
Oracle Hires Mark Hurd As Co-President - gamble
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/technology/07oracle.html?_r=1&hp
======
SkyMarshal
_"H.P. found no evidence of sexual harassment, but said Mr. Hurd had tried to
conceal a personal relationship with Ms. Fisher by removing her name from his
expenses for meals. "_

Interesting. He's a multimillionaire CEO and couldn't be bothered to just pay
for the dinners out of his own pocket, but expensed them to the corporate card
instead? It must be good to be da king. Until you're not...

~~~
wmf
That's normal behavior for HP executives. The company also paid for them to
make personal trips in HP's jets.

~~~
amirmc
I've heard there are sometimes insurance reasons for that. i.e the senior
execs can _only_ fly on private flights.

~~~
mhansen
Can you explain the reasons?

~~~
stingraycharles
After some quick googling, I found more references to this claim, but only in
comments on articles:

<http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/37608>: "The use of a corporate
jet is often required by corporate policy intended to protect the executive
from the threat of violence or abduction. "

[http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/11/auto...](http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/11/auto_officials_nailed_on_priva.html):
"Most corporate CEOs in companies with corporate jets are REQUIRED to use
those jets as their ONLY mode of travel, as per the insurance requirements of
being the Chief Executive Office and Chairman of a Publicly Traded Company.".

~~~
mryall
> "Most corporate CEOs in companies with corporate jets are REQUIRED to use
> those jets as their ONLY mode of travel ..."

That would make getting a cup of coffee from the local café a serious PITA. I
guess that's why they have executive assistants?

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flatulent1
It is a bit funny seeing one Oracle exec who had an affair (Charles E.
Phillips Jr) getting replaced by another. Someone could base a movie on them.

It's good to see Mr Hurd back at work so soon. He seems a good match and well
qualified. Besides seeing how Oracle does under him, it'll be interesting to
see what influence he has on decisions affecting the industry in general.

In particular, some wonder how much Android will be affected by the JAVA case
against Google. Others wonder about the future of other open-source projects
such as VirtualBox (development appears to be continuing)

If they need another exec with a colorful past, there's always former Broadcom
CEO Henry Nicholas. He was accused of putting drugs in others' drinks; an
airline pilot complained of pot smoke so thick that a gas mask was needed.

[http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/06/06/he...](http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/06/06/henry_nicholas/)

Steve Jobs used LSD when he was younger and turned out pretty well. Sun had
other that did the same. I heard one former Sun exec in a PBS interview
talking about that experimental period, trying to expand the mind. Basically
he said drugs failed at that, and the expanding experience came later... the
internet

There's a little bit of related history at this link that mentions Suns' fifth
employee:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-grim/read-the-never-
befor...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-grim/read-the-never-before-
pub_b_227887.html)

~~~
brisance
I know this is the internet and all, but it would be prudent not to cast
aspersions about executives having an "affair" when the fact was that Hurd
left for other reasons.

~~~
joe_the_user
Uh,

Hurd left because of unethical behavior which many would interpret as evidence
he was having an affair.

HP didn't have overwhelming evidence of an affair (and an act isn't
necessarily grounds for termination) but the world already a preponderance of
evidence. I don't think Mark Hurd is going to be starting any civil cases on
the subject any time soon.

~~~
btilly
Not quite.

Hurd left because of a sexual harassment case where a contractor (Jodie
Fisher) claimed that she stopped getting work after turning down his sexual
advances. According to both parties, no affair existed.

So while there is good evidence that he wanted an affair, there is no evidence
he had one.

~~~
joe_the_user
"This year, Mr. Phillips acknowledged having an affair after a woman he had
been seeing put up a Web site and billboards detailing his extramarital
relationship."

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/technology/07oracle.html?_...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/technology/07oracle.html?_r=1&hp)

... The original post, btw, simply said Hurd had an affair, neither it nor I
say he was fired for having an affair...

~~~
neilc
Mr. Phillips != Mr. Hurd -- the question is whether Hurd had an affair, not
Phillips.

~~~
adolph
oracle.morality++;

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seldo
At HP, Hurd was famous for ruthlessly cutting jobs. If I were a former Sun
employee, I would be very scared of this guy.

