Layoffs At Now-Private Dell May Hit Over 15,000 Staffers

schwit1 writes "Curious why Michael Dell was so eager to take the company he founded private? So he could do stuff like this without attracting too much attention. According to the Channel Register, the recently LBOed company is 'starting the expected huge layoff program this week, claiming numbers will be north of 15,000.' Of course, with a private sponsor in charge of the recently public company, the only thing that matters now is maximizing cash flows in an environment of falling PC sales, a commoditisation of the server market and a perceived need to better serve enterprises with their ever-increasing mobile and cloud-focused IT requirements — things that do not bode well for Dell's EBITDA — and the result is perhaps the largest axing round in the company's history. But at least the shareholders cashed out while they could."

Comments

I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[haruchai]

At least they get health coverage for the next 18 months.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

At least they get health coverage for the next 18 months.

If they can afford it. The charming thing about COBRA is that you get hit paying 100% of premiums when you can least afford it. Heaven forbid that we become a bunch of commies like those Canucks. I've heard that even the snow is red up there.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[DoofusOfDeath]

But at least you're getting a group-policy rate that the employer had negotiated, rather than an open-market individual/family rate. It's better than (pre-ACA) open-market plans, I suspect.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

I give up, what do you mean by Torts? To me they're a matter of civil law, and we've got plenty of them.

I will however always refuse to say "about" funny.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[Critical Facilities]

But at least you're getting a group-policy rate that the employer had negotiated, rather than an open-market individual/family rate. It's better than (pre-ACA) open-market plans, I suspect

Not always. I worked for the largest commercial real estate company in the world a few years ago. When I put in my notice, there was going to be a lapse of about 30 days between when my insurance would expire with my present employer, and when my new benefits would kick in with my new employer. When I received the COBRA notification explaining the details of my coverage (if I were to have chosen to take it), I was shocked. My premiums more than tripled....not exaggerating. Coverage for me and my young daughter for a fairly standard health policy (which still had copays, co-insurance, and deductibles, mind you) was going to be well over $600 for 30 days.

Suffice to say, I was able to find a term based health insurance plan, and get us both covered for about $150-$175 for 30 days, with better co-pays and a much lower deductible.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

It's better than (pre-ACA) open-market plans

The ACA is, to put it charitably, a day late and a dollar short. I honestly hope it's better having that piece of garbage than not, but the only way that will really be true is if it leads to further changes. The US is the only country to rely on for-profit companies as the source of basic health insurance.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[NatasRevol]

I'd take Torts over being laid off every day.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[CohibaVancouver]

At least they get health coverage for the next 18 months.

America is bananas. You lose your job with all the stress that entails, then on top of that you have to worry about whether you have the coverage required if your kid gets sick.

Hey USA, get with every other first world nation on earth (and a few second and third world ones) and get some universal healthcare for YOUR people.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[hendrips]

That's only guaranteed to be true if you coverage needs are the same as the plan your former employer offered, and if you are as risky or riskier than the average employee. To use myself as an example, I was laid off a couple of years ago from an employer which had a high average age and a high smoking rate (average age: late 40s to early 50s, 10%-20% smoked, if I had to guess). Their health plan had a 300$ per year deductible. As a result, their COBRA premiums were about $1500 per month for a couple. Pre-ACA that's probably still a better rate than a pair of 50 years old smokers in questionable health would have gotten on the individual market.

My wife and I, on the other hand, were nonsmokers in our 20s with no preexisting conditions. We also have a sizable emergency fund saved up because I hate spending money, so a $300 deductible would have been ridiculous for us. When we bought open market insurance, it cost us less than $200 per month. Obviously, that's just an anecdote, but it illustrates how hard it is to make blanket statements about American health insurance*.

*Other than "it sucks," which I think everyone on both sides of the spectrum would agree on, even if they argue about why or what to do.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[CubicleZombie]

America used to be a lot more sink-or-swim. Work hard, innovate, or you die. Health care ended up being tied to employment because everybody worked. It was our grandparents who made this nation the greatest in the world. Now we're well on our way to a European social-wellfare system, and Universal Healthcare will be part of that after Obamacare fails (listen to Obama's speeches before he became a Senator - this is just one step in his plan).

Universal healthcare, living wage, equal outcomes. It's all coming. Along with it comes the loss of the U.S. competitive edge. Work hard? Why bother. Just join the Occupy Wallstreet crowd and stand in line for a government handout.

It's all well and good until there's nobody left to pay for it.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[Anonymous Coward]

The bullshit machine is up early today!

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[jedidiah]

> But at least you're getting a group-policy rate that the employer had negotiated, rather than an open-market individual/family rate. It's better than (pre-ACA) open-market plans, I suspect.

No. Not really. There is this prevailing myth that you need to be dependent on your employer for health insurance coverage. It's pretty bogus really.

The ACA does not improve the state of things.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[haruchai]

A lot of those European social democracies are pretty nice places to live and have been for decades.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[caseih]

Yes the snow is quite red up here. However it's not from the communists. It's from the politicians in the Harper government falling all over themselves to be more like their idols, the American Republican party. Also it seems like they are hell-bent on Americanizing Canada in any way they can. If it weren't political suicide, they'd have scrapped public healthcare insurance a long time ago. But time will change that, and they will do it if they are in power too many more decades.

That said they are perfectly willing to act as if they are opposed to the will of American politicians when it suits them, such as defending Canadians against American invasive tax policies, verbally at least. But their heart's not really in it as Canada's banking system is now completely beholden to the whims of the IRS.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

I was laid off a couple of years ago from an employer which had a high average age

A charming aspect of our for-profit health insurance system is that this is a concern for employers, which leads to age discrimination. Even under Obamacare you can have a 3:1 range depending on age. If we're going to have that kind of crap, why not go back to the old system where insurance would cost a fortune if you had existing health problems. How is that any more discriminatory? No other country does it this way. In Germany for example, where insurance is mostly handled by non-profit insurance companies, you can only vary premium costs depending on where you live. Like other countries, the per capita health care expenses are at least a third less than the US (as a %/GDP - the difference is greater if you use exchange rate or PPP).

Yes, I'm in my 50's. If I have to go back to COBRA or "open market", that will cream me. It's ok to screw me because of my age, but the fact that I'm in good health doesn't buy me anything. Basically I spent decades subsidizing the health care of those who were older or less healthy than me. I'd be fine with that, except now that I'm older it's a big "SCREW YOU".

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[jedidiah]

> A lot of those European social democracies are pretty nice places to live and have been for decades.

They would suck me dry worse than American insurance companies do now.

The real problem is that people think that there is a free lunch. Eurotrash won't honestly acknowledge this and American wannabes will happily ignore any practical considerations.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[pnutjam]

This is true for alot of people, but ask me how I know you don't have a pre-existing condition.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[TWiTfan]

You can blame both Republicans and Dems for the shit state of affairs with the ACA and American healthcare. The ACA plan was created by the Heritage Foundation and Republicans as a way to have a sort-of/kind-of universal healthcare while also preserving all that capitalism/free-market horsehit, and the Dems were fucking stupid enough to embrace this plan as a way to get universal healthcare with bi-partisan support (in the end, it got neither).

It was pretty typical of the corporatist bi-partisan fuck-up-fest that passes for "governance" in the U.S. The only thing that the two parties can agree on here is that the common citizen doesn't mean shit and the corporations/elite run the show.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[TWiTfan]

Also it seems like they are hell-bent on Americanizing Canada in any way they can. If it weren't political suicide, they'd have scrapped public healthcare insurance a long time ago.

Be careful. If they're anything like American Republicans, they won't stop until they find some sneaky, underhanded way to undermine or completely dismantle it. And they can be very clever about it. Look out for obscure treaty agreements that block it, obscure funding measures that quietly de-fund parts of it one piece at a time, and other measures that sneakily bypass the traditional legislative process to effectively destroy public healthcare (while allowing legislators plausible-deniability in its death). And keep in mind that they will NEVER STOP TRYING. Just because you defeat a measure one day doesn't mean they won't try to sneak the same measure past the very next day.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

Health care ended up being tied to employment because everybody worked.

You're ignorant of history. Health care ended up being tied to employment because there was a wage freeze during WWII, but a loophole let employers add benefits.

It was our grandparents who made this nation the greatest in the world.

And it was our grandparents who fought (sometimes literally) for better wages and working conditions, Social Security, and a host of other evil things. If it hadn't been for the employer based health insurance in WWII, we'd likely have gotten UHC in the late 40's. We also would have saved trillions of dollars because of it.

Universal Healthcare will be part of that after Obamacare fails

Let's hope we don't become a socialist hellhole like Canada, Australia or Japan.

Just join the Occupy Wallstreet crowd and stand in line for a government handout.

If you want a handout you'd be better off on Wall Street. The banks got handouts that are beyond the wildest dreams of anybody in the OWS crowd.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[TWiTfan]

Agreed. We won't be competitive again until we go back to the days when children had to beg for food on the street.

As someone who is pretty well-off I also can't WAIT to get slavery back too! Let's here them complain about me calling them "Boy" when I OWN their black asses!!!!

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[whoever57]

No. Not really. There is this prevailing myth that you need to be dependent on your employer for health insurance coverage. It's pretty bogus really.

The ACA does not improve the state of things.

Says the person who either has a good health record or never actually shopped for private insurance.

Pre-ACA, if you had anything less than a very good health record and shopped for private health insurance, you would find yourself either paying very high premiums or being pushed into your state's last-resort health schemes.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

True. Why don't you point out the insightful part?

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

The real problem is that people think that there is a free lunch.

I don't know anybody who thinks there is a free lunch, but I do know people who ignore facts. For example, all those countries with their evil socialist healthcare pay at least 1/3 less (%/GDP) than the US for universal coverage and outcomes just as good. I'm not so much an evil socialist as a cheap bastard. I'm tired of getting ripped off.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

We won't be competitive again until we go back to the days when children had to beg for food on the street.

We should make that illegal too. Go die quietly, without annoying your betters.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[TWiTfan]

No, keeping them on the streets makes it easier for me to find cheap, expendable labor to work in my factory. You would be amazed what a desperate child will do for even a little piece of bread.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[Aidtopia]

Health care ended up tied to employment because, during World War II, there was a wage freeze. Unable to increase wages, employers used fringe benefits to compete for employees, and one of those benefits was subsidized health insurance.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[operagost]

How could health care get any more socialist than single-payer? Have Joseph Stalin personally give you your annual checkup?

