HP CEO Resigns During Sexual Harassment Investigation

A number of readers are letting us know that HP CEO Mark Hurd just resigned over sexual harassment accusations. The company's board has appointed CFO Cathie Lesjak as interim CEO. A contractor had accused Hurd of sexual harassment, and the board brought in outside counsel to investigate. While the harassment claim could not be substantiated, the investigation did uncover other misconduct. Hurd's "close personal relationship" with the contractor created a conflict of interest, and he was also found to have misused company assets. In a statement, Hurd said, "As the investigation progressed, I realized there were instances in which I did not live up to the standards and principles of trust, respect and integrity that I have espoused at HP and which have guided me throughout my career."

Comments

"realized"?

[Lost Race]

He "realized there were instances" of misconduct on his part? More like he realized he'd been caught.

Re:"realized"?

[jd]

That, and the rest of the board probably deciding that they had to get rid of him to avoid exposing any of them to investigations.

Re:"realized"?

[suomynonAyletamitlU]

I'm going to play devil's advocate, keep in mind it may not work.

I find when I look at people who are given a lot of power don't tend to view "misuses" of power the same way as people do when looking at it from the outside. A lot of different kinds of corruption can be born from, "What's the harm?" and it can be very easy to run away from the consequences and by doing so, lie to themselves.

In cases like that, when you are forced and/or given an excuse to stop lying to yourself, you actually learn a lot about yourself and your behavior that you may not have known, but which you should have. It's actually rather easy to 'misfile' things in your head such that you actually do know them, but they're not properly weighted or not connected to other facts, for (a made up) example, "I hired my cousin in place of a qualified applicant, as a favor." Okay, you hired your cousin--did you check to see that he was doing a good job? Did the company suffer because you didn't look into his behavior? Did the company actually need that qualified applicant? Was the qualified applicant already working there (internal promotion) and have they gotten the shit end of the stick because of it? Was the qualified applicant, perchance, someone you actually knew and respected and who hasn't talked to you since?

Once you stop hiding from your own closet and its skeletons, you may in fact get hit by the realization that you aren't nearly as clean as you thought you were. That's all I'm saying.

Re:Wasn't he the CEO during the pretexting scandal

[dan828]

More like, at some point in the investigation he realized that he was busted and couldn't cover up or plausibly deny things. He was probably feeling pretty untouchable up to that point after coming out unscathed from the other little upset they had a while back.

Crap floats.

[Spazntwich]

Anyone else's skin crawl as they read the rehearsed and empty words? Reeks of a sociopath saying what he thinks folks want to hear to let him off the hook. Funny how many seem to make it to the top.

Re:Crap floats.

[bertoelcon]

Anyone else's skin crawl as they read the rehearsed and empty words? Reeks of a sociopath saying what he thinks folks want to hear to let him off the hook. Funny how many seem to make it to the top.

Only the sociopaths want the power so only the sociopaths get the power.

Re:Crap floats.

[jd]

Criminal psychologst calls CEOs psychopaths
Sociologist/Criminologist calls CEOs sociopaths

Take your pick. Or maybe they're both. It would explain a lot.

Re:Crap floats.

[DragonWriter]

Anyone else's skin crawl as they read the rehearsed and empty words? Reeks of a sociopath saying what he thinks folks want to hear to let him off the hook.

It sounds more like the words of an agreed-to statement made as part of a deal that involves the person making a statement and resigning while the other party to the agreement (in this case, the HP board) elects not to pursue some of the other remedies it might have available for the misconduct at issue, so that the offender merely loses the job (notionally voluntarily) and everyone moves on with a minimum expenditure of resources on further proceedings (litigation, etc.)

Re:Crap floats.

[Hatta]

I follow the news. I'm pretty immune at this point to rehearsed and empty words from sociopaths.

Re:Crap floats.

[jd]

I'd refine that to "they're not hard sciences - yet". There's a dispute that's older than me (by a long way) as to whether soft/social sciences and social sciences are sciences at all and I won't get into that. What I will say is that there is absolutely nothing in any physical science which strictly prohibits any of the soft/social sciences becoming hard sciences eventually. That anyone knows with any certainty.

I will add this proviso: "The Emperor's New Mind" by Roger Penrose would seem to imply that psychology can never be a hard science, since it does claim that the brain is a quantum computer which is irreducible to a deterministic model. That's not quite enough, since QM is perfectly good physics and yet not reducible to a deterministic model, but the brain is hellishly complex and if we can't model even trivial macroscale systems using QM we certainly won't be able to model something as convoluted as the human brain. We might not need to model it to quite that degree to be able to derive laws that are as good in the social disciplines as Newtonian mechanics is in the physical sciences, which would probably be good enough to qualify as a hard science, but we'd not be able to go beyond that point if Penrose is right.

