HP To Cut 30,000 Jobs

Axolotl_Rose writes with news that Hewlett-Packard is preparing to cut around 30,000 jobs, close to 10% of its total workforce. CEO Meg Whitman reportedly wants to use that money instead for new products and for bolstering the sales force. From the NY Times: "China, which is one of H.P.’s highest growth areas, will probably be spared, as will its research and development efforts. Ms. Whitman, who became H.P.’s chief executive last September, 'is trying to build a new company,' one senior executive said of the job cuts. 'You can count this as a part of that.' The final plan is expected to be announced on Wednesday, when H.P. announces earnings for its second fiscal quarter. Considered a slow-moving giant in the tech industry, H.P. had revenue of $127 billion in fiscal 2011, but net earnings of just $7.1 billion. While it has a leading position in the sales of low-margin personal computers, H.P. has been late or unsuccessful in many recent tech trends like providing cloud computing services for big companies and smartphones and tablet computers." An article at Forbes suggests HP should instead 'retool' those jobs by recruiting makers and hackers, TED conference speakers, and others who have experience building and inventing things.

Comments

wait... what???

[starblazer]

HP still has a R&D division? Has hell frozen over? Is a CEO being intelligent for once??

Re:wait... what???

[Anonymous Coward]

They are cutting jobs but concentrating efforts on sales. Yeah.. What I hear is please by from us but don't expect cutting edge, anything innovative, or decent support after the sale.

That pretty much puts the final nails in the coffin for what once was an inovative tech company.

Re:wait... what???

[Anonymous Coward]

Its more like they are cutting jobs to show a profit. Its says we are clueless and know no other way of turning a profit. So we will toss out our knowledge base people and hope the cheaper ones in China will work out. Kodak tried this except the engineering went to Japan and Xerox is still trying it. Good luck American worker.

Re:wait... what???

[Anonymous Coward]

There's good news in this.

HP has been making trash equipment for a long time. Their printers are garbage, the software for them is worse. Their business laptops ship with non-functional radio chipsets and I've been told they just won't be fixed. I've gotten servers shipped to me with unsigned drivers that just don't work, and their foreign tech support is the consistently the worst I've ever had to deal with (and over phone lines that barely work). Not to labor the subject, but I actually had someone in India call me a thief when I called to ask them to replace a missing part on a laptop that came back from depot service. Worse yet, I've seen zero indication that they intend to do anything, about any of this, for years.

Any company that pumps out crap product and treats its customers like garbage for the sake of short term cost cutting, trying to squeeze out another .03 bump in their stock price, deserves to die the kind of death HP is going to suffer.

For my part, I say, "fuck em".

Re:wait... what???

[Lord of the Fries]

I agree in a non-humane principled sort of way. But my bet is that it's not those 10,000 peoples faults that HP is where it's at today. Which makes me sad. 10,000 poppa's and momma's are going to have to find jobs doing something else in a depressed economy. The well to do management will experience a drop in their earnings, but they won't suffer the same way.

The only way I'd be happy is if the story stated that among the 10,000, every single "product manager" employed by HP was being terminated. In every company I've watched or been part of that has tanked in the last 20 years, it's always been accompanied by a growing role of the "product manager."

Re:wait... what???

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way I'd be happy is if the story stated that among the 10,000, every single "product manager" employed by HP was being terminated. In every company I've watched or been part of that has tanked in the last 20 years, it's always been accompanied by a growing role of the "product manager."

As a former product manager at IBM who knows several PMs who left for HP, I can offer some insight here. I have to post as anon for obvious reasons.

First off, I basically agree with your sentiments. While I've known a couple sharp product managers who were critical in getting improved products out the door, most are self-styled "thought leaders" or MBAs who do not have a technical background, do not understand the technology, and are incapable of recognizing technology trends until they are already old news.

That said, the major bottleneck is going to be the company's executives. PMs do not have free reign to do what is best for the product. They also do not have any R&D budget. Ideally, they come up with ideas for improvements, and shepherd the whole thing through a Concept/Plan/Build/Release cycle. Every step has a checkpoint the executives can use to shut the whole project down.

Here are points from my experience:

• Executives act like bratty little rich kids and have only a slight understanding of their products and markets. They know this. They have various tricks to make themselves seem worthy of the title. #1 trick is to speak up occasionally and be very opinionated. Their opinions are generally worthless (but not always).
• PMs cannot request budget for R&D, and typically are not welcome to make their own technology suggestions (unless maybe the PM is at a start-up).
• PMs are not welcome to make risky suggestions (certainly we weren't at IBM). Big ideas must come from an executive sponsor, not the PM.
• PMs will be laughed out of the checkpoint meetings if they aren't pitching BIG $$$ ideas. Ideas like "we need to spend money to fix all these bugs" are not what the execs are looking for, and don't bring rewards to the PM.

Add this all up, and here's what you get. The PMs offer incremental improvements that are mostly business changes (e.g. sell through a new channel, offer a slightly different model). Products stagnate.

The PM is an important role, because this is the one person who is the glue binding all the other departments (sales, eng, r&d, marketing, etc.). A talented PM who is given some autonomy can do big things. But for the reasons described above, the corporate culture just sucks.

Should be...

[busyqth]

Why not just cut 300,000 right away and get ahead of the game for once?

Re:Should be...

[daem0n1x]

I like that idea. Enslave your people, fire them when they're worn and hire new slaves. What can possibly go wrong?

Re:Should be...

[tqk]

Been working as a contractor for HP. Not a single paid hour of vacation in 8 years. I hate this place with a passion

Who's fault is all of that? Why's a contractor expecting paid vacation? If you want paid vacations, you should be an employee.

I'm a contractor. When I finish a project, I take time off, on my dime. I also don't work for anyone that won't pay me a decent wage. I don't work on stuff that I don't want to, or I think doesn't need to (or shouldn't) be done.

What's your problem? Yeesh.

Oh yeah, that'll help.

[JustAnotherIdiot]

I have a friend who works at HP, and he's constantly tell me how they're overworked due to constantly lowering employee count.
I'm sure cutting out 10% of the workforce, shoving even more extra work on everyone else, will just be a huge moral boost. /sarcasm

Re:Oh yeah, that'll help.

[Reverand Dave]

That's the american way to boost productivity. If you make 1 person do 3 people's jobs then they are 200% more productive.

Re:Oh yeah, that'll help.

[An ominous Cow art]

If those 30,000 employees all work on print drivers, maybe we'll see them (the drivers) shrink to a reasonable size...

The 21st century formula for a successful company

[crazyjj]

The modern CEO doesn't grow his company in the long-term. He doesn't build good products and increase sales, putting profits back into R&D, new products, and new hires. He doesn't pay shareholders modest dividends and tell them about his long-term strategy for slowly growing and maintaining a profitable company. That shit is old school!

The 21st century CEO boosts short term profits by cutting jobs and forcing existing workers to pick up the slack. He shows the shareholders that the next quarter's profits are great and they call him a visionary. He hides debt with a shell game, cuts workers to hide sales declines, and outsources everything he can to some sweatshop that produces crap product to lower prices. The 21st century CEO looks AMAZING on paper.

And in the long-term...well, who gives a shit about the long-term? By then the 21 century CEO has long since bailed out with his golden parachute. Let Uncle Sam bail them out.

Disgraced Republican Candidate for Governor

[bit trollent]

Anyone who watch Meg Whitman run for governor should realize by now that she is an abject retard.

I wouldn't put her in charge of a car wash, much less a multinational company.

I guess after that other Republican candidate, Carley Fiorina started driving HP into the ground they needed another mentally handicapped Republican to finish the job.

Re:Disgraced Republican Candidate for Governor

[toadlife]

My favorite part of that campaign was when Whitman went on and on about how '30 years ago everything was great in California', forgetting that 30 years ago was during the tail-end of her opponent's first two terms as CA governor.

Re:The 21st century formula for a successful compa

[crazyjj]

You may not be a native English speaker, so you may not be aware of the fact that we have no gender-neutral, third person, singular pronoun for a person. One must choose either "he" or "she" or the much more awkward "he/she." I supposed one could also go with "it" but most humans take offense to being called an "it" for some reason. Being as most CEO's are men, I chose "he" in this instance. I think that's a reasonable choice.

And as for Meg Whitman, well I'm sorry if I may have offended the woman who just threw 30,000 families into dire crisis. I suppose she'll just have to live with it.

Bad CEO replaced by bad CEO replaced by bad CEO

[tomhath]

Carly Fiorina gutted the company and put it into a tailspin. Hurd took over and promised to fix things by gutting the company. Now Whitman has taken over and promised to fix things by gutting the company. I hate to see HP go, at one time it was a great company, but they lost their way under Fiorina and never recovered.

Re:Bad CEO replaced by bad CEO replaced by bad CEO

[Anonymous Coward]

A new CEO was hired to replace an outgoing CEO. The outgoing CEO met with the incoming CEO for an exit interview. During the discussion, the departing CEO stated he had placed 3 very important letters in his drawer just as his predecessor had done for him. He explained that the new CEO would find opening the letters in order most useful when a serious event took place. He also stated the letters left for him had really helped him over his tenure.

        Several months passed before a major event came up. The new CEO now remembered the letters and noticed they were numbered 1, 2, and 3. The former CEO had instructed they be opened in order for maximal benefit. The new CEO opened letter #1 and the paper inside had the words “blame it on your predecessor.” The new CEO did as the letter stated and amazingly he was able to avert serious problems and keep his job.

        Several months passed before the next serious event took place. This one was growing in magnitude and things were starting to get ugly at the company. There were even calls for the CEO to step down. In desperation, the CEO opened the drawer and pulled out letter #2. With great fear he, opened it carefully to read the word “reorganize.” He followed the instructions and just as before he was saved. The whole company quieted down and went back to business as usual.

        After about a year, a third serious event took place and it was much worse than the rest. The CEO knew how to get out of the mess because he had a third letter left to open. With a smile he reached for the letter #3 and opened it to read “write 3 letters.”

Re:The 21st century formula for a successful compa

[crazyjj]

There is nothing quite as beautiful as seeing the plane in free-fall and on fire behind you, as you float to your new private island on a parachute stitched from gold thread and destroyed lives.