HP's Dunn as Newsweek Cover Girl

theodp writes "In The Boss Who Spied on Her Board, Newsweek likens HP Chairwoman Pattie Dunn's attempts to escape culpability with her I-knew-nothing defense to both a head of state, who wants 'plausible deniability' while ordering an assassination plot, and to Henry II, who had the Archbishop of Canterbury removed by simply muttering 'Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?' in front of his knights."

Comments

When in Rome, etc.

[ScentCone]

This is slashdot. Please do not cite movie-style 'head of state asks-without-asking for an assination mission' analogies, or refer to centuries-old British church smack-downs. If you can't describe this in terms of chair throwing, iPod-killing, or some form of infringement, the message is lost.

Re:When in Rome, etc.

[CRCulver]

...or refer to centuries-old British church smack-downs.

The killing of Thomas Becket is retold in T.S. Eliot's first play Murder in the Cathedral . Granted, such literature is far removed from iPods and knocking on Microsoft, but the play is performed--and assigned in college lit classes--often enough that I imagine many people will know something of that historical event.

Re:When in Rome, etc.

[HerrEkberg]

Will no one rid me of this troublesome chair?

Re:When in Rome, etc.

[Artifakt]

And the American prosecuters at Nuremburg referred to the "troublesome priest" phrase repeatedly in trying the Nazi war criminals, and so people should encounter it not just in lit or ancient history but in modern history, philosophy or ethics. It's actually pretty common, and if you didn't hear it in such classes, you can safely assume you didn't get your money's worth on college. (If you didn't have to take ANY of those classes, congratulations on your Engineering/CS degree, and I hope you got some of this sort of thing on your own.). Many people know that "I was just following orders" is considered a pretty crappy excuse, but many of them don't understand the other half of that is "My underlings misinterpreted my orders.", and it is equally inexcusable.
      Note: I have not compared HP's management to the Nazis, except in that some people seem to be adopting the same "They misinterpreted me/I was just following orders" BS when they got caught at something. Anyone who thinks I just Godwinned the thread does not understand Godwin, but if you want to mod me down anyway, go right ahead.

Re:When in Rome, etc.

[fishbowl]

>Well said, in fact under the UCMJ a soldier MUST disobey an illegal order (aka shoot the prisoners).

I've known former soldiers who have reported different experiences with this. Some, including an officer who had graduated from the US Military Academy, told me about drills that were more-or-less routine, where illegal orders would be given (with relatively mundane consequences) and if the cadet followed the order, he would have faile the test and would be disciplined for it.

Others have told me that the actual situation is that you follow orders, period, without question.
So I basically have an artillery man in one ear with one story, and a commissioned officer in the other ear, with a completely different story.

I would expect the latter to be the more common case. The idea of refusing to follow an order certainly does not occur to the typical enlisted man, who would consider the consequences to be too severe to even entertain the notion, but then, it's not a situation the average enlisted man encounters anyway, My Lai's and Hadithas being vanishingly rare.

Ugh.

[writermike]

Ugh. Too many words. It's much easier for me to buy another brand until this calms down.

But interested enough to post?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

The real sadness in all this is that HP started off as an icon of geekdom, "The American Way", and many other pure and virtuous themes. Since then it has been Carley'ed and generally fucked over in many ways.

At one stage, HP was "the best". They made the best calculators, best test equipment, best everything they touched. Their slide probably started with getting into the commodity PC industry (PCs and printers).

Re:But interested enough to post?

[javakah]

Hmm, look at it this way: Spying to find out who other people are calling, and justifying it by not having actually listened to the phone calls. Sound familiar? Sound like the logic of a certain President? Sadly, this actually is "The American Way" now.

Re:But interested enough to post?

[Ingolfke]

I'm going to try again:

The real sadness in all this is that HP started off as an icon of geekdom, "The American Way", and many other pure and virtuous themes.