Canada isn't a communist nation, but the fact is that single-payer health care abolishes an entire industry-- even if it's one that many of us intensely dislike-- and turns it over to the state.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[TheGratefulNet]

I just got laid off (1/3 of our office closed). not dell; a very small company.

my health payments when I was on my own non-group plan was in the $700/mo range. hella expensive for one person (I'm over 50, though). when I took a job as a contractor, after 6mos I was able to join the contract company's health plan. my rates went down to about $500/mo. finally, I joined fulltime after those 6mos and had my insurance monthly go down to less than $300/mo (the company kicked in a bit, of course, so my total of $300 was not all that bad, each month).

after the layoff, I will consider cobra. but my cobra quote is back to $700 again! I see NO benefit in savings.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[Critical Facilities]

but ask me how I know you don't have a pre-existing condition.

Ugh! I can only imagine. I'm inferring that you (or someone you know) does, and I was (and am) grateful that I didn't have that complicating the matter to drive up the cost even further. While I'm not sure exactly who to believe any more in this whole Health Care Reform debate, and I do not thing the existing legislation is a complete and thorough solution, I'm glad that at least the issue of pre-existing conditions is being addressed. While I'm fortunate enough to not have that be a factor for me yet, I don't think it's fair that those who are should be so boxed in with their choices as a result.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[operagost]

Maybe you should stop wasting your time parroting Democratic Party talking points and realize you're being screwed by just about everyone.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[operagost]

We do have universal healthcare. We're forced to buy it from mega-corporations, which apparently is a free-market solution from the Democratic Party. Note that the law was passed without a single Republican vote for it-- or even a single vote NEEDED-- before you jump on me.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[operagost]

Note how government, once again, claims it's the solution to a problem it created. If it wasn't for the unconstitutional wage freeze, we wouldn't have been relying on employer-subsidized health care.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[wiredlogic]

It's better than (pre-ACA) open-market plans, I suspect.

When I left my last job the COBRA coverage was $600 monthly for everything and $75 for dental only. Not going to happen. The scam is that you don't (or didn't before ACA) have an option to purchase a cheaper option.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

How could health care get any more socialist than single-payer?

Socialize the entire health care industry, instead of just the insurance. The NHS is close to that. I'm not in favor of it, and I can't think of other developed countries that have it.

They are on a slippery slope though. Next thing you know they'll have socialized police departments, fire departments, school tuition, roads, military, etc.

Have Joseph Stalin personally give you your annual checkup?

I heard Uncle Joe wasn't always good for your health.

but the fact is that single-payer health care abolishes an entire industry-- even if it's one that many of us intensely dislike-- and turns it over to the state

If you don't like that, try the German or Swiss system, where highly regulated non-profit companies provide insurance. They are private sector.

As for "turning it over to the state", data from around the world says that they do it more efficiently that the for-profit companies in the US. Should we subsidize deadwood because it's in the private sector? Now that's socialism at its worst.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[TheGratefulNet]

'people' in the US are doing fine.

oh, you mean real human beings and not companies, didn't you?

nevermind.

Re: I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

you can't import socialism to America. To do so would be the death of the nation as all the welfare recipients would suck it dry

Of course. If we had UHC then people would run around getting sick or injured as much as possible so they could maximize their use of those government benefits.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

You'd exploit children that way? I thought that's what illegal aliens are for.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[Penguinisto]

A lot of those European social democracies are pretty nice places to live and have been for decades.

Of course they are - their defense budget is pretty much taken care of (see also "NATO"), so that's one huge expense they don't have to bother with. Those who do excel and gain wealth get taxed into the dirt in order to pay for everyone else. Ultra-cheap labor (form Turkey, Eastern Europe, etc) help keep costs/wages way down and the low end... much like how the US uses Immigrant labor for the same reason (the only difference being that the EU actually admits it openly.)

I guarantee you that if NATO were to shut down and the US were to pull out of all but maybe one or two bases, the EU would be faced with a massive defense ramp-up that would in turn kill their economies... well, those economies that aren't already being kept alive by Germany.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[pnutjam]

There are so many variables when you buy insurance. I'm blessed with good health myself, but I have seen it happen to people.

I had a friend who had a brain tumor which meant he lost his job (truck driver). So, of course he lost his insurance and you can bet that insurance companies weren't jumping out of the wood work to cover him. Even Cobra is little help in a situation like that.

It's really stupid for insurance to be tied to employment. Only a single payer system makes sense. I would much rather pay taxes today to insure I am covered when I need it, vs our current system of paying premiums so 2 or 3 middlemen have a job and when you need the insurance you can't have it.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[m.ducharme]

Sorry no, you've entirely neglected the fact that private healthcare leads to higher per-capita costs as insurers fleece their clients.Insurance companies aren't taking a little profit off the top, they're taking massive profits compared to their costs.

  The idea behind a universal health care system is that in such a system, you get the same or better health care for a lower price. It's not a matter of the government subsidizing your health care, it's a matter of giving increased power to the consumer, to prevent them from being fleeced in a transaction where otherwise they would have no bargaining power. And it works. In 2008 (the last figures I've seen, care of the WHO I believe), US health care cost per person was I think $6000/person, while the next-closest was Switzerland (which has a semi private system somewhat like the ACA) where health care costs were half of what they are in the US (I may have the figures wrong, but the proportion is correct, the Swiss pay half per person what Americans pay).

The long and the short of it is that the free market doesn't work as intended where one party has the choice of paying or dying. Government regulation is supposed to (and in most of the world, does) equalize the playing field so that the consumer doesn't get hosed by the insurance company or the service providers.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[JackieBrown]

You can blame both Republicans and Dems for the shit state of affairs with the ACA and American healthcare. The ACA plan was created by the Heritage Foundation and Republicans as a way to have a sort-of/kind-of universal healthcare while also preserving all that capitalism/free-market horsehit

And the republicans were smart enough to realize it was crap and did not pass it when they controlled all three branches.

Sorry, but the blame lies solely with the democrats on this one.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[Bumbles]

In the US, you may want to look up the Medical Loss Ratios now in effect. There is some wiggle room in these but to call the profits "massive" with the current MLRs is only accurate if you look at overall dollars. If you look at percentages, the profits are no longer massive.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[haruchai]

You know that the Soviet Union collapsed 20 years ago, right?

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ShanghaiBill]

It's really stupid for insurance to be tied to employment.

Indeed. During the communist era in China, each factory ran a school for the children of their workers. If someone changed jobs, their children had to change schools. Americans laugh at how insane that was, but the way we run our healthcare system is just as stupid. It is absurd for your employer to be involved in your healthcare.

Here is a complete, exhaustive list of everything that an employer should provide to their workers in exchange for their labor:

1. Money

Everything else (healthcare, pension, etc.) should be obtained elsewhere.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[Penguinisto]

It ain't the Sovs that present the biggest danger to Europe, but yes, I agree that NATO's biggest reason for existing is no longer... so why not dismantle it?

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[SleazyRidr]

The USA was founded on different principles than most of the countries in Europe. The USA is now abandoning some of those principles in favour of those being adopted by Europe. Expecting the USA to continue to achieve more highly than European countries would be naive.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[haruchai]

I have no objection to that.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[Xaedalus]

The scary thing is that there are people out there today in our society who would cheerfully take children from the lower classes and toss them into factories, because their personal identity is bound up in a classist/caste view of society, with themselves being at the pinnacle. They would, and do (quietly) view it as "doing a favor to those who are beneath me".

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[haruchai]

I'd be more inclined to believe what you say if you could explain why per-capita healthcare is so much more expensive in America than any Eurotrash country or the Frozen North above the 49th parallel but the outcomes are about the same.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[Grishnakh]

Hey USA, get with every other first world nation on earth (and a few second and third world ones) and get some universal healthcare for YOUR people.

There's a word in this sentence which does not belong.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[bill_mcgonigle]

Don't worry, it's a temporary measure meant to work-around wage controls implemented to ease the GI transition into the economy. As soon as WWII is fully over, employers will return to paying workers in cash and the workers will buy their own insurance again, just like they do for their cars, homes, and motorcycles.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[monkeyFuzz]

And the republicans were smart enough to realize it was crap and did not pass it when they controlled all three branches.

Sorry, but the blame lies solely with the democrats on this one.

As misguided as this statement is, even if one were to accept its veracity it at face value, it is a meaningless one. You do realize that republican vs. democrat is a distinction without a difference. There has been, and is, only one party, and that is the party of Big Business. Follow the money and the policies it purchases and it should be painfully obvious.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[Anonymous Coward]

Even under Obamacare you can have a 3:1 range depending on age.
<snip>
Basically I spent decades subsidizing the health care of those who were older or less healthy than me. I'd be fine with that, except now that I'm older it's a big "SCREW YOU".

I don't think you understand how the 3:1 works in your favor. Previously, you got away with paying much less for your healthcare because you were NOT subsidizing the healthcare of older people. Now that you are older, and the 3:1 kicks in, younger people are NOW subsidizing your healthcare (your healthcare premiums would cost much more than 3x the healthcare of younger healthy people in a free market, because healthcare costs for older people are on average much more expensive).

How is it a big SCREW YOU that you now have cheaper healthcare than you used to?

It is the younger healthy people that are getting the big SCREW YOU

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[c]

Heaven forbid that we become a bunch of commies like those Canucks. I've heard that even the snow is red up there.

Only where we do our seal clubbing (it's okay, we only kill the capitalist seals). Everywhere else, it's the orange of our socialist masters, the New Democrat Party (AKA: The Party).

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[the_B0fh]

You have up to 90 days to opt out of it. If you didn't tell them, you can notify them you want in, *IF* you had an accident in that 30 days.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[the_B0fh]

That is because you are looking at the wrong parts. If everyone else is paying *VERY MUCH LESS* than we are, and still have similar health outcomes, we're being screwed.

MLR isn't the only place where you get screwed. There's been good articles written about it already.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

Previously, you got away with paying much less for your healthcare because you were NOT subsidizing the healthcare of older people.

