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HP Lays Off Unix/IA-64 gurus
A reader writes "On Tuesday HP announced that it is closing a lab in NJ. This was an HP-UX development lab, responsible for porting HP-UX to IA64. The lab employed top engineers, including some who have worked in Unix kernels for over 20 years (originally from Bell Labs, Novell, and other companies). " That report came from a soon-to-be former employee.
Probably giving up on HPUX and concentrating on Linux IA64!
Personally, I wouldn't end that statement with a '!' ... considering the fact that people are losing their jobs.... even if thats the case, it's not really something to be 'happy' or even excited about ...
if anything , it's a testament to the crappy way big corporations treat loyal and qualified employees
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
the less time spent on developing hp-ux further the better in my opinion.
when they are laying off their top people
with 20 years experience.
So how does the job market look for people who have these kind of credentials? Let's just hope that they don't end up asking us if we wanna supersize...
...are on the downward slope. The BEST thing about HP was their engineering. I bought a new Omnibook 6000 in June and love it.
How are they supposed to compete in the upcoming 64-bit arena if they are laying off key development personnel? Leave it up to Compaq? Look what they did with Alpha. I guess I'll be building my own Itanium system in about three years...
After all, HP is acquiring Compaq, and with it Tru64 Unix. Makes sense that HP would axe the lesser of the two operating systems.
*** Quantum Mechanics: The Dreams of Which Stuff is Made ***
At a presentation I recently attended concerning Linux for zSeries (zSeries is IBM's new 64bit mainframe platform) the comment was made that one of the big research firms (don't remember which...) had said that in seven years there would only be three operating systems: Windows, Linux, and zSeries(also what IBM calls the 64bit replacement for OS/390). Could this be the start of that? I'm not suggesting that Linux will replace HP-UX today or this year, but could they be holding off on the port since Linux already runs on IA-64?
Just wondering.
Politics, Culture, Food?
Everyone says they want linux to be the next big o/s. Then, when Linux starts grabbing market control from other groups, the same people wine and complain! If open source takes market share from closed source competitors, some people will be laid off. It's not that complicated.
I'll even send one to you!
You Like Science?
You Like bottomquark.
It's tough being lain off. I just try to remember my personal philosophy:
:)
I only have one life and I'm going to live it up.
So I'm taking flight and now I'll never get enough. I'm standing tall.
Yes, I'm young. Yes, I'm kind of proud.
But I'll be on top (as long as the music is loud).
Got a full tank of hot grits and a penis bird in the glove box.
you could NEVER be laid off (not that some other things couldn't happen), if you had your very own o-s project WebSite, complete with a year's free web hosting, compliments of us.
..of Spheniscidae here?
Censorship on Slashdot
It seems to me that laying off some of your top OS engineers is really stupid. HPIX may not have been the best flavor of unix out there, but it did provide an alternative. I'm really saddened by how many OS's and architechtures ar biting the dust at the moment. Looks like it's gonna be a one chip three OS world in not too long....
:-)
Moderators: please browse at 0. I may have made some stupid comments in the past, but I do have something of value to say occasionaly
In light of the merger announcement you couldn't expect them to keep two versions of UNIX around.
These layoffs are the latest move in Carly Fiorina's brilliant plan to run HP into the ground so she can have an excuse to leave and get a golden parachute on the way out and retire to the Bahamas. The last move she made was to buy Compaq.
Damn she's good!
For the record, most of the Florham Park site was not working on IA-64, and will not be let go.
Economy = crap
HPUX market = crap
HP profit margins = crap
IA64 market = crap
Cost of developers = high
Markets change. Companies must reorganize, redeploy, and if nothing else works, fail.
So, how many people are we talking about here? 20? 100? Maybe they will disperse into existing Linux companies (Redhat, Suse, etc...) and improve the overall state of Linux. Maybe start a slew of consulting companies. Either that, or exploit all those backdoors they built in HP-UX, just in case they ever got fired.
I'm reading Jack Welch's book. In the 80's he laid off thousands, but he said he tried to give notice of a months of a plant closing or lay off.
Maybe these guys will be interested in helping out with the Linux kernel or other projects (if they haven't been already)?
Read my keyboard review.
They've got Compaq. When 64-bit computers become mainstream, they can either go the "Compaq" way and use Windows or TRU-64. Or go IBM's way and stick with Linux. There is really no need to have a third way which is a waste of time porting things in and out. I think R&D should be better spent in improving e-paper or faster scanners/printers.
¦ ©® ±
ok, if HP has to lay off guys that were around when UNIX was a youngin, then the IT industry my be in bigger trouble than we thought.
for god sakes, UNIX to these guys is like a part of their body, they probably have memorised all file locations and commands and programs that exist in UNIX.
well I guess it shows you that knowlege and experience is not always your savior.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
A year from now, when they want to have a 64-bit UNIX product, it will cost a LOT of money to hire 100 senior UNIX developers again.
I spent several months working with HP about 5 years ago, and they had a saying inside the company that went something to the effect that if HP were trying to market, say, a Bacon Cheeseburger, they'd call it "Fried dead cow and pig on a bun with dairy and plant matter."
I can't imagine they're just firing this "crème de la crème" group.
HP must have quite a few projects up the sleeve they could be put to very good use for.
...Linux related development, for example?
Reading the article and the brief comment about it on Slashdot, I get the feeling that this should not have happened and that it is a bad move by HP for those gurus.
Let me first tell you that I feel sorry for those guys, just like anyone else, but at the same time I want to point out that this is the natural of evolution/change.
Some may argue that those guys are so-important/good and should not have been let go, or that the project at hand is so-important/good et. al..., and so on.
I think we need to look at this, and everything else, as part of what makes us "advance" forward and look ahead. To me this is nothing but "change-in-action" for which without "change" we will never see beyond our current perspective.
I am very confidence that those HP engineers (and the project) that are being doomed today, will go out and come back with a much superior product now that they are faced with higher challenges due to this "change" that has been forced upon them.
