No, maybe it looked to Apple's board like the correct decision at the time, but, in hindsight, it actually appears a huge mistake, not because of how well Apple has done since his return, but because of how poorly they executed after his departure. The entire Mac platform languished for years under Scully, Spindler & Amelio. With no real driving vision from these men, no real change or advancement other than the plodding incremental improvements that are Apple's history in that period took place. At the same time, SJ was hard at work on the very projects that saved Apple from itself, projects that he would have been able to pursue, and would have pursued, even more fruitfully had he still been running Apple. He may have made a lot of mistakes, but he also did a lot of brilliant things, and on balance, the brilliant things he's done have been far more important than the mistakes he's made. We'll never know where the Mac, and computing generally, would be today if SJ had not been ousted from Apple, but it's utter folly to think that they did better in the years without SJ than they would have done with him.
I am not sure how much better Apple would have been with Steve Jobs staying on board and John Scully resigning in 1985. From what I have read, Steve Jobs was really out of touch of how the macintosh was doing at the time. This lead to his eventually ouster of macintosh operations. The reason for this was lackluster sales and (from what I read) Steve's erratic behavior. If Steve had stayed on board at Apple and the macintosh division, I am not so sure he would have created something close to a Next operating system on top of unix.
I think in this case you cannot have one without the other, Jobs may have very well killed the company if he stayed, and we may not have Next, OS X or i devices as we know it.
Steve never stole money from the company and he never embarrassed the company with an affair with a beautiful actress
Should we care if a CEO of this Fortune 10 company has an affair? Yes of course we should. These guys are running public companies (H-P is listed on the stock market so they are publicly held), this is not a private company and what he does actually is our business. Also, its pretty obvious that if this guy is willing to steal money from the company and conspire with his mistress to funnel her the cash that he is not ethical and should not be running a public company. Leaving an unethical person at the helm of a public company is just an invitation for more problems because he has already demonstrated a severe lack of judgement.
Well I mostly disagree. "Stealing money" can be used as a maudlin phrase denoting a person who has fallen out of favor with their BOD. If she never filed the harassment claim, then as HP CEO Hurd has discretion to run CEO events, and he wasn't stealing the money. If she did, then he suddenly is in the wrong and the money is de-sanctified. He has discretion over billions of dollars of company business, INCLUDING the few thousand dollars in question (which amounts to a rounding error of nothing).
It's called an accounting error if nothing else. It happens all the time on billions of dollars. You can accuse all 500/500 of Fortune 500 CEOs of having questionable financial dealings. The reality is, all things are questionable in corporate finance. Especially if you are trying to pull a hatchet job on somebody. It's easy to do. Just say, that coffee at that meeting was improperly billed. You stole the money and you're fired. Basically he is being fired over a cup of coffee. After all, it is his job to travel, brainstorm and "summit" with people, in hotels. So WTF.
And by the way, who he sleeps with is his and his wife's business. It strikes me that Carly Fiorina belongs in jail if she was spying on people or wiretapping them illegally.
I think in this case you cannot have one without the other, Jobs may have very well killed the company if he stayed, and we may not have Next, OS X or i devices as we know it.
Both you and anonymouse have very good points in that particular debate.
Yeah I personally think the smartest move Apple did was fire Jobs in '85. This gave Steve Jobs the time to breath. Start NeXT, acquire Pixar, leave NeXT and have the foundation for what Apple is today. Without Steve's enviers with NeXT and Pixar we would not have what we have today. I firmly believe Mac OS X was the main saving grace for Apple. Without it we would not have the stable hardware (including the iPhone) platform we have today.
Then what was with all those defenses of Mac OS 8 and 9, and the dismissal of "buzzwords" which Mac users take for granted today?
Who cares if the system pauses when you click on a menu?
Who cares about dynamic memory allocation? Just click Get Info and change the number yourself.
OS X is the foundation for their most profitable HW and it's sure to grow in scale, and NeXT's WebObjects seems to run the backbone of all their financial transactions. However, I would say that Jobs' "vision" and management is the real reason for their phenomenal reemergence.
I think it's a combination of all those things. However, I don't see any reason to think Jobs would not have obtained the skills he has today if he had remained at Apple. People mature, develop new skills, become more effective at what they do without requiring having their worlds turned upside down on them. Maybe it would have been a bit bumpy, but I still think Apple would have been in a better place during its dark years if the board had hung on for the ride.