Not true. Premiums paid by me, or on my behalf, were not a function of age. That's still true for most employer based plans. So obviously younger people were subsidizing older people.

your healthcare premiums would cost much more than 3x the healthcare of younger healthy people in a free market, because healthcare costs for older people are on average much more expensive

Do you have a cite that the ratio exceeds 3:1? Moreover, are you considering things strictly as a function of age, or are you also taking health and history into account? I'm in good health. I haven't been in a hospital since I was 18. BP, HDL/LDL, etc. are all fine. A history of long lived family with no debilitating diseases. The only medical care I get or need is checkups. Yet on the individual market I'd pay the same as somebody who has a host of expensive and debilitating diseases. I'm fine with that because I think everybody should be able to get coverage - even those that actually need treatment. But if basing premiums on health is no longer allowed, why is basing them on age allowed? Health is a bigger factor. Before the ACA people my age in good health could get individual coverage, but if you were 25 and had health issues, they wouldn't touch you at any price.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[TWiTfan]

What on earth makes you think I like the Democratic Party? I hate those pricks too.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, always, it is a requirement of COBRA. The premium cannot exceed 102% of the cost of the plan for similarly situated individuals who have not incurred a qualifying event, including both the portion paid by employees and any portion paid by the employer before the qualifying event, plus 2% for administrative costs. If the amount was triple, this was the true cost of the policy, the combined employer and employee premiums. Few employees know what their company pays for the premiums. I think if employees knew how much their company picks up the tab of the premium, they would be shocked at the cost of health insurance in the United States. In fact, many people are learning this with ACA, as some companies have dropped employer provided coverage.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

Ever heard of blue cross blue shield? Non profit.

Not for many years. They're simply an umbrella organization that sells a branded product. Many of the companies providing the insurance are for-profit. Moreover, the behavior of even some of the non-profits under the umbrella is questionable, because they're loosely regulated and/or the regulation isn't enforced. I mentioned that one of the reasons the German system works is that the insurers are very tightly regulated.

insurance was much cheaper when you were in your 20s, than it is for someone who is in their 20s today

Insurance for anybody was cheaper when I was in my 20's. The problem is medical costs increasing much faster than inflation for decades, not that I was lucky to have been born earlier than you.

It is the young who are getting screwed by Obamacare.

The young and healthy. But even that's not right. Everybody is getting screwed, or at least the problem isn't being addressed, by Obamacare, because it does so little to bring down costs to those in other countries.

The same group that is being screwed by social security (broke in 2033) and medicare (broke in 2024).

Social Security is going to go broke 19 years in the future, because it's always been going to go broke 19 years in the future. When the economy is bad the date pulls in a little (it was 2038 before the GFC), and then goes out again when the labor economy improves (since it's funded by payroll taxes). Even "going broke" is BS. If it "went broke" it would still be able to pay out greater than 2/3 of the benefits. That doesn't fit my definition of broke, as in no money.

As for Medicare, if it goes broke then we'll all go broke, because the big issue isn't Medicare itself, but rising health care costs. Medicare funding is no different in that respect than any other healthcare funding.

We could have tried to do something about the healthcare cost curve. "Universal coverage" was chosen as a goal instead, so healthcare costs will continue rising.

What makes you think that those goals are mutually exclusive? Every other developed country has universal care and pays at least 1/3 less than the US. It helps if you don't kiss the ass of the for-profit insurance and pharma companies. Why do you think their stock prices went up after Obamacare passed?

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[swillden]

Health care ended up being tied to employment because there was a wage freeze during WWII, but a loophole let employers add benefits.

I read that it was before WWII, that depression-era legislation freezing wages led to employers adding benefits to attract workers.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[Bumbles]

I was only replying to the statement that the insurers are taking massive profits compared to their costs. The MLR was instituted to limit profit vs costs.

The overall cost of our healthcare insurance is higher and I did not refute that.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

The USA was founded on different principles than what you have now? That's true. For example, in the early days of the Republic slavery was legal. What can I tell you, things change.

The people who would be most shocked at the idea that our principles, or more accurately the specifics of government, shouldn't change, would be the Founding Fathers themselves. They never claimed to have reached perfection. Imagine if the Republic had been founded on ideas from the early 16th century instead of the late 18th. Thank heaven the Founding Fathers weren't afraid to use newer ideas than that.

Re: I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

And I'm not convinced a UHC has been implemented properly anywhere around the world because of the lack of personal oversight by the "Will of the People".

That explains the great suffering of our northern neighbors. They've just been bought off by the bread and circuses of their entire healthcare sector being a much smaller %/GDP than ours, and that they never have to worry about not having coverage.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[turgid]

Work hard? Why bother.

Quite, when you work yourself into illness to make the shareholders richer as they constantly cut back your resourcing, fire your colleagues, make deadlines shorter and freeze your pay, selling things that don't exist to customers expecting delivery tomorrow when there's 2 year's work to do to get it out the door...

As long as the stock price keeps going up, little things like customers and worker bees are merely incidental.

Anything else is commie.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

It ain't the Sovs that present the biggest danger to Europe

Of course not. How much of a danger can a non-existent country pose?

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

Yes, thank you. I should be more careful in conjugating my verbs.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

If it wasn't for the unconstitutional wage freeze, we wouldn't have been relying on employer-subsidized health care.

Please indicate precisely what part of the Constitution that violates.

On the bright side though, the Allies did win the war. As the Arsenal of Democracy, the US produced enough materiel to bury the Germans and the Japanese. We also avoided the sort of rampant inflation that caused great economic problems during and after the Civil War and WWI. But maybe we should have stuck to our principles instead. Do you speak any German or Japanese?

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

TARP was chump change. Look at what the Federal Reserve did.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[turgid]

It's just the Invisible Hand's way of telling you that you need to be changed. And after all, what could be more important than placating the forces that govern the Invisible Hand?

"It's nothing poysonal, it's only business," as they say.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[CubicleZombie]

Then buy some stock.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[turgid]

Because the amount of stock I could afford to buy on my meager salary and savings in this broken economy is so trivial that I'd starve and lose my house by the end of the week.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[the_B0fh]

Uh, company provided healthcare came from WW2, and not what you believed.

And what's this about the greatest nation on earth?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[SleazyRidr]

No one is trying to insinuate that the style of government shouldn't change with the times. (OK, some people are, but try to ignore them.) What shouldn't change is what you stand for, and what you want your country to achieve. IT might seem heartless, but allowing people to fail has served the USA quite well over the last couple hundred years. For all its faults, the USA has been a significant world power of the last few decades. Many people feel as though they are sacrificing what made them great and following the lead of other nations with far less presence on the world stage. Acting as though those people don't exist or don't have an argument is not productive and will only lead to a widening of the division currently tearing the country apart.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

IT might seem heartless, but allowing people to fail has served the USA quite well over the last couple hundred years.

Nobody is talking about not letting people fail. What they're talking about is a safety net if they do. Just because you'll get medical care even if you fail, doesn't mean there are no consequences. I'd rather be middle class than poor. That's plenty of incentive.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[HornWumpus]

Reminds me of my first employer. Their group insurance was more then my open market rate. I spread the word, which caused all sorts of problems as everybody under 30 started declining the offered insurance.

Turns out the CFO's kid was sick and he preferred his employees to pay for his expense. He would have fired anybody else with a sick kid. He did direct middle management to find an excuse to fire a diabetic. Not that he said it out loud.

Would have been my ass if they knew I was behind the other young people declining. They just knew I was the first.

The whole insurance industry is full of bastards.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[HornWumpus]

Where I live (N Cal) the illegals in front of Home Depot won't work for less then $100/day.

You can hire a suburban kid for less, but they won't work half as hard.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[lsatenstein]

At least they get health coverage for the next 18 months.

If they can afford it. The charming thing about COBRA is that you get hit paying 100% of premiums when you can least afford it. Heaven forbid that we become a bunch of commies like those Canucks. I've heard that even the snow is red up there.

I am a Canadian, and government medicare has been a blessing. -- an absolute blessing. While I was in mid-age, my daughter suddenly succumbed to chronic MS. My group insurance covered canes, wheel chair, crutches, and some drug costs to a limit. But with the recession, it was a handshake and I was on my own fully.
The government plan kicks in if private insurance does not cover enough or if there is no private insurance. I did not go bankrupt, lose my house, burn through my life savings to cover drugs. My daughter has daily injections to take, covered by my income taxes and government insurance. Drug costs to the tune of $30,000 per year. Our cost-- $1200/yr.
There are some adjustments to make with government insurance. There is triage if you go to a hospital. Urgent attention is now, immediate, (faster than an I/O interrupt), mid importance (broken arm, etc,) may take a few hours, or if there is a need for some surgeries (cataracts) may take a a few short weeks awaiting an operating room availability. Would private for profit Insurance and treatment prolong my life? I think not. I can give you other stories as well, but for the RED care, I will take it anyday.

Here is a second final story. My son learned Russian, liked the language so much that he applied for a job in Moscow. The first night there, he has severe excrutiating backpains -- kidney stones. The hotel located the nearest medical clinic. He went there, and was treated with ultrasound, painkillers and admitted. No questions asked about papers, insurance, et. Everyone is insured so the state does not bother with that costly aspect of fee collection. It cost my son all of $20.00 for flowers as a gift to the attending staff.

So, which would I prefer to have, your system or our system.

Wrong

[u38cg]

This should have been done by the previous management. Dell is running a company whose business is in serious decline where no-one really knwos where the market will be in five to ten years time. Doing anything else would be commercial suicide.

Re:Wrong

[rmdingler]

Nobody wants to have to lay off 15% of its employees (103,300 total:Wiki).

When market forces dictate your primary product sales growth is endangered, you have to change or die.

Dell's recent spate of acquisitions is an attempt to diversify and keep pace with HP and Lenovo. Many job losses will be duplications, I suspect.

Re:Wrong

[Herkum01]

If this were done by the previous management, the stock price would have gone up and M. Dell would not have been able to purchase the company. Hence, leaving the company limping along was probably the plan all along.

Just another way management can screw over the stockholders.

Re:Wrong

[ppanon]

Um it said in the title that Dell is now a privet company there are no stockholders to screw

Guess you missed the part where he implied deliberate mismanagement to keep the stock price down when it was still public in order to keep market capitalization lower and make the leveraged buy-out possible. I'm not saying that he's right, but if he was then his characterization that it was a failure to uphold the fiduciary duty to those shareholders seems reasonable. Finding enough evidence to prove it in a court of law as part of a (past) shareholder's lawsuit would be the tricky part.