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
If linux wants to stay alive, though, and maintain it's buzz, it has to do one thing: Don't fully emulate windows. Reason? OS/2 did it, and so all the developers said, "Why should I port to OS/2? That OS runs windows anyway"
HP engineers are nice because they are into the team thing
I wonder how long until Intel or AMD get down there and start recruiting
realistically Intel needs help with IA64 because it's compiler is not really up to scratch (witness the compaq/digital guys moveing to intel)
AMD needs to get O/S AND Compiler to work on x86-64 realistically the new win2k kernel to work on it
so I dont think that they will be unemployed for long
its a big gaff on HP part because HP-UX was going to be the successor going from PA-RISC to IA64 meaning that customers had very little to worry about compared to True64 customers
the only real big guys not laying off core people seems to be SUN
(remember that alot of linux people got layed off as well recently )
so remember good engineers are never in need of a job just projects that need good engineers the problem is of course finding the true good engineers
regards
john "curently trying to get a job" jones
It kinda smells like Eudyptes chrysolophus for the laid of HP-UX people!
I am really shocked on this news. Dont these so called managers have the slightest idea on whom to axe, and whom not to? These people are really good. They deserve better treatment. They have been working on these technologies for over 20 years, and are absolute gurus in their fields. They are being treated as 'unskilled labor'...
The company decides...
We need to layoff 6000 people.
hmm...Lets see.
Lets close down one of the research labs. Who cares who works there. To hell with them.
This will keep the stock holders happy.
It is really ironical since it is due to these people that the stock holders got what they want to protect today!
ankit
Don't Panic
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act prohibits users from circumventing copy protection. It's now a crime in America to do that.
There you have it. Fair use is now illegal.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Sure, but then they would probably be laying of the people best suited to help in that effort.
These are jobs, not lives. The people laid off are probably in the top 1% intellectually and will get new jobs fairly easily at very nice salaries.
Now, I like HPUX more than solaris, but both of those dogs are too expensive when compared with linux or NT.
Business decisions suck. Whether this decision is smart is to be seen.
"The area of penetration will no doubt be sensitive." ~ Spock
is willing to pick up some of them? I'm sure
they will be able to contribute some major
improvements and functionalities into the Linux
kernel.
why is unix dying? xp won't make an advance on who's running unix now - few will leave the unix arena for a product such as xp which *does* follow the same lines as its predecessors, mainly security holes, poor performance, poor reliability, and overall high administration costs.
Interviewer:So, Mr. Ritchie, you claim you're a C programmer, yet you've never taken a class or been certified as one, right? And you claim decades of experience in Unix, yet you don't have any certifications? Sorry, don't call us, we'll call you...
And not get paid.
Hunt around for a new job, OR work on GNU/Linux and not get paid. I bet the bill collectors will go "Oh, you have no job, no income, and you are instead of paying me, your creditor, you are working on GNU/Linux? Oh, please, kind humanitarian, let me forgive the debt you owe me!"
Are you accepting story submissions for every tech company that lays ppl off now? Can any dotbomber email /. when they get laid off?
I'd understand if this was an announcement of the release or death even of HPUX, but in these times layoffs are common and hardly worth reporting on here.
The capricious way that companies seem to be doing this (I shudder to think what else will happen during this merger), is staggering. If I ran a company I wouldn't let experienced engineers loose on the streets and give them a possible reason for a grudge. Someone is going to snap them up and the short term profit of axing them will be a pittance compared to the revenue and goodwill you lose from them in the long run. Think about what DEC/Alpha engineers did for AMD and then think about what these people could do for IBM or SUN or any number of companies.
The analyst in the article said it does not make any sense and he's right. This leads me to believe that their strategy is not as coherent as they claim. What's going to happen when they tell their customers "Not only are we giong to sell you an Intel box for your server, but it's not going to have HP-UX on it." Thus, the original reason for buying an HP (their architecture and software) is now gone. If they think their "brand" is something else, then they will be horribly surprised when their customers say "well as long as we're changing platforms and OSs I think I will check out what Sun and IBM have to offer." No one is strong enough in times like these to crap on valuable employees and customers this way. Doesn't anyone understand that this is the time to keep valuable employees and steal them from others? When the dust settles it will be painfully obvious that they need them.
"The plural of anecdote is not data." -- Roger Brinner
In case anyone is interested, FuckedDistro.com is available.
This strikes me as the second major move towards a Windows-only shop. The first being acquiring Compaq. "Let Intel make the cpu's, let MS make the OS, and we'll sell boxes and service." Too bad.
It's an old joke. I prefer this version from back in the Amiga days:
If Commodore had sold sushi, it would have marketed it as cold, dead fish.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
The CEO says:
But axing the development group may run counter to statements CEO Carly Fiorina recently made that the computer-and-printer giant plans to increase research and development staffing.
H-P executives say:
H-P executives let go the majority of workers at the company's Enterprise Intel Architecture Lab in Florham Park, N.J. The facility, which specializes in Unix operating software that can work on both on traditional RISC-based and Intel-brand chips, will close.
Not only is HP shooting itself in the foot by dumping its best and brightest in PH-UX research, but it looks real stupid when everyone is following conflicting plans. Hey, HP, how about dumping some of the mangement drones that pulled this one off.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
This is further evidence that Carly has NT-itis. Wake up HP! Compaq is a freakin' boat anchor. Don't give up your enterprise operating system to sell PC's. Geez!
They could work on it in their spare time like the rest of us. Or, perhaps get hired by the likes of Red Hat, SuSE, MontaVista, or Lineo. Just becuase they're hurting has little to do with Open Source- it has much more to do with the economy being the way it is right now (and will be for some months yet, it seems...)
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
It is less about people or technology and more about money. HP is desperately in the "layoff to save money" mode.
And, as others have mentioned, the rise of Linux is going to put a lot of senior folks out of work as these old versions of UNIX die..
More IT layoffs in NJ, eh? I probably should have gone to the Rutgers career fair this morning.
grep -ri 'should work'
Perhaps after swallowing Compac, they need to trim something to improve the (short-term) bottom line?
