Nine of the biggest payouts made to tech CEOs
Hewlett-Packard is disproportionately represented
WeWork has hardly been out of the headlines over recent weeks, first for its ambitious attempt to IPO and then its hasty about-turn from those plans.
The office rental outfit also announced it is to pay co-founder and CEO Adam Neumann nearly $1.7bn (£1.3bn) to vacate his chief exec role and hand over control of his voting rights to the company board.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the mammoth deal is broken into three components: a $185m "consulting fee", a $500m loan and $1bn to buy out some of Nuemann's equity in the beleaguered company.
Not all CEOs walk away with such lavish golden parachute deals; pity Andrew Mason, founder and CEO of discount site Groupon, who walked away from his creation in 2013 with just $378.36.
Most of the chief execs of the IT companies listed below fall into the Neumann collection of deals, with many being ousted for failing to deliver on expectations. Luckily for them, they left with satchels of money on which to dry their tears.
Here we count down some of the biggest severance deals ever made by IT companies.
John Sculley, Apple
How much did he walk away with? $10m
Former president of Pepsi, Sculley was lured to Apple by its founder Steve Jobs. The pair got along well until 1985, when Sculley was tasked by the Apple board with containing Jobs' flights of fancy when it came to developing expensive, untested products.
The two men butted heads until Jobs' attempted coup to replace Sculley as CEO failed and he resigned from the company in 1985, upon which the chief exec was also named president.
Sculley continued to oversee Apple until 1993, helping to grow the business from an $800m to an $8bn operation, and overseeing the development and success of the Apple II PC and its iconic Macintosh PC.
Poor results in the first quarter of 1993 and internal tensions about the direction of the company caused Sculley (pictured left) to be ousted by the board.
He was replaced by then-COO Michael Spindler, who was chief exec for three years before seeing himself be ejected, though he walked away with the comparatively paltry sum of £3.7m.
His successor Gil Amelio was forced out of the role after only 16 months by the return of Jobs, though he managed to snag a cool $9.2m package for his troubles.
Nine of the biggest payouts made to tech CEOs
Hewlett-Packard is disproportionately represented
Mark Hurd, HP
How much did he walk away with? $12.2m
Hurd took over from Carly Fiorina in 2005 and immediately started cutting costs, including axing nearly 10,000 jobs globally.
In 2006, HP launched a number of new products, including PCs and notebooks, and grew its market share in inkjet and laser printers significantly.
The company's share price more than doubled during Hurd's first year, with the company breaking the $100bn revenue barrier for the first time in 2007.
He also managed to succeed where Fiorina failed in successfully merging HP and Compaq.
Hurd (pictured left) was riding high until sexual harassment allegations were raised by an HP contractor.
An internal investigation found him not guilty, but did bring to light some creative expense reports which were declared "violations of HP's Standards of Business Conduct".
These findings forced him to resign suddenly in 2010, causing HP's share price and investor confidence to fall.
He was replaced by ex-SAP CEO Léo Apotheker in 2010.
Hurd joined Oracle after his departure from HP. However, that move initiated a lawsuit with the latter claiming a breach of conduct.
The suit was settled out of court and Hurd went on to become co-CEO of Oracle in 2014, a position he held until his death last month at the age of 62.
Nine of the biggest payouts made to tech CEOs
Hewlett-Packard is disproportionately represented
Léo Apotheker, Hewlett-Packard
How much did he walk away with? $13.1m
Apotheker was drafted in from his CEO role at SAP to replace Mark Hurd - Fiorina's successor - who departed abruptly in 2010 (more on that later).
His time at HP was disastrous; its stock dropped 40 per cent, it discontinued its mobile phone and tablet business and acquired British software firm Autonomy for $11.7bn.
The latter decision continues to haunt the vendor as it is locked in a legal battle in London's High Court with Autonomy's former CFO and CEO, alleging they undertook fraudulent accounting to bolster the value of the company. Apotheker and his successor Meg Whitman both took the stand in the case, which is expected to continue into next year.
Apotheker lasted 10 months in his role at HP before he was unceremoniously dumped by its board in favour of Meg Whitman.
That ousting was cushioned by a $13m compensation package, made up of $7.2m in severance pay, shares worth $3.5m and a performance bonus of $2.4m, despite HP losing more than $30bn in market capitalisation during Apotheker's time at the top.
Nine of the biggest payouts made to tech CEOs
Hewlett-Packard is disproportionately represented
Carly Fiorina, Hewlett-Packard
How much did she walk away with? $21m (plus $21m in stock options)
Fiorina took the helm of Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 1999, becoming the first woman to lead the tech giant and the first woman to lead a Fortune 20 company.
Her six-year stint as chief exec included overseeing what was at the time the largest merger in tech sector history, by acquiring PC maker Compaq for $24.2bn in 2001. The merger has since been universally declared a disaster and proved to be a thorn in the side of HP for the following years, as it struggled to integrate the business.
Despite ongoing conflict between Fiorina and HP's board of directors and the fallout from struggling to integrate the Compaq business, HP's revenues doubled and the rate of patent filings increased due to the number of acquisitions it made during Fiorina's (pictured right) tenure.
A massive earnings miss in the third quarter of 2004 heralded the end of her time heading the company. HP's board asked her to stand down in early 2005.
To add insult to injury, the news of her termination caused HP's share price to jump nearly seven per cent, adding nearly $3bn to its value.
Her severance amounted to $21m but she also walked away with an equal amount in stock and pension benefits, causing shareholders to launch a lawsuit against HP for going against company policy which dictated that departing executives were entitled to no more than 2.99 times their base salary and that anything more would have to be agreed by investors. The suit was dismissed.
Fiorina has since moved into the political sphere, even running against Donald Trump as the Republican candidate for the US presidency in 2016.
Nine of the biggest payouts made to tech CEOs
Hewlett-Packard is disproportionately represented
Kirill Tatarinov, Citrix
How much did he walk away with? $32m
Citrix hired Tatarinov as CEO at the beginning of 2016, specifically because of his experience in product management and technology leadership.
However, 18 months later a "mutual separation decision" was made by Tatarinov and Citrix's board of directors and he was replaced by current chief exec David Henshall.
During his brief time heading Citrix, Tatarinov oversaw the sell-off of its unwanted remote access and conferencing suite GoTo for $2bn, oversaw increased profitability and saw Microsoft bin its RemoteApp product in favour of using Citrix's offering.
The rationale for getting rid of someone who was hired specifically because of his product knowledge after only 18 months in the role remains a mystery to this day.
However, Tatarinov (pictured) remains in the IT field, taking up the role of executive vice chairman of Acronis earlier this year.
Nine of the biggest payouts made to tech CEOs
Hewlett-Packard is disproportionately represented
Gianfranco Lanci, Acer
How much did he walk away with? $42.9m
Lanci joined the Taiwanese vendor in 2001, moving up the ranks until he took up the chief exec position seven years later.
He left in 2011 after what the PC manufacturer delicately termed a disagreement on "the importance on scale, growth, customer value creation, brand position enhancement, and on resource allocation and methods of implementation."
Arguments between Lanci and the board centred on the encroaching presence of tablets on PC sales, with the CEO adamant that people would still want to buy cost-efficient PCs in their droves.
This proved to be a costly decision, as Lanci's predictions did not materialise and Acer had to write off $150m in ageing stock. The vendor also lost its position as the second-biggest PC vendor in the market during Lanci's tenure.
Lanci's (pictured left) mammoth pay-off left a legacy at Acer. In the wake of his departure, it formed a compensation committee to ensure future severance pay is commensurate to the departing exec's performance at the company.
The firm then sued Lanci for breach of contract after he joined rival Lenovo seven month later.
He is currently president and COO of Lenovo.
Nine of the biggest payouts made to tech CEOs
Hewlett-Packard is disproportionately represented
Kevin Rollins, Dell
How much did he walk away with? $53.5m
Rollins can claim the dubious honour of being the only CEO of Dell who wasn't Michael Dell.
When the tech giant's founder decided to step down from the role in 2004, Rollins was anointed as his successor. However, just three tumultuous years later Dell had to climb back into the driver's seat.
Rollins oversaw what was - at the time - one of the largest layoffs in Dell's history, cutting 8,000 jobs. His tenure also saw Dell lose its crown as top PC manufacturer to HP, one of the biggest ever consumer electronics recalls of laptop batteries, and an investigation by the US SEC for potential accounting improprieties.
Rollins' massive payout comprised $5m in severance and $48.5m in expired stock options that were frozen as a result of the aforementioned investigation.
Nine of the biggest payouts made to tech CEOs
Hewlett-Packard is disproportionately represented
Sanjay Jha, Motorola Mobility
How much did he walk away with? $65.7m
Jha (pictured below) was lured to Motorola in 2008 from his COO position at chip maker Qualcomm, a company he had been with for 14 years. He was charged with turning around its flagging mobile phone business.
Unlike most of the other names on this list, Jha wasn't pushed out or fired by the board. Rather, his services were no longer required when Google purchased Motorola Mobility in 2012 for $12.5bn.
His severance package was broken into several components: $10.8m in severance, a $2.3m bonus and $52.4m in stock options.
He went on to become CEO of semiconductor founder GlobalFoundries in 2014, a position he left in 2018.
Nine of the biggest payouts made to tech CEOs
Hewlett-Packard is disproportionately represented
Louis Gerstner - IBM
How much did he walk away with? $189m
Gerstner (pictured below) was the first IBM CEO to be chosen from outside the company and his brother had previously headed its PC division.
He joined the vendor in 1993 from his previous role as an exec at American Express after former CEO John Akers was ousted by the board. IBM was facing a crossroads; it no longer had a monopoly on the PC market, losing out to cheaper models and undergoing a complex restructuring at Akers' behest.
This reorganisation involved splitting IBM into autonomous business units in order to compete with more agile, cost-effective competitors.
Gerstner reversed this plan based on his belief that there was still a need for a broad IT integrator, and that the challenge facing most companies at the time was integrating multiple emerging technologies - a challenge that could be solved by IBM's integrated solutions.
He also oversaw IBM's withdrawal from the consumer PC market in the early 2000s as it had become unprofitable. The PC division was sold to Lenovo in 2005, three years after Gerstner's retirement.
At the time of his arrival, IBM had a ‘job for life' policy, which Gerstner changed by laying off 100,000 people within the first two years of his tenure, thereby changing the culture and bringing in new blood.
His nine years at the helm saw the vendor's market capitalisation grow from $29bn to $168bn.
His leaving package included equity profits valued at $155m and 20 years of access to IBM aircraft, cars, financial planning assistance and home security.