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HP Makes More Money, Cuts 16,000 Jobs
jfruh (300774) writes "Good news for HP: Profits are up by 18% over the previous year! Bad news for HP: A lot of those profits are from post-Windows XP PC upgrades, and company revenue actually dipped 1%. The solution, according to CEO Meg Whitman, is "continuous improvement in our cost structure," which means firing thousands of people. At the end of the next round of layoffs, the company will have shed 50,000 employees since 2012."
New submitter Deveauxes (3664417) links to a similar story from CNN's news service, according to which "HP said the latest layoffs would come across all its business units and geographic locations, and would generate $1 billion in annual savings beyond the $3.5 to $4 billion projected from the previously announced cuts. 'No company likes to decrease the work force, and we recognize that this is difficult for employees,' CEO Meg Whitman said in a conference call with analysts. 'I think everyone understands the turnaround we're in.'"
How many H1Bs will replace them?
I discovered the big problem in American business today: Executives can make big money by running a company aground. Enough money so that their grandchildren won't have to work.
Greenspan thought companies would self regulate. His mistake was subtle: He assumed that the leadership of the company needed the company to be healthy in order for the executives to prosper. But a new pattern emerged: executives could engage in behavior which could yield a multiple-lifetime supply of wealth by engaging in practices which ultimately destroyed the company.
And that's what happened to the financial sector in the US. And doubtless other companies which yield this particular prize.
I don't know what the common underlying reason is but this is the common symptom - being able to make the Big Score by running a company aground.
I've had experiences with both good H1-Bs and awful ones. I currently work with two - one is Chinese and one is Indian. Neither is expected to put in more than 40 hours/week unless it's really needed, in which case we're *all* there. The Chinese guy is sharp as a tack, and is extremely good at both design and implementation. He's also one of my best friends. The Indian girl is fricking *amazing* when it comes to debugging - give her a dump file supplied by a customer and odds are she'll have found the problem within the hour, whether it's an application-level issue or something that we've hooked at the systems level. She's also one of the sweetest people I've ever met. Both are paid on par with what everyone else is, and our kick-ass HR manager abides by both the letter and spirit of the law - both of the H1-Bs were sought out only after we spent months looking to fill the positions with domestic workers (I interviewed quite a few of them after the company flew them in to talk to us). I've also worked with imported workers that couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag, even when effectively given step-by-step instructions, and others that were competent but effectively indentured servants working for far less than they were legally supposed to be. The system needs a lot of reform, both to protect domestic employees as well as those brought in from overseas.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
in the last few decades, there has been mass mind-reprogramming that seems to convince people that 'profit above all else, to the exclusion of all else' is what american companies are supposed to be about.
but go back to our grandfather's days and you would find social responsibility (which was hard fought for, during the union days). companies DID care and they DID shoulder the burden during hard times, because they saw value in the INVESTMENT in their work force! it was common for people to work at the same company for 20, 30 even 40 years!
find anyone like that today. I dare you. if you find someone working 20 yrs at the same place, its extremely rare.
this is now how it used to be. and don't accept that this was always how it was and how its meant to be. that's brainwashing by the new capitalists who are no better than white collar criminals, these days.
What has changed my friend is court cases of the 1980's defined the role of a company. The question is who owns the company? The shareholders and big banks won. It is not to make profit. It is to raise the shareprice. It must grow grow and grow and if it gets too high go do splits forever with no end in sight! If a CEO can't perform this then hire someone else who can. It is taught in finance 101 today in any college and was asked during my exam even.
So how does this change things?
1. You can't grow by creating great products when your share is saturated or is no longer a cash cow with competition
2. The emphasis on Engineers getting MBA's does not help the goal of the company. Cost accountants getting MBA's and bean counters making critical decisions and overiding IT and engineering make a better value for raising the share price
3. The only way to get a magical p/e ratio is to raise revenue and cut expenses by sitting on cash and going in debt rather than investing on growth
4. When you are out of ideas SELL or CUT DRASTIC CUTS to gain quarterly updates. When that doesn't work by other companies to get other investors raise the share price or sell it so the shareholders can sell out their high costs and give you the golden parachute for looking after shareholder intestests etc.
How many times did I write shareholder? See the problem? It is a math game today of flipping for computer programs that make entities more wealth.
That is the downside. The upside is newer agile competitors can rise up as HP is killing itself and Lenovo and Asus are taking its place. HP needs to hire more financial engineering majors to tinker with the price through accounting tricks and will cash out when it can't sell computers by selling it to Asus as a shadow of itself etc.
It is sad really but unregulated greed and Wall Street is ruining the whole country. Did you know bankers went to jail setting gold and stock prices! True ... today they do it with HFT supercomputers and do not blink. Why is this legal? But until courts role stakeholders not shareholders only you will continue to see shareholder activists like iKahn screwing things up and cashing in and funding Tea Party and anti union laws to make sure he can make even more money.
This corruption needs to stop
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