And, of course they can't layoff any sales/marketing people, and all those tech-support people have to stay, so...
Mind you, the long-term bottom line might not be too rosy.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
If HP-UX goes away I won't miss it. I work with HP-UX, AIX, IRIX, Solaris, and Linux machines all day, and HP-UX is in a dead heat with AIX for my least favorite. In answer to those that say "see, Unix is dying, look at HP-UX!" I point out that many Unix people don't like HP-UX and use Solaris or Linux or FreeBSD when they can get away with it. I really don't understand why people could prefer HP-UX, AIX, or IRIX if given a choice. I only have grown to accept Solaris more because they seem to be moving to having GNU versions of the standard tools available on install. The GNU fileutils and bash are two of the best things about Linux distros, aside from TCO and hardware support that is..
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Do you think this is just the beginning of several steps HP may start making? Perhaps HP finally realized intel has strongarmed the procedures and processes of the IA64 architecture that HP's finally going to just let Intel run the whole show, rather than vainly try to pretend its theirs and Intel is really just helping them.
'nuff said..
Fabulous! Linux, the choice of a GNU generation.
This article is written by someone who quite simply doesn't know all the facts.
I work at HP, so I have some insight about what is going on here.
While it is unfortunate for those involved, it makes no sense for HP to keep a small facility like that open. Sitting here in Fort Collins, I can survey rows of empty cubicles and much larger base of people to support.
Here and other sites, there is a ton of IA64, HP-UX, and Linux work going on. The article would make you think it was all done at this small plant in NJ, but it just isn't so. In no way does this closing represent a lessening of HP's support for IA-64, HP-UX, or Linux for that matter.
...in the IT industry getting sacked. If the top 1% of the industry's getting laid off, that IS news, sadly enough.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Silicon Valley doesn't take SGI seriously any more. Ever since 3D graphics hardware became cheap, SGI has been lost in search of a market niche. They've tried selling servers, creating a Silicon Studio division, making NT workstations, acquiring Cray, getting out of NT workstations, dumping the Silicon Studio division, acquiring Intergraph to get back into NT workstations... Nothing worked. Their basic problem, that their stuff costs 2-3x what comparable stuff costs from others, has yet to be solved.
It will be sad if HP goes that route.
The people saying that HP is dropping everything to concentrate on Linux are nuts. Linux won't scale to 64 processors, it only recently lost the 2-gig filesize limit, HP has no hope of getting these scalability features past Linus, and there are other reasons why many still consider Linux a toy.
These layoffs a terrible move for HP in general. They need to develop two separate OS roadmaps, one assuming that the merger goes through, and one that assumes that it will be blocked.
Each roadmap needs to address all the important OSes (HPUX, Tru64, OpenVMS, MPE/ix, Linux) and the processors (Itanium, PA, Alpha).
Before they fire anybody, they need to share the roadmap with the public. This layoff makes HP appear to be backing away from the Itanium architecture and the HP-UX OS.
A tasteful merger of HP-UX and Tru64 can occur (and heck, TruHP might fix some of the big flaws in both), but it looks like taste is out the window as this hatchet-job proceeds.
It just the computer industry equivalent of Ford firing their Edsel team, or GM firing the Corvair team. You can't keep people on for a project you're not working on anymore, and nobody should be shedding tears for products that suck.
AC's cheerfully ignored
I'm no Mac-lover, but apparently Apple just refuses to die so MacOS isn't going anywhere. Somehow I don't see the BSD folks quitting either.
The initial cost of the OS, be it HP-UX, Solaris, or NT, is a trivial part of the cost of a system.
Some people just don't get it.
Of the 120 people, 23 (the best, I assume) were offered jobs in Fort Collins, where a part of the HP-UX work gets done anyway. Also, this is only a fraction of the 1000 or so HP-UX engineers...most of which sit in the Bay Area or Colorado.
The sky is not falling. HP-UX will still be the only non-Linux Unix shipping on Itanium when McKinley rolls around. It looks like Sun and IBM have shelved their ports, for now at least. Don't you think HP gets this?
this could mean more, and fresh blood for Linux!
Or, people who have been that long in the industry are ossified old hacks who can't or won't update their skill sets and get with the new times.
It's never all management's fault when they let senior staff go.
All you have to do is look at the performance of IT companies run by women. Exodus Communications is a perfect example. Its woman-run and run into the ground. There is not one successful IT company run by a woman. Ovaries and compilers just do not mix.
Obviously, this inability is a major Achilles heel of the free market. So HP gets rid of valuable employees, and flourishes as a result! I can't stand the contradiction...
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Worst. Haiku. Ever.
Amen. Everytime we get a new female tech in my department, I end up having to clean up her mistakes while at the same time having to give her a good review on job performance so I don't get sanctioned for not promoting diversity in my department by the HR staff. Women are just a pain in the ass in the IT industry. They get all the perks because of their low numbers and don't have to perform at the same level as men to advance. Thank God for pregnancy! Its the only way to get rid of them -- though in most cases, you have to wonder who the hell would want to procreate with IT women.
I thought of a long and detailed response to your post but then I reconsidered, and though it was a total waste to time (on slashdot anyhow).
So in lieu of that post:
"Fuck you n3bulous, you asshole!"
From a (redundant) HP software developer.
If HP is laying off hackers in NJ, it's not because of their technical value, it's because NJ is Siberia as far as HP is concerned. HP's decision makers are out west. If there is a pile of work to do (and revenue to be made), the suits would rather have it done in their own profit center. And when money is tight, they cut loose the remote location that doesn't have the political clout to defend itself. Having hacked UNIX since the 1970's, I've certainly seen this happen before - I've had it happen to me before.
Forgive me for not having too much sympathy, but I doubt these guys are too unhappy. Unlike the hundreds of thousands of now out of work mid and junior level dotcom techies, these guys are some of the best UNIX gurus in the world. That means that they already made a ton of money, and probably recieved incredible severance packages. They will now all be able to spend a few months with their families or vacationing, and as soon as they want to return to work, they can, because they have the skills and knowledge that will always be in demand, no matter how bad the US Economy gets.