Re:Wrong

[Xest]

Yeah, this is probably one of the most stupid Slashdot summaries ever, but then, it's based on an article from The Register so I guess I'd be a fool to expect anything other than sensationalist propaganda.

The fact is that the alternative to Dell reinventing itself which yes, involves massive layoffs, is that all 110,000 employees lose their jobs instead. Surely it's better to lose under 15% of the workforce than end up with the whole workforce screwed?

Or even worse, the whole thing could've been asset stripped including the pension fund raided if Icahn had gotten his way.

Re:Wrong

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Nobody wants to have to lay off 15% of its employees

Massive layoffs from time to time are useful pour encourager les autres.

Re:Wrong

[capedgirardeau]

Of course people want to lay off 15% of the workforce. That is very typical in leveraged buyout processes and part of the plan from square one.

You are take out big loans to buy the company, knowing you are going to immediately gut it maximize profits in the short term so you can pay off the loans. Then you continue to milk what remains as profit, letting the business decline knowing you can sell off chunks to get the last drop of value out of the company, and then at the very end, when you have loaded it up with debt again, you declare it bankrupt and walk away.

Re:Wrong

[bberens]

Yeah, the last statement in the summary about "at least the shareholders got to cash out" seemed a bit dubious. Why wouldn't the shareholders have wanted this? Your response I think is spot on.

Re:Wrong

[pnutjam]

reading comprehension fail, troll, or astroturfer?

Re:Wrong

[epine]

when you have loaded it up with debt again, you declare it bankrupt and walk away

Walk away from what, exactly? The only parties extending you credit in the final chapter are parties who have already padded their fees to account for the looming insolvency risk.

In your economic model, is it the case that stupid creditors grow on trees?

Corporations have a natural life cycle. So they die ugly? It has to happen, one way or another.

Re:Wrong

[tlhIngan]

Dell is running a company whose business is in serious decline where no-one really knwos where the market will be in five to ten years time.

Uh, the IT sector has changed drasticly every 5-10 years, so no one knows where anything is headed.

10 years ago, Symbian, PalmOS and Windows Mobile were king (hell, Microsoft released PocketPC 2003, considered to be first "real" version of Windows Mobile competitive with PalmOS). 5 years later, they were in serious decline (iPhone, 2007). And yet, during those times, all three were in serious peaks - customers demanded Windows Mobile, PalmOS devs were cranking out serious apps, S30 and S60 were popular phone OSes.

10 years before that, Windows was maturing, with Windows 3.1 being the in thing. Except for gaming, of course, since they still wanted DOS. Even 5 years later many games were still DOS focused, but were transitioning to Windows. It took a few years after that before gaming under Windows was the norm with Windows 2000 having decent DirectX support, and Windows XP coming out that forced everyone to adapt. (There were still games under that era that refused to run under NT based OSes).

Who knows what happens in 5-10 years? About the only certainty is that there'll still be demand for computers as we know them - either desktops or laptops. A much smaller demand as many uses of them are replaced by smartphones and tablets, but you'll still need them. Though instead of everyone needing their own, it'll probably be reduced to a shared PC.

Heck, 10 years ago people were saying consoles just don't have it to do "serious" gaming.

Re:Wrong

[ebno-10db]

*cough* Nokia *cough*

Re:Wrong

[schnell]

Just to make sure that I understand the Slashdot logic correctly:

1. When public companies lay off employees, they are evil because they are screwing the employees to benefit the greedy shareholders
2. When public companies don't lay off employees, they are evil because they are screwing the shareholders

The fact is that slashing employees is SOP after a buyout. LBOs are a rich person's financial game, and it generally benefits none of the stakeholders except the big investors (i.e. Michael Dell). If you haven't already, read this book to get a feel for how and why these things are done.

Re:Wrong

[Talderas]

He's not right in the least bit. It would require perfect knowledge of how the stock price would react to the layoffs and their scope. There are two outcomes from the layoff. Either stock prices rise or they drop. The use was assuming the layoffs would indicate that stock prices would rise thus "screwing" investors out of value. However in the other hand had the layoffs been done before the buyout then the accusation would be that they were done to screw over the shareholders.

Re:Wrong

[mjwalshe]

And probably asset strip it and load up the company with dodgy debt and other financial instruments so it can be flogged to some dozy fund mangers in a few years see the Debenhams group for an example of how this scam works

Re:Wrong

[mjwalshe]

But they could have done that as a public company just as easily as a private one

Re:Wrong

[Tough Love]

I'm confused by the plan, layoffs or not. PC peddling is a sunset business, that horse will not get up and run again. Lenovo will grab whatever life is left in the business, squashing Dell.

Re:Wrong

[Xest]

Depends who they're getting rid of. If Michael Dell wants to give up on fantasies of competing in the tablet/phone marketplace because he knows Dell just doesn't have what it takes to compete with Apple and Samsung in that sort of area then he'll want to get rid of people related to that. As a public company though try explaining to investors who have a hard on for anything "mobile" right now that you're ditching mobile when everyone else is treating it as the only possible route a tech company could ever go down right now.

Re:Wrong

[loom_weaver]

Laptops will be around for while. Desktops not so much.

I think it's a matter of time where one's smartphone will operate both as a smartphone in the traditional sense and as a portable work computer. Plug it into a docking station at the office to get the big screen and keyboard.

Re:Wrong

[Darinbob]

Yes, the issue that a privately owned company is doing this is strange. Big layoffs are the sort of thing that public companies do all the time, and they're rewarded by the shareholders. Often avoiding the layoffs will cause the shareholders via the board of directors to dump the CEO and get someone else on board who can follow directions. Private companies are those who can afford to take some short term risks.

Re:Wrong

[ppanon]

You make a good argument as well. What a lawyer for a class action lawsuit would need is some indication that the executive suite, prior to the buyout, had requested/obtained some simulations/estimations of the effects from layoffs of the same magnitude on short and long term profits and revenue and found that profits would increase. Then, even if those simulations were incorrect, there would be evidence that the executive had failed in its fiduciary duty to shareholders.

Re:Wrong

[Stuarticus]

Obviously you've never worked anywhere where it's happened. Morale will be rock bottom.

Re:Wrong

[samwichse]

Um it said in the title that Dell is now a privet company

And Michael Dell is... A SHRUBBERY!

Now that it is private?

[alexander_686]

Of course, with a private sponsor in charge of the recently public company, the only thing that matters now is maximizing cash flows ......

How is it different now that they are private? Don’t public firms try to maximize profits? I know back in the 80’s, LBO tried to generate as much as cash flow because they have mortgage everything and were up to their eyeballs in debt. Dell is nowhere near that.

No, this is because Mr. Dell wants to take Dell Inc. in a new direction as fast as he can – away from the low profits of a commodity business.

Re:Now that it is private?

[jmauro]

The difference is if the company was public all the metrics that the big financial companies would use would go completely haywire during the layoffs, causing the stock price to drop like a rock (even if it was good for the company in the long run). As such, once private you can do these sorts of maneuvers without the financial markets screaming bloody murder, since you're not tradable.

Re:Now that it is private?

[Anonymous Coward]

News Flash: Businesses exist to make a profit. This is not a charity. He is acting rationally.

Re:Now that it is private?

[murdocj]

Is this really true? I seem to recall the markets applauding big companies that "slashed costs" by layoffs, even though the long-term results might be disastrous.

Re:Now that it is private?

[Sockatume]

To serve their stakeholders, private companies must maximise net revenue, while publicly traded companies must maximise share price. The means to achieve those two goals are not always the same, because very often the market price is decided by idiots.

Re:Now that it is private?

[Junta]

On the one hand, layoffs are frequently considered a 'good thing' by investors, if they believe the company may still be capable of functioning afterward. I don't think Dell is in this boat, but layoffs have upon occasion been taken as a sign of the end times for a particular enterprise.

As to your point about taking it in a new direction as fast as he can, away from a commodity business; the challenge is Dell has yet to show capability in any candidate market. Investors eat up announcements by IBM for decreasing stake in the hardware business because they have shown data that they have already established themselves in other markets. Contrast to when Apotheker announced an intent for him to take HP away from hardware and be a software company. HP's stock took a nosedive because they were not seen as a credible software company, but giving up on their bread and butter to chase a dream. Even if that hardware business isn't as profitable, it's better than nothing.

Re:Now that it is private?

[ebno-10db]

I seem to recall the markets applauding big companies that "slashed costs" by layoffs, even though the long-term results might be disastrous.

Believe it or not, once upon a time layoffs would cause a company's stock price to fall. The markets figured, usually correctly, that layoffs meant the company was in trouble. In Dell's case I'm afraid the layoffs might be necessary, as the company is in serious trouble, but when profitable companies have needless layoffs, it's ridiculous. You can almost always make the company's finances look better in the short term with layoffs.

The best analogy I've heard (and this from a serious business analyst) is that many of these companies are like the participants in a body building contest. For those that don't know, they usually take lots of diuretics and what not for a few days before the contest to increase muscle definition. It also leaves them weak as hell. You could probably knock them over with a feather. That's the way a lot of companies are these days. Superficially they look great on the balance sheet, but they're actually quite weak when it comes to anything beyond the next quarter.

Re:Now that it is private?

[MightyYar]

I don't think layoffs are a problem at a public company, but revenue decreases seem to elicit a negative response from stockholders. The market punishes companies that are trying to downsize, even if it means better long-term viability. If these layoffs will result in reduced revenue, the market would probably crush the stock price.

Re:Now that it is private?

[DoofusOfDeath]

I would think that private companies can maximize whatever the hell they want: short-term profit, long-term profit, the number of frogs in Ohio, etc.

Re:Now that it is private?

[MightyYar]

Mostly I agree, but I'd add that many public companies also need to concentrate on their dividend - so it isn't quite so black and white.

Re:Now that it is private?

[alexander_686]

I will have to disagree with you there. First, I think you mean earnings, not “net revenue”. Second, there is no difference if 1 person owns the firm or 1 million – the purpose is to maximize value for the owners. The calculations of both earnings and value are the same; it is just that for the private firm the numbers are more opaque to the public.

