Forbes: Hewlett-Packard's Mark Hurd: He Wants It All

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0412/technology-hp-mark-hurd-ibm-cisco_2.html

Below the senior tier, however, HP is more miserable than restless. It consistently ranks at the bottom of its big-scale competitors on Internet sites where employees compare notes. On one (www.proletar.com/by-employees/HP.html) it scores 1.6 out of a possible 5 stars, compared with 3.3 at Cisco and 3.7 for IBM. At Glassdoor.com HP managed a 2.5 out of 5 among 1,045 employees ("If you want to be kicked like a dog, come work here!" is typical), three slots above Countrywide Financial, and Hurd got a 30% approval rating (IBM's Samuel Palmisano, 40%; Chambers, 60%). Common complaints concern overwork, favoritism and managers looking over their shoulders in fear of not meeting Hurd's inexorable goals. "A sweatshop," says one low-level manager who recently departed. "No one wants to quit now, but watch them go when the economy recovers."

The pain seems particularly acute for some of the dwindling population of long-term vets who remember HP, perhaps wrongly, as a warm and caring place. Founders William Hewlett and David Packard devised the cuddly idea of management by walking around and hosted company cookouts to buffer their hard-nosed, hard-driving approach. By contrast, HP's executives staff arrives at headquarters in Palo Alto through a secure entrance, surrounded by barbed wire. Last year at the onset of the downturn, the boss cut salaries by 5% (at lower levels) to 20% (himself), then paid the money back when things recovered.

Hurd knows that morale is down but figures it will rise again as people adapt to the new HP. "Not everyone is comfortable with being pushed," he concedes. "We're still working on things like sales compensation--measuring people on revenues, margins and customer delight--that can create a lot of stress." Still, he adds, "we are trying to move the ball down the field fast--there is so much opportunity. Our competitors aren't waiting."