On the upside, this might mean that the new HPaQ corporation is planning to dump some of their traditional UNIX plans in favor of moving to Linux. This would certainly make sense, given that both vendors have close relationships with intel, encourage Linux as the native OS for IA-64, and have had problems being strongarmed by Microsoft in the past.
While it's bad news for those folks laid off, *qualified* software engineers will always be in demand.
Sure, some questionable "new economy" startups like HP are going to fail, and some 64-bit kernel gurus are going to have to go back to McDonalds, but hackers with *real experience* and *real education* who *know what they're doing* won't ever have to worry.
I can't remember how many times I've had to go in after gurus and clean up their mess. It really aggravates me to see them come fresh out of grad school, put in 20 years or so and expect to be paid the same and treated with the same respect as people who've *worked* for their position.
My condolences to these folks; this is a hard blow in today's job climate.
But I have to say, these guys were no rocket scientists. I've worked at Sun, HP, SGI and others, on UNIX, Solaris, HP-UX, Linux, in the kernel areas, on 32 and 64 bit kernel projects.
HP-UX just blows. It's incredibly badly designed, the source code is a mess and in general it's clear that it was designed by guys who weren't that sharp. And with managers who were more into politcs than technology.
There's an extremely clear theme throughout all of this. When you have smart people, and management which gives them support, you have a better products. The design of Solaris is outstanding, from the tools, the development infrastructure down to the kernel.
Linux is right up there too. Perhaps not as polished as Solaris, but a heck of a lot more technology support and faster moving.
Both are top-notch. I still prefer Linux, because I think Sun has screwed up by not going open-source. Sorry - their current attempt is sadly lacking, and needs at least some dedication to it by Sun's management, rather than it's current slap-dash incarnation. The current shell script build procedure is a joke.
Irix blows. While some of developers were/are sharp, SGI's managers haven't been as good. Which led to suboptimal tools and processes.
All in my humble opinion, of course.
I am a woman and work in the IT industry. I can handle Windows. I have my MCSE so that means I am expert in my field. The woman in charge of HP is smart, she knows the future of corporate lies with Microsoft's revolutionary enterprise class operating systems. I doubt you could handle a registry entry if your life depended on it!
Now go back to your stupid little boy games like Quak.
Because of that forward product motion, customers could standardize on the HP platform, and buy 3rd party apps and other items that ran under HP/UX (Oracle in particular, since HP/UX is widely used as a base for client/server). With HP/UX 11i as their main server OS, they had some serious scalability and reliability going for them. HP/UX will be supported for the next few years, of course, but once that ends, customers will have the future budgetary choices of sticking with whatever direction Carly takes them in, or abandon HP for a more consistently-managed vendor (i.e. IBM). Bet they pick the latter choice.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
This was bound to happen. How many OSes will the new company (HP and Compaq) have? Lets see: HP-UX, Open VMS, True 64 Unix, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Novell Netware.....blah, blah, blah.
Maybe the new company should consider moving all their "big iron" to linux. One platform with the benefits of open source and free software.
-ted
Imagine, developing in a 32-bit kernel for 20 years. HP probably decided to bring in some 64-bit people. Besides, they would be younger and cheaper.
Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of THESE!!!
Oh my god, you mean to tell me that I could have gotten my MCSE and avoided going to college for my computer science degree? WOW! Does an MCSE course teach you about complexity theory, complier theory, algorithm implementation, and networking theory and practice? Does the phrase "two's complement" mean anything to an MSCE?
Let me guess, you're A+ certified as well.
HA!
Don't forget MPE/ix.
Maybe the new company should consider moving all their "big iron" to linux. One platform with the benefits of open source and free software.
Let me know when Linux gets clustering support, security, or uptime comparable to OpenVMS or Tru64.
Life is a psychology experiment gone awry.
for all of you poor bastards who were layed off and can't find work again, because you never had any real skillz anyhow, you should follow my lead. You should work something tangable for a while. I just took a job working construction, we are building a turkey barn, and today was the hardest day I have ever worked in my life. After coasting through college, and then not graduating because I "can't learn german" I decided that the best career choice I could possibly make at this time was to take a job where I would work harder than I ever had before. The work isn't that bad, sure, after my first day all of my muscles ache and I have blisters all over my hands, but it feels good in a way. I feel like I actually acomplished something today. Solving quantum mechanics problems was fun and all, but it wasn't real, nothing was lost or gained depending on my performance, only my grade. Now, I can look, and see that I have done something worthwhile, and it feels good to see something which I did.
get a life, work a job which requires zero thought and 100% manual labour. It reminds you of who you are, who you should be, and who you wish to become. Its purely liberating. Sure, I might hate this job in a matter of days, but it is temporary, three long months, but the work today was reportedly the hardest work of the entire project. Its all downhill from here.
Maybe Linux will now that these HP-UX guys have free time! (One can hope).
-ted
In this editorial in a recent EE Times issue, Rick Merrit, discussing hardware spending, writes "I doubt [Fiorina] has the taste for the engineering costs. Maybe she really is poised to reverse HP's three-year slide in R&D expenditures as a percentage of sales, but the move to acquire a company [Compaq] that spends even less on engineering speaks otherwise."
I am a recent computer science graduate and I have been laid off from my job. It has been three months now and I still haven't found a new job. I wonder if some of you guys know where there are developer jobs out there. I'm getting a little depressed. I graduated with high honors. But because I only have a year of experience, I cannot qualify for the mid-level positions. I also do not know where to find entry-level jobs because I do not qualify for on-campus interviews anymore. I need a little help. Someone point me to the right direction.
Yeah, why don't we just deport all those freeloading foreigners anyway?
Please, don't make gross generalizations like that. You don't need an H1B to be an incompetent newbie, and you can be an H1B-holder and a good programmer.
Think about what DEC/Alpha engineers did for AMD and then think about what these people could do for IBM or SUN or any number of companies.
Indeed. There's a Sun billboard near Boston that I drive by every once in a while that says "Alpha Engineers: we've got a better job for you."