I think it's a combination of all those things. However, I don't see any reason to think Jobs would not have obtained the skills he has today if he had remained at Apple. People mature, develop new skills, become more effective at what they do without requiring having their worlds turned upside down on them. Maybe it would have been a bit bumpy, but I still think Apple would have been in a better place during its dark years if the board had hung on for the ride.
I think its impossible to say. Sometimes people need to get away from their environment to fully understand the errors of their ways. Sometimes its just easier to see things more clearly from a different point of view. In the case of Mr. Jobs I believe it was necessary for him to leave Apple in order for him to gain that perspective.
Remember at the time of Mr. Jobs resignation Apple was betting the company on the macintosh line as the Apple II series was inferior to the IBM PC. The fact that macintosh sales were not very good coupled with an out of touch Mr. Jobs who headed the division combined with an Apple that was betting the company on the success of the mac it is easy to see why the Apple board choose Mr. Scully to run the company.
Also remember that Apple had some of its greatest success without Mr. Jobs. Mr. Scully lead Apple to find great success. It wasn't until the early 1990's that Apple was truly losing its way.
There is no way to tell that if Mr. Jobs had stayed to run Apple that it would be the success it is today.
... Also remember that Apple had some of its greatest success without Mr. Jobs. Mr. Scully lead Apple to find great success. It wasn't until the early 1990's that Apple was truly losing its way. ...
Well, it is impossible to say, of course, so opinions may differ.
Apple may have done well financially under Scully for a few years, but they didn't really do anything new, except the Newton, which just didn't go anywhere. Mac OS development essentially languished -- although, it still remained better than the alternatives -- and the (dull and boring) path Scully started the company down is what nearly led to their demise.
Food for thought: Steve Jobs was kicked off the Lisa project because he was deemed, by the reasonable people, unreasonable and impossible to work with. He then applied his unreasonable, impossible personality to the Macintosh project. Which project was more of a success for Apple?
Well, it is impossible to say, of course, so opinions may differ.
Apple may have done well financially under Scully for a few years, but they didn't really do anything new, except the Newton, which just didn't go anywhere. Mac OS development essentially languished -- although, it still remained better than the alternatives -- and the (dull and boring) path Scully started the company down is what nearly led to their demise.
Food for thought: Steve Jobs was kicked off the Lisa project because he was deemed, by the reasonable people, unreasonable and impossible to work with. He then applied his unreasonable, impossible personality to the Macintosh project. Which project was more of a success for Apple?
I think the point of your last paragraph is negligent. Mainly because Lisa was designed as a business computer with an enormous price tag. I think the point I was trying to make was at the time of Mr. Jobs resignation, Apple needed to have a successful product to replace the Apple II. The company bet the macintosh on that. Mr. Jobs at the time was very good at pushing forward creating new if unproven products. It was crucial at the time that Apple have the Mac platform become a success. It had nothing else to compete with and would fall back on the Apple II which was not current technology at the time.
What Apple needed was to reap rewards in $$$ from the macintosh which it wasn't yet doing. Mr. Jobs was (from what I read) way to out of touch with the reality of the mac, which was it wasn't selling. Jobs was seen as to stubborn to change his viewpoint and was uncontrollable as a leader for a product that still hadn't reaped its success. This was dangerous for the company because they needed a reliable and sensible leader to make the macintosh a $$$ success.
Apple needed Mr. Scully, reliable and sensible if not a bit technology deficient, to lead the the mac and Apple to success. That was what was needed at the time. You are correct that Mr. Scully lead Apple astray in the end. But it should not be dismissed that Mr. Scully propped the company up from a potential disaster. I think the ideal scenario would be if both of them stayed. Mr. Scully wanted Mr. Jobs to stay on at Apple. Mr. Scully hoped that Mr. Jobs would find and create a new exploratory division at Apple and (from what I read) Mr. Jobs was going to do that with an idea called Apple Labs. This never came to be as Mr. Jobs was to effected by Mr. Scully being chosen over him to run the company.
I was at first shocked the Board let him go, but after you look at the circumstances, it makes perfect sense. Not just the affair but the lying and using expenditures un-appropriately even for just $20,000 is good reason for departure.
Especially now, when you have the SEC looking over your shoulder for anything in the books done wrong. You just can't take the chance.
