steve was a gentle farmer, you’re slash and burn. Steve cultivated the land and nurtured it so that those after him could continue growing and creating.
Mark? What did he do to the land? It’s saddening, really. As much as we tell Mark to fuck off around here, he’s the one who really fucked things over. Fucked people over. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. Our words won’t hurt Mark, but what he did has hurt hundreds of thousands.
So with that intro, lets compare: Steve vs Mark.
Stock Value:
Stock price when Hurd took over HP: ~$20. Stock price today: $25.
Stock price when Steve took over Apple: ~$20. Stock price today: ~$300.
Employees:
Steve: Steve hired the best and brightest. He recruited new CEO Tim Cook from HP! Steve rewarded his people and they thrived. Apple has grown and grown and grown. Employees are some of the happiest in the industry.
Hurd: In addition to the thousands and thousands of layoffs, Hurd slashed employee pay by 5%, cut the 401k matching by 50% and made it discretionary, and elminated the company bonus in favor of individual performance bonuses. Basically, he set the employees against each other, and cut-cut-cut. Oh and gave himself a salary cut, but increased his bonus. Genius. Those he didn’t fire are leaving in droves.
New Products:
Steve introduced the iPod, iPad, iTunes music store, AppleTV, and on and on. He’s left a pipeline of new products behind.
Mark? Oh he creates short term profit by slashing and slashing and slashing. On Hurd’s watch HP became the largest company selling computers, but his focus on selling a commodity at razor thin margins didn’t bode well. His dash to become a data-center supplier offeneded customers and found his competitors moving into HP’s ground as HP moved into theirs. Way to piss off your strategic partners. As someone who worked in R&D during Hurd’s tenure, I personally saw how he pulled money out of new business development and starved great, innovative ideas. HP was working on smartphones (iPaq’s, etc) for as long as anyone – how did they miss developing the iPhone? Probably, Hurd was too cheap.
Legacy:
Steve not only leaves behind perhaps the most valuable firm in the world. He developed leaders behind him. And he created an Apple University to enshrine and perpetuate the culture he created.
Mark took the venerable HP-Way, a culture developed by HP’s Jobs-esque founder Dave and Bill, and crushed it. Gone was the idea that everyone was working hard on their goals, instead replaced by business-unit performance and individual performance. Gone was the idea that there were no keys to the garage and tools, gone was the teamwork of the past. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, said Mr. Hurd. I suspect HP’s new leaders will ressurect the HP-Way in a 21st century way. But the damage has been done. HP is lost, it’s morale shattered, it’s stock price down, and its brand wounded. That’s Mark’s legacy. If you work for Mark now, I’d watch out.
Final Note:
If you haven’t read the Steve Jobs
If you like Audiobooks, you can get the Steve Jobs biography for free from Audible by signing up for Audible’s free trial by clicking here(just cancel before the end of the 14 days). It loads right on your iPhone or Android (or laptop, etc) and you can listen while you commute to your job. Proceeds from these sales go towards keeping the FUMH site going (or spreading the word, as you wish!)
Aug 30
You’ve probably heard by now that HP decided to kill the Palm devices running on WebOS, unless you’ve been living under a rock that is. The HP acquisition of Palm had “fail” written all over it from the beginning. How can it be that HP spent over $1 billion U.S. to buy Palm a little more than a year later is already throwing in the towel and killing the hardware devices associated with the WebOS?
Once upon a time there was this company that made the PalmPilot, this was before the Blackberry from RIM, and all those Nokia Smartphones (the iPhone/iPad and all the Android products too). For much of their history in the past decade or so, they’ve been the little engine that could, they’ve been fighting an uphill battle with limited resources. I’m sure that many of the people that stayed after HP bought them had hoped with HP’s marketplace position and resources that they’d be in position to move to the next level, well they seemed to have been in for a surprise. HP didn’t seem to put any R&D money into Palm and let it die before it really got out of the starting gate.
HP has been in the mobile space before with the iPaq. Remember the iPaq, this was a good device that HP inherited when it “merged” with Compaq. HP didn’t really put the R&D money into this product either and then Nokia, RIM, and the iPhone all came along. HP was going to get back into this market (and expand into others) by buying Palm. What happened here?