Losing a lab full of HP-UX developers may not seem that horrible from the perspective of open source *nix users. However, these folks are damn talented developers who would be able to contribute a lot to most any project.
I worry that without a steady income to put food on the table, many longtime Unix gurus will find themselves doing other jobs. It would be great if the HP-UX people getting layed off would contribute to Linux or Darwin or FreeBSD or whatever; some of them probably already have contributed in their spare time, as a hobby. Unfortunately, when you become unemployed your hobbies take the back seat.
Not everyone layed off is going to luck out and get a new job working on some cool new project. They'll find other things to do. Possibly, we'll lose some great brains who might have made computing better.
WOW!!!! MCSE OMG you must be sooo smart. I should just throw all my Cisco shit out the window. The fact that your an MCSE you should know all the fuckups in windows. What am I up 2 a patch every other day on my NT servers here @ hp. Then again wait.... do you know what a patch is? Have you ever pressed a key on a unix box (/dev/null?)? OMG wait I'm an MCSE too... of ya I furgot about that... ya... thats right, I remember it's those overpriced factual based test that really don't teach you anything that look good for HR.... hmmmmm HR... is their a any more of a no skill job in the world.... maybe a news reporter?
Nyquil = Nectar of the devil
It would appear HPaQ is looking to Linux for it's long term Unix plans, else they aren't going to use Itanium and stick with PA-RISC.
Their desperate embrace of Compaq and a willingless to let so much human capital fly out the window is more evidence that HP is a company fading into obscurity just like Digital several years ago. Maybe someone will buy THEM, cherry-pick what IP is worth salvaging, and then put this sad company out of its misery.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
"Jim, we seem to have a problem with our unix servers? The public just exposed a crucial security leak [in telnet]"
"What should we do Ted?"
"Lets fire everyone who could possibly fix this situation"
"THATS A GREAT IDEA TED!!...and we can leave users with defective merchandise and never fix it!"
can't sleep. clowns will eat me.
OK, so is HP ditching HP-UX, or is it leaving
the sinking Itanic ?
Rats.
Toon Moene.
I'm a Sun guy though.
:-) I'd be thrilled if everyone ran nothing but Solaris, but they don't. Sun seems most popular in engineering and manufacturing businesses. AIX, coming from none other than big blue IBM themselves, has a big following in commerce and beancounting, etc.
Yeah, Sun is really where it's at
A lot of it comes down to *politics* too, of course. The department next door to me used to run all their services on some older 32 bit Sun machines. As they started to outgrow it they were lucky to get some nice new Compaq Alpha hardware donated from some folks who had surplus machines.
The two guys who knew anything about Unix worked regular jobs most of the time--systems administration was something they did part time. They grumbled a bit about having to change everything and then they got down to business and learned enough about Tru64 to make things work.
Several months later, upper management outlawed all "rogue" computing services and forced everyone departments to centralize their stuff onto NT machines kept in a different building--machines adminned by contract labor. The 6 year old Suns and the 1 year old Alphas got shipped off to a government surplus warehouse. All politics.
Wow... I just had to read this again. I know his comment was cass but, jesus fucking christ you just sealed the deal.
Nyquil = Nectar of the devil
I really think there is something to be said for face to face collaboration, or at least having everyone working under the same roof. You can peep over the cubicle wall or walk over and talk to your coworkers. It makes working together on things go a whole lot more smoothly.
QSSL (the company that makes QNX) has that kind of philosophy. All the OS engineers work in the same place and they're able to just talk about stuff together.
Distributed development, especially on large projects, is hard to do. Getting everyone together via IRC in realtime can help, but people still end up going off for hours or days at a time without really getting in touch with the other people on the project. Sometimes, CVS changelogs are not a good substitue for quality facetime.
What church? Do you mean Sage chapel? Sitting here, I'd love to go out and see...
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
The fact is, Carly could get a wild hair and decide that Itanium/NT is the way to go, and the HP-UX bloodbath would then commence. The customer base has absolutely no idea how this is going to work out, to say nothing regarding Tru64 or OpenVMS.
I had been led to believe that there were some rather intense political struggles between Ft. Collins and NJ, which your viewpoint seems to back up. These sort of internal struggles are of no real value to your customer base.
However, I have also been led to believe that the NJ team bore most of the responsibility for porting the HP-UX kernel to the Itanic. Losing this team is perhaps Carly's first salvo in slaughtering Ft. Collins. Remeber, Carly already has said that you could "drive a truck through HP's high end." What makes you think that you're so safe? I don't see this woman as a staunch defender of either HP-UX or Tru64.
As a customer, can you actually convince me that I should see this differently?
The latest version of SUSE now includes a new LVM. This LVM uses the same commands and arguments as HP. SUSE has a white paper on the new LVM implementation somewhere on their site.
SUSE also includes the ReiserFS journaling file system. By the way - Linux can store ACLs on most of it's JFS implementations - HP-UX cannot (you can only use ACLs on HFS, not VxFS). Care to explain this brain-damaged design?
Yes, Linux still has problems with enterprise scalability, but not the problems you've mentioned.
p.s. I'm pretty ticked off that RedHat seems to have done nothing with the LVM - not a peep.
The guys laid off in NJ are mostly ex-SCO/ex-Novell/ex-NCR/ex-AT&T UnixWare guys, if I remember correctly. It appears to me that HP kept them around for a couple years after the last big HP/SCO deal, figured out who were the best, and now that its cost-cutting time, are cutting the rest. Harsh, but the NJ crowd never got a strong commercially successful product off the ground; just good SVR kernel technology it licensed to other players.
...They just wanted to fire the person who came up
with the "2-user license" HP-UX scheme that counts
*all* network logins as 1 license.
The LVM in HP-UX is base on the one of IBM,
HP instead of developping their own LVM and
Journaling File System they took the best available at the time. Don't reinvent the wheel.
JFS does have ACL (HP-UX 11.00 with JFS installed, free and HP-UX 11i has too).
It just use the Veritas commands for the ACL, not the one for HFS.
LVM on Linux is supposed to be based on the ideas of HP-UX and I think commands are compatible.
