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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.
Linux is not taking any market share from HP/SUX. We're talking about high end machines, many of which are sold with clustering software which allow multiple machines to share a single hard drive through fibre channel. HP/SUX comes with VxFS, a jounaling file system, built in. It comes with a much better volume manager than any linux distro I know of.
For all intents and purposes, Linux and HP/SUX cost the same. Sure, Linux can be customized to do just about all the things that HP/SUX does out of the box, but that costs money. If you want source code, HP/SUX source code is available. Not many people want it though.
Speaking of Linux, I hope some intelligent company (like RedHat, SuSe, etc.) grabs up these guys as fast as possible -- especially before they end up posting resumes to Microsoft.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
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.
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.
About 120 in the lab (there are about 40 other HP
staff in the building, in other business units,
who will have to find other offices).
Some of the 120 (not sure how many) have been offered a chance to
apply for 20 jobs in Fort Collins, Colorado.
Those not offered or who don't get a job in Colorado get laid off.
Those are the numbers.
It seems to me that laying off some of your top OS engineers is really stupid.
I used to work there, and 90% of us (including myself) did not want to move to California. At Florham Park we got the best of both worlds, a west coast style company, without moving to the west coast. There are many costs with operating a division across the country. You get about 4 hours of communication a day. You get in and work for 3 hours, then you get an hour of phone time, then you go to lunch, then you get another 2 hours of phone time, them they go to lunch, then you get maybe 1 more hour of phone time. Besides the fact that collaboration when you're not face to face just doesn't happen (and there was a minor culture clash anyway which is problematic).
I'm sure the top unix gurus working there were given the opportunity to move to California. Most of them probably declined.
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.
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.