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Another Round of HP Layoffs
geekroot's dad writes "AP News is reporting that Palo Alto, California-based Hewlett-Packard is 'fighting to stay competitive with formidable rivals like IBM and Dell' and is announcing 5,900 European job cuts "to safeguard the future" of the company. From the article: 'Michel Destot, the Socialist deputy mayor of the southern France city of Grenoble - where HP has one of its French plants - said the layoffs were "unacceptable" and demanded that HP managers also meet local politicians to discuss scaling back the job cuts.'" This round following the first cut back in July.
As a person who was a contractor at HP, I am glad to see these HP employee's get laid off. Never in my life have I dealt with such a group of arrogant and hostile to contractors group of people in my whole life. It was a company of "we're better than you, you God Damn contractors". We ran just about every support division, but those fuckers never said thank you or even acted nice toward us. It was a company of Us vs Those Contractors. They were always busting our balls and threating to have us fired or laid off. I never had a vacation because we did not have the same benefits as them but did the same work.
I would like to say to all you HP employees, karma is a bitch.
Linux O Muerte!
I used to work for HP (wasn't layed off, just finished my contract term!) and we did quite a lot of work with people in Grenoble and they seemed pretty good at what they did. But they do get something like 50 days off per year vs the measly 23 I used to get and HP let them drink wine at lunch, we couldn't even bring a bottle of wine on site to give to someone as a leaving gift! I wonder who was more productive?
Pah... I think it's already much too late. HP will never regain the status it had before Carly screwed it up. To talk of this is like talking about rebuilding a car that's been run into a brick wall at 50 mph. It's easier to just salvage some parts and scrap everything else.
HP still has a halfway-decent business printer division, and maybe some salvageable business units dealing with enterprise computing. Everything else needs to go.
The other bit about EU unemployment rates, is thta they measure UE differently than the US. We generally report the U3 numbers, while they report the equivalent of our U6 numbers.
Currently, the US U6 numbers are 8.9%
Suddenly, we look a lot more like Europe.
... hi bingo
They were.
Having worked both in Europe, not France, and the US for many years I know I was more productive under a system that allowed me time to re-charge.
The US may have me in the office longer but I feel I actually do less work. I cannot even take time unpaid time off, which I would gladly do.
In Europe I felt everybody was on the same page. We go to work to provide ourselves with quality leisure time and a nice life style.
In the US it would seem you go to work because nothing else matters. Marriage, health, sanity etc etc are all less important than having a job.
Of course, if you look at the widening gap between the rich and everybody else in the US it would seem that no matter how hard you work you're financial status in life was set when you were born.
You don't have to live in France to have France's labor laws work for you. I had a good job in Dallas working for Alcatel (French telecom company). They'd much rather hire people in the US than in France.
Rumor has it that a few years ago Alcatel management in France was talking with the unions trying to avoid a strike. They ended up getting fined by the government because they spent more than 35 hours in a week negotiating.
Face it, most US corporations treat employees and stockholders like serfs. Everything for upper management and to hell with everyone else. The sale of a couple of GulfStreams could keep thousands on the payroll.
see
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11542
And before people start yelling about Europe's high unemployment I would like to point out:
1) US unemployment rates only count actively registered unemployed. Once the unemployment runs out most people don't bother showing up to register anymore. In Europe they have 'the dole' for which you get paid to show up and so they record larger numbers of unemployed. In the US the official numbers are skewed.
2) Oh, and while on the dole you still get some minimum of health care.
3) Oh, and there are 1.9 million US citizens in prison in the US who are not counted as unemployed. Contrast that to China with about 1.4 million in prison (see this pdf for an eye opener http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/r188.pdf a report developed by the UK government no less!). Did I mention China has about 3 times the US populations AND is a Communist regiem?
What they need to do is get rid of some overpriced C*Os and sell a couple of airplanes.
I hope the French stick it to them.
(no, no rant here, move along, nothing to see... )
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Really, I don't like france and their socialist attitude as much as the next guy. But I don't think it's offtopic to say that HP is going to hell because the US economy is tanking like I said here (5 412215 41377
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=161969&cid=13
) and here (
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=161969&cid=13
). I'm sorry, these were not offtopic and the fact that they were marked so shows some people are very bitter, but it doesn't doesn't show they are offtopic at all.
I wrote a long rant. I've deleted it. Generally, it said something like this, "Our government is wasteful and incompetent, and since we've elected it we've made our own bed. This causes me dissatisfaction for I feel disenfranchised."
My little site.
It's not bullshit, but it is an opinion. Socialism in and of itself is a bad idea. The concept of a planned economy does not work either in it's more true forms or in the bastardized forms as exhibited in the communist countries. The fact is that it's better to allow the market to adjust on it's own to both the needs and desires of the market and the resources available to it. These opions, and I am admittedly not an economist, are derivitaves of those ideas put forth by Adam Smith and economists like him. Ask anyone whose lived in a communist country verses living here, and you'll have support for my opinion. I happen to work with a lot of guys who grew up in Russia and places like that before the wall came down.
That being said, I mentioned that I am the son of a 40+ year union man. Socialist reforms of true Lasie-Faire capitolism are necessary. We need the EPA and it's regulations as much as OSHA and unions themselves. Each of these orginizations are a limitation of capitolism and socialist in effect. I'm not saying that some reforms aren't necessary, but I am saying that in places like France, and to a lesser degree Germany, they've gone too far. The very rollback that you talked about in your email only supports my argument, and the current backlash against the ruling German party is more evidence.
European poverty rates being below that of the US, well, I'll take your word for it. I've not looked into it, but I do know that our unemployment rates have beaten them through most of that time. You can make an argument for which is more important, but clearly poverty is less important to the average American than the average European.
Now you talk about the Cold War as if it wasn't real. It happened, and it was the American tax payers, and economy, that bore the brunt of the burden of it istead of Western Europe. The fact is that our mostly Democratic presidents and congress during the Cold War directed our spending to be much higher than theirs. Quite frankly, we couldn't afford it, but they could. You can argue why they spent as they did, but it is a fact.
As for being back at the same level as 1999, well so is France's unemployment. In the 90s it was as high as 12.1, and they got it down as low as 8.7. When they were at that low, we were below 4. The economy under Clinton was great. For the last several years, the wonderful European economy has had almost no growth where as we have continued to have between 2-4 growth in spite of some very tragic events that have happened; and I'm not talking about what happended downtown. The Enron garbage, oil prices, tech bubble burst, and countless other major economic events besides the terrorism troubles have all not stopped the US from having moderate growth.
It's funny but unlike what you suggest many of the former Communist states now free in Eastern Europe, I'm thinking about the Czech and Slovak republics in particular, have adoped laws that make us seem Socialist, and their economies have excelled. They chose not to err towards socialism, but away from it. Interesing isn't it?
My final point is about one of your first ones. The fact that their economy has gone down recently when ours hasn't, does mean that their form of socialism isn't working. If their way was better, then they'd have more growth.
There is no doubt that the poverty issue does need to be worked on here. That I do agree with you about.
- Mike
Once you've lost your temper, you've lost the argument - Me
My neighbor, on the other hand, came here from Mexico 15 years ago on a green card. Didn't have anything except the willingness to bust his butt and a good head on his shoulders. Worked scut work for 5 years in a bakery saving every cent he earned all the while learning how to be a baker. After 5 years, he started out on his own and opened a bakery. He's got seven of them now, and he works one day at each one each day of the week. Public schools around here aren't worth much so he's sent his two kids to a Catholic private high school. Each of them has their own car.
About once a month, I eat at a Chinese hole in the wall. Food is outstanding and there's always a line for takeout as there are barely any seats in the restaurant as most of the floorspace is kitchen. There are 6 people working in a space the size of two cubicles exchanging instructions in Chinese. Haute cuisine it ain't but the food is damn good. They open at 10 am and are there until 10 pm. They're making a go of what you would take to be slim prospects.
My gardener wasn't quite as successful. He still rents, but he's provided for his family which he said there was no way he could of done in Guatamala.
My best friend is a plumber. No college but is a partner in a plumbing business. He's smart, worked his tail off, and got to the point that he is billing quarter million dollar jobs in Pebble Beach. He plumbed Clint Eastwood's house and used a tie down he invented to keep floor heating pipes in place. The tie-down saved him 7 cents/tiedown over a commercial product, and is faster to install to boot. It may not sound like much of a savings but it's enabled him to shave his cost on each floor heating job he's bid. He never knew his dad and is mother was an alcholic who didn't provide much for him and yet he's thrived. All that on a high school education.
One of my top student's father was pulled out of middle school during the cultural revolution. Wasted years of his life on a farm just staying alive. When he got the chance, he left China and came here. His wife works in a local hospital and he's holding down a day job while taking care of some pre-reqs before going to med school. He gets about 5 hours of sleep each night even though he's in his mid 40's. Even still, he's happy to be here.
I don't think any of these folk would agree with your assessment of economic prospects in this country.
America's level of borrowing is running at a higher level than of some countries it has forced to restructure their own economies (Argentina), the economy overall is seeing a reduction in employment, people have less disposable income and the jobs being created within the economy are of a lower standard than those being lost.
Japan can't sort out problems in its backyard: they had the size of their military capped for 50 years. Terms of their surrender after the second world war.
The American economies strength is largely dependent on exporting items, and I do remember an article in which American economists blamed Europe for their economic woes as we were unwilling to get ourselves into enough personal debt buying American goods.
You are aware that the occupation of Iraq and the preceeding war were in violation of international law, aren't you?
And, despite this, you still had a coalition of allies helping you there and still do.
American interests are not the world's best interests and, increasingly, tend to run contrary to them.
That's a quote from The HP Way by David Packard, a book given to every single employee of Hewlett-Packard, at least it was when I joined in '98. I wonder if the current CEO even read it.
Since the merger it's like HP sucked all the Suck out of Compaq's sucky products and injected it into HP products.
And it's not like it wasn't foreseeable. It's the reason that the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the William R. Hewlett Revocable Trust voted against the merger. It's the reason I voted against the merger.
About ten years ago I got a contract 'temp' position at HP (Vancouver, WA, USA) to disassemble printers. My job was to open brand-new printers in packages and take them apart down to the metal chassis. The chassis was used to make prototypes for new models.
There was no chance of my being hired, but I had to go to three interviews and take a drug test. And the 'job' was at the factory where the printers were assembled from the metal chassis in the first place. But there was no way that they could get the metal chassis from the assembly line before it was assembled, so the printers had to be completely disassembled after being completely assembled and packaged for sale.
I'm assigned to a storage room with a million dollars worth of printers and truck loading port. I'm getting $9 an hour and was given the key to the warehouse with a lot of resellable product. But I passed the marijuana piss test, so according to H-P I'm 100% reliable and trustworthy.
There's another temp working there also, way in the back. He'd been a temp for three years already as noone ever gets hired at H-P. No one who actually works there, at least. I saw the 'boss' once for 10 minutes on the first day. He welcomed me to the 'team', gave me the key to warehouse, pointed to the stack of brand-new printers to be torn apart, and showed me where the dumpster was. All of the brand-new parts except the metal chassis were to be just tossed into the garbage.
Two months later, the day before Christmas, I get fired for:
(1) 'stealing the brand-new floppy disks.' I took them home and reused them instead of throwing them away.
(2) 'allowing the disemination of confidential H-P information.' This referred to the text files of the printer manual found on the floppy disks. The files that went with every printer sold. Any floppy in an H-P dumpster was assumed by H-P to be holding confidential information. Then why is in the dumpster, guys?
(3) 'contributing to the creation of an environment conductive to sexual harassment.' I was lonely spending all day all alone in the warehouse tearing apart printers. I put a GIF file of Claudia Schiffer (a head shot of Ms. Schiffer in a evening dress, no porn) on the PC as Windows wallpaper. It was ten years ago and at that time having photos acting as Windows wallpaper was considered very unusual and special.
Now I'm sure your corporate lawyer would give you what passes for good reasons as to why I had to be fired. But in the real world, it was all bullshit. I've never trusted H-P since then. I've never again believed any press release or 'independent' article in the press about how advanced of a company that they are.
And I was certainly not surprised when Hurricane Carly came through and wiped out the place and then left with many millions of dollars in go-away money. Hewlett-Packard was FUBAR long before Carly.
That's just the federal debt, which is a real issue, but when you count all debt like credit cards, housing, other bonds, etc
I know I sound like a gold kook. But, truthfully I would really rather have my money in google or red hat stocks, but not with the way things are now ( and their P/E's). The truth is, gold doesn't do anything but sit there, but gold has one thing going for it that nothing else has, it can't be printed out of thin air, crash to nothing, or default.
A housing bubble is a lot different than a stock bubble. With stocks you typically don't own debt, and stocks remain liquid even when they drop huge amounts. But when housing crashes, it will bring down everything else with it, even banks, unless the fed prints up money - that's what I mean about gold.
In my opinion the economy is not doing well, but is being held up by loose money and easy home financing. Now the stock market has been betting on that loose money using derivatives, and consumers have been betting on that loose money by going outrageously into debt for housing. The notational value of derivatives is 270 trillion dollars while the GDP is only about 13 trillion. This is making the margin calls of 1929 look like tight wads, but at least money was backed by gold then. And it's making the inflation of the 80's look like a 50% off sale, but at least the US could absorb a lot more debt then. There is no easy way out this time.
Thank you for posting this. I was one of the very few people who got the pleasuer of being trained by HP *way* back in the day.
:) I may not have a degree, but I sure do have a lot of learning.
I was one of the people hired in '91 to run a COBA lab full of brand new HP 386-33 machines. They hired me cuz I knew MSDos 5.0 and WordPerfect 5.1 (I had taught both as a student teacher my sr. year of high school). We got to go to the HP plant for 2 weeks of training in customer support, technical support, and consulting best practices. IN 1991!!!!
Those tools and tasks and everything that I learned 14 years ago, still apply to everything I do today and more. They were standard basic tricks that they taught to their own employees, and fancied teaching us that would represent them. HP then made some of the best products in the world, though I wouldn't count the Vectra's among them. I sure did love those laser printers and huge plotters. The best was the printing conference room whiteboard... not seen in the board room for another 10 years. I loved that thing. Oh, and the underdesk mounted monitors!!!
I was spoiled to get this training, only because HP DONATED all of this equipment to a local University. They hoped to cull the university of it's CS students, when it didn't even HAVE A CS PROGRAM YET! That was pretty amazing foresight. After a semester, I took that training and knowledge and went to a real CS School for 2 years... long enough to find out it was a WASTE OF MONEY! Not to mention time.
Later, my ex worked for a company that split off from HP back in the day to go their own way. Heard tell they got bought by AMD not too many years ago. *sigh*
I want the old days back so bad!!!!!!!!!!
Jho
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.