By Charles Cooper, CNET
A fascinating nugget turns up in BloombergBusinessweek's excellent piece on Hewlett-Packard: None other than Steve Jobs reached out to offer counseling to Mark Hurd after Hurd had walked away from his job as HP's CEO.
A fascinating nugget turns up in BloombergBusinessweek's excellent piece on Hewlett-Packard: None other than Steve Jobs reached out to offer counseling to Mark Hurd after Hurd had walked away from his job as HP's CEO.
Three days after he'd resigned as CEO under pressure from the
company's board of directors, Hurd received an e-mail from Steve Jobs. The Apple founder wanted to know if Hurd needed someone to talk to. Jobs had lived through a similar experience decades earlier when Apple's board turned on him, an analogy Hurd and Jobs's mutual friend and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison was quick to draw, condemning Hurd's ouster as "the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago."
Hurd met Jobs at his home in Palo Alto, according to people who know both men but did not wish to be identified, compromising a personal confidence. The pair spent more than two hours together, Jobs taking Hurd on his customary walk around the tree-lined neighborhood. At numerous points during their conversation, Jobs pleaded with Hurd to do whatever it took to set things right with the board so that Hurd could return. Jobs even offered to write a letter to HP's directors and to call them up one by one.
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