HP CEO Gets $2M Raise Despite Laying Off Thousands

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Of course HP had to lay off over fifteen thousand employees. How else do you think the company could afford to give its CEO a $2 million raise. Duh. :rolleyes:

As 15,500 employees at technology giant HP lost their jobs during the company's last fiscal year as part of a multi-year restructuring effort, its chief executive Meg Whitman received an 11 percent compensation rise. Let that one sink in for a moment.
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To be fair you could only pay about 30-35 average full time employees for a year with his raise..... Still stupid as hell though.
 
I don't see why this is a big deal. Lower tier employees are less skilled and far more expendable. Also, it's impossible to keep everyone employed at a company all the time. Layoffs stink for the lesser people and I think we can all sympathize with them, but it's part of life when you're lower or middle class. Getting upset about someone who gets a salary increase because they're thought of as more valuable is silly.
 
I don't think she really needs a raise like that, but comparing it to the layoffs is kind of silly considering it wouldn't have made a difference whether she got it or not. It amounts to about $129 per employee. To put it another way, I'll assume that the average employee with salary + benefits costs the company $50,000. It could be more, it could be less, I don't know. But given that number, the layoffs will save the company $775 million. The $2 million raise is peanuts in comparison.
 
If the company is doing that bad, then the CEO simply doesn't deserve a raise.
 
Hornet said:
If the company is doing that bad, then the CEO simply doesn't deserve a raise.
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If I remember right they had a good year and were in line with the projected growth she proposed when she took the job.
 
They can do whatever they want. More power to 'em.

Government intervention in 3... 2... 1... :rolleyes:
 
if the business is doing so bad i don't see how while laying people off she gets a big raise.

guess the investors must really like her ;_;
 
Good for her, most of the laid off employes were useless,do nothing,take up space people you normally find in a large corporation.
 
sfsuphysics said:
So many reasons to despise Meg Whitman... add this to the pile
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Well, it's the responsibility of the board of directors to decide what to pay their C-level staff so her pay raise wasn't her own choice. It's not like she woke up in the morning and said, "Yup, layoffs are done so it's time to pay myself an extra $2 million a year." Being upset with her over what the board did is sort of like yelling at your monitor for displaying an error the computer is throwing.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
Well, it's the responsibility of the board of directors to decide what to pay their C-level staff so her pay raise wasn't her own choice. It's not like she woke up in the morning and said, "Yup, layoffs are done so it's time to pay myself an extra $2 million a year." Being upset with her over what the board did is sort of like yelling at your monitor for displaying an error the computer is throwing.
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And the board of directors is made up of CEOs of other corporations looking for the same thing. You wouldn't decline Meg's raise knowing that she'll scratch your back as well since she sits on your board.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
Being upset with her over what the board did is sort of like yelling at your monitor for displaying an error the computer is throwing.
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Could have said, no thank you, I don't think it's right to take a $2M raise due right after we laid off over 15k workers in an effort to save money.
 
TwistedAegis said:
And the board of directors is made up of CEOs of other corporations looking for the same thing. You wouldn't decline Meg's raise knowing that she'll scratch your back as well since she sits on your board.
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Ooooh, I get it! It's a big conspiracy. :eek:
 
Yep, won't be considering working for HP any time soon.
 
Although I'm not a huge fan of CEO's receiving millions of dollars in raises/bonuses when the company is doing poorly, layoffs are just a part of life for publicly owned corporation. Your employment is nothing more than a number to the share holders. They don't care if you've been working for the company for 20 years, have 3 kids, a disabled spouse or donate your time back into the company. When your number is up, you are gone for the sake of someones quarterly statement.

I worked for HP before and during the Carly era. Our division made hand over fist money for the company. One day, 200+ of us were laid off because our production was scheduled to be outsourced for a small profit. We didn't receive a single warning. We came in one day, the area was blocked off and a HR supervisor was handing our paychecks and severance packages.
 
