Slashdot Mirror
Alcatel-Lucent To Cut 10,000 Workers, Calls It "Shift Plan"
Dawn Kawamoto writes "Alcatel-Lucent is planning to cut 10,000 workers by 2015. The telecom equipment maker's newly minted CEO calls this restructuring part of his Shift Plan. Under this plan, Alcatel-Lucent wants to save 1 billion Euros in costs and refocus its operations on next-gen IP networking, cloud and ultra-broadband access and away from legacy technologies like its 2G and 3G wireless. In the meantime, Wall Street thinks it may be cleaning itself up for a sale of some of its assets or its operations to Nokia, which will need to bolster its telecom equipment business after selling its smartphone operations to Microsoft. But a Nokia-Microsoft deal may be too little, too late."
You missed the important part
As CEO collect outrageous bonus.
And jump ship before the long-term consequences of your actions become apparent.
A-L has been going down the tubes for quite a while. It's pretty amazing to think that part of the company used to be the mighty Bell Labs. You know, Unix, the transistor, one of the last corporate-funded basic research institutes... It kind of makes me want to have the old AT&T monopoly back just to have that.
Admittedly, they probably do have huge legacy costs in the form of less productive employees and products that don't make them as much money anymore. Also, the telecom landscape has changed a lot over the years. I work for a similar company, and while our group works on newish stuff, there's a ton of older products just sitting around that used to be very high margin and no longer have the revenue to support their costs.
That said, it's never good when an older, established company suddenly announces a monster layoff like this. In the older companies, you just know it's going to be 10,000 58-year-olds in the developed countries who will suddenly find themselves out of work with zero prospects for new employment, hanging on until Social Security kicks in. That's the sad part of these "smartsizings" -- when you're just a number in a spreadsheet, companies have no idea how much you still have to offer in terms of talent and experience. I'm approaching the ripe old age of 40 now, and am constantly staying on top of all the new stuff just to keep the skill set sharp. That's one thing I could do without in the IT "profession" -- so much new buzzwordy stuff is rehashes of technology decades old with better supporting technology. Too bad Gartner and their ilk are the only ones that CIOs listen to!
Unless you're in senior management, you have absolutely no control over your future. I can do the best job, get top ratings for performance, but if I'm unlucky and am working on the wrong projects... poof no job. Layoffs are done by cutting whole programs, without even attempting to retain the best talent. We're chattel, nameless drones who are viewed as necessary evils. Worse, I may be potentially viewed as substandard by future employers because the product I was working on wasn't viable, as though I had any opportunity to influence it's direction.
I truly enjoy writing software, but I would never recommend this career to my children or grandchildren. Way too much volatility coupled with abusive employers...