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Same Old, Same Old at HP?
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."
Well, there's no way the Hurd can escape further criticism for the scandal of being twenty years overdue when there's still no usable code.
Oh, that Hurd.
Mark Hurd has been the best thing that's happened to HP in a long time. His decision to bring a trusted advisor from NCR to be in charge of Ethics is hardly baffling - this same individual was able to stop leaks and other unethical behavior at NCR while keeping the activities fully legal and 'above the board'. The scandal at HP arose from Mark directing subordinates to take care of the leak problem, but the subordinates not being trustworthy enough to take care of the problem legally and ethically.
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?
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
Actually it's not their PCs that I think are lousy. It's their technical support. I work at the helpdesk of an appliance store and all of our registers are either dell or HP PC running windows xp. I had two hardrives that went bad that I needed to call in and RMA. One was from Dell and one was from HP. Keep in mind wewe bought the highest level of support from both HP and Dell.
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?
I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
over the previous HP ethics officer who approved the pre-texting effort ...
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
I have an HP laptop and it works perfectly. I bought it, downloaded the drivers and installed them (my laptop was a cheap one with Freedos), and that's it. Their iPAQ PDAs are probably the best. Much higher quality than Palm, Dell and Acer. And HP probably has one of the best support you can find. Someone gave me an ancient 486 HP server and just for fun I tried to download drivers. To my amazement, its BIOS was last updated in 2001! Most motherboard manufacturers stop supporting their products one year after they are released.
A few quick issues:
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.
Gateway?
Jonathanjk.com
1)Customer looks for tech support number in product manual and literature. No luck.
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?".
Where were you when the voynix came?
You may think the leaders of the great companies are exceptional and unique people. You are very wrong. They are just like you, for good and bad. The insight into HP has revealed this quite well. They are probably a little arrogant and eloquent, but you will quickly get that in a matter of a year.
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.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
The writing was on the wall when they started to file nasty frivolous lawsuits against other companies that made cartridges for HP printers. HP: Do only evil.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Mark Hurd knew or should have known as much or more about the details of this spy scandal than Patty Dunn. He got detailed reports on the progress of the investigation and somehow was allowed to skate on "I'm sorry, I should have read them but I didn't."
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
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Why is it that the boards of extremely large companies tend to make bad decisions over and over again?
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.
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.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
From NCR delayed contaminant tests: For at least 10 years, NCR Corp. put off testing to learn the full extent of environmental contamination at its former manufacturing complex, in part because company officials feared the results would create adverse publicity and prompt an expensive cleanup, internal NCR memos show...In a three-page letter to the Dayton Daily News dated Jan. 22, Hoak stated that the memos were "confidential, proprietary and attorney-client privileged" and raised legal issues with the newspaper's possession of them, including concerns regarding "trade secrets." Hoak wrote that NCR is "closely examining issues and remedies," and urged the newspaper to "refrain from publishing their contents."