When was this exactly? This sounds like an idealized romanticized view of someone who doesn't actually know what they're talking about. Sure HP has made great products, but "icon of geekdom"... that sounds like either misplaced affection or overzealous fanboism to me.

Since then it has been Carley'ed and generally fucked over in many ways.

Again... since when? "Carley'ed". What's that mean? Carley's gone last I checked. HP's innovating, HP's selling products that work and that people and businesses want... "fucked up?" again you're overexagerating b/c you have some ridiculously romantic view of how things once were... and no idea of what is today.

At one stage, HP was "the best". They made the best calculators, best test equipment, best everything they touched. Their slide probably started with getting into the commodity PC industry (PCs and printers).

Really? TI seemed to have some kick-ass calculators... I don't know who hands out awards for "the best" calculators but I seem to remember TI was the standard for calculus+ classes at the University I attended. Best test equipment... maybe, but I thought HP was a computer company... so geeks are freaking out about test equipment. "Best everything they touched"... again with your hyperbole. You're exagerating... and I'm guessing it's because you don't know what you're talking about. "Commodity PCs and Printers"... HP invented the fucking laser jet printer. The laser jet, the desk jet... those fuckers sell like hotcakes. HP owns the market and they keep innovating. Waht are you smoking?

I think this entire line of thinking is unsubstantiated... it's that sort of reality that exists in /. where super nerds imagine that truth and their idealistic fiction are the same thing. Reality says that HP is a good company that makes good products and that their are great competitors our there who also make good products and you get to choose. Stop idealizing periods that never actually existed, stop glorifying a past you didn't experience in its fullness... accept today and understand it... but don't delude yourself.

Re:But interested enough to post?

[Epsillon]

HP invented the fucking laser jet printer.

Really? So Gary Starkweather employed a dwarf with very fast drawing skills and very neat handwriting to cram into that very first laser photolithography box, then? You learn something new every day. No wonder the darned things were so expensive at first.

LaserJet is a trademark. Laser printers were invented by Xerox as a natural progression of their Xerographic photolithography process. In fact, Xerox and IBM beat HP to market. There's an MIT page here that confirms this, and you can check out the Wikipedia page here for a more in-depth discussion.

Oh, wait, I see nothing about Xerox's machine fornicating. Perhaps you are right...

Re:But interested enough to post?

[sbryant]

HP's innovating, HP's selling products that work and that people and businesses want...

What on earth is it you think that HP is currently innovating?

They don't do medical equipment anymore (that part now belongs to Philips). They don't do Test & Measurement or components either (see Agilent).

HP used to make some extremely good printers, which were head-and-shoulders above others in the field (I'm talking about the LJ 4/5 era), but that's not true for their current printers. HP is certainly not the clear market leader it used to be. The technology they invented was excellent, and the printers today still benefit from that, but it seems to me that instead of real innovation now, they are more interested in finding ways of stopping people using ink from other manufacturers, so they can sell their own at horrendous prices. Why does HP's ink cost more than Dom Perignon champagne?

The same goes for PA-RISC, which was a strong architecture at the time. I see no advantage to buying an Itanium system now though. I wouldn't say that HP were the best at everything, but they definately had a significant edge; they don't have that anymore.

HP took the innovation out of the company and put it in their logo. I was there - I saw it with my own eyes. They don't do anywhere near as much innovation as they used to. It's a shame.

Reality says that HP is a good company that makes good products

You've missed what it is that is upsetting people. They used to make most excellent products; now they're only good. That's a big step backwards.

Back to the current story: anyone who worked at HP in the 80s and early 90s will know what an amazing corporate culture it had. This current scandal is yet another sign that HP has become the thing that Bill and Dave wanted to get away from. The old HP is dead, and what you see here is people in mourning.

-- Steve

Re:But interested enough to post?

[joebob2000]

TI calculators being the equal or superior of HP is a very recent thing. HP was first with personal calculators and was the best for decades. HP35 HP65 HP41. These were the "personal computers" engineers used daily before Apple, etc. were around. Incidentally, TI could only be better than HP once PCs took over the professional engineering computing market and off-the-shelf embedded microcontrollers got so good that they beat the performance of the last of HP's custom calculator ASICs.

