Bill and Dave’s HP and employee voting #

I interned at HP during college several times between 2001-2005. Most of the people I worked with had been part of HP during the glory days and were approaching retirement. For those who don’t know, there was a time when HP was cool to work at, like Stripe or Google today. One of my favorite parts of those internships was learning about what life was like at HP during the glory days. I heard stories of Bill and Dave famously stopping by random engineers cubicles to bypass middle management (termed “management by walking around”). I heard about employees wearing roller skates to get around the large manufacturing floors faster. I heard of employees being encouraged to take electronic parts (resistors, capacitors, etc) from the supply closet for personal projects at home with the long-term view that the employee would learn new skills from these side projects which could serendipitously feed back into company products.

One of my favorite stories was related to HP’s stance on using corporate power to influence politics. The conversation went something like this:

18 y/o lazy me:

Voting day is coming up and I don’t have time to get educated on all the issues on the ballet. All else equal, I guess I would like to vote for things that support my employer. Does HP have a voting guide for employees?

Wise old manager:

No, HP does not take official stances on political issues. Instead, HP encourages and empowers employees to advocate for what they think is important. We give people 1 paid day per month to volunteer for whatever community service they like. We also match up to $X per year in charitable donations. We trust that our employees have good judgement, and in aggregate, their actions will do good.

18 y/o lazy me:

Wow, that makes a lot of sense, and is quite generous. However, I still need to fill out my voter ballot, and I would like to know the company’s opinion, even if I disagree with it.

Wise old manager:

We have 250,000 employees scattered around every region of the globe. Even if we wanted to make official suggested policies, it would be impossible for those 250,000 to agree on anything. It is better for official company policies to strictly focus on the mission, and to empower employees to engage with democracy directly.

I think the current generation of Silicon Valley companies could learn from Bill and Dave.