Hardware Geeks

So I visited with HP this week, and as some of you know I got to visit the HP Garage and go inside of it. Something few people have actually gotten to do, so I was pretty excited that HP allowed me and a few others (Xavier from notebooks.com and Andru from Gearlive.com) to get a tour.

So after the tour of the garage I got to visit HP HQ and got to see Bill Hewlett’s and David Packard’s offices, and while you may not think it’s a big deal to actually see someones office, it kind of is because David and Bill have done so much for the tech industry it’s kind of like visiting the oval office.

HP has kept their offices intact the way they were left when the two men retired, and so when you enter their offices it is like being thrown back to the 70’s. I started humming some Beatles songs to my self when I walked in.

The two offices are divided by a small hallway which has a bathroom they shared, and the doors to their offices and each others office were always open, because the two of them believed in an Open door policy.

So as many of you know, over time sun light tends to fade the color of your floor, well because of the open door policy David and Bill had; the floor behind their doors is the original floor color it was when their HP offices were built.

The first office I toured was the office of Bill Hewlett’s, on his desk you can still find stationary with his name on it some of his notes.

On his desk you will also notice some money, when I first walked in, I thought it was Bill’s money that he left there but later learned it is money that people leave on his desk as good luck. Why?

Well one day in 1996 Bill left a penny on his desk, when he came back a week or so later (probably longer) it was still there. His secretary told him to take it and he said no that eventually someone else would. His secretary said no one would dare take money off his desk that people were in awe of him. So they made a bet. Well it would seem that his secretary won the bet, and now visitors to his office leave money on his desk for good luck. HP collects the money every now and then and donates it to charity. By the way I left a dollar, I know I’m cheap.

As you can see from above his office was also fully furnished, and he had access to a nice patio, both Bill and David had access to the same patio which I have to admit was pretty nice. I regret not taking more pictures of it.

Let’s move on to David Packard’s office, the first thing I noticed was David Packard’s office wasn’t as cluttered as Bills was. So I think David Packard was a neat freak like me.

His office was also fully furnished, but it didn’t have as many things in it like Bills did.

I am kind of curious if Mark Hurd has the same open door policy that Bill and David had, if he does I think that would be pretty cool.

Hope you all enjoyed the pictures!!!

Post Tags: hp  bill packard  david hewlett 

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