Massive Firings Could be Massive Stupidity

You are absolutely right. Mark Hurd showed he cared about well-being of his company and employees. HP will be a good position when the economy recovered. Wall street needs leadership like Mark . That's call high moral. If you the leader of the company. that calls good ethics and responsible CEO. He looks far into the future.

Hear Hear - this is the most meaningful write up since the start of the recession. And Mr. Mark Hurd, this kind of leadership and wisdom increases confidence and will undoubtedly secure future.consumer support for Hewlett-Packard.

Mark Hurd is in full spin mode. He says he is reducing his salary 20% but what when you look at his total salary compensation for 2008, his reduction is .006 percent.

Mark Hurd should not take any salary.

A sensible approach from an industry giant.
Globally it would be good to see a similar approach imposed on companies bailed out by tax payers.
Disclosure - as an ex investment bank empoyee I know the pay is too high!

Utter rubbish. The paycuts are being applied across the board and are hitting staff who are outperforming the market. Hurd is only cutting his base pay which is tiny compared to his bonus.

If HP does not need its staff then it should do the decent thing and make them redundant, not the death by a thousand cuts that we have now.

As an UK employee I will be rejecting the pay cut.

I can say that the alternative to a pay cut is not pleasant. Mr. Hurd's 20% pay cut may be greatly misleading (since it's only his base pay that's getting cut) but he's one of very few taking such a step.

My company just up and fired 10% of the staff, which included me. I would have gladly taken a pay cut instead of being shown the door after nearly fifteen years of over delivering results time and time again.

Each person a corporation lets go is like letting go of one of their own customers. When employees feel no confidence, they stop spending and all that money stops moving through the economy.

What irresponsible journalism. Mark Hurd is 100% spinning everybody a lie! Go to this US Securities Commission link: http://www.corporate-ir.net/seccapsule/seccapsule.asp?m=f&c=71087&fid=6113954&dc=

Go to page 3. You will see his 20% cut to his BASE PAY will be 0.69% of the total. He will still make over $40 million USD in bonuses and share options. This is obscene. Nero fiddling with the facts. Nobody here in Australia will be signing off on 5% cuts. Considering EDSers haven't had a pay rise in over 2 years, what to management expect??

I thought cutting salaries to keep jobs is an Asian (read outdate socialistic) practice, when did capitalistic Americans start thinking in those directions.

Asia = Cut costs (read salaries) to keep jobs.

America / UK = Cut costs (read jobs) to keep salaries.

Maybe they could out-source some more work the cheap overseas labor like ole Carly did?

Bravo Mark Hurd, I'm sure he'll get his next big bonus in 2009...
First he cut 25000 jobs during EDS HP integration and now he plays hero to save next 20000... Brilliant everyone knows that it is much better solution then pay 20000 packages... but think about morale in HP... people have been waiting for pay rises for 4-5 years, getting no bonuses at all but working hard and buying management promises... (worth nothing as you can see...) The best people are leaving... soon the last one will turn off the light... congratulations to Mr Hurd.

In the latest spark of genius. All U.S. EDS employees making more than 40,000 a year are to receive a 10% paycut (for April Only)on top of the 5% they have already lost. What purpose does a 10% paycut for 1 month serve? I can think of only two... 1)Artificially skew 2nd quarter earnings. 2)Reduce overall comp then terminate, thus reducing your package liability. Both are deceitful.. Smells of AIG.. Oh and by the way..EDS is the only unit at HP that is actually making money at the moment. Are you listening Obama?