Mark Hurd Gets New Job at Oracle, HP Miffed

Those who have casually followed the HPQ-Oracle-Mark Hurd-sexual harassment imbroglio may be interested to hear it has taken an even more amusing/bizarre turn. Here's a quick recap of the history:

• Everybody Loves HPQ's CEO Mark Hurd.
• Mark Hurd settles a sexual harassment claim with a former HPQ consultant/employee whose job description was at best murky.
• HPQ board gets mad because, um, this is a bit embarrassing. Why is our CEO sexually harassing our employees? Wait, what did she do for us? What are these "expenses"? She used to be an actress? On reality TV??? Then she worked in real estate? Oh right, we hired her to be a greeter/escort at our fancy parties. Because we need one of those to sell our lousy printers.
• Mark Hurd "resigns" (aka given boot by board) and given massive severance payment.
• Everyone is shocked that CEO is fired, especially the harassee (didn't mean to get the guy fired, thought it would be all hush hush)
• Except for Larry Ellison who apparently doesn't care if his employees sexually harass (or whatever) other employees, as long as they "create shareholder value."
• Mark Hurd gets job at Oracle.

Which brings us to present day: HP's board is now really pissed off and is suing to block Mark Hurd from joining Oracle. I mean he's going to bring all of those trade secrets over to Oracle. And now Oracle is going to start making lousy printers too and it's going to eat into our monopoly and we won't be able to get away with selling printers that run out of ink a week after purchase, then charging $50 a cartridge for another week's worth of ink! Oh No!

Here are a few thoughts I'd like to share with HPQ's board:

• Next time you fire someone for cause, don't pay them a $35 million severance. Trust me, you'll feel better when they immediately go to a competitor.
• According to the FT, there was no non-compete clause, but something about not releasing trade secrets to competitors. Nonetheless, suing will likely be as big of a waste of money as his severance.
• Hire someone who will figure out why my two week old printer keeps giving me error messages instead of printing.