Having worked with Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, Irix, UnixWare, a little of FreeBSD, SunOS and OpenServer. I consider that HP-UX is one of the niciest OS I've worked with, easier to administer than Solaris and cleaner than Linux. I still like Linux and like Solaris and also liked the eye candy of Irix.
probably more likely because Intel won't put IA64 on the market until Microsoft can produce an OS that runs on it. Which maybe HP knows something which Intel knows that we don't (but have always suspected.)
I wouldn't count on my job if I was an Alpha engineer either.
if anything , it's a testament to the crappy way big corporations treat loyal and qualified employees
;) All these engineers they're laying off will probably end up with IBM, Red Hat or Sun with an axe to grind. Research lab UNIX (tm) types don't leave the scene to flip burgers at McDonald's. This will come back to bite HP in the ass.
Exactly. This reminds me of all those Digital techies in the Alpha division jumping ship when Compaq took over because their corporate culture sucked and they weren't treated as valuable, talented people. Where did alot of those dudes end up? AMD. And Compaq's blunder has come home to roost against Wintel in the Athlon, with x86-64 as an encore to *really* rub Wintel's face in the dirt.
Now it's HP's turn to step on their dicks....oh I forgot, Carly doesn't have one
The group that's getting canned sounds like the folks who were part of USL, the AT&T spinoff meant to commercial Unix from Bell Labs. These are the guys who sued BSDI way back in 1991 to prevent cheap Unix from getting to the masses, back when a source license cost $250k. Really good engineers though and it's a shame they're being let go.
As an HP engineer, I feel the need to say something about this. Yes I think that engineering cutbacks are bad from a gut level, but there is also a financial level to consider in everything. HP is a business and has to be run as one. We bring in revenues and pay out expenditures just like everyone else. We're struggling, just like everyone else, to stay afloat when sales have tanked in many business segments and the economy is sliding downhill underneath us.
This move is one intended to reduce costs overall. Nothing more, nothing less. HP is not looking at ways to cut its most experienced people. If so, there are many, many good engineers that could be cut from sites all over the place. The cuts happened at a site in New Jersey where costs were not particularly competitive with other sites. This was the motivating factor in the decision. This is in alignment with other cuts that HP has made recently (not referring to the general layoffs that occurred recently.)
Anyone who thinks that job security is guaranteed in this day and age is ignorant to begin with. Everyone who whines on here about "*grunt* Cuts bad" is out of touch with the times. HP is still a good company to work for. Perhaps it's not so much the same company that it used to be, but it's not a flash-in-the-pan startup with loads of money to burn and no accountability, either. Yes it does suck to be those that are being cut, but life goes on.
See if you can pass any of the first year courses at IIT in India and get back to me.
HP's Oregon office is strictly in the hands of an openly Mormon management. What the hell does this matter? According to a number of non-Mormon friends who work at the company, or who used to work at the company, the Mormon management goes out of their way to fast-track other Mormons who may be much less skilled than their non-Mormon counterparts.
An example: a guy I know, incredibly skilled at his job, has worked at this office for 14 years. He's been passed over for promotion the last three times, and every time to a Mormon with far less experience. The last time a wet-behind-the-ears snot-nosed kid with less than five years of experience got the job even though the kid has no experience in programming at all!
This is all anecdotal but I've heard two-dozen stories along the same lines as the one above, especially in the last five years. How can a company make informed decisions if it promotes, in part, on religious affiliation???
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Someone passed this amusing satire of HP.
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
I have an uncle that worked for a company for 20 years. Then one day in the late 80's they laid him off. Six months later they came begging him to come back. He declined. They burned him pretty bad with their show of disrespect.
Why do companies expect loyalty from us workers when they show absolutley no loyalty in return?
Anyway, I suspect a similar outcome with this turn of events. Who wants to make a wager as to how long before HP starts begging these guys to come back?
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
It's common knowledge that hardware isn't free and that Sun/HP are bastard expensive. Get a clue before you post.
In addition to the hardware, the real cost is all the stupid consultants that are hired at 100-200/hr to manage the damn things. (Don't say this doesn't happen, I've consulted (100/hr) at places that did this. OF course they are out of business now because money isn't water and you can't find it on trees...)
"The area of penetration will no doubt be sensitive." ~ Spock
Yeah, then they can make as much money as VA! Oh wait...
Also, like most people, you seem to equate this move with getting rid of HP-UX altogether. That is not the case. The NJ facility was but one of many locations working on HP-UX. The bulk of the work was (and still is) being done elsewhere, and it is for HP's own line of PA-RISC chips rather than IA-64. All that really happened was HP realized there was little to be gained from the IA-64 effort, and dropped it. HP-UX is alive and well.
[Instead of figuring out ways they can be rid of the expensive employees, why don't companies see them as valuable employees? ]
Because employees really arent a company's most valuable asset. Their most valuable asset is money.
In reality this is the type of thinking that's both good and bad for the industry. The idea that when times get tough, just find the most expensive people and get rid of them (oddly, expect for managers) -- it helps to keep technical knowledge "in circulation". These guys are going to go (eventually) to another company, maybe a start-up and breath life into it. I believe this is how even the smartest, biggest companies eventually fall prey to the smaller upstarts.
Sort of reminds me of a previous coast-to-coast cost cutting debacle(or maybe just VMS folklore). Wasn't there a similar strategy back in the last 1980's at DEC? KO & Co. killed the team on the West Coast building the VMS replacement OS, and told the folks to move back east (or take a hike I suppose). One person in particular didn't like those orders, and has instead spent the last decade building enterprise OS capabilities for Bill_G, while VMS is soon to be a distant memory (sorry, VAXherders, but that's what I think).
What I am getting at here is somebody at HP should be thinking about just where those NJ folks (from the once-lovely Florham Park) will be moving to. I expect they will stay East. Likely locations are "Blue" (IBM's AIX group) and "Red" (the "hat" folks in NC), or perhaps even SUN (isn't there still some stuff in the Boston area?). In any case, allowing competitors to pick up resources cheap that may have *good skills* in building enterprise-scale Unix OS capabilities on top of IA-64 H/W seems like an obvious bad idea. But hey, that won't help HP's next quarterly earnings report will it?
