"Almost every area will be affected across-the-board, but it won't be 10 percent cuts in every department. It'll be in areas where (HP) need to improve their benchmark against competitors...Mark likes to benchmark against the competitors and IT, sales and service are areas where (HP) needs to improve efficiencies."

This comes on the heels of 4,500 layoffs already completed this year. At his previous company, NCR, Hurd successfully slashed the cost of retirement benefits by replacing pensions with 401k programs and reducing the amount of stock options granted to employees. Of course the woman he replaced, Carly Fiorina, similarly laid off huge percentages of HP employees when they merged with Compaq. This is after the tragic announcement of a a 9% increase in quarterly profits.