Wow, must be a hard life when you fail to meet your annual targets, like HP CEO Meg Whitman did in her first year on the job, so you “only” get $15 million for a year’s work as “punishment.”

Meg Whitman the CEO of the Hewlett-Packard Company or the HP Co. has received a lesser annual compensation. According to reports Whitman has received a compensation of $15.4 million in the year 2012. It is to be mentioned that the amount is only seventy percent of the targeted compensation. It was a year in which Autonomy debacle happened also Meg Whitman completed one year as CEO of Hewlett-Packard Company.

Hey HP, punish me!

Granted, Whitman is not yet in the “$40 million ‘retirement’ “ category that that other failed-GOP-candidate Carly Fiorina attained, but she’s doing okay at a cool 15 mil.

HP is doing less well. The company has been in a downward spiral for a while, yet they keep throwing wads of cash at their senior executives, somehow hoping that big money will solve their big problems.

In the case of Meg Whitman, her record at HP has been less than impressive — though she’s now on target to make $30 million in her first two years. Not too shabby when you consider the $13 billion – yes, billion – loss for HP’s last fiscal year under her watch. In addition, HP’s stock has lost about half of its value.

There’s something horribly wrong in corporate America when failure is so consistently rewarded at the top. Rewarding mediocre to bad results hardly seems like a viable plan for the future.

How could any board of directors possibly approve this?