Apple Has Sexy Tech, HP just has Sexual Harassment
Our newest fresh face in to join us in Career Purgatory is Mark Hurd now the ex-CEO of HP or Hewlett-Packard Co. for you older geeks.
Apparently Mark Hurd didn’t realize that if you’re going to try and win over the ladies you need to at least give them new iPhones, and iPad’s; HP gear just won’t cut it these days, also you shouldn’t be putting your girlfriend’s lunches and gifts on the corporate expense account. I mean seriously he was paid millions of dollars each year and he couldn’t pay for her out of his own pocket? Surely his personal team of accountants could have found some write off’s for him. Granted I can see where Mark was coming from as the girl involved is an occasional actress with keyword descriptions in IMDB such as Independent Film, Erotica, Cult Favorite, and Female Nudity I’m sure a lot of other executive types would try to keep Jodie Fisher around as a “close friend” too.
Alas I suppose that Mark isn’t entirely to blame as HP isn’t a stranger to introducing executives to Career Purgatory. During Carely Firnoa’s time as CEO and chairman of hte board she put Patricia C. Dunn in charge of plugging a leak in the board room, Patricia created a pretexting scam to flush a media leak at HP on their corporate board of directors. In fact if I could warn any C-level executive types or board members I would suggest you stay away from HP. The company has a strange ability to turn your career into something along the lines of a bricked iPhone; Your career looked nice when you got it, you still have the business cards laying around, but your career is dead. On the up side though, you have plenty of time to count your severance payout and stock options.
To be sure though I’m not crying for any of these ex-employees of HP as it turns out HP likes to pay out rather nice severance packages to their management. We’ll take a recap at how those turned out:
Mark Hurd – $28 million looks like $12.1 million is in cash rest in stock options. The final number could balloon into $40 million.
Carly Fiorina – $21 – 41 million severance package for her performance.
Patricia C. Dunn -$0 since she was the one of the few with criminal charges brought against her, but later dismissed.
Ann Baskins – $3.1 million severance package, General Counsel for HP was wrapped up in the pretexting scandal.
***BONUS***
Here is the “demo reel” for Jodie Fisher so we can all get an idea of the caliber female that will be giving HP nightmares for at least a couple more quarters this fiscal year.
We’re going to have to consider a Career Purgatory Golden Parachute award for our favorite corporate inductee for the year. Check out our other infamous people who are in Career Purgatory here.