Comment by stratosgear 6 days ago
He refused a generous exit package because he wanted to maintain his ability to talk about his experience with HP, but waited 15 years to do so? I think i missed something, or he's not completely honest?
I went from a college dropout waiter to small town successful startup founder to Google, and Google somewhere between 3-5x'd my comp. I left, after 7 years, due to some nasty stuff.
It's hard to explain and I don't understand fully myself, yet, but there's a point where more money isn't worth some sort of principle you have, and it's a lot lower than I would have thought.*
In their case, I'd imagine having the unencumbered ability to talk (i.e. not needing to worry if HP would come crying if he got a job at Apple and did an interview for Fortune someday) would be worth more than whatever a severance package was on top of years and years of 6-7 figure comp.
This would be especially paramount if you felt current management was completely misguided on decisions you were involved, they were doing the standard corpo forceout maneuver, and you couldn't say anything yet because the #1 qualification for CXO jobs is a history of placing nice / dumb when needed.
* reminder to self: this is also probably the purest answer to my Noogler fascination with how high turnover was, given the company approximated paradise to my eye at that time
Author admits he held (and still holds) a lot of HP shares. Had he spoken out back then after the fiasco, HP's stock price would have tanked further. He'd be cutting down his own wealth unnecessarily, in addition to harming his prospects at the peak of his career.
Today he is probably past his corporate ambitions, and has a good personal relationship with current HP leadership. There is little to no harm getting it out now.
Several reasons to wait 15 years come to mind:
- at first, maybe he wanted to focus on anything else for a while. Shame, stress and anger don't always diminish when you share something on the Internet ;)
- at first, maybe he was worried it would jeopardize his colleagues' careers
- maybe he was worried it would jeopardize his own career
- maybe someone intimidated him
- maybe he didn't have the bandwidth to share this for a while
- maybe he found more fulfillment doing something other than talking about this, and stuck to that for a while
- maybe he was waiting for a good moment to share this message, and decided now was the time
Can you think of a reason why he'd be dishonest that's more likely?
"I nobly refused these golden handcuffs so that well down the road I could continue huffing the farts of a company that is a shell of its former self. Don't let your eyes deceive you - they're still a powerhouse. Buy my book."
Is this what LinkedIn considers radical candor?
He refused the exit package so that he had the option of talking about his experience at the company. It's not like he is compelled to.
Maybe he talked about it plenty in private conversations immediately afterwards, or semi-publicly throughout the years, and you just haven't been privy to those conversations.
Some people, on principle alone, will refuse to sign these sorts of NDAs even if they never plan to talk, simply so they have the ability to do so if they want to in the future.