Although there seems to be a strong anti-CEO sentiment in the worker class, some of them are very valuable ... When I worked for Intel the CEOs while I was there (Grove, Barrett) and the one who took over after I left (Otellini) were worth every penny and were deserving of suitable compensation (even when the company went through transitions and layoffs) ... when I was at Flextronics the CEO (Michael Marks) was good for company stock growth and I could see why he was rewarded with suitable compensation increases (even when the company regularly restructured and laid off employees) ... if a company is restructuring a company might need to reduce heads (even though the overall company direction is good) and if the CEO is properly leading the restructuring effort then they should be rewarded for that (as stability in the CEO role, especially if you have a high profile CEO, can be good for the company stock performance and general perception) ... bottom line is that CEOs perform a very specialized role in most companies and unlike an engineer (who can be hired from a broad pool of candidates) there are often few CEOs suitable to lead large companies (and the company must compensate them properly to attract and retain the best candidates)
 
WhyYouLoveMe said:
They can do whatever they want. More power to 'em.

Government intervention in 3... 2... 1... :rolleyes:
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While I support their legal right to do whatever they want, when companies and CEO's back certain runners for Congress/President/etc I'd like to see voted in to help reign in our nations debt, when average people see stories like this it will cause them to not vote for this person.

And even though I agree with their right to pay who they want, what they want, most CEO's don't deserve that kind of pay.
 
Also, HP makes shit products so I will never buy an HP product when there is a choice. I'd pay double what HP charges simply to avoid the asspain that is HP.

Fuck them. I hope that company goes under.
 
Blown 89 said:
If I remember right they had a good year and were in line with the projected growth she proposed when she took the job.
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so maybe she should get the 3% raise all the other employees get for doing their job to expectation. That is the going "average" for a yearly raise.... HR does studies and it is "competitive"... they have told me so at a number of jobs in different industries.

They also say training new hires is a huge expense and they want everyone to work on retention... Yet its very common to get 10-20% at a outside new hire, doing the same job as the 3% yearly raise for existing employees... If new hires and retention was that expensive the different wouldn't be that big.

Sometimes you are lucky and get a boss that will fight for you and be honest with you. Those are the places I end up working longer and the when my boss leaves usually look for a new job.
 
Yes, let's just write a headline without context. Of the 15k that are no longer employees, how many were voluntary early retirements? How many were roles that no longer fit the company? How many had the opportunity to look for other positions in the company?

Got a beef with how a CEO is compensated? (yes, so do I) Take it up at the next shareholder's meeting.
 
Why does the least-skilled position at the company demand so much pay? Seriously, in a large corporation the CEO is just a talking head who's job it is to read copy. Everything is delegated to other, more necessary people.
 
OEM said:
Also, HP makes shit products so I will never buy an HP product when there is a choice. I'd pay double what HP charges simply to avoid the asspain that is HP.

Fuck them. I hope that company goes under.
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I agree with you on computers, but they still make some of the best laser printers.
 
OEM said:
Also, HP makes shit products so I will never buy an HP product when there is a choice. I'd pay double what HP charges simply to avoid the asspain that is HP.

Fuck them. I hope that company goes under.
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Shit consumer grade products. (desktop, laptops and printers)

Servers, workstations and enterprise networking? Another ball game.
 
Their laser printers are... OK. We had one recently new out of the box dead in a week. The replacement also was NIB. And died one month later. Not exactly confidence inspiring.
 
The job of the CEO is to manage the stock price. If it goes up..they get more money. If it goes down, they look for a new job. What happens beyond this is "who the fuck cares".
 
This is typical publicly traded company bullshit.

You lay off a bunch of people while maintaining sales. So your income numbers stay the same while your expenditures numbers go down. Hence, more profit. This looks good on the ledger to shareholders.
 
Maybe... just maybe... she cut the 15,000 jobs after a full review of unneeded/redundant departments & positions, poor performance, and various inefficiencies...

That's her and the COO's job. Their job is to ensure the survivability of the company and make sure it is running as efficient as possible.

I'm sure she didn't enjoy killing those jobs, but you have to maintain the big picture of keeping the business alive.


So much business hating and ignorance here.
 
TwistedAegis said:
Huh, you know this personally? Interesting.
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Well you see acairman's job is to watch people who don't do meaningful work. He does this with quadcopter's buzzing all over the place. He's the ceiling cat that you thought was just a meme, except he's watching you not do your job.

Or he's pulling this info from his ass. Maybe. Probably. Quadcopter's sounds cooler.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
I don't see why this is a big deal. Lower tier employees are less skilled and far more expendable.
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Common sense, you don't tell everyone to buckle down and pinch pennies and say you're forced to lay off over 15000 people, and then fly a private jet, have lavish parties, and give yourself multi-million dollar raises to management without morale and investor confidence going to complete shit.

Its unacceptable.

We need more CEOs like Alexander the Great, that actually were leading the troops and saying "do as I do".
 
wgm3446 said:
I'm sure she didn't enjoy killing those jobs, but you have to maintain the big picture of keeping the business alive.


So much business hating and ignorance here.
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Stop it. Just stop it OK. Nobody wants to hear that any more. It's all about greedy people keeping the little poor folks down.

Viva la proleteriat! Red revolution! You're gonna burn now richy!!
 
Ducman69 said:
Common sense, you don't tell everyone to buckle down and pinch pennies and say you're forced to lay off over 15000 people, and then fly a private jet, have lavish parties, and give yourself multi-million dollar raises to management without morale and investor confidence going to complete shit.

Its unacceptable.

We need more CEOs like Alexander the Great, that actually were leading the troops and saying "do as I do".
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Or since everyone is going gaga over CEO pay then more CEOs like Steve Jobs (who only received a $1 salary ... with the rest being compensation in stock options and stock grants) ;)
 
And the rich continue to get richer. Wages for the top 1% account for 45% of all (tax-reported) income per year of all wage earners in the US (this top percentile are those making more than 380k / year). Let's see how much more fail Reaganomics is, the money will fall eventually :rolleyes:

Another perspective, every wage earner in the US could be paid 250k a year and there would still be money left over for wages of over a million USD for the few 'privileged' people.
 
LOCO LAPTOP said:
Shit consumer grade products. (desktop, laptops and printers)

Servers, workstations and enterprise networking? Another ball game.
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Agreed. I've had the best experiences with HP business products in regards to lowest field failure rates and dealing with customer service for our deployed ProDesk, ProBook, EliteDesk, EliteBook, ElitePad, and LaserJet products than I've had with Dell, Gateway, and Lenovo.

And I'm not just saying that because I worked for HP PSG in the enterprise products segment for almost 12 years (1997-2009) building and configuring everything from laptops to desktop and workstations to servers. :p Seriously, I'm not. I have some bitter feelings towards HP for laying me off in order to save a few pennies by sending my job duties down to Juarez and Guadalajara, but their business class products are about the best out there, imo.

I'm sure others will disagree based on their own personal experiences, but that's why we all still have a choice with whom to buy our products from: brand loyalty, personal experience, volume pricing, etc...whatever else you want to factor in that keeps the big OEMs competitive with each other and afloat.
 
kbrickley said:
Or since everyone is going gaga over CEO pay then more CEOs like Steve Jobs (who only received a $1 salary ... with the rest being compensation in stock options and stock grants) ;)
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Compensation is compensation, and Jobs was way overpaid.
 
aardvark sandwich said:
Who

Fucking

Cares
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Everyone should. As the rich become richer and continue to hoard their cash, the less liquid the market becomes. Less liquidity means less spending power for the majority of people - 90% of the US (those making less than 110k / year). Less money in the market causes wages to fall which easily causes a spiral effect of less liquidity, lower wages/lost jobs, etc. This is oc laymens terms but we've been living through lower minimum wages (thanks to inflation) and pay (3% raise a year is breaking even) since the early '80s. This is true for lower the 90%. The top 1 percent have seen their wealth and wages skyrocket - literally exponential growth - while the following 9% have had a stead linear growth of around a few percentage points in growth.
 
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