If you are reading this and are part of the group that was let go, I wish you success in your search for work. The folks I worked with at DEC are all gainfully employed, and most of them are not at Compaq. If I had stayed at DEC to go to Compaq (after the period when DEC was just amputating whole business units), and now would have to go through the HP buyout and more rounds of "musical chairs", I'd be in quite a state ...
The NJ lab was responsible for the 3-year port of HP-UX Unix enterprise server operating system to the Intel Itanium Architecture. Many of the engineers spent time at the Intel Dupont site during initial prototype bringup. What is incredible about the whole thing is that Carly was making claims about how HP will bet its business
on the IA-64 architecture. The bridges are being burned on PA-RISC chip development. 11i Version 1.5 is the only production enterprise release available for the Itanium architecture and beat IBM so badly, they threw in the towel. Windows
and Linux are still testing beta. HP-UX was available back in June. The entire filesystem team for HP-UX was located in NJ and was responsible for implementing Veritas filesystem technology in the HP kernel. All this experience is lost in one fell swoop.
The NJ site consisted of roughly 120 elite engineers that were acquired in various forms from AT&T Bell labs, Novell, SCO, USL, and others many years ago. Originally the plan was to reduce the HP workforce by removing low performers in the company. Then when that wasn't enough they instituted a "geographical strategy" where they wanted to consolidate to Cupertino, CA. and Fort Collins, CO. the HP-UX development community, thus the reasoning behind our demise.
HP will have almost no IA-64 expertise in the company after the layoffs are completed. There were a few engineers scattered in Cupertino that at one time reported to the NJ site management chain. A few of those have already since
left the company. The remainder of the HP-UX development team will continue to blunder into mediocrity. Fort Collins to it's credit does have a handful of top people that worked IA-64 from the workstation side.
With the Carly at the helm HP's future has never been so bleak. Morale is completely gone in the company as well as the acknowledged death of the HP way. Often times the senseless restructuring decisions are justified with glorious name-droppings of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard.
We are told that "this is what Bill and Dave" would have done. I fully disagree. Bill and Dave would have invented HP out of a company jam and implemented paycuts across the board to avoid layoffs. Bill and Dave realized that emerging technology and engineering resources are a company's valuable assets. Carly, a medieval history major, has no technical fluency to understand these concepts. The operating system division is run by someone with a degree in forestry. She only looks to cut costs by closing sites regardless of what engineering talent resides there. She hopes to buy or acquire rather than invent technology. The ramifications
of Carly's pattern of behaviour can now be witnessed in the spiraling demise of Lucent. This will soon be the way of HP within one to two years. Carly has already declared that the Compaq merger will affect profits for the next two to three years though I expect it to be much
worse. With the planned acquisition of Compaq, Carly has doomed HP. Most HP employees have gone into work slowdown mode waiting to see who will be laid off next. Hard work or critical projects have no bearing on an employee's value to Carly, so why bother?
The estimates of an additional 15,000 to 30,000 layoffs after the merger have been explained as the minimum required for a first phase with unknown additional ones planned. Most of the business units in Compaq are a duplication and product lines will be even more confusing.
Carly was unable to alter the culture of HP's 63 year history and cannot effectively manage 90,000 people. How will she fare with another 60,000 people? The plan at HP before the merger was to focus on a 3-OS strategy. With the Compaq acquisition, this will become a 6 OS company,
7 if you count HP's MPE. Customers should be very
concerned about their OpenVMS, Tru64, or Himalaya NSK systems. Before each grand decision, insider trading data shows Carly and the EC cashing out large amounts of stock options or selling shares. Of course she reassured employees that she shares in our pain.
The entire IA-64 team is considering moving to a
competitor company such as Sun or IBM as a further
side-effect that will come back to haunt HP. You will never see a more fervent effort to reduce HP into obscurity.
I would guess it seems ridiculous to have 800 to 900 engineers developing HP-UX. To reduce this number Carly took the group that was trying to bring HP out of the dark ages. This was afterall the people that fought to add DLKM (loadable modules) a technology that most O/S's had many years before. They also added journaled filesystem support from Veritas. Important new features like Online Module Replacement (patching without having to reboot) were all brushed under the rug. Remember that these weren't HP employees jaded by years of mediocrity. These weren't people that would think it conceivable to have an I/O lab of 400 people to write a few device drivers. Most were used to having a group of 50 do the entire O/S, not 800. The same group of tight-knit engineers that worked over 15 years together evolving and inventing (truly inventing, not some Carly "invent" logo stamped everywhere) Unix ported the entire HP-UX O/S to IA-64 and several new hardware platforms. This was done many times with the resistance and defensive roadblocks placed to hinder progress by the "owning" group of HP-UX in California. Perhaps this was a coup by the original HP crusties to protect their domain. If word got out that it only takes at most a hundred people to do an O/S heads would roll. More likely though it is the poor management chain that Carly retained when she took over. Most of the engineers are the world's best, but with the back-breaking weight of a confused management that reinvents reinventing the reorganization of the refocused reformation.
on a decent troll that snared lots of idiots lol
Photos.
SGI got squeezed out because it tried to protect its margins by going further and further upmarket as workstations became commodity products. In the process the volume shrank to the point where they simply didn't sell enough stuff to cover their R&D costs. Once they had to cut back on R&D they were not upmarket much longer.
The high end server market was once dominated by performance concerns. Now it is dominated by reliability concerns. The profit to be gained in squeezing the last ounce of power out of the Itanium is negligible.
If the ASP outsourced hosting model takes off the demand for high reliability transaction systems will be very different. Instead of a large number of medium to high performance systems there will be a much smaller number of ultra-high performance systems sold. The performance won't come from putting 64 processors into a high end box however, it will come from putting a few thousand loosely coupled processors in a large rack and feeding it a couple of terrabytes of RAID disk.
