Innovate or Entrerpreneur

Having been an HP employee for 15 years, I can honestly say the company has been gutted. The exorbitant pay for the executives makes me nauseous. In the last 7 years I have received no pay increases, on the contrary.. I have lost almost 40% of my wages. It's sad, infuriating, depressing and should be criminal.

The company had 304,000 employees at the end of its fiscal year in October. Hurd, 53, has cut jobs before to shift the workforce and expand the sales staff. When he became CEO in 2005, he cut 10 percent, or more than 15,000 positions, to lift profit. In 2008, he announced a plan to eliminate 24,600 jobs over three years to save $1.8 billion after the purchase of EDS.

Livermore said today that the cuts and the new hiring will take place over a multiyear period. HP's services unit will be hiring 6,000 workers in sales and in some "global delivery centers," she said.

"This company is focusing more and more on revenue growth in their services business," said Aaron Rakers, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co. in St. Louis. "IBM's always going to have a big presence in services, but these guys are going to battle it out for big deals."

HP said last month that services revenue rose 2.5 percent to $8.71 billion, while PC sales rose 21 percent and orders for server computers and storage devices jumped 31 percent. Services accounted for 28 percent of HP's overall $30.8 billion in quarterly revenue.