HP may be only a computer company now, but HP started out as a test equipment company back in the 30s. Computers (custom designed computers, not Intel reference designs with a HP logo) came later and were just one of many products HP produced. Besides electronic test gear, they made scientific gear like mass Spectrometers, EKGs, and much more. HP gear was never cheap, but it had ultimate performance, was built like a tank, and lasted forever. Actually it is lasting so long, you can find old test gear inside pretty much every electronics lab in America, including mine.

Test/med/science part was spun off as Agilent, the HP name was kept for the PC-clone boxes that break, and the printers that run out of ink faster and faster. Even recent Agilent test gear is apparently not at the same level of engineering as the old stuff. There are stories of lab-grade spectrum analysers breaking after a few years and inadequate replacement part stock. Something to do with thoughtlessly coded software wearing out relays after only a year or five. These instruments can easily cost $50,000 or more, so companies expect more than they do from their Dell.

Your post indicates that HP's heyday occured before your time. Those of us who remember parts of that time are not "glorifying the past", we are simply remembering something that happened before you were around to tell us how wrong we are. Try to be understanding of some of us older (over 30) folks who have not yet had the common decency to die off yet.

Re:limelight dims

[__aaclcg7560]

I don't think it's a gender issue. They don't teach falling-down-on-your-own-sword in the business schools anymore. These days you get a brownie point for blaming the next guy/gal over and/or the news media. Taking personal responsibiity is so old school.

Re:limelight dims

[Denis The SQL Menace]

The board meeting is today, I predict she will step down after they ask her to "Dunn has no plans to step down but would do so if asked by the board, according to HP spokesman Ryan Donovan. HP's board plans to meet Sunday, he added."

My 2 cents as an impartial observer...

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell is Liza Minnelli doing in a story about HP?

Re:msnbc article not compatible with Firefox

[Pink Tinkletini]

Looks fine here in Safari. Maybe it's time for you to upgrade.

Hey

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anybody have a stream of today's emergency board meeting?

The equipment is in place, isn't it?

No-need-to-click-next-7-times-version

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14736379/site/newsweek /print/1/displaymode/1098/

Re:limelight dims

[springbox]

Honestly from what I've seen of this, I think women in responsible positions are given a tougher time then men.

What this person did is just totally inexcusable and they came out looking like a total dimwit on top of it. Who cares about their sex? What this person did was WRONG and they deserved to be given a hard time. If a man (and again, why does it matter) did the same thing I can guarantee that people aren't going to hesitate to criticize him. So maybe the question you should ask is given two people of different sexes (hypothetically) who commit the exact same crime under the same circumstances, why should we treat them differently?

Turbulent

[trewornan]

If you're going to quote someone at least get it right, Beckett was a "turbulent" priest not a "troublesome" one.

Re:Turbulent

[trewornan]

Sorry, I'm not American so it didn't occur to me that school-kid knowledge of history would be regarded as elitism.

Re:Turbulent

[Daetrin]

Sorry, I'm not American so it didn't occur to me that school-kid knowledge of history would be regarded as elitism.

Funny, i've always heard it as "will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest," although admitedly neither i nor i expect any other american actually learned about it in school as a child, so it is most certainly _not_ "school-kid knowledge of history" for everyone. Secondly, if you want people to listen to you you might want to adopt a slightly less agressive tone. "If you're going to quote someone at least get it right" is much more likely to be taken as elitism than a phrase like "i was told the original quote was" or something along those lines.

