Month: December 2010

A product manager quit Google to take a job at Facebook despite Google offering a large raise, a promotion, an opportunity to work in a different location, and even a chance to start his own company within the company. Google started in a scrappy garage just 12 years ago and it changed over the years into a slower moving bureaucracy in Silicon Valley. Recently, Google lost 142 of its best employees to Facebook whose processes and procedures are faster paced. While Google gives everyone 20% of their time at work for their own ideas and limits groups of engineers to 10, the groups usually swell to 20 or even 40 and the best ideas such as Gmail come from more than 20% of their time. At the same time, Google indirectly encourages employees to make improvements to existing products and less new ones. These restrictions frustrate employees because they believe their innovations and skills are not properly appreciated – so they go to newer  companies like Facebook. This scenario reminds me of an example in class about how IBM lost many of its innovative employees to Apple as soon as IBM professionalized its structure. Although its hard for Google to go to its old ways considering it has grown, it should continue to keep its core mission of being innovative.

Read more about it here.

Mark Hurd, the CEO of HP, was recently fired because of improper business conducts. He had filed false expense reports to hide his personal relationship with a contractor, who was hired  by Hurd himself. After doing further research (found here), I found Hurd’s love interest to be Jodie Fisher, a soft-core porn star. Fisher was one of the main reasons behind Hurd’s resignation and she happened to sue Hurd for sexual harassment. Furthermore, not only was his false expense reports a form of fraud but they were also bordering on embezzlement. As the leader of HP, Hurd’s actions were extremely unethical and unprofessional as the top leader of one of the most successful technology companies. He was basically committing an act of dishonesty for his own personal gains.

The part that left me confused was when Hurd received a $50 million severance package to exit the company – the money is on top of the $10 billion of market value that HP shareholders lost as a result of Hurd’s departure. Not only does HP negatively impact its image but the values within the company could crumble. CEO was a bad role model and his departure with $50 million can leave employees questioning their ethical behaviours within the company and relate negative actions to compensation.