Whatever did or did not happen between former HP CEO Mark Hurd and contractor/actress/single mother Jodie Fisher, he's out of a job.
Apparently, more than a few HP employees aren't sorry to see him go.
Last week, I blogged about a Glassdoor.com surveyon the best and worst loved CEOs in finance.Â
where employees rate their own firms and leadership, though they do so anonymously, meaning there's no way to confirm that reviewers are whom they claim to be.
I decided to look at how tech company CEOs have been rated on the web site. Mark Hurd is dead last among peers. Hurd has a 34% approval rating on Glassdoor, based on more than 1,000 employee reviews on the web site. "Please replace Mark Hurd with someone that knows how to bring HP back to being the innovator it once was!" says someone claiming to be a systems engineer, written before last Friday's bombshell. "You need to replace the CEO with someone who have (sic) a vision for growth for our company not someone who only cuts costs," writes a "software engineer".
Advice for senior management? "There is no point," writes someone purporting to be a past employee.
How does Hurd's 34 percent approval rating compare to other tech CEOs on Glassdoor?
Steve Jobs at Apple had the highest score, at 98 percent (shocking!), followed by Intel's Paul Otellini at 82 percent, Cisco's John Chambers at 81 percent, and Oracle's Larry Ellison at 78 percent. Even Microsoft's Steve Ballmer (52 percent) and Dell's Michael Dell (51 percent) had approval ratings which handily beat Hurd.
One name being bandied about in today's Wall Street Journal as a potential successor to HP's corner office is former CEO Michael Capellas. As you'll recall, in last week's blog on financial companies, Capellas, now at First Data, came in last place in Glassdoor approval ratings, at 23 percent. Yes, HP workers liked Mark Hurd more than First Data employees like Michael Capellas.
Sure, there is a lot of grousing on Glassdoor. That is the entire point of the web site — discuss what's right and what's wrong about a company and educate those who might want to change firms. But the HP reviews are particularly downbeat in describing a workplace more interested in cutting costs than being cutting edge. "Go back to the basic 'HP Way' principles that Bill and Dave Created!" writes someone identified as an "Alliance Manager".
"Don't just talk about about it in PR brochures, practice it each and every day."
Questions? Comments? Funny Stories? Email