~~~
gamble
Hurd's only real achievement at HP was finishing Fiorina's work and applying
the coup de grace to the HP Way. HPers loathe him. They'd have been dancing in
the street when he left, if they didn't know that the board was so happy with
his performance that his successor was guaranteed to carry on in the same
style.

Of course, if there are Oracle employees who have a problem working for people
with Hurd's attitude, they haven't been paying attention.

~~~
kujawa
I worked for Snapfish (division of HP) for about six months last year. It was
quite disappointing. This isn't a company that's ever going to innovate again.

I grew up loving HP calculators, and detest anything that doesn't run on RPN.
I have an HP-15c app on my iPhone (notibly, _not_ the one done by HP, which is
inferior.)

Carly and then Turd killed any sort of innovation in this company. They're
purest evil, and I can see why Oracle would like to hire this sort of
executive.

~~~
tonystubblebine
Why are they evil? Maybe they're just business people. This is an honest
question. You're not the only person I've heard react that way. Merely cutting
R&D just doesn't seem inherently evil to me, even if it turns out to be the
wrong decision.

~~~
pyre
I think he means 'evil' in a 'you just ruined something that I thought was
great' sense.

~~~
IMorgothI12
Not exactly. HP developed the first Memristor.

<http://www.hpl.hp.com/news/2010/apr-jun/memristor.html>

~~~
pyre
I speculated what he meant, I didn't make the claim myself.

------
some1else
So.. If under his watch HP made a lot of money with service parts, and
substantially reduced R&D spending, he may be a great fit for Oracle. In the
sense that they will spend as little as they can on improving Solaris, and
just try to make it necessary for the enterprises to integrate with the rest
of Oracle portfolio? :-) If I recall correctly, that's the market potential
that the recent memo was referring to.

~~~
ojbyrne
Those kinds of things only work once. I think every IT manager out there knows
Solaris is dead, and will be pushing to migrate to open-source alternatives.
And every other product that Sun brought to Oracle is also suspect.

I just recently quit working at an IT managerish job, and I hope the one thing
I left them with is "never, ever buy an HP printer."

------
jonursenbach
Since Oracle is a direct competitor to HP, I wonder if HP (or even the SEC)
are going to be investigating the hire for conflicts of interest regarding
trade secrets just like they went crazy when engineers left Google for Apple.

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treblig
When was the last time a "Co-President" worked well?

Serious question, I'm just having trouble thinking of one.

~~~
wmf
Oracle has been running with two presidents for a while now, so presumably
it's working.

Larry and Sergey are co-presidents of Google.

------
Another1
when Oracle bought Sun many analysts speculated that Oracle will sell Sun
Hardware Division, of course even more analysts speculated the obvious which
is, Oracle is taking a dive into the hardware business

When I read this all i was thinking was, Mark Hurd seems like a hardware guy,
Oracle really wants to get this hardware business right!

~~~
kiujygtyujik
Hurd is the guy who managed to single handedly destroy the remains of HP's
engineering ability. I give it about a week before the last Sun guy leaves.

Of course this could be a cunning plan to avoid the costs of redundancy
payments - hire Hurd and watch all your best engineers resign for free.

~~~
brown9-2
_Hurd is the guy who managed to single handedly destroy the remains of HP's
engineering ability_

I thought Carly Fiorina was blamed for this? How many people can single-
handedly destroy something?

Let's be realistic, CEO's aren't able to get much done without the approval of
the board of directors, who are elected by the company's shareholders. There
are very few "single-handedly"s in business. You can't blame just the CEO, as
there are people above him/her. Blame the board, blame the shareholders who
didn't/don't value "HP's engineering ability".

~~~
kiujygtyujik
Fiorina destroyed HP as a great engineering company turning it into a printer
ink marketing scam.

Hurd managed to get almost every remaining engineer to leave - see the stories
posted here at the time.

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Mrdev4
I doubt Phillips will have a problem finding another job.