However, as things stand, you are absolutely correct. The soft sciences (whether or not they really are science) often do not use the scientific method and frequently are more opinion-based than anything. In short, not merely pre-modern-science but pre-Socratic. It shouldn't take more than 2,500 years for them to catch up, though. Less, if they put in the fundamental research necessary.

Re:Crap floats.

[sjames]

It's not that they're the only people who want to be highly paid no matter how well or poorly they do, they're just the only ones who are able and willing to stab enough people in the back and stomp on enough puppies over the years to get there.

Most people would feel too much personal shame to lay off half the workforce "to save the company" and then collect more than their cumulative incomes as a bonus.

In Las Vegas

[Lead Butthead]

In Las Vegas, that type of contractor is called an "escort."

"contractors" like this, so no women taken srsly

[wagadog]

It only takes ONE "contractor" like this in a company to totally discredit any other incoming women, no matter how many times over they can prove that their technical qualifications and achievements were earned fair and square. People won't even bother to find out. They'll just *assume* she got her grades, degrees, honors and awards on her back, got men to do her homework for her, "managed" to take credit for other peoples' work in all other previous work experience, and just happens to "know what the words mean." Except that the a-hole men on the project will simply not listen, assume she's "got it all wrong" and then have to find out the hard way what her point was -- when the little boys walk right into typical traps for young players that she'd warned them about .... having more experience.

"contractors" like this piss me off even more than ethically-impaired sociopaths like Hurd. And for a *prostitute* like that to scream "sexual harassment" when he gets tired of her just makes a mockery of *real* cases of sexual harassment, which sorry -- goes on ALL the time.

He used company funds for his fling

[sirwired]

He can have a consensual relationship all he wants, (I never recall a CEO getting fired over an affair) but HP found him using company funds for this relationship. That crosses the line into misconduct worthy of firing. It's perfectly legal to have a mistress, and not something a CEO is going to get fired over. But he should have paid for the whole fling out of his own pocket; too many CEOs treat the company treasury as their piggy bank. As if their outsize salaries aren't big enough already...

And apologizing to the managers and employees would be appropriate here; nothing steams employees more than executives only paying lip service to a company's "values." The non-apology wasn't worth the paper it was written on. (It wasn't until he was investigated that it dawned on him it was wrong? *blech*)

It wasn't harassment because she probably agreed to the whole deal (likely up until the point he decided to dump her.)

Oh, and the "no panic" plan doesn't seem to be working. HP is down 10% in after-hours trading. (Which makes sense... an abrupt CEO transition from an executive that by all accounts was doing a good job is going to be tough.)

Re:As a followup... one impressive thing

[MightyMartian]

I love how "lack of judgment" has become the newest euphemism for "crook". Misappropriating funds, preferential treatment for a contractor (which really is a form of theft too), and instead of being labeled a conniving embezzler, he gets the wooly "profound lack of judgment" crapola.

Re:Wasn't he the CEO during the pretexting scandal

[Servaas]

I can't seem to remember ANY employee of a tech company that had anything good to say about the company they work for...

Re:Resigned? Yeah right! He got his ass fired!

[Kingrames]

Wow, a 53 million dollar reward for sexual harassment, theft, and other misconduct to horrifying to speak aloud. Friends we are in the wrong goddamn industry.

Re:Resigned? Yeah right! He got his ass fired!

[timeOday]

$50e6 probably sounds very reasonable when you're accustomed to making $30e6 every year. It's funny, how small must have his fraudulent expenses been, compared to being paid over $100K every single work day. He probably feels like he just got fired for going home with an HP ballpoint pen in his pocket.

Re:The difference between Hurd and Fiorina

[DragonWriter]

Larry Ellison has repeated been accused of sexually harassing, then paying off his personal secretaries, but he's still CEO of Oracle... go figure.

I'm guessing that the difference here isn't the accusations, its the fact that in Hurd's case, investigation based on the allegations turned up all kinds of misconduct against the company.

Sexual harassment allegations (especially when made by someone else where the alleged victim isn't backing them up, whether or not they have been paid off) can be difficult to substantiate even if true, and people in power can draw lots of false allegations -- OTOH, things like misappropriating company resources for personal use are often leave evidence that is far more cut and dried.