HP's merger with Compaq is about building a dominant position in the volume PC market, printers, desktop PCs, home PCs, handheld devices. For the same amount of effort required to build a O/S kernel on a new processor HP can develop three or four mass market products that are much more likely to generate profits.
If the Compaq merger completes HP will have two high quality UNIX builds to choose from. Porting of the Mach kernel based Digital Unix is likely to be easier since it has been ported several times already.
The only surprising thing about the announcement is that the engineers are being laid off rather than re-assigned. That would indicate to me that HP is retreating on the whole UNIX front and not just on HP/UX.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I just don't see that this hurts the migration path. HP-UX for IA64 is RELEASED already! It now becomes a maintenance and tuning issue, like any other product. The PORT is over.
Yes, this sucks for the people that got layed off. I knew a number of people here in Fort Collins that were layed off recently. One guy had 24 years with HP, another had 33. Both were good friends. Being layed off at any time is terrible. It is that much worse in this economy.
Nonetheless, I can see the logic in closing down a small, 100 person facility. HP has plants that serve thousands of employees with tons of empty space in them right now.
Once upon a time DEC has cut Dave Cuttler (sp?) and his group.
Result: M$ has piched up the group that made them NT. They would have a very hard time getting it sooner without ex-DEC-ers' experience.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
I think you missed a bit of text. HP is not moving to Windows Blue screen, just moving in different UNIX direction. I don't say that they're dropping Win support. A little remark. There is so many games for Windows and so little for UNIX. Don't know who is playing more. Somehow Registry is simple and stupid. Believe me I use all platforms and Windows way of system preferences is the slowest and impossible solution. MSCE doesn't mean SHIT. Everybody whom I know has it even I, a few (server, desktop, networking,... name it) of them, but not on my request, they forced me. You take exam and You IT. So if would look in the night sky, tell me, WOULD THIS MAKE ME AN ASTRONAUT. Putting Your MSCE shows your real knowledge.
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
... layoffs are done by HR! :-(
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
so you think the people that make more than $100 an hour deserve it? do we work less, or is our work less valuable?
Ouch, I think I hurt myself laughing! So many things to ridicule, I don't know where to start!
I guess, each sentence after the first one.
Quak! Quak!
Oh, it wasn't the CEOs direct decision? Well, it's her responsibility if HP loses 100 of its best skilled people.
HP will be down the hill in three years (mark my words), but Miss Fiorino will be playing golf in Pebble Beach with her ex-board apologists and a cushy severence package.
Given the fact, that she not only missed three announced quarterly goals and heads full blast for a merger, which will be a major disaster (3 major - and 1 minor OS lines, different architectures and quite different cultures), I don't think this assessment is overly harsh.
Do I sound bitter? You bet, and I don't even work for HP. I did work for DEC however from 90 through 94, that was about the time when the big downward spiral gained momentum. I saw in real life how the tech company with the bloody best engineering* was killed by slick talking MBAs in expensive suits (agreed that Ken Olson also has his share, but he wasn't the one that ultimately killed DEC [arguably]). Oh, and Mr. Palmer in his white Porsche didn't really offer much more to the company then a slick hairdo.
Don't even get me started what happened after the sale to Compaq. A company who knows (or knew) how to assemble and market boxes, period. After buying DEC for it's enterprise services and customer base in short order they killed VMS (that started already at DEC; but Compaq didn't have a clue about what to do with it), the engineering departments, the Alpha chip and of course, allienated a fiercly loyal customer base...
I totally agree with your post, I was not ranting against it, my rant is directed to people who - for their own personal gain and ego - kill the finest companies in their industry.
* You can argue that of course, but when you look at things like DECnet, the Alpha chip or clustering, DEC sure as hell had a 5-10 year lead technologically.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
I've used SAM, and is a good app. But now I'm the Manager for an IBM infrastructure, and SMITTY is absolutely superb. Hell, Sun doesn't even HAVE a tool! Even dumb MCSE's can figure out SMIT.
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
If so, it can reasonably be maintained as an add-on to the standard kernel.
While you don't want the same os on a mainframe and a wrist watch, it can reasonably be two configurations of the same OS framework.
I guess all these guys in NJ could go work for Tony Soprano at the Bada-Bing doing some kind of Full Monty routine. Carly shoulda used these people as server consultants. Imagine the typical customer interaction:
Customer: my server crashed, what do i do?
NJ: hey yo, yoo talkin ta meh?
Customer: our business is losing money by the second while the server is down.
NJ: I'll send over tha cleaner? Let me talk ta uncle joonior and fix it up.
Having been a contractor at HP for a little over a year, I haven't really witnessed much team work in my own group or between groups.
In contrast, the attitude is more along the lines of "that's not my job" or "that's not my problem" than anything else. Alot of engineer time is wasted on dealing with office politics.
I believe team work may have existed company-wide in the past, and there may still be pockets of good team work going on in well-managed groups, but it is not commonplace now. Perhaps the growing disenfrachisement towards management is the reason.
If there is tons of empty space in these other HP plants, sounds like a perfect opportunity to dump these large unpopulated labs. It seems a small 100 person lab is cheaper to keep than a huge building with space for 8000, but only 4000 in it. If the PRB1 and PRB2 (low talent) category account for 20%, then there are almost as many dopes in these large labs than the entire NJ site of top talent. I guess it does make sense to keep the dead weight. Bell curve ranking encourages moving everyone to the center of averageness.
Wow, I disagree with both of you.
You're absolutely correct that 3-4 mediocrities does not equate to 1 superlative developer.
But you don't need a world class theoretician to do plumbing. What monster, paradigm-breaking development effort is HP trying to put out that needs a world class UNIX guru?
More important, is it fiscally worth it to a financially challenged company like HP to keep an expensive campus away from their major centers?
I share your reservations about H1-B's, but not about their quality. From what source are you basing these "project failures"? Wouldn't the reason for the failure of these projects more likely be the brain-dead management? They would be more likely to have design flaws, inadequate composition and management of teams, and disrupt a project with "new" bodies that need time to ramp up. Blame management, not the H1-Bs.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon