Of course this could be a cunning plan to avoid the costs of redundancy payments - hire Hurd and watch all your best engineers resign for free.
I thought Carly Fiorina was blamed for this? How many people can single-handedly destroy something?
Let's be realistic, CEO's aren't able to get much done without the approval of the board of directors, who are elected by the company's shareholders. There are very few "single-handedly"s in business. You can't blame just the CEO, as there are people above him/her. Blame the board, blame the shareholders who didn't/don't value "HP's engineering ability".
Hurd managed to get almost every remaining engineer to leave - see the stories posted here at the time.