Well, value is a bit different. You post the accounting numbers and get the consensus value (from the stock market) back for public firms. For private firms you don’t get that feedback.

Re:Now that it is private?

[alexander_686]

Slashing costs can take different forms.

Are you slashing costs because you business is going down the tubes? You trim costs to match reduced revenue. To overstate the case, the PC market is going down the tubes.

Are you trying to make yourself look good? There are companies that need to lose weight. Some do it via the crash diet method – not very effective but it looks good in the short run. Some do long term cuts. In Dell’s case they can cut a good number of accountants because they no longer need to be SOX complaint.

In Dell’s case, it is because they want to head in a different direction. I know some of their divisions have been hiring and are continuing to hire as Dell expands into new markets. I am going to guess that over 5 years that these will more or less net to zero. (I am making a lot of assumptions here – like Mr. Dell’s plan works and Dell grows.)

Re:Now that it is private?

[alexander_686]

Not in Dell’s case. Private does not mean personal property. Dell has other owners then Mr. Dell and owes other people fiduciary duty – such as the bond holders. So not frogs, and there is less of a difference between short term and long term profits.

Risk is one thing that Mr. Dell has better control, as in “let’s dump or PC business and strike out for new grounds.” Dell could squeeze a lot of profits out of a declining PC business at low risk. Warren Buffett was able to do so with Berkshire Hathaway – you know – the company that made broadcloth.

Re:Now that it is private?

[RabidReindeer]

Not in Dell’s case. Private does not mean personal property. Dell has other owners then Mr. Dell and owes other people fiduciary duty – such as the bond holders. So not frogs, and there is less of a difference between short term and long term profits.

Risk is one thing that Mr. Dell has better control, as in “let’s dump or PC business and strike out for new grounds.” Dell could squeeze a lot of profits out of a declining PC business at low risk. Warren Buffett was able to do so with Berkshire Hathaway – you know – the company that made broadcloth.

And how do you know that the other major investors in Dell aren't frog-lovers?

Re:Now that it is private?

[RabidReindeer]

Mostly I agree, but I'd add that many public companies also need to concentrate on their dividend - so it isn't quite so black and white.

Dividends are more popular these days than formerly, but not as much, I think as back before about 1980. A lot of companies are focussed more on growth than on dividends.

Re:Now that it is private?

[murdocj]

The PC market is not "going down the tubes". It's saturated. People will continue to buy replacement PC's / laptops, but the demand has stabilized, and people are now buying replacements, rather than new units. 5 years from now people will still be buying replacement PCs.

Re:Now that it is private?

[Talderas]

Cash flow is similar but different from profit. It's even more important than profit. In general, your cash flow is a much better indicator of the healthiness of the business because it represents the ability to purchase goods and make investments. Dell recently made a lot of acquisitions which cuts severely into their cash flow. When you hear that they're trying to maximize cash flow there's trying to recover a drop, likely significant, in cash flow due to all those acquisitions.

Cash flow represents the company's ability to fund its operations. Let's look at an example. Let's say a company has $5,000,000 in cash. They produce widgits which sell for $10,000 and cost $5,000 to produce meaning each unit sold has a profit of $5,000. Right now the company has the ability to produce 1,000 widgits a year and has currently has 250 widgits built and delivered on net terms (a profit of $1,250,000). The company is seeing demand for their widgits and they can't produce enough to meet the demand. So they get a loan to expand their operation by another 100 units and spend $4,000,000 of their cash. They now have $1,000,000 in cash and the capacity for 1,100 widgits a year. The problem the company has is that it can only produce 200 widgits with its on hand cash which is only 18% of their annual production. Translated that means they can run the business a maximum production for just over 2 months. At this point its entirely on accounts receivables to hound the buyers for them to pay for the widgit. That $1,250,000 could run production for another couple months and if they fail to get those payments in the company is going to have to lower production to preserve cash (taking loans for operating expenses is not usually a good idea). That means fewer units produced which means fewer employee work hours which means employee hours are cut or employees are laid off.

Re:Now that it is private?

[mlts]

The PC market isn't going down the tubes. It just has reached a point where it isn't growing, because there are so many players for that market. However, even now, the desktop isn't going away. It is a content creation device while tablets and smartphones are intended to be content consumption items. Yes, in theory one can use a BlueTooth keyboard with a tablet, but that tends to be a cautious exception.

It wouldn't be hard for Dell or PC companies to revive the desktop market. It could be little things like putting a copy of the OS install media into a read-only flash drive on the motherboard (not a new concept -- some Tandy AT compatibles had MS-DOS in ROM.), having a read-only recovery ROM that boots Linux or Windows PE with the ability to have updated AV definitions on a USB flash drive.

There can perhaps be bigger jumps. A lot of people use their desktops/laptops as "servers" where the machine holds their synced music, eBooks, Quicken documents, Office items, etc. Why not add server functionality, such as a hypervisor so one can have different VMs for tasks, a smarter drive controller which can actively deduplicate present logical drives, snapshot, perhaps even autotier. Backups could be handled by the controller by attaching a USB drive, and saving the snapshots off similar to how it is done in ZFS. Plus, this gives a layer of abstraction so a hardware upgrade would just mean moving the VMs to the new machine rather than having to reinstall and reload apps.

Yes, desktops/laptops are stagnant, but definitely not dead. There is plenty of room for innovation.

Re:Now that it is private?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Rather than continuing to hemorrhage (somebody else's) cash waiting for a resurgence that probably will never come, calve off now and save money now.

"Anything that must happen eventually should happen immediately."

Re:Now that it is private?

[MightyYar]

Well, either way - shrinking revenue is rarely tolerated on the public markets, and that is exactly what Dell needs to do in order to remain viable.

Re:Now that it is private?

[alexander_686]

No, earnings trump cash flow. Or if we want to be technical, “future free cash flow to equity”. I can point to great investment situations where the company had low or negative cash flow. I can point to situations where a company had great cash flow but was a poor investment. A company can take out a loan, sell assets or inventory at fire sale prices, or delay routine maintenance – All of these actions bump up cash flow without improving the overall outlook of the company.

I am not sure if your example works. Would not the company be more valuable after the expansion? After all, doesn’t the company now have higher earning potential? And of course the answer is maybe. In this case the companies’ Acid test (cash / current liabilities) goes down, indicating a higher risk of bankruptcy. So the next question is: by how much? There are many industries were 2 months of operating capital is the norm.

Cash flow is required to operate the business; it does not mean the business is growing. In the short term cash flow and earnings can go in opposite directions. (However, if this happens for the long term you need to dig deeper. It is a sign of fraud.)

Re:Now that it is private?

[Grishnakh]

The PC market isn't going down the tubes. It just has reached a point where it isn't growing,

To American corporations, it's the same thing. If you're not constantly expanding at a high rate, then you're "dying". There's no such thing as being stable.

Re:Now that it is private?

[mlts]

The ironic thing is when a market hits a stable point and competitors are stagnant, that's when you toss money into R&D and start reworking a market segment. Before Apple came in, the cell phone market was stagnant (RAZR v3 anyone?)

The desktop market is ripe for this, and all it takes is a significant step by one company with a must-have feature, and everyone (including the big enterprises) will be either knocking on their door, or trying to build something similar at a feverish pace.

Re:Now that it is private?

[Grishnakh]

Sounds good in theory, but in practice I don't see how that'd work in the PC space. Enterprises aren't going to pay Apple prices for desktop machines, and Apple hasn't done much in that segment anyway; they're good at making things for and marketing them to consumers, but not business; they've never done very well there. The real innovation that could be done with PCs is all in software, and that's mainly up to Microsoft since everyone has voluntary limited themselves to using MS software in business. A new software competitor can't usurp them because all the businesses are locked into the MS ecosystem (Exchange etc.), and anything really innovative would break the way things work with MS-ware. There's nothing new to innovate with hardware; no one's going to pay tons of money for a fancy new-style PC case when they can get something from HP or Lenovo dirt cheap (in the quantities of thousands or tens of thousands that businesses order PCs in).

Re:Now that it is private?

[Darinbob]

The typical case with public companies is that stock prices go up when layoffs are announced.

Re:Now that it is private?

[HornWumpus]

Every market sees diminishing returns.

But there might still be a few more must have innovations for the PCs. Will everybody 'need' a 3d display? I doubt it, but marketers do funny things.

But they still need more H1-B Visas, right?

[TWiTfan]

I bet he'll still go to Congress this year and tell them that he needs more visa to import more indentured servants.

Re:But they still need more H1-B Visas, right?

[TWiTfan]

No, real IT workers can quit their jobs or ask for a raise without fear of being deported.

And?

[Dan East]

PC sales have been steadily declining for years. Large PC maker lays off employees. And? Same thing happened at record player companies. And typewriter companies. And factories that produced film. If you want to complain about something, the complain about how Dell couldn't turn itself into Apple or Google. Laying off people is the only way to save the company at this point in time.

Re:And?

[Kjella]

The PC business is still huge, but what Dell was built on was rapid custom-assembly of components. Between integration and computers out-perfoming the needs it's much more back to the traditional "we need five million laptops of model X" production lines. You even see Apple moving away from the traditional components to custom made-to-order formats that only fit the Mac Book Pro or Mac Pro. Lots of companies still makes lots of money on the PC, but Dell is struggling to find where they can add value to the process.

Re:And?

[bberens]

I agree with your sentiment. The story to me is to speculate on why they waited until the company went private and what new products and services they intend to offer in the future.

Only 12% of workforce

[snsh]

A tech company laying off around 10% of its workforce isn't drastically shrinking. They're just doing routine housekeeping.

Quality, Too

[Akratist]

In my personal experience, their quality has been declining in recent years (poor internal design, bad fit and finish, on the boxes by them that I've had to use). A shift to mobile computing is part of the blame, probably, but I don't think the Dell brand has the same strength in recent years as it had in the past.

Re:Quality, Too

[DoofusOfDeath]

I've read from others that it depends on which product line you buy.

