It's usually other industries that get all the sex scandals. Politics, sports, entertainment -- hardly a week goes by without someone getting their dangle in a mangle. But high tech? Not so much.
Finally, our long, painful drought is over.
[ InfoWorld's Bill Snyder explains what Hurd's sudden departure means for HP and its customers. | Keep up with the key news and insights on business tech with the InfoWorld Daily newsletter. ]
By now, you've probably heard about Mark Hurd and HP. No matter what you think about him, you have to admire his chutzpah. It isn't everybody who gets to run the world's largest PC maker for five years, wine and dine a private contractor for two of them on his company's dime, resign in disgrace, and walk away with $12 million and health benefits.
Is this a great country or what?
As I write this, blogfiends are surely on the hunt for the name (and more important, pictures) of the marketing temptress that brought Hurd down. Because otherwise, all they have to report is what everyone else has reported, to wit:
Hurd did not get shown the door for hot-docking with an outside contractor for two years. Nor was he found guilty of sexual harrassment, or of trying to bed every Hooters waitress within a 5,000-mile radius, or of hiring "contractors" from Craigslist's Adult Services section. No, Hurd got the boot because he played "defrag my hard drive" with some saucy lass and tried to cover it up by filing bogus expense reports.
Per liveblog of the HP media call:
HP is saying that Mark Hurd had a close personal relationship with a contractor who was hired by the office of the CEO, and there were numerous instances of reimbursement where there was not a legitimate business interest for HP. Mark also submitted inaccurate expense reports to conceal his relationship with the contractor, and that violated HP's standards of business conduct.
So, to recap: Diddling a private contractor isn't ideal, but still within the realm of marginally acceptable behavior. Fudging your expense reports? That's not the HP way. Yer outta here.
