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HP Cuts Workforce By 5%, Looks To Probe GM Hires

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the picking-teams dept.

dcblogs writes "Hewlett-Packard's reduced its workforce last year by 17,800 employees, more than half-way to its restructuring goal. But some key IT workers left unexpectedly and have taken jobs with HP customer, General Motors. GM, which outsourced its IT for years to EDS, announced plans last year to in-source its IT. HP acquired EDS in 2008. On Nov. 30, 18 employees of HP's Global Information Technology Organization in Austin 'resigned en masse and without notice' and 'immediately began working for General Motors in Austin in GM's new IT Innovation Center,' according to court papers. HP is asking the court for approval to depose some of the exiting workers to determine whether employment contracts were violated. 'HP expects that additional resignations will follow as the departed employees will likely seek to build out their teams by filling in with subordinate employees from HP,' the company said."

13 of 304 comments (clear)

  1. So.... by Andy+Prough · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ..."you can't leave unless WE fire you". Nice way to build loyalty!

    1. Re:So.... by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Nah, it's not about loyalty. HP saw that workers ended up with a positive outcome, and reflexively concluded that it must have been illegal. Refer to legal department, sue. Workers are never allowed a positive outcome, this is how you know you're doing business correctly. Business as taught in school, of course.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    2. Re:So.... by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Strange how business school graduates exhibit this activity, while others unexposed to this culture still cling to ancient habits like "keeping one's word".

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    3. Re:So.... by doug · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Bah. I have no sympathy for HP. I've never worked at HP, but I've been at plenty of places where most/all of the corporate history was lost. It is unpleasant, but you get over it. If this is an especially critical position, then HP should have used golden handcuffs to keep a few key people in place. If your employer treats you well, you usually stay put. If you are worried that you're going to get the axe, you jump ship. This is a basic truth, and if HP's management spent more time focused on its employees and less on the shareholders they would know this. Management should keep employees from having a conflict of interest. Yes, it might cost more in the short run, but it avoids situations like this. Too many people in management focus exclusively on the business side of things, and forget that people are involved. Unfortunately this is not unikque to HP.

    4. Re:So.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I've been involved, numerous times, in cleaning up after that kind of loss of personnel. The loss of institutional knowledge can be devastating: there may be no one left who knows _why_ things were done certain ways, and it can really endanger ongoing services and other contracts to lose that much of a key department without some kind of plan.

      Yes, well isnt' that too bad for HP, or whoever. This is why you pay employees what they are worth to you if they decide to leave. And guess what, employees respond to uncertainty with their feet. The best employees can always find new jobs, and never will have to worry about going hungry. But the best employees also want to leave on their own terms. You cannot, as a company, expect to "trim" here and there, and not have a negative effect on your best staff.

      In your previous situation, the employer weighed the possibility of a "devastating" loss of knowledge against the costs of retaining their employees without whom they would devastated. They gambled, and lost. These larger companies think they are the masters of the universe, but it's not true. They live in a world where intellectual capital has inflows and outflows, just like actual capital.

    5. Re:So.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I think that you may be overstating your ability to sign away your employment rights in TX. In any state, all such contracts must be made in "consideration" for something - you must get something in return for anything you give up.

      Once you are hired, or retained, they will have a hard time enforcing any contract which did not come with a tangible benefit when it adds restrictions. If your boss rolls by a few weeks after you are hired with a stack of non-competes, chances are, they are worthless unless signing the documents gets you a cash bonus, a promotion, more salary, better vacation policy, or something tangible benefit. If it's just "sign these, it's routine", they are not valid contracts. In general, this is true across all contract law. There must be a bona fide "meeting of the minds", plus "consideration" for both parties.

      Secondly, in all cases, the employer must be protecting valid business secrets, and not just making a naked restraint of trade. Meaning, the employer must have a legitimate reason to prevent you, specifically, from competing with them. If the purpose is simply to clear out potential future competition, it is probably unenforceable.

      Finally, in all cases, the employer must attach the non-compete to another agreement which is enforceable, i.e., an employment contract. For "at will" employee, who is not under any contract, there is nothing to attach such agreement to, and as such, any "naked" instrument is probably illegal.

      The real truth is that most of these documents that employees are asked to sign as a matter of course are not enforceable. Some are, but in those cases, the employee has (1) an employment contract, (2) been given access to actual trade secrets, and (3) is integral to the operation of a business engaged in work related to an actual trade secret. Even in Texas.

      None of this is to say that the employer can't make your life very unpleasant. Especially if you out on your own to start a new competing business. My own two cents is that if you are moving between employers that compete directly, make known your concerns to your new employer, and get a written guarantee of (1) legal support up to a large dollar amount and (2) indemnification against judgement.