Re:Quality, Too

[Grishnakh]

Well the business laptop product line seems to have totally gone down the shitter. I have a 2008-era Dell Latitude E6400 for my personal laptop and it's excellent: metal case, sleek, all-black businesslike design, excellent 1440x900 screen (14" model), extremely easy to open and repair or replace components (single screw on back metal panel, and the keyboard is the best I've used on a laptop, even better than the many Thinkpads I've had. It's a great laptop. The E6410/6510 that replaced it was also great, just a small update to move from the Core2Duo series CPUs to the Corei5/i7 CPUs). Then they replaced those with the E6420/6520 and then E6430/6530 models, and they're shit. I have a E6420 for my work-issued laptop. It's butt-ugly (rounded corners, silver-and-gray color scheme, and ugly orange border around the keyboard), the keyboard has a worse layout than before, and worst of all the screen is total shit: they changed it to a 1366x768 wide-screen panel. The older model has far more vertical resolution, and the panel overall has more area. The new model has a noticably smaller screen, but the laptop itself is bigger, and the screen has a much larger bezel around it.

Re:Quality, Too

[CBravo]

So we fitted our company with a few racks of R310 Dell servers a couple of years ago. But they are too expensive on memory so we took the effort to put it in by hand. Now, two years later, some motherboards are failing and we cannot get a motherboard at a normal price. Why again are we buying Dell? They are not cheap by any metric. I might as well buy something like Supermicro for less (and I don't have to spend time doing stuff by hand).

And I don't even mention the bad **** sata controllers that don't work with SSDs (buffer underruns which hose mdraid). Oh wait, I did now. And the bad network cards that kept freezing Linux' kernel (when we bought some intel nics the frozen kernels were history). And don't think you will get support for anything past failing harddrives (and we replaced 20% of those too but I think we cannot blame Dell for that).

Re:Quality, Too

[red crab]

So thats' more about poor aesthetics than quality. You will almost never see the quality of any electronics manufacturer going doing down as such, given the frequent advances in technology that are so freely accessible. Its very unlikely that they would be cutting cost on components to maintain their profits.

Re:Quality, Too

[Grishnakh]

Did you miss my biggest rant there? The screen is smaller and crappier than in the older model. That's not aesthetics, that's a cheaper, shittier component. So yes, they did cut costs on components.

Also, the case is all-plastic now, no metal. That's cheaper and shittier too, not purely aesthetic. Yes, it's uglier too, but it's also cheaper.

Re:Quality, Too

[bdo19]

Mostly agree with you, but there were multiple screen resolution options on both the E6400 and the E6420. I am writing this on a 6420 with a 1600x900 display. Your employer cheaped out with the 1366x768 option.

Re:Quality, Too

[bdo19]

Why again are we buying Dell?

IMHO you buy Dell for the support that is available (albeit usually at additional cost) along with them. If you're not going to maintain your service contracts, then I agree Dell may not offer you a lot of value over Supermicro et al.

On a side note, I think the R310 is about the cheapest server they make, so it wouldn't be fair to judge the company based on those alone.

Re:Quality, Too

[CBravo]

You mean that they can't get something simple right? ;-). About their service: In my world where we prefer 2 minutes downtime over 8 hours, I need hot spares anyway so buying extra guarantees is not of this time anymore.

This is slanted wrong

[rjejr]

Usually when big companies make big moves like this their stock price goes up as they are cutting costs. This article makes it osund like it would have been a bad thing to fire people while it was still a publicly traed company. Publicly traded companies fire people all the time, it' snot better or worse or different now that they are private.

Re:This is slanted wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with this comment. This is slanted wrong. Public companies have share holders to answer to. Share holders who probably bought the shares to make money. A private holder, a guy who is already rich, he can do what he wants. Maybe try to make money. Maybe try a long term growth strategy that won't make money for a few years. Maybe keep people on the payroll who should be layed off now, just so they will be ready to go to work in 6 months. I'd be way more critical of what public companies do to make money than I would be critical of private companies.

Re:15,000

[Anonymous Coward]

why are you assuming the layoffs are in low-wages-india and not high-wage-usa?

Curious about product lines

[DoofusOfDeath]

I'm considering buying an M6800 workstation-class laptop from them. But it's only worthwhile if they'll be able to honor a 3-year warranty.

This uncertainty might cost them my business. Their only saving grace is that their primary competitor for my business, HP, is also causing me to doubt.

To make an omelette...

[The123king]

you have to break a few eggs. Dell is one of the american computing greats, and it would be a very sad day to see it taken over or file for bankruptcy. So in order to turn a company with more money leaks than a welsh allotment, you have to fire people and rearrange departments. Apple did it in 1997, Microsoft will do it in the next few years (hopefully), IBM's been doing it since IBM made computers. If Dell wants to become more than just a hardware manufacturer and OEM for Windows, they need to cut back and re-evolve. I have great expectations of Dell since it's gone private. I hope my expectations are realised...

We are ALL Temporary employees

[Moof123]

The head of engineering at a former job told the crowd after a nasty layoff "We are ALL temporary employees" several times over.

Get used to it. In most jobs your loyalty is purchased in 2 week increments. Check your contract, or rather your lack thereof.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[ubersoldat2k7]

That's one of the reasons I cannot feel any sort of loyalty to any company I've worked for ever and I laugh at those who do.

I'm a "soldier of fortune" (yes, I've been called that in pre-job/post-job interviews) but it's all business at the end of the day and your beloved company won't feel any regret of firing my or your ass when the gods of the spreadsheets declare their thirst for blood. Hell, even Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, which the guy founded.

Also, all that crap about corporate values: I don't give a fuck! The only way I'm staying somewhere is because I'm either better paid or because I have better conditions, if that's not the case, I'm gone. And so do you.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[some old guy]

That's probably the best piece of advice you could ever give any kid embarking on his/her career. My son is still in middle school, and he's free of any delusions about employer-employee relationships.

In a sense we're all just prostitutes peddling our time and assets to sleazy, uncaring creeps.

This is in no way meant to be insulting to prostitutes. I can respect a good honest hooker.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[ebno-10db]

Get used to it.

Fuck getting used to it. You should deal with the reality of it, but "getting used to it" means thinking of it as something that's reasonable. That's bull. A few decades ago this was not the norm. Large successful companies didn't do it. IBM started a "no layoffs" policy during the Great Depression and IIRC they did okay afterwards. This "we are all temporary employees" has nothing to do with any essential new business requirements, and everything to do with politics and a shift back towards the Gilded Age.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[RabidReindeer]

Our employees are our greatest assets.

And we think we'll liquidate some assets today.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[bzipitidoo]

It doesn't have to be that way. You talk like companies must have absolute freedom to hire and fire instantly, for any reason at all, because staying competitive demands it. Even if a massive layoff is the equivalent of hacking off their left arm to lose weight, they deserve and need the option to do that. If a person did that for a reason like that, the rest of us would commit them to a mental institution. But before things reached that point, friends would likely notice that something is very wrong, and try to help.

I don't know whether this move by Dell is the equivalent of liposuction or maiming, but I suspect the latter. They've gone to all the trouble of screening and training these 15,000 people, and now they're going to throw that all away. If this is part of a plan to change their areas of business, why not spin off those sections of the company instead of destroy them? Or are they saying their hiring and planning decisions really were that poor and corrupt, and now they have to clean house? Blame is very likely to be laid at the door of shrinking desktop sales, of course, but that only raises more questions. Why didn't they see this coming? Or, what did they do wrong to cause desktop sales to shrink? I rather think people are finding the classic desktop PC simply too bulky, noisy, and possibly power hungry. Peek inside a case, and you see a large volume of unused and wasted space. Cabling is another mess. Can't some of these cables be consolidated? At the least merge the mouse and keyboard cables, like on MacIntoshes? Power the display and computer from the same power supply, instead of having separate power supplies for PC and monitor? The tower configuration saves on footprint, but that little innovation is over 20 years old. Where are the mini ATX, Nano-ITX and smaller size PCs? Or, why haven't they moved more aggresively into tablets?

Whatever the reason, this rumbling about massive layoffs doesn't inspire confidence from customers. How many people, right here on Slashdot, have already said this move makes them less likely to buy a Dell? I recall at least 2. Dude, you shouldn't have bought from a suicidally shrinking company that's lost its way?

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[floobedy]

Fuck getting used to it. You should deal with the reality of it, but "getting used to it" means thinking of it as something that's reasonable. That's bull.

It certainly is reasonable. A company which sees its business decline, needs to lay off employees, or it will go out of business and everyone will get laid off.

Unless you as a consumer (and many other consumers besides) are willing to commit to buying Dells every few years no matter what, Dell may undergo a decline in sales and may need to lay off employees.

Large successful companies didn't do it.

Dell is not a successful company, or it wouldn't be in these circumstances. The question is what the large unsuccessful companies must do.

Large unsuccessful companies have always laid off employees in the face of declines. There is no way around it. For example, GM had one million employees in the 1960s and has 1/4th that number now. The railroad industry was shedding massive numbers of employees in the 1970s. The shipping industry was shedding massive numbers of employees after containerization arrived. IBM was shedding massive numbers of jobs during the 1990s, as mainframes did poorly. This has always been a part of capitalism.

I'm not a young man, and I knew an old guy who was a telegraph operator for much of his life. Unless you, as a consumer, are willing to pay about $1 for 10 bytes of data transmitted, it was necessary to lay him off, and for him to get a different job. Unless you as a consumer are willing to pay far more than is necessary to support redundant jobs, layoffs will be necessary. It isn't even up to the company. It's a matter of accounting. No business can take large losses and survive for very long. If layoffs are disallowed then the business will just go under more quickly.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[ebno-10db]

The discussion you commented on was not about Dell in particular, whose layoffs may be necessary. However those "temporary jobs" are also with successful, profitable companies in stable or growing industries. That's the part that's bull.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys are seriously jaded. Having worked 20+ years in software development my experience has been very different.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[Grishnakh]

Fuck getting used to it. You should deal with the reality of it, but "getting used to it" means thinking of it as something that's reasonable. That's bull. A few decades ago this was not the norm. Large successful companies didn't do it. IBM started a "no layoffs" policy during the Great Depression and IIRC they did okay afterwards. This "we are all temporary employees" has nothing to do with any essential new business requirements, and everything to do with politics and a shift back towards the Gilded Age.

We're living in the present, not the past. Why would you not want to "get used to" the way things are? It'll help you deal with modern realities better than sitting on your ass, pining for the "good old days" which are long gone and are not coming back, no matter how much you might wish them to.

