Presented by David Packard at HP’s

second annual management conference,

1958, Sonoma, California

1. Think first of the other fellow.

2. Build up the other person’s sense

of importance.

3. Respect the other person’s

personality rights.

4. Give sincere appreciation.

5. Eliminate the negative.

6. Avoid openly trying to reform people.

7. Try to understand the other person.

8. Check first impressions.

9. Take care with the little details.

10. Develop genuine interest in people.

11. Keep it up.

Thats is profits of about 4%. That is more than most of the grocery sector that is considered almost safe from 'The Recession'.

I also note the very high use of agency staff, no doubt to avoid having to deal with employee issues and the guilt of sacking them all, never mind severance pay etc.

.....

Come on Matt - surely you've got a positive spin on HP's contribution to f*cking up the UK economy....

Great company - make a profit and still f*ck the guys that made that profit.

@Michelle - that's the very reason I dumped all our HP kit. Apart from being cheap and nasty nowadays (ah the days of old were so different) the "support" guys are clueless.

@HP new guard take note...

Thanks pal - I laughed so much at that list that I spent the next 5-10 minutes cleaning coffee out of the keyboard. If that was the sainted Dave's syllabus for success then the current HP board would score a big fat zero.

@Cue Matt Bryant

Yep, I was also wondering where he'd got to - maybe he's off spending his management bonus? Or maybe you need to mention HP/sUX a couple of times to get him to appear.

You're probably right about the clueless support guys - which is a damn shame if customers (prospective or current) think this way, because I _know_ beyond doubt that there's not only a shedload of smart cookies in various parts of HP, but they also _want_ to help customers and build the business. Trouble is that they're shackled by the clueless I'll-do-anything-to-save-a-buck management.

My thoughts and smpathies are entirely with the soon-to-be-pink-slipped hardworking colleagues who've been sacrificied merely to pimp the share price, (and thereby the boost management's bonuses).

I would have love to have finished with a short description of the HP board, but unfortunately it'd get me banned for overuse of expletives. Maybe the UK government should remember this shameful treatment of UK citizens when the next public procurement project comes up?

Unfortunately the small print of these warranties say that you can have hardware/an engineer 4 hours after the technician decides you are worthy. You are not automatically entitled to anything within 4 hours of the phone being answered by their support dept. Industry wide problem

Standards of build should at least improve...

was the HP Pavilion 3240. As Winders 95 didn't resemble anything I'd used before, I called support in Holland at 28p per minute. Problem wasn't resolved. I went over to the Microsoft website and was still none the wiser. After a bit of faffing about I managed to sort out the problem myself. On another occasion I acquired a Kodak 210 zoom camera (cutting edge tech at the time, but now worth about £10 if that), the install had gone wrong somewhere along the line, and I followed their instructions, deleting the modem in the process. I managed to get it back using the recovery disc (something I worked out for myself), reinstalling the drivers (something I'd never done before). I emailed Kodak and got a reply off one of their engineers apologising for this and they would make it known to folk. I checked back a few days later and the revision was on their site. 11 years later I am still my own tech support/sysadmin. Can't things just work?