    6. Re:So.... by CodeBuster · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'd like to respectfully disagree about insulting HP for this.

      The management at HP has failed both the stockholders and the workers. They aren't worthy of respect.

      When you're trimming a department, you sometimes have contractual obligations that require you to retain _some_ of the department or group, to support existing services.

      That's not my problem, you deal with it.

      When they all leave en masse, it can put a very large hole in your infrastructure

      Well cry me a river.

      when someone leaving poaches from their former group, it's usually a contract violation, written into the contract _precisely_ to protect assets a company has invested in and built up over time.

      That's a load of bull. What part of "employment at will" don't you understand? The laws in "at will" states are very clear on this point: either party can terminate the agreement at any time without reason or prior notice. The corporations themselves have long since dispensed with any nonsense illusions of "loyalty" and so we workers have learned to be ruthless too. It's their fault that there's no loyalty anymore, so I say turnabout's fair play, "contract" (which is unenforceable anyway) be damned.

      I've been involved, numerous times, in cleaning up after that kind of loss of personnel. The loss of institutional knowledge can be devastating

      Maybe the company should have considered that before they went to war with their employees.

      there may be no one left who knows _why_ things were done certain ways, and it can really endanger ongoing services and other contracts to lose that much of a key department without some kind of plan.

      You mean somebody moved your cheese?

      there are few things as devastating to the surviving remnant, who may believe in what they do or may really need the job to feed their families and keep medical insurance

      These days it's every man for himself and his family. Make no apologies for that and have no illusions of "loyalty". The corporations look out for numero uno, so must we.

      when the "elite few" depart and leave them holding the undocumented remnants of their work.

      A perfect opportunity to rewrite everything the "right" way. If the company cannot afford to do that, then maybe it shouldn't continue operating (and likely won't anyway).

      And if I ever do a departure interview with one such departing member of a horde who says "there is no documentation, just read the code!" I'm going to warn the staff who organize bids for my company that our hourly rates need to double, and explain why.

      I never do exit interviews, nothing good ever comes of them.

  2. win-win, no? by Trepidity · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Employees don't want to work for HP anymore, and HP gets closer to its "restructuring targets" without even having to fire them!

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    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    1. Re:win-win, no? by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The problem is that the employees you would rather keep are the ones that are most likely to leave a dysfunctional employer.

       

    2. Re:win-win, no? by roc97007 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I have to wonder whether HP management even cares at this point. I get the impression that meeting short term attrition goals is considered more important than long term viability.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
  3. Re:Prime grazing area by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 5, Informative

    . . . except, of course, if you are looking for competent high level managers . . .

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  4. The employees left due to how they were treated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I know three of the people who left and I had heard of their terrible work environment for months once HP got hold of EDS. GM offered several a good deal to come over since they were all experienced with their systems, gave them significant pay raises, decent benefits and control of their own group. Who wouldn't leave?

  5. Supreme Court of Canada by EmperorOfCanada · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The supreme court of Canada recently made a very radical decision I think regarding a bunch of guys who left a big bank here. Basically the court decision was that people can work wherever the hell they want for whomever will have them. The court seems to have completely tossed out the idea of an employee having any kind of non-compete as violating their right to work. But the decision went much further. It wasn't just about working for the competition or even stealing former employees but the court even said stealing old clients and their phone numbers was fine as long as it was reasonable that the employee could have remembered that data. So if an employee even wrote some names and numbers down it was fine as long as it was a reasonably memorable list. In the particular case the employees were dealing with a fairly small elite clientele so the bank really lost big time. Again the court said that you can't make an employee forget stuff.

    This of course is a Canadian supreme court case but I went to a lecture given by a supreme court justice who said that most supreme courts look to other supreme courts around the world that are based upon the English system of law as the same sort of cases tend to crop up in the various courts at similar times. So without a doubt the US courts will at least glance at this outstanding decision supporting workers rights.

    To me the answer is quite simple. What is HP doing for any employee the day they leave? Absolutely nothing. So what should an ex-HP employee do for HP after they leave? Absolutely nothing. As for any contract. You could sign a slavery contract but any court would toss it out in a second. The key to a contract is that there is an exchange. If I promise to give you a gift of $1,000,000 tomorrow for absolutely nothing on your part you can't actually sue me when I don't deliver. There has to be an exchange. When the employee stops paying the employee the contract has ended regardless of what extra bits HP might wish for. I suspect that this will be going to the supreme court in the US as people will think that it is "unfair" for the employees to be so disloyal and some lower courts might be so foolish as to fall for this argument. But the law is not about fairness. It is about rules; and contract law is fairly old and boring that way. So it will be interesting to see how this all turns out. Personally I was surprised to see our supreme court side so thoroughly with the little guy when the other side was one of the biggest banks in Canada.