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SGI Announces Restructuring, Cuts 400 Jobs
kerneljacabo writes "Yikes! SGI seems to be the lastest victim of the economic downturn. Today they announced an extensive 'restructuring,' which includes releasing about 10% (400) of their employess. Seems like no one is immune." SGI claims this'll save them $40M, as well as improve their performance next fiscal year.
If they knocked their price down, and brought back FSV, I'd buy one...Problem is, they never used FSV...coulda been one of the best File Managers ever. The one for Linux is lame, and hasn't been updated in a while.
It can't possibly be anywhere near 400; I doubt all those jobs that were 'restructured' were tech support positions.
It seems to me that SGI's major problem is that they were always a one-trick pony -- they made the decision to stick with graphics machines at a time when that particular niche was sliding towards being a commodity, or at least commodity-doable. When Jurrasic Park came out, it was like a birth cry. When Titanic came out, it was a death toll.
They tried to branch out, but their directionless, clueless management (I'm looking at you, Chainsaw Rick Belluzo) flailed around towards one ill-concieved scheme after another, and all the while powerful PC-based workstations were dropping in price.
IMO, they should have concentrated on appliances. I remember pilot programs floating around to do things like massive network storage (a la NetApp) and other similarly promising things, but they never went anyplace.
Oh, and I had a Herman Miller Areon and an office. As an intern. Might have been a symptom of part of the problem, on reflection...
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Well, it is probably close to that amount. Depending on location, they can probably stop paying the lease on one or two buildings, as well as the electric, water, and insurance on those buildings as well. For decent office space, I wouldn't be surprised if they were paying 2-5 mill a year on the buildings.
And remember, its not just the actual salary that they will save, its also the benefits as well (no decent company is without good health care, etc). And it is also counting in the interest they will earn on the money they are saving as well. That is another 3-7% right there.
So that means the average salary+benefits package only needs to be about $85,000 or so per person. And to be honest, that number is probably about right. Especially if these people are engineers or programmers.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Moderators are on crack because this guy pointed out how it is short sighted of SGI to fire its workers. You need to develop new and cool products that run on top of linux, and that requrires good employees. Once the business cycle swings up, those who invested during the downturn will benefit.
The above poster was RIGHT ON.
I went through 2 "rightsizings" at a company. Both times, some of the open positions were cancelled, besides people being reduced. And both times, divisions within the company continued growing and hiring afterwards.
If the people being reduced have usable job skills, they'll have a decent chance at getting transferred into one of the open positions. And if they are just chaff, so what? why should sgi settle for 2nd or 3rd rate employees?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
you obviously have no idea or experience with SGI machines. SGI was doing quite fine until they bought Cray.
they are not bought for their graphics anymore.
they are bought because they continue to be some of the fastest supercomputers on the planet.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Don't be silly. The parent had no intent to actually consider the numbers. He just wanted to use this topic as an excuse to spew the anti-Bush diatribe at the end of his post.
When I worked for them in 99, they already had cash flow issues, and had had them for some time. But Wall Street has always loved them, so they always got more cash when they needed it. Many people who worked there thought this was actually a bad thing. I guess Wall Street has finally figured out that their business model is just not working.
I went from SGI to Borland, which has cash up the wazoo. They got a huge patent settlement (disguised as an investment) from Microsoft, and have mostly been in the black lately. But Wall Street doesn't trust Borland: too much weirdness. (Personal trauma prevents me from being specific.) So we were always under pressure to cut costs. I once had to go all the way to Dale Fuller for a $200 memory upgrade!
Publically held companies live and die at the sufferance of Wall Street, no matter how well, or how badly, they're doing. I imagine that's why Google is still privately held, even though an IPO would make a lot of the people there -- maybe not rich, but certainly comfortable.
At my company they were hiring people shorlty before and after layoffs. What I think they are doing is not only cutting down the roster but also taking back on other people who they still need but will work for a lot less due to the 5-8% unemployment rate. People who have been at a company for a while and have accumulated many pay raises are prime targets for this kind of severance and replacement.
The 'other/temp/tiered/expendable' workers are outsourced. They are not on the corporate head count/roster, so that number doesn't change whenever the outsourced quantities rise or fall. It's a non-event in terms of 'official' staff counts, so there is nothing to have news about.
This is one of the reasons corporations do it this way...they can increase or decrease staffing, and everyone, from investor to competitor, hears nothing...not even the door hitting them in the ass on the way out.
I assume you are being sarcastic. Many companies lay off and hire at the same time. When I was at IBM they did it all the time. Sometimes they made the hiring announcement before the fired people were even out of the building, so they heard the announcement!
The corp can use the temp numbers as headcount scavange data if they so chose. One data set says 'lean' (low fulltime count) and another says 'leaner' (cut temp count). That's why I'm never impresssed when a corp claims cutting staff is necessary to cut costs.
all the names we used to look up to are dieing, is it our fault?
;-)
years back I wanted to run SCO (couldn't afford it) played with Minix (didn't pay for it) and then Linux arrives and so do I. After linux I didn't need SCO.
I always wanted an SGI box if only to play with 3d graphics. They where too expensive I carried on buying PC's and ran free unices eventully getting the performance I wanted for a couple of hundred quid.
I always wanted a Sun machine they where just the ultimate (to me at least) so eventully I splashed out on an Ultra Sparc (I just had to get those extra 32 bits before the wintel brigade) so what if it was beige it has a 18inch flat panel display, and those mythical 64 bits I was after. I soon got bored with Solaris and went back to Debian, now those extra 32 bits are rarely used in userland.
We are killing off all the hacker companies we used to respect and the big boys that we had no respect for are getting all the corporate dosh thats left around. Perhaps SGI, Sun et al need to start putting out some cool bits and pieces in our price range because MS and IBM are getting our bosses money.
SCO are gonna's by their own making I just hope SGI and Sun manage to pull a few tricks out of the hat or they will also self destruct. I never owned an Alpha becuase DEC tossed itself to the mercy of it's competitors I hope that I get an SGI one day if only for the cool case
sparkes
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