And lastly, before you chastise someone else for getting the quote wrong, make sure you yourself have got it right. Wikipedia certainly isn't infallible, but their page on Thomas Becket says it was "passionate words from the angry king" and then lists several phrases that were reputedly used, so no one is really sure what the exact utterance was to begin with. Not to mention the fact that this was during the period when middle english was being spolen and what he said probably only had a passing relationship with a modern english interpretation of the same words. I therefore strongly suspect that _all_ of us are wrong, or all of us are right, depending on how you choose to look at it. It seems rather unlikely however that you can conclusively proove you are more correct than the person you corrected.

Re:Turbulent

[Anonymous Coward]

Sources disagree as to what Henry II said to make a group of knights think that killing Thomas Becket was something their king was ordering them to do. There seem to be a number of popular variations, including "turbulent," "troublesome," "meddlesome," "low-born," and a bunch of statements which are nothing like the most common form. Given the lack of reliable contemporary accounts, along with the tendency following the incident to lionize Becket and blame Henry for the whole thing, any quote of what Henry II said to set those knight dudes off must be considered apocryphal.

Re:Turbulent

[SirSlud]

First of all, it comes as no surprise to me that there is some debate as to the actual phrase. You should be really really careful when you correct somebody over a trivial matter because more often than not, you're running headlong into a tangential nerd-cliff where everybody stops looking at the forest and starts arguing over one leaf on one tree in that forest.

Nobody ever said Let them eat cake either, but correcting somebody when they utter those words to illustrate a point is about as pedantic as you can be. If the meaning of the phrase is retained, and the message is succinctly conveyed, what the hell is so important about the words unless you're quoting them with the actual intention of accurate archival?

Re:Turbulent

[Daetrin]

"Because of this he was born in (modern-day)France, didn't visit England until he was 16 and didn't spend any appreciable time there until he was 20. I'd say it was a fair bet he used French when cussing the clergy..."

Was it part of France at the time? Or was it part of Normandy? And given that he was Duke of Normandy as well as King of England it seems quite likely that he spoke Anglo-Norman and Middle English as well as Old French. Which he would prefer for cussing is open for debate (Anglo-Norman was after all the "courtly" language in England and Middle English the "common" lanaguage,) as is which he would used when talking to his English knights.

But in any case, whichever of the three it was, clearly the words that were said were nothing like the words we would use to express a similar sentiment today.

Nothing new here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the 1960s a friend's dad got a job as head of an important government office. The people working for him were at the director level so the case is somewhat similar. Everyone had an intercom on their desks so they could do things like calling their secretaries in to take dictation etc. Buddy's dad found that the intercoms were wired so his predecessor could listen in to whatever was happening in any of the other offices. It wasn't an accident, they were deliberately wired the way they were. To his credit, he had them reverted to normal operation.

Powerful people got where they are by knowing what is going on around them. There are other powerful people trying to subvert them and get their jobs. Machiavelli described the process and nothing has changed since then. They used to use spies. Now they use wiretaps.

I'm dubious about the press coverage

[Anonymous Coward]

Something really smells about the press coverage on this. It all seems to pain Perkins as such a good, likeable, ethical person who resigned from the board. And yet, last week I saw a single quote from Dunn which stated that Perkins played a key role in starting this investigation. Curiously, I don't see this statement repeated in other press coverage. But it is extremely telling, if true.

I'm not defending Dunn here. I'm just saying to take any of this "news" which is so glowing about Perkins with a large grain of salt. Perkins is quite powerful in Silicon Valley. And all of this just smells of his propaganda, designed to paint him in the best light possible.

Archbishop of Canterbury also known as...

[vleck]

The Black Adder! It's depressing that I remember more history from The Black Adder than years of public education in the UK. One of the best comedy series ever!

The war on terrorism has moved to the boardroom

[hemp]

Wire taps?? Spying on reporters? Sounds like the tactics used in the 'War On Terrorism'©.

Only disloyal HP customers or stock holders would dare questions the tactics of the Chairman Of The Board.

this is just sad

[iritant]

Having lived in the Valley for nearly 20 year I spent most of my adult life hearing the legend of Hewlett and Packard. And these two men meant a lot to the Valley. They gave generously and their foundations continue to do so. Between the Children's Wing of the Stanford Hospital to MBARI to the vintage movie in Palo Alto to public radio, these people and their money have done quite a lot of good. HP as a company back then was a fine establishment, and while today I'm sure there are fine people there, I bet both men would be rolling in their graves.

And so it's just sad to see their legacy trashed. I can't say why, but from the moment the board picked Carly Fiorina, things just went south. I am not an HP shareholder. I don't think I could be one until everyone on the current board was gone. If you are a shareholder, that should bother you, because I'm sure I'm not alone.

Were I a shareholder, I would propose that not a single member of the board stand for re-election, so that after some period of time a new board would run the company.

Re:Wow.

[mabhatter654]

SHE was ethical... as much as any slashdotter that gets cheated out of money. What all the slashdot hype misses is a fortune 500 board member was leaking info to the press... even after the entire board was notified of the investigation, this board member continuined to leak confidential employee reviews, and stratagy meeting results...

We all say people like Apple should "clean their house" and stop threatening reporters and such. Well that's exactly what she did. Just like the rough slashdotter hacks to get a mailing/email address of a spammer, RIAA member, etc... It wasn't even Dunn that offically authorized it... I'm sure she just said "dig up dirt" The goal's not to bring a lawsuit against this guy, it's to get him kicked off every board he serves on! Fact of the matter is that most of the board didn't object to the investigation. The spying would have been fine for an employee alleged to do the same things.. the one resigning board member was only upset that he was not allowed to "spin" the investigation because the CEO went over the board's head because THEY weren't faithful.

This whole thing is really blown out of proportion. It's really more of a "cheating husband" thing.... people with power, position, and money, couldn't be bothered to keep the privacy of fellow board members and employees.

What else would they do?

[The Second Horseman]

Spy on a large customer that might be planning to jump to another vendor for major IT services? Spy on business partners or VARs? Flat out, the reason there are so many leaks surrounding HP is that the behavior (starting during Fiorina's reign) of the management and the board was terrible. Of course there were leaks. It's the only way to ever put the brakes on the amoral behavior of scumbags like these. The way they've been treaing people for years? Of course there are disgruntled people leaking information. They're lucky it hasn't been worse. I expect, now that Dunn has been wounded finding the leaker, the board's going to have to pull an "Old Yeller" and get her off before everyone else is contaminated. It may be too late, though.

Private Investigators should go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

If private investigators are acting illegally, they are the ones whose names should be known. They are the ones who are supposed to go to jail, and lose their licenses.

Private investigators ARE licensed. They ARE supposed to act WITHIN the law. If any company chooses to hire licensed private investigators, then it's understandable that you assume this, i.e. don't necessarily need to ask questions about their precise methods.

Who were these so-called private investigators? Is this is the first time these private investigators have broken the law in order to get a paycheck? Who were their other clients prior to their HP contract? If the P.I.'s were ordered to do something illegal, why didn't they object?

Why aren't the journalists focusing on them?

Last paragraph

[rking]

Right at the end of the (7 page) article:

Update: A source close to Hewlett-Packard tells Newsweek that HP's emergency board meeting was adjourned late in the afternoon on Sunday (ET) without any decision being reached on the possible resignation of Patricia Dunn as chairman. The source, who requested anonymity because of the confidentiality of internal board proceedings, said the HP board would reconvene late Monday afternoon.

So I guess they're still leaking :)

No, she was not "ethical".

[khasim]

SHE was ethical... as much as any slashdotter that gets cheated out of money.

The 2nd part of that makes no sense. And no, she was NOT ethical in this.

What all the slashdot hype misses is a fortune 500 board member was leaking info to the press... even after the entire board was notified of the investigation, this board member continuined to leak confidential employee reviews, and stratagy meeting results...

And?
Just because one person is not ethical does not make it ethical to take un-ethical actions to find that person.

We all say people like Apple should "clean their house" and stop threatening reporters and such. Well that's exactly what she did.

Nooooooo..... it seems that she STARTED investigating reporters. And people related to reporters.

It wasn't even Dunn that offically authorized it...

Drop the word "officially". Dunn authorized it. Dunn instigated it. It is Dunn's responsibility.

Fact of the matter is that most of the board didn't object to the investigation.

And so ... ?
If some other people don't object, that does not make it ethical.

The spying would have been fine for an employee alleged to do the same things.. the one resigning board member was only upset that he was not allowed to "spin" the investigation because the CEO went over the board's head because THEY weren't faithful.

No, it would not be. This type of behaviour is un-ethical no matter who the target is.

This whole thing is really blown out of proportion.

No, it has not.
I'm hoping that, because of this, the "pretexting" practice becomes a Federal Crime.

It's really more of a "cheating husband" thing.... people with power, position, and money, couldn't be bothered to keep the privacy of fellow board members and employees.

"couldn't be bothered"?
She hired a company to actively search for information.

And when she received their report, she did NOT ask how they came up with information that would not be available outside of a court order.

That is un-ethical.
She is un-ethical.

No action today, reconvening Monday afternoon

[coyote-san]

According to an update on the original article, the board adjorned without action on Sunday. They are scheduled to meet again Monday afternoon(iirc).

Gather round little children

[gelfling]

The senior ranks of large corporations have been the hotbeds (literally) of skullduggery for as long as there have been power mad underlings. Bill Agee at Allied Signal in the '80's was banging his investment banker on the deal for a hostile buyout of another company. Maurice Greenberg at AIG was bribing everyone he could. Most of the heads at Wall St. firms in the last 25 years have been replaced by being arrested or threatened with lawsuits. Tyco? MCI? The great hdge fund meltdown of 2004-5?

Re:Wow.

[timeOday]

I disagree. Corporate governance is important. I'm pretty sure I couldn't get away with what Dunn has done. Now my question is whether my bosses could.

not sad, just inevitable w/ the corporate system

[nido]

Their only drive is "usually" greed and self advancement and promotion.

But isn't that the nature of the corporate system? The officers of the corporation are legally required to maximize profits for shareholders, right? Let's see what Google says... :)

Hinkley explains, "Each of our fifty states has its own corporate law allowing corporations to be formed and establishing the rules for how such corporations are to operate. Each of these laws has something in common with each of the others. Each says that the only goal of corporations formed in that jurisdiction is to maximize profits for shareholders. In effect, each state does something for corporations that it does not do for its individual citizens--it dictates their purpose. This purpose, the pursuit of corporate self-interest, drives all corporate action. Every act carried out by a corporate employee can be traced back to this purpose established in the corporate law."

Thus the courts created entities that could acquire vast resources over an indefinite life span. They could use these resources as they see fit, for the singular purpose of maximizing profits, without an accompanying set of values or principles that an individual would likely have to guide his actions. "This lack of values," Hinkley writes, "is in evidence every time a corporation makes money at the expense of the dignity of human beings, the welfare of our communities or the protection of our environment."

-http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh040102-story08.htm l (emphasis added)

It is a group of people who usually lack the passion to drive the company for its business model.

The successor managers usually aren't able to execute the founder's vision, and this is especially the case if the successors are not family. Didn't the Hewlett (or was it Packard?) family fight the Compaq merger? As the founders of the company, Hewlett and Packard had the influence to graft principles onto their corporation. But once their shares were dispersed at their deaths, the family lost the power (and perhaps the will) to stand up to the state mandate to maximize profits.

Also witness the long, slow decline of General Motors following the parting of founder Billy Durant.

This is, incidentally, why China is going to win. They make plans for the future based on their sense of several thousand years of history, whereas we in the west only have a couple hundred years, and anything older than two or three generations is largely forgotten.

Re:msnbc article not compatible with Firefox

[StarsEnd]

Thx...Im using Windows XP....that may be the difference.

Put a fork in her...

[jbonik]

she's Dunn.