Yes, we're moving back to the Gilded Age, whether you like it or not. There's absolutely nothing that can be done to change that. You might as well get used to it.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[Grishnakh]

I rather think people are finding the classic desktop PC simply too bulky, noisy, and possibly power hungry. Peek inside a case, and you see a large volume of unused and wasted space.

This is an unfortunate byproduct of high modularity. You could make things better integrated, but only with custom parts which can't be exchanged with other machines so easily. Unfortunately, the PC industry has never been very good at standardization, and the last thing they did well was the ATX standard. After that, they tried the BTX standard and that flopped.

Cabling is another mess. Can't some of these cables be consolidated?

Probably not. A lot of cables now are high-speed serial interface cables and can't just be merged with other cables. They're also going different places. The hard drive has two cables going to it, one from the motherboard (data), and the other from the power supply (power). How are you going to consolidate those? Run power through the motherboard?

At the least merge the mouse and keyboard cables, like on MacIntoshes?

Great, now instead of being able to use any keyboard and mouse you want, you're stuck with the ones that came with your computer? Who wants that? If you're talking about just putting a USB port on the keyboard for the mouse to plug into, that does make sense and a lot of keyboards already do that.

Power the display and computer from the same power supply, instead of having separate power supplies for PC and monitor?

The Coleco Adam did something like this: they put the power supply in the printer. So you couldn't run the computer without the printer. The thing bombed.

Also, what happens when you plug a second (or third, or fourth) monitor in? Your power supply wasn't designed for that. What if you replace the monitor with a larger monitor? Again, it won't work. Finally, it's unlikely you'd be able to make them share a cable this way without screwing up the HDMI signal.

The tower configuration saves on footprint, but that little innovation is over 20 years old. Where are the mini ATX, Nano-ITX and smaller size PCs?

Finally, you make a suggestion that makes some real sense. However, they do have these: go look at Dell's and HP's and Lenovo's "SFF" (small form factor) desktop machines. They're not that small, however, but they are an improvement on the standard ATX minitower. But then they have the problem I mentioned above: lack of standardization. They use standard optical and hard drives of course, but the motherboards and power supplies are nonstandard, so if you have a problem you can forget about swapping it out. They work well in large corporate settings because the company will buy tons of the same model (or same model line), so the IT department will have spare parts on hand for repairs, but for individuals they're not so great unless you like paying $400 for a replacement power supply.

Or, why haven't they moved more aggresively into tablets?

Because Samsung beat them to it, and because there's no real profit there unless you control the whole software ecosystem like Apple does (and MS tries to do, but fails).

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[Grishnakh]

The problem with unions is they tend to result in horrifically unproductive and overpaid employees. My coworkers were just talking about their previous building where the janitors were unionized and refused to clean piles of dead cockroaches because that somehow wasn't their job, the water fountains had Legionaire's Disease, and the janitors drove high-end Mercedes because they got paid so much. I remember another story about an automotive assembly line where a manager noticed trucks going by missing a critical part on the assembly line, so he went to the employee who was supposed to install it and found out he ran out of parts, so he just stopped. The manager tried to go get more parts to supply him but the employee threatened to file a union grievance since that's not supposed to be the manager's job. Unionization just seems to result in people being turned into mindless automatons, incapable of doing anything at all outside their narrowly-defined job description, and makes the company completely uncompetitive. They worked back in the 50s when there was no such thing as foreign competition, but if you try it now, the companies will just go under as everyone buys from Chinese competitors instead.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[Anonymous Coward]

You just need to find the right company. Usually those with 1000+ employees are not the companies that build loyalty. I have worked for several companies of 100-200 employees and at that size you can build loyalty. You usually know the owner and shareholders. You know everyone you work with. You begin to care for fellow employees. If the owners treat you right, you begin to care for them and actually WANT to make them money. They may be known for passing the money down or providing nice extras... whatever the case, it starts with the owners. Public companies eventually have public owners and therefore the owners don't give a shit about you. Smaller private companies have owners that actually know the employees and (some) care about their well being.

For all the bitching /. does about management/companies not giving a shit about employees, we seem to forget that many people work for companies that have publicly traded stock. When is the last time you heard a shareholder happy that a company missed earnings because they gave substantial raises to employees, or threw a kick-ass xmas party? Would any shareholders of a public company allow for this? That's why work sucks.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[bzipitidoo]

I'd forgotten about multiple monitor set ups. But what I meant about the power supply is that we should dump the bulky, wasteful AT style that provides 3 different voltages (and so is really 3 power supplies in 1), and have one brick that provides 24V DC (or 19V or 12V, don't know what would be best) on 2 or more output cords. Plug one cord into the PC, plug the others into monitors. Can also take a leaf from years ago, when PC power supplies had a plug for the monitor so that the big red switch controlled power to both computer and monitor, but instead of an AC passthru setup, run a small cord carrying the appropriate DC voltage from the PC power supply to the monitor. More on that below.

USB keyboards can also serve as USB hubs. Plug your mouse in there, or plug it directly into the computer. It's not like these devices can saturate the capacity of a USB port and must have exclusive use of one.

Speaking of USB, it has become a defacto standard for DC power. 5V may be a little low, but consumer electronics has been running with it. And now that monitors take so much less power, could carry power and signal in the same cable. HDMI with power, why not? Works for USB.

SFF machines? I'll take a look. Lately, I've been running with the nettop packaging.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[ebno-10db]

It'll help you deal with modern realities better than sitting on your ass

You missed the part where I said "you should deal with the reality of it".

Yes, we're moving back to the Gilded Age, whether you like it or not. There's absolutely nothing that can be done to change that.

If there's nothing that can be done to change it, then how come the first Gilded Age ended?

The worse thing that people can do is start believing that the new Gilded Age is anything but a bunch of political imposed shit. That makes you like a Medieval serf who just accepted that the lord's privileges were the way things are, and how could they ever be any different? The serfs at least had the excuse that they were ignorant of history - you don't.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[Grishnakh]

But what I meant about the power supply is that we should dump the bulky, wasteful AT style that provides 3 different voltages (and so is really 3 power supplies in 1), and have one brick that provides 24V DC (or 19V or 12V, don't know what would be best) on 2 or more output cords. Plug one cord into the PC, plug the others into monitors.

Can't be done. Now you have to put separate power supplies inside the PCs and monitors to convert that power into the different voltages needed by different components. You can't power a PC with a single voltage. Some parts need 5V, some need 12V, some need 3.3V, some need 1.8V, etc. Motherboards already have DC-DC power supplies on them for supplying power to the CPU from a 12V rail coming from the power supply; they've been doing this since the P4. Hard drives need both 12V and 5V.

USB keyboards can also serve as USB hubs. Plug your mouse in there, or plug it directly into the computer. It's not like these devices can saturate the capacity of a USB port and must have exclusive use of one.

That's fine as long as you're OK with USB2 speeds. Don't expect to get USB3 speeds in your keyboard.

Speaking of USB, it has become a defacto standard for DC power. 5V may be a little low, but consumer electronics has been running with it.

Only if they use about 5W or less in total power. Monitors use far more power than that (about 25W for a typical 21" LCD). You can't run that on 5V without having high losses in the cable, and you'll still need DC-DC conversion in the monitor. The whole thing doesn't make sense at all.

HDMI with power, why not? Works for USB.

Because monitors use a lot more power than any USB plug can provide, and HDMI speeds are higher than USB. That much power running through a cable next to high-speed signals will cause signal problems, requiring heavy shielding, and increasing cable cost greatly.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[Grishnakh]

If there's nothing that can be done to change it, then how come the first Gilded Age ended?

It ended because people finally forced it to end. A better question is, how long did it take to end? The answer is: many decades. That's what we can expect, best-case.

The worse thing that people can do is start believing that the new Gilded Age is anything but a bunch of political imposed shit. That makes you like a Medieval serf who just accepted that the lord's privileges were the way things are, and how could they ever be any different?

They couldn't be different because if the serfs rose up, the aristocracy (who were also the military elites) would put on their armor, get on their horse, round up their other knight-buddies, and hack them all to bits. And again, how long did it take for things to change? Many centuries.

Face it, social change is glacially slow. People don't see bad things happening and then force their leaders to change things for the better in a couple of years. How long was it between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Enlightenment? There was no way for medieval serfs to bring that about any quicker.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[BarefootClown]

I don't know whether this move by Dell is the equivalent of liposuction or maiming, but I suspect the latter. They've gone to all the trouble of screening and training these 15,000 people, and now they're going to throw that all away. If this is part of a plan to change their areas of business, why not spin off those sections of the company instead of destroy them? Or are they saying their hiring and planning decisions really were that poor and corrupt, and now they have to clean house?

Dell has been buying a lot of other companies lately. That tends to create substantial redundancy. Additionally, if the market is shrinking, a smaller sales force is appropriate.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[ebno-10db]

They couldn't be different because if the serfs rose up, the aristocracy (who were also the military elites) would put on their armor, get on their horse, round up their other knight-buddies, and hack them all to bits.

That's a very crude and expensive way to deal with the issue. Of course it was resorted to on occasion, but if they'd had to do it all the time it would have been very expensive in many ways. Knights unavailable to fight wars (and leaving the kingdom open to invasion), too few live peasants to work the land, etc.

Far less expensive and far more effective to convince the serfs that the organization of society is legitimate, and even ordained (the Church promoted this idea). Why revolt when things are the way they're supposed to be? That's what kept the serfs down most of the time.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[Grishnakh]

Yes, that's all completely true. But the threat of force was there just in case there was an uprising, but usually convincing everyone this is the natural order worked well. Sound familiar? It's exactly like the way things are now. People are convinced by their churches and media that things are the way they should be, more or less, they're kept distracted from seeing where the real problems are and kept focused on other crap, they're provided bread and circuses to keep them distracted and happy, and the few times someone causes a problem the militarized cops beat them to a pulp, shoot them, kill their dog, etc. It usually takes a long time before people decide to make a real change, and before this can happen they have to realize who they're really being oppressed by. Americans aren't anywhere near that point; it's decades away, at best. Lots of people are somewhat unhappy about things, but they blame everything on "the liberals" or "the conservatives" or "the Democrats" or "the Republicans".

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[n7ytd]

With all due respect, "Large successful companies" don't do layoffs. Large struggling companies do.

And they need to be able to do it. If companies are told they can never let excess employees go, they will be all the more hesitant to hire when they need extra labor.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[ebno-10db]

With all due respect, "Large successful companies" don't do layoffs.

You're living in the past. It's done all the time to "trim costs".

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[petermgreen]

Finally, it's unlikely you'd be able to make them share a cable this way without screwing up the HDMI signal.

It's possible, apple did it for a while in the early 2000's

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

Of course being possible doesn't make it a good idea.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[Grishnakh]

Yep. From your link:
"The ADC carries up to 100 W of power, an insufficient amount to run most 19-inch or bigger CRTs widely available during ADC's debut, nor can it run contemporary flat panels marketed for home entertainment (many of which support DVI or VGA connections) without an adapter. The power limit was an important factor for Apple to abandon ADC when it launched the 30-inch Apple Cinema HD Display."

Looks like the idea has several shortcomings, a big one being the amount of power that can be stuffed through the cable, which makes it unusable for very large and power-hungry displays. The OP's ideas might make some sense for totally proprietary all-in-one units with no ability whatsoever for expansion (as many earlier Apples were), but when even Apple has abandoned the idea, it's probably not a great idea to begin with. If it were such a great idea, we'd probably see it on Apples, since they lead the market frequently in adopting new hardware standards, as they don't worry much about backwards compatibility with older equipment and their customer base doesn't mind paying a premium for stuff.

So is there still no truth to the rumour?

[ackthpt]

The rumor of the PC's impending demise as people's primary computing/communicating/wossname device?

North?

[garryknight]

numbers will be north of 15,000

Has the writer never seen an Australian map?

Company's soul is no longer owned by the Devil.

[jageryager]

This is slanted wrong. Public companies have share holders to answer to. They've sold their soul to the devil, AKA: Share holders who almost always buy shares to make money.

A private holder, a guy who is already rich, he can do what he wants. Maybe try to make money. Maybe try a long term growth strategy that won't make money for a few years. Maybe keep people on the payroll who should be layed off now, just so they will be ready to go to work in 6 months. I'd be way more critical of what public companies do to make money than I would be critical of private companies.

There are quite a few examples of privately held companies going the extra mile for their employees at the expense of short term profits.

For Example

[jageryager]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malden_Mills

"The Malden Mills factory burned down on December 11, 1995. CEO Aaron Feuerstein decided to continue paying the salaries of all the now-unemployed workers while the factory was being rebuilt. By going against common CEO business practices, especially at a time when most companies were downsizing and moving overseas, he achieved recognition for doing the right thing"

Re:For Example

[ShadyG]

"In November 2001, Malden Mills declared bankruptcy after the recession at the beginning of the new year left the company unable to pay creditors—related to its rebuilding and payroll commitments."

Re:For Example

[jageryager]

Are you looking out for creditors? Or Employess?

Re:For Example

[iamhigh]

Going bankrupt doesn't do much good for employees in the long term. There is no doubt, companies have to make a profit or else owners, shareholders, employees and customers are screwed.

Re:For Example

[JackieBrown]

How many of those employees have jobs now?

Necessary evil of doing business

[Ngarrang]

I feel sorry for the 15,000 workers about lose their job, Dell is walking a thin line and Michael wants to make sure that the company that bears his name stays around. Dell has become a bloated pig and unfocused. They are also not responding to customers demands where they should and expanding into markets that support their core strengths.

Re:good

[Chrisq]

maybe a house in austin will be affordable again

Compared to most of America, in fact the Western world, its pretty affordable anyway.

I have an idea

[slashmydots]

They should fire everyone who makes their awful computers. That would be a great way to start.

Re:Nothing like a lame anti-corporation rant

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you go lick the balls of you favorite CEO. Just because the market is shrinking, doesn't mean you have to fire people.

Have you seen the numbers? Do you understand the numbers? I can say i haven't seen them, but obviously neither have you, so this reply is more of a general nature.

Yeah, before you need to fire people, you can either do something about the bad market (is it the companys own fault, maybe it's just people don't want to buy from that company or is it a fluctuation that also conserns rivals), or do some R&D for the next wave or start doing something else than the core business also.

Mass firing people will not make the market better (people get pissed and now a lot of them can't afford to buy your stuff), it will not make you products better for the future, also if the market will be going down anyways (i.e. that product is really obsolete, like horse pulled wagons for personal transportation is today), just hanging on to that dead market will kill the company too.

So are you so sure, that mass firing is the right way to go in this particular case?

Stock price

[goombah99]

Wow I bet this will make their stock price go way up!

Not only that

[smooth wombat]

We were notified that our support phone number was being changed. When I called it, I was sent to a call center in India where it took me half an hour to get a return label sent out. We had a replacement part shipped to us the previous week but there was no return label included so I was calling to get one.

Half an hour to get a label sent out. Pathetic.

I guess it's just another example of private industry doing it better than the government.

Re:Dell went private for $25 billion

[EvilSS]

IBM just sold off its x86 server business for $2.3 billion!

Looks like Mr. Dell and Silver Lake maybe overpaid by just a little...? Of course, they have some other stuff like Oracle utility software... I'm sure that makes up the difference.

Yes, because that's totally apples to apples in this case.

Reversed?

[Culture20]

Of course, with a private sponsor in charge of the recently public company, the only thing that matters now is maximizing cash flows

Isn't this the reverse of the usual argument? That publicly traded companies have a duty to maximize cash flow but private companies can choose to maximize tinker toys per desk ratio.

Such a terrible summary

[tom229]

... with a private sponsor in charge of the recently public company, the only thing that matters now is maximizing cash flows. ..

I'm going to assume the author meant "recently private company", and "maximizing revenue" as this would be the only way that sentence would make sense. Of course, even after the corrections, the author is still wrong. The major problem with public companies is that shareholders only care about relatively short term profits. This usually narrows the focus of any business to doing whatever makes this quarter better than last quarter. Being private is a huge advantage precisely because it allows you to look at the bigger picture beyond short term profits. Terrible summary.

Precisely

[RogueWarrior65]

IMHO, schwit1's summary is a typical leftist rant that assumes that every job position in the company is valuable and should be permanent even if the company is bankrupt. To that I say "Should the people who used work on the incandescent light bulb production lines still be allowed to make them?"

Re:Precisely

[operagost]

They can all move to China and make the CFLs and LEDs that replaced them!

dell has a good layoff package

[Anonymous Coward]

2 months pay (WARN ACT)
2 months of subsidized COBRA insurance
1 weeks pay for every year with the company on top of the WARN act (most companies don't do this)
75% of your bonus. most techies get an 8% bonus.

They are going above and beyond what is required by law.

Mgmt led buyouts violate fiduciary duty

[swb]

Ben Stein had an interesting column objecting to these buyouts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09...

The gist is that management has a fiduciary duty to shareholders, and if they know of a better way to make money for the shareholders, their obligation is to do just that.

Withholding that from shareholders and using that information to enrich themselves violates this duty.

I don't understand what role 'taking the company private' plays in their restructuring plans or why it couldn't be accomplished as a public company.

Re:Mgmt led buyouts violate fiduciary duty

[u38cg]

In this case it's not the same management. You are right though, the fiduciary duty point is a good one. The main objection is that management have goals set by their board on a strategic level, and public ownership skews that to the short term. But serious performance differences in the same management between private and public ownership are signs of a problem.

Come on

[Workaphobia]

Jesus, the summary's written like an indictment of capitalism. "The only thing that matters now is money", as if that weren't the stated purpose of every company. Dell's not a charity created for its employees. And even if it were, can you argue that this wouldn't be in the best interest of the remaining ones, so that the company still exists a few years from now?

I get the whole Let's-hate-on-private-capital bent. Sure, Mitt Romney was a tool. But you're really not helping your credibility with this Corporations-are-evil hippyism.

Re:Come on

[Hillgiant]

Dude. We don't read TFA, what makes you think we read the summary? Even if we do, we are only looking for misspellings, grammar errors, or somesuch.

Pffft. Content. Who comes to /. for content?

Re:Come on

[Workaphobia]

I read the summaries. I come here to argue about how bad the summaries are.

Bring it on!

IT futures, according to me.

[h8sg8s]

SW: infinite margins on shrinking marketshare. Expensive to compete with 'free'..
PC's: smaller, faster, so cheap they're disposable.
Tablets: as above, but more so.
Servers: smaller, faster, cheaper.
Storage: ever larger, ever faster, nobody deletes anything.

I think I'll work in storage - for now.

Re:IT futures, according to me.

[iggymanz]

don't forget

networking - more and faster
virtualization - more
contractors and outsourcoing - even more

Moderator Help

[briancox2]

Could someone help me figure out how to mod this story as flame bait?

Seriously. Claiming that only private companies can "get away with doing this" is so ridiculous that it can only be construed as an attempt to rile people up.

Yes, ding, ding, ding

[Anonymous Coward]

>>In your economic model, is it the case that stupid creditors grow on trees?

Yes. Exactly this. Did you miss the S&L crisis? The LBO/Junk bond crisis? The most recent financial crisis fueled by Credit Default Swaps and Mortgage derivatives?

The "Private Equity" schtick is the same. You lever the company with massive debt, issue dividends to the investors and leave a zombie behind.

This happened to the entire upper mid-west, first with companies which had tangible assets to take loans against (manufacturers) and later with companies with intangible assets (financial companies, IP and the like).

Michael Dell is almost certainly still a true believer, wanting to restructure his company. But he's made his deal with the sharks and will be eaten alive.

BOGUS

[Anonymous Coward]

Dell has come out and said 15k is bogus and it's just a few folks:

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2014/02/03/dell_disputes_layoff_numbers/

Hardly surprising....

[erp_consultant]

Dell had stated before he took the company private that he intended on entering new markets with a greater focus on services rather than hardware. Well, those are different skill sets. You can't just take a hardware guy and turn him into a software guy. Or vice versa. The other aspect, which I'm sure Dell is well aware of, is that the company is bloated in the middle management layer. Like just about every other big company out there.

What's interesting to me is not so much the layoffs themselves but where the cuts occur. Will he actually take the opportunity to get rid of some of the belly fat or will the dead wood continue to remain? Time will tell.

Re:Dude...

[Tablizer]

"Dude, you got Delled!"