How much does a chief executive really matter at a multibillion-dollar technology company? Apple’s employees, customers, shareholders, board and Steve Jobs’s successor, Tim Cook, must hope the answer turns out to be a lot different than at the world’s largest computer company, neighboring Hewlett-Packard.

Just a year ago, Mark Hurd, H.P.’s chief executive, was forced to resign in the midst of allegations of sexual harassment and expense account irregularities, many details of which remain shrouded in secrecy. (The board concluded the sexual harassment claim was unfounded, but that Mr. Hurd’s lack of candor had cost him its confidence.) The vote to demand his resignation was unanimous, although the board was sharply divided, especially over how to handle his departure and seek a new C.E.O. But H.P. was so big, so dominant in most of its markets, and so profitable that Mr. Hurd was dispensable, according to people familiar with the board’s reasoning. “We don’t need you,” one board member bluntly told Mr. Hurd, or words to that effect.

So how has Hewlett-Packard fared under new leadership?

On Aug. 18, H.P. announced simultaneously that it was exploring “strategic alternatives” and might sell its dominant personal computer business, which accounts for roughly a third of the company’s revenue; that it was scrapping its new, much ballyhooed TouchPad tablet computer; and that it was acquiring a British software concern, Autonomy, for $10.3 billion, a steep 11 times revenue. The stock plunged 20 percent to $23.60 a share. When Mr. Hurd resigned, it was just under $46, so the one-year decline amounted to 49 percent. (The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index gained about 3 percent over the same period.)

“I didn’t know there was such a thing as corporate suicide, but now we know that there is,” a former H.P. director, the venture capitalist Tom Perkins, told me this week. “It’s just astonishing.”