And of all, you need a good CEO that represents your company, if the CEO is a liar or a cheat, do you think your employees are going to follow trust and honesty or even put faith in their leader. How can one speak of integrity to all the employees when he himself has no integrity.
Lastly, any employee that stole/used funds un-appropiately from their company even at a small amount would be fired. $20,000 is a lot more than what any other employee would be doing.
Case closed! Next CEO!
Yeah tell that to the shareholders and retirees who lost a cool $9,000,000,000 ($9B) for allegedly misappropriating $20,000. The $40M golden parachute is a drop in the bucket still.
H-P hired a law firm to do its own investigation and has exonerated Mr. Hurd of sexual harassment, saying he didn't violate H-P's guidelines, even while refusing to disclose Ms. Fisher's allegations or H-P's findings. As a result, H-P shareholders have no way of evaluating the validity of H-P's claim. Mr. Hurd did reach a settlement with Ms. Fisher, the terms of which have also not been disclosed. Both Mr. Hurd and Ms. Fisher have said no sex was involved.
The whole HP board should be fired over this... I'll know how to vote at the next shareholder's meeting...
"The HP board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago," Ellison wrote. "That decision nearly destroyed Apple if Microsoft hadn't purchased $150 Million of stock to pull Apple from the brink of bankruptcy."
Ok...lets clear this up....mark hurd was NOT fired for sexual harassment. The complaint was reviewed by the board and also by external counsel and was found to be untrue...HOWEVER, Mark Hurd has settled the issue seperately with the complainant with whom he was a close personal friend and whom was a contractor and advisor to HP.
Mark Hurd WAS fired for breaching the companies ethics and compliance policy in regards to financial reporting and conflict of interest inregards for his behaviour. He has admitted, and it has been found, that he both forged and doctored financial records in regards to his expense accounts and therefore the board asked him to step down due to his poor judgement and loss of credibilty to his employees and shareholders.
The only thing that sucks about this is that he still recieved his multi-million dollar payout when hp bitched to its employees it hadnt done so well last year financially and froze ann pay rises and slashed bonuses...
In hindsight, he should have been convicted of sexual misconduct, as he has screwed every single employee of HP
While he broke HP code in faking expenses, he turned HP around and made aquisitions that made alot of sense and money. Should he have been fired??? hard question, however being no sex was involved perhaps a warning or reprimand would have been adequate. His departure will result in a 40 million + payday for him, while shareholders are being screwed over as replacing a CEO these days is not the easiest thing.
Marc Hurd was well connected in the tech world & on top of current events. HP will go on but losing Marc Hurd is a big loss and poor decision by the HP board.
....Should we care if a CEO of this Fortune 10 company has an affair? ....
Sexual Harrasment IS NOT having an affair.
Sexual Harrasment is the use of power or position to gain sexual benefits from somebody else. As per Wikipedia,
Quote:
"Sexual harassment, is intimidation, bullying or coercion of a sexual nature, or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors.
This is not about an office daliance, it is about criminal behaviour.
I think the point of your last paragraph is negligent. Mainly because Lisa was designed as a business computer with an enormous price tag.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by negligent, unless to say I'm neglecting the fact that Apple made some money under Sculley, but, my point was that one can't discount what Jobs impact was on the money they made, and that it was his project that ended up making the company money, not the one that the reasonable guys ran. So, wild, out of control, whatever you want to call him, it was still the technology that he drove the development of that ended up making Apple successful during that time. And that's exactly the way it is today, and there wasn't anyone in between there that did anything remotely similar that anyone can point to and say, this is what made Apple great.
As an alternate hypothesis to yours, maybe Scully was just the fortunate foil of circumstances. Maybe the Mac was on the verge of taking off when the board fired Steve, and Scully is getting credit for things that just happened to him, but didn't result from him. But then, they ran out of steam, had dumped the creative guy, there was no second act waiting in the wings, besides Son of Lisa (the Newton, metaphorically speaking, designed by reasonable guys), and the rest is history. Notice that this time around, there's always another act ready to come on stage, there's always money being put into R&D, and there always seem to be successful new products coming out of it. (And probably a lot of stuff that either never pans out, or is still not ready for prime time.) Isn't that pretty much what Jobs wanted to do the first time around?
As you said before, and I agreed, we can never know what could have happened, there's a plausible case for either opinion. But, that also means we can't with any certainty say that it wasn't a stupid move to get rid of Jobs or that he needed to go.
[QUOTE=BUSHMAN4;1694063]While he broke HP code in faking expenses, he turned HP around and made aquisitions that made alot of sense and money. Should he have been fired??? hard question, however being no sex was involved perhaps a warning or reprimand would have been adequate. His departure will result in a 40 million + payday for him, while shareholders are being screwed over as replacing a CEO these days is not the easiest thing.
Marc Hurd was well connected in the tech world & on top of current events. HP will go on but losing Marc Hurd is a big loss and poor decision by hp
Hmmmm....so what your saying is and long as your a good productive employee, you can sexually harass, steal and be a non credible, untrustworthy asset to your company...
He broke the company ethics and compliance policy in a number of ways, his behavious is less than stellar after a sexual harassment case (guilty or not guilty) and generally the board and employees whom he is beholden too find him a person now of less than acceptable integrity....but thats ok, cos the guys connected...
I hope he becomes your new boss....you seem to be perfectly ok with his behaviour
Ps....if a "good" average employee had done the same thing, he would have been out on his ass with criminal charges pending for the return of the money....and no severance pay..
But thats ok, cos' the guys connected you can cut him some slack...
While he broke HP code in faking expenses, he turned HP around and made aquisitions that made alot of sense and money. Should he have been fired??? hard question, however being no sex was involved perhaps a warning or reprimand would have been adequate. His departure will result in a 40 million + payday for him, while shareholders are being screwed over as replacing a CEO these days is not the easiest thing.
Marc Hurd was well connected in the tech world & on top of current events. HP will go on but losing Marc Hurd is a big loss and poor decision by the HP board.
I'm wondering why he received that kind of severance package if he was being fired for misappropriation of company funds. Paying CEO's and management to leave is one of the most idiotic things in this economy currently (another being hedge funds). Things like this do nothing more than siphon money that could be used to pay the salaries of lower level workers that might otherwise be fired to reduce operating costs. The top heavy salary/bonus structures in these companies are ridiculous and really far beyond what is needed to retain good upper management.
Sexual Harrasment is the use of power or position to gain sexual benefits from somebody else. As per Wikipedia,
This is not about an office daliance, it is about criminal behaviour.
Nice definition. However, the board found the sexual harassment complaint to be without merit. She was looking for a payday and got it. Even after getting plenty of business while she flirted with a married man. She's not so innocent either.
Sexual Harrasment is the use of power or position to gain sexual benefits from somebody else. As per Wikipedia,
This is not about an office daliance, it is about criminal behaviour.
Oh really? Welcome to America, 2010. Sexual Harassment exists whenever and wherever a woman states that it exists. No exceptions. Woman says she was harassed, bingo, end of story. Harassment it is then. About 25% of the people nation-wide who must live the rest of their lives on a sexual predator list, are completely innocent, (aside from the time they pissed off some woman).
We live in the most pathetic, out of control country on the face of the planet.
Do you have any concept of the number of FAKE rape/harassment/abuse cases are reported every day in the U.S.? Any concept, whatsoever?
Oh really? Welcome to America, 2010. Sexual Harassment exists whenever and wherever a woman states that it exists. No exceptions. Woman says she was harassed, bingo, end of story. Harassment it is then. About 25% of the people nation-wide who must live the rest of their lives on a sexual predator list, are completely innocent, (aside from the time they pissed off some woman).
We live in the most pathetic, out of control country on the face of the planet.
Do you have any concept of the number of FAKE rape/harassment/abuse cases are reported every day in the U.S.? Any concept, whatsoever?
Do you have any concept of the number of rapes and/or incidents of workplace sexual misconduct NOT reported every day due the victim (male or female) being unable for any number of reasons (might lose their job etc). If you (male or female) use your position or authority to gain sexual benefits from a person (male or female). You are vaguely correct (for reasons you probably don't understand) when you say that if the victim claims harrasment, then there is harrasment to investigate. This is because harrasment is based on the subjective experience of the victim. An example of this may be the display of sexually explicit material in a work environment where the offended party is unable to complain because the majority of the senior staff are males who have actually displayed the objectionable material.
I've had over fifteen years experience as a workplace counsellor. During that time I have seen everything from aggravated sexual assault through to misunderstandings based on differing cultural views. During this time, I have seen a very small number of malicious or nuisance claims. Of those that I have seen, the majority have been males accusing females of harrasment. If you think the the system is broken then fix it, but don't blame the victim.
Indeed. He was impeached because he lied under oath about the act, not because of the act itself. Still a pretty big red flag if done by the CEO of a major international corporation, IMO.
Nice of you to pop in from the Political Outsider forum to clarify this, I knew I could count on you!
Oh, and by the way, you may want to update your reply, because Clinton was never actually impeached. They tried. And failed.
Comments
No, maybe it looked to Apple's board like the correct decision at the time, but, in hindsight, it actually appears a huge mistake, not because of how well Apple has done since his return, but because of how poorly they executed after his departure. The entire Mac platform languished for years under Scully, Spindler & Amelio. With no real driving vision from these men, no real change or advancement other than the plodding incremental improvements that are Apple's history in that period took place. At the same time, SJ was hard at work on the very projects that saved Apple from itself, projects that he would have been able to pursue, and would have pursued, even more fruitfully had he still been running Apple. He may have made a lot of mistakes, but he also did a lot of brilliant things, and on balance, the brilliant things he's done have been far more important than the mistakes he's made. We'll never know where the Mac, and computing generally, would be today if SJ had not been ousted from Apple, but it's utter folly to think that they did better in the years without SJ than they would have done with him.
I am not sure how much better Apple would have been with Steve Jobs staying on board and John Scully resigning in 1985. From what I have read, Steve Jobs was really out of touch of how the macintosh was doing at the time. This lead to his eventually ouster of macintosh operations. The reason for this was lackluster sales and (from what I read) Steve's erratic behavior. If Steve had stayed on board at Apple and the macintosh division, I am not so sure he would have created something close to a Next operating system on top of unix.
I think in this case you cannot have one without the other, Jobs may have very well killed the company if he stayed, and we may not have Next, OS X or i devices as we know it.
Steve never stole money from the company and he never embarrassed the company with an affair with a beautiful actress
Should we care if a CEO of this Fortune 10 company has an affair? Yes of course we should. These guys are running public companies (H-P is listed on the stock market so they are publicly held), this is not a private company and what he does actually is our business. Also, its pretty obvious that if this guy is willing to steal money from the company and conspire with his mistress to funnel her the cash that he is not ethical and should not be running a public company. Leaving an unethical person at the helm of a public company is just an invitation for more problems because he has already demonstrated a severe lack of judgement.
Well I mostly disagree. "Stealing money" can be used as a maudlin phrase denoting a person who has fallen out of favor with their BOD. If she never filed the harassment claim, then as HP CEO Hurd has discretion to run CEO events, and he wasn't stealing the money. If she did, then he suddenly is in the wrong and the money is de-sanctified. He has discretion over billions of dollars of company business, INCLUDING the few thousand dollars in question (which amounts to a rounding error of nothing).
It's called an accounting error if nothing else. It happens all the time on billions of dollars. You can accuse all 500/500 of Fortune 500 CEOs of having questionable financial dealings. The reality is, all things are questionable in corporate finance. Especially if you are trying to pull a hatchet job on somebody. It's easy to do. Just say, that coffee at that meeting was improperly billed. You stole the money and you're fired. Basically he is being fired over a cup of coffee. After all, it is his job to travel, brainstorm and "summit" with people, in hotels. So WTF.
And by the way, who he sleeps with is his and his wife's business. It strikes me that Carly Fiorina belongs in jail if she was spying on people or wiretapping them illegally.
I think in this case you cannot have one without the other, Jobs may have very well killed the company if he stayed, and we may not have Next, OS X or i devices as we know it.
Both you and anonymouse have very good points in that particular debate.
Yeah I personally think the smartest move Apple did was fire Jobs in '85. This gave Steve Jobs the time to breath. Start NeXT, acquire Pixar, leave NeXT and have the foundation for what Apple is today. Without Steve's enviers with NeXT and Pixar we would not have what we have today. I firmly believe Mac OS X was the main saving grace for Apple. Without it we would not have the stable hardware (including the iPhone) platform we have today.
Then what was with all those defenses of Mac OS 8 and 9, and the dismissal of "buzzwords" which Mac users take for granted today?
Who cares if the system pauses when you click on a menu?
Who cares about dynamic memory allocation? Just click Get Info and change the number yourself.
OS X is the foundation for their most profitable HW and it's sure to grow in scale, and NeXT's WebObjects seems to run the backbone of all their financial transactions. However, I would say that Jobs' "vision" and management is the real reason for their phenomenal reemergence.
I think it's a combination of all those things. However, I don't see any reason to think Jobs would not have obtained the skills he has today if he had remained at Apple. People mature, develop new skills, become more effective at what they do without requiring having their worlds turned upside down on them. Maybe it would have been a bit bumpy, but I still think Apple would have been in a better place during its dark years if the board had hung on for the ride.
I think it's a combination of all those things. However, I don't see any reason to think Jobs would not have obtained the skills he has today if he had remained at Apple. People mature, develop new skills, become more effective at what they do without requiring having their worlds turned upside down on them. Maybe it would have been a bit bumpy, but I still think Apple would have been in a better place during its dark years if the board had hung on for the ride.
I think its impossible to say. Sometimes people need to get away from their environment to fully understand the errors of their ways. Sometimes its just easier to see things more clearly from a different point of view. In the case of Mr. Jobs I believe it was necessary for him to leave Apple in order for him to gain that perspective.
Remember at the time of Mr. Jobs resignation Apple was betting the company on the macintosh line as the Apple II series was inferior to the IBM PC. The fact that macintosh sales were not very good coupled with an out of touch Mr. Jobs who headed the division combined with an Apple that was betting the company on the success of the mac it is easy to see why the Apple board choose Mr. Scully to run the company.
Also remember that Apple had some of its greatest success without Mr. Jobs. Mr. Scully lead Apple to find great success. It wasn't until the early 1990's that Apple was truly losing its way.
There is no way to tell that if Mr. Jobs had stayed to run Apple that it would be the success it is today.
... Also remember that Apple had some of its greatest success without Mr. Jobs. Mr. Scully lead Apple to find great success. It wasn't until the early 1990's that Apple was truly losing its way. ...
Well, it is impossible to say, of course, so opinions may differ.
Apple may have done well financially under Scully for a few years, but they didn't really do anything new, except the Newton, which just didn't go anywhere. Mac OS development essentially languished -- although, it still remained better than the alternatives -- and the (dull and boring) path Scully started the company down is what nearly led to their demise.
Food for thought: Steve Jobs was kicked off the Lisa project because he was deemed, by the reasonable people, unreasonable and impossible to work with. He then applied his unreasonable, impossible personality to the Macintosh project. Which project was more of a success for Apple?
Well, it is impossible to say, of course, so opinions may differ.
Apple may have done well financially under Scully for a few years, but they didn't really do anything new, except the Newton, which just didn't go anywhere. Mac OS development essentially languished -- although, it still remained better than the alternatives -- and the (dull and boring) path Scully started the company down is what nearly led to their demise.
Food for thought: Steve Jobs was kicked off the Lisa project because he was deemed, by the reasonable people, unreasonable and impossible to work with. He then applied his unreasonable, impossible personality to the Macintosh project. Which project was more of a success for Apple?
I think the point of your last paragraph is negligent. Mainly because Lisa was designed as a business computer with an enormous price tag. I think the point I was trying to make was at the time of Mr. Jobs resignation, Apple needed to have a successful product to replace the Apple II. The company bet the macintosh on that. Mr. Jobs at the time was very good at pushing forward creating new if unproven products. It was crucial at the time that Apple have the Mac platform become a success. It had nothing else to compete with and would fall back on the Apple II which was not current technology at the time.
What Apple needed was to reap rewards in $$$ from the macintosh which it wasn't yet doing. Mr. Jobs was (from what I read) way to out of touch with the reality of the mac, which was it wasn't selling. Jobs was seen as to stubborn to change his viewpoint and was uncontrollable as a leader for a product that still hadn't reaped its success. This was dangerous for the company because they needed a reliable and sensible leader to make the macintosh a $$$ success.
Apple needed Mr. Scully, reliable and sensible if not a bit technology deficient, to lead the the mac and Apple to success. That was what was needed at the time. You are correct that Mr. Scully lead Apple astray in the end. But it should not be dismissed that Mr. Scully propped the company up from a potential disaster. I think the ideal scenario would be if both of them stayed. Mr. Scully wanted Mr. Jobs to stay on at Apple. Mr. Scully hoped that Mr. Jobs would find and create a new exploratory division at Apple and (from what I read) Mr. Jobs was going to do that with an idea called Apple Labs. This never came to be as Mr. Jobs was to effected by Mr. Scully being chosen over him to run the company.