HP Executive Vice President Todd Bradley worked at Palm before joining HP. In fact he was CEO of PalmOne. Is it any surprise that HP would buy the company that Todd Bradley once ran?
While it is hard to really know what Mark Hurd was thinking when HP bought Palm, there is little doubt that this is another once great company ruined by him. This is only one of thirty plus acquisitions started and/or closed during his reign. To all the remaining Palm employees and those ruined along the way we do fell for you. How about a big F**k Y** to ole Mark? We hope that you’ll be out of a job like the countess good people that you’ve “workforce balanced” along the way. Unfortunately for the people that you’ve shafted along the way, they aren’t looking at those $100 million plus paydays that you’ve had recently. We hope that you and the other corrupt and greedy CEOs out there like yourself will be out jobs soon, never to be hired again to a position where you can wreak so much havoc on hard working men and women with families to support. For all of the destruction that you’ve caused you should be tried for crimes against humanity with no chance of inflicting pain on anyone again.
Aug 29
A cool $100 million in cash. "Pass the Grey Poupon, bitches!"
Holy fucking shit, Mark Hurd is one rich asshole.
According to the San Jose Mercury News, fucking Mark Hurd made $100 million dollars.
Thats $100,000,000.00 for those of you who really want to feel like he makes a bit more money than you and I.
Where did it come from?
$14 million: HP Salary / Severance
$30 million: HP stock exercise (good move Turdy, u knew it was going to tank after you strangled it!)
$78.4 million: Oracle pay and bonus
Holy shit. These CEO’s get paid way too much. How does Hurd deserve one hundred times more in one year than most folks make in a lifetime?
Bullshit I say, B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T
So hey, Turdy, you may have all the money.
But you’re still a prick with no friends. None here cuz as we like to say:
FUCK YOU MARK HURD!
Jan 14
Welcome to 2011!
It’s a new year but Mark Hurd hasn’t changed. He’s still the same penny-pinching, steal-your-job-for-his-bonus, run-your-R&D-into-the-ground, cheat on his wife asshole he’s always been
So Mark, hey, Fuck You!
He’s at Oracle, layin’ low. Oracle is going gangbusters, and please don’t tell me its cuz Hurd is there. The groundwork was laid before he got there. He’s just reaping the benefits.
And eventually, he’ll get back to being Darth Turd. He can’t kick it. Cut Cut Cut.
So Mark, remember, we’re watching. And when we see, we’re gonna call you on it. When you fire people, we’ll be watching. When you sleaze around with other girls, we’ll be watching. When you cheat and lie we’ll be watching. When you take from employees to give to yourself, we’ll be watching.
Happy new year everyone, and to you, Mark Hurd, have a happy fucking new year! Fuck You!
Dec 22
Yes we knew it would come.
Mark Hurd shitty ethics and his lying-as-a-way-to-cover-up-an-affair is being investigated by the SEC for the details of his “resignation.”
Awesome news! The bastard deserves to have his actions brought out into the open.
The most contentious issue, which we mentioned months ago, was the disclosure that Hurd told his soft-corn porn love-toy, Jodie Fisher, that he was closing a deal for EDS. This is insider information, and the SEC wants to know if anything untold came of this info. Jodie apparently didn’t act on the info, so it doesn’t appear there was any insider trading, but really, Mark, are you that stupid?
At the moment, Mark is fighting tooth-and-nail to prevent the unsealing of the letter from Jodie that brought him down. Over at the San Francisco Chronicle, good ol’ boy Henry Blodget says there’s no way the letter shouldn’t be disclosed, as HP shareholders deserve to know what happened. I agree!
But why stop there? Hurd’s reckless behavior led to a huge reduction in HP’s share prices. And Hurd just walked away.
Hey Mark, are you listening? Remember all your talk of ethics? The “New York Times Test,” that was seen twice a year in the corporate Standards of Business Conduct training? Fuck You!
You could have been a man about leaving. Left behind a strong HP. But no, you had to go work for the only guy sleazier than you in Silicon Valley. And while you could have taken the high road, you and Larry seem to be on a mission to sully HP and it’s good name.
Karma’s a bitch bro – and the SEC is just one more piece of bad karma coming your way. I’m sure the outcome will not be good. Have fun squirming in your chair answering their questions.
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