Was the real reason for Mark Hurd’s ouster from HP that he was a douche?

It helps to remember that HP is not just the printer/server/desktop company we now know them as, but in Silicon Valley, HP is the ur-technology company. They were the first garage startup, the original engineering-centric-company-that-won, the boot camp that spawned Tom Perkins, among legions of others. For the faithful, it is still Bill and Dave’s company built overrun by barbarians.

The New York Times speculates that, while the stock was indeed booming, not all was well behind the scenes with Mark Hurd’s tenure. Sure, he was better than Carly, but it would have been a long executive search process indeed to find someone worse (Kim Jong Il?). Always focused on the bottom line, concerns were rampant that Hurd was gutting the soul of HP.

The consensus in Silicon Valley is that Mr. Hurd was despised at H.P., not just by the rank and file, but even by H.P.’s top executives.[...] “He was a cost-cutter who indulged himself,” was one description I heard. His combined compensation for just his last two years was more than $72 million — a number that absolutely outraged employees since their jobs were the ones being cut.[...]

Charles House, a former longtime H.P. engineer who now runs a research program at Stanford University, openly rejoiced when he heard that Mr. Hurd was leaving. “I think the sexual harassment charge was a total red herring,” Mr. House told me. He didn’t care. “I was delighted,” he said.

Mr. House’s brief against Mr. Hurd went well beyond his outsize compensation and penchant for cost-cutting. As Mr. House saw it — indeed, as many H.P. old-timers saw it — Mr. Hurd was systematically destroying what had always made H.P. great. The way H.P. made its numbers, Mr. House said, was not just cutting any old costs, but by “chopping R.&D.,” which had always been sacred at H.P. The research and development budget used to be 9 percent of revenue, Mr. House told me; now it was closer to 2 percent.

Which sort of makes sense when you consider that he was ousted in a sex scandal that didn’t actually involve any sex.

So, who best to succeed him? There is only one, in my opinion: Marc Andreessen. Om Malik, apparently, shares my opinion.

[Original story at NY Times' Dealbook here.]