I was at first shocked the Board let him go, but after you look at the circumstances, it makes perfect sense. Not just the affair but the lying and using expenditures un-appropriately even for just $20,000 is good reason for departure.
Especially now, when you have the SEC looking over your shoulder for anything in the books done wrong. You just can't take the chance.
And of all, you need a good CEO that represents your company, if the CEO is a liar or a cheat, do you think your employees are going to follow trust and honesty or even put faith in their leader. How can one speak of integrity to all the employees when he himself has no integrity.
Lastly, any employee that stole/used funds un-appropiately from their company even at a small amount would be fired. $20,000 is a lot more than what any other employee would be doing.
Case closed! Next CEO!
Yeah tell that to the shareholders and retirees who lost a cool $9,000,000,000 ($9B) for allegedly misappropriating $20,000. The $40M golden parachute is a drop in the bucket still.
H-P hired a law firm to do its own investigation and has exonerated Mr. Hurd of sexual harassment, saying he didn't violate H-P's guidelines, even while refusing to disclose Ms. Fisher's allegations or H-P's findings. As a result, H-P shareholders have no way of evaluating the validity of H-P's claim. Mr. Hurd did reach a settlement with Ms. Fisher, the terms of which have also not been disclosed. Both Mr. Hurd and Ms. Fisher have said no sex was involved.
The whole HP board should be fired over this... I'll know how to vote at the next shareholder's meeting...
"The HP board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago," Ellison wrote. "That decision nearly destroyed Apple if Microsoft hadn't purchased $150 Million of stock to pull Apple from the brink of bankruptcy."
Fixed that quote for you.
Mark Hurd WAS fired for breaching the companies ethics and compliance policy in regards to financial reporting and conflict of interest inregards for his behaviour. He has admitted, and it has been found, that he both forged and doctored financial records in regards to his expense accounts and therefore the board asked him to step down due to his poor judgement and loss of credibilty to his employees and shareholders.
The only thing that sucks about this is that he still recieved his multi-million dollar payout when hp bitched to its employees it hadnt done so well last year financially and froze ann pay rises and slashed bonuses...
In hindsight, he should have been convicted of sexual misconduct, as he has screwed every single employee of HP
Larry ellison should pick his friends better
Marc Hurd was well connected in the tech world & on top of current events. HP will go on but losing Marc Hurd is a big loss and poor decision by the HP board.
....Should we care if a CEO of this Fortune 10 company has an affair? ....
Sexual Harrasment IS NOT having an affair.
Sexual Harrasment is the use of power or position to gain sexual benefits from somebody else. As per Wikipedia,
"Sexual harassment, is intimidation, bullying or coercion of a sexual nature, or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors.
This is not about an office daliance, it is about criminal behaviour.
I think the point of your last paragraph is negligent. Mainly because Lisa was designed as a business computer with an enormous price tag.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by negligent, unless to say I'm neglecting the fact that Apple made some money under Sculley, but, my point was that one can't discount what Jobs impact was on the money they made, and that it was his project that ended up making the company money, not the one that the reasonable guys ran. So, wild, out of control, whatever you want to call him, it was still the technology that he drove the development of that ended up making Apple successful during that time. And that's exactly the way it is today, and there wasn't anyone in between there that did anything remotely similar that anyone can point to and say, this is what made Apple great.
As an alternate hypothesis to yours, maybe Scully was just the fortunate foil of circumstances. Maybe the Mac was on the verge of taking off when the board fired Steve, and Scully is getting credit for things that just happened to him, but didn't result from him. But then, they ran out of steam, had dumped the creative guy, there was no second act waiting in the wings, besides Son of Lisa (the Newton, metaphorically speaking, designed by reasonable guys), and the rest is history. Notice that this time around, there's always another act ready to come on stage, there's always money being put into R&D, and there always seem to be successful new products coming out of it. (And probably a lot of stuff that either never pans out, or is still not ready for prime time.) Isn't that pretty much what Jobs wanted to do the first time around?
As you said before, and I agreed, we can never know what could have happened, there's a plausible case for either opinion. But, that also means we can't with any certainty say that it wasn't a stupid move to get rid of Jobs or that he needed to go.
Marc Hurd was well connected in the tech world & on top of current events. HP will go on but losing Marc Hurd is a big loss and poor decision by hp
Hmmmm....so what your saying is and long as your a good productive employee, you can sexually harass, steal and be a non credible, untrustworthy asset to your company...
He broke the company ethics and compliance policy in a number of ways, his behavious is less than stellar after a sexual harassment case (guilty or not guilty) and generally the board and employees whom he is beholden too find him a person now of less than acceptable integrity....but thats ok, cos the guys connected...
I hope he becomes your new boss....you seem to be perfectly ok with his behaviour
Ps....if a "good" average employee had done the same thing, he would have been out on his ass with criminal charges pending for the return of the money....and no severance pay..
But thats ok, cos' the guys connected you can cut him some slack...
While he broke HP code in faking expenses, he turned HP around and made aquisitions that made alot of sense and money. Should he have been fired??? hard question, however being no sex was involved perhaps a warning or reprimand would have been adequate. His departure will result in a 40 million + payday for him, while shareholders are being screwed over as replacing a CEO these days is not the easiest thing.
Marc Hurd was well connected in the tech world & on top of current events. HP will go on but losing Marc Hurd is a big loss and poor decision by the HP board.
I'm wondering why he received that kind of severance package if he was being fired for misappropriation of company funds. Paying CEO's and management to leave is one of the most idiotic things in this economy currently (another being hedge funds). Things like this do nothing more than siphon money that could be used to pay the salaries of lower level workers that might otherwise be fired to reduce operating costs. The top heavy salary/bonus structures in these companies are ridiculous and really far beyond what is needed to retain good upper management.
Sexual Harrasment IS NOT having an affair.
Sexual Harrasment is the use of power or position to gain sexual benefits from somebody else. As per Wikipedia,
This is not about an office daliance, it is about criminal behaviour.
Nice definition. However, the board found the sexual harassment complaint to be without merit. She was looking for a payday and got it. Even after getting plenty of business while she flirted with a married man. She's not so innocent either.
Cheers,
Sexual Harrasment IS NOT having an affair.
Sexual Harrasment is the use of power or position to gain sexual benefits from somebody else. As per Wikipedia,
This is not about an office daliance, it is about criminal behaviour.
Oh really? Welcome to America, 2010. Sexual Harassment exists whenever and wherever a woman states that it exists. No exceptions. Woman says she was harassed, bingo, end of story. Harassment it is then. About 25% of the people nation-wide who must live the rest of their lives on a sexual predator list, are completely innocent, (aside from the time they pissed off some woman).
We live in the most pathetic, out of control country on the face of the planet.
Do you have any concept of the number of FAKE rape/harassment/abuse cases are reported every day in the U.S.? Any concept, whatsoever?
Oh really? Welcome to America, 2010. Sexual Harassment exists whenever and wherever a woman states that it exists. No exceptions. Woman says she was harassed, bingo, end of story. Harassment it is then. About 25% of the people nation-wide who must live the rest of their lives on a sexual predator list, are completely innocent, (aside from the time they pissed off some woman).
We live in the most pathetic, out of control country on the face of the planet.
Do you have any concept of the number of FAKE rape/harassment/abuse cases are reported every day in the U.S.? Any concept, whatsoever?
Do you have any concept of the number of rapes and/or incidents of workplace sexual misconduct NOT reported every day due the victim (male or female) being unable for any number of reasons (might lose their job etc). If you (male or female) use your position or authority to gain sexual benefits from a person (male or female). You are vaguely correct (for reasons you probably don't understand) when you say that if the victim claims harrasment, then there is harrasment to investigate. This is because harrasment is based on the subjective experience of the victim. An example of this may be the display of sexually explicit material in a work environment where the offended party is unable to complain because the majority of the senior staff are males who have actually displayed the objectionable material.
I've had over fifteen years experience as a workplace counsellor. During that time I have seen everything from aggravated sexual assault through to misunderstandings based on differing cultural views. During this time, I have seen a very small number of malicious or nuisance claims. Of those that I have seen, the majority have been males accusing females of harrasment. If you think the the system is broken then fix it, but don't blame the victim.
Indeed. He was impeached because he lied under oath about the act, not because of the act itself. Still a pretty big red flag if done by the CEO of a major international corporation, IMO.
Nice of you to pop in from the Political Outsider forum to clarify this, I knew I could count on you!
Oh, and by the way, you may want to update your reply, because Clinton was never actually impeached. They tried. And failed.