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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?
They used to make really cool, quality stuff (Agilent Technologies anyone?) Now they're reduced to selling disposable printers and ink that costs more than vintage Dom. Gee thanks, Carly.
got rid of ALL the employees!
I suggest they start at the top!
She might save HP, actually.
But she could devastate the local economy and thousands of families to increase the already profitable company's margin even more for the rich shareholders.
But hey, there is a silver lining - at least she only fucking over 16,000 HP employees and not 1M+ California employees as governor...
1. Build a product people want to buy. Do not shit on your customers. (HP is now failing here)
2. Support your products to a reasonable degree. (HP is failing here too)
3. Treat employees like valued portion of the business. (Huge HP failure here)
There you have it. The SROP (standard republican operating procedure) is now being followed at HP. HP is on a death spiral into garbage land. A few key wealthy republicans are profiting massively, and working people are getting screwed.
No, one less letter to a newspaper is not going to change their publishing ability.
There are plenty of stupid letters they can still post, since there are no shortage of inane comments people have about topics they don't understand. As you have proven just now...
Wasn't HP the one that, not long ago, hired and fired about 5 CEO's in the course of 7 years. Paying each a 8 figure severance package on their way out?
I say the 50,000 employees all team up and create a company named Homeward Bound (HB). Seems appropriate since HP sent them all home. They can sell software as a service, cheap servers, re-badge some cheap laptops and tablets, and maybe sell a few printers. Then they should do something different and maybe provide support from regional offices -- you call and you get someone within driving distance of your site, who can show up and actually help you solve your problem.
Where do you get that? Wikipedia says 262,569 Initial+Renewals+Extensions in 2012, which would make 20K off by a factor of 13.
Sure, but that includes the elderly and children and people who dont' work, and people who work in areas not eligible for H1Bs. There are, and this is a hotly debated number, perhaps 2.4M STEM related jobs (of which HP itself only employs a cross-section of) and of that under 10% are open. There are over 11 million STEM degreed americans out there who have given up on STEM, probably due to dropping salaries and incessant layoffs.
Anyway hopefully as HP lays off STEM job holders, the H1B count can be lowered by that number (some large fraction of 16K jobs). Of course that won't happen because salaries might go up.
Apparently, that is how capitalism is supposed to work.
Shareholders get wealthy at the expense of the rest of the economy.
They teach this stuff in school these days. So it must be true.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Almost right. Actually, it's upper management who gets wealthy in the name of "shareholder wealth". But yeah, too bad about the rest of the economy.
All of my calculators used to be HP, all of my bench equipment was HP or Tektronix. But these days, I no longer own an ink-jet printer, so I don't buy printer ink, so HP has nothing for me.
There are many brands that no longer represent their heritage: Philips, Zenith, Bell Labs, Kodak...
It's sad, but it's life, HP hasen't been a "high tech" company foe several years, they have been a "re-brander" of Chinese consumer products.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Capitalism.
More info here: https://www.adbusters.org/
It proves that if you can give a corporation tax breaks and throw off the shackles of regulation, they will do better and want to hire more people. Oh...wait.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Outsource out whatever you can and cover the rest with H1B imports. The stock price will go up, for a while, and everyone will live crappily ever after.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
Their CEOs don't believe they have a future. Better for them to loot and pillage before jumping off the boat.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Just in case other people notice, the SSL certificate for the Slashdot login page expired today.
Shocking.
HP is screwed up. Who actually likes their products anymore that has a clue? Even their printers are nothing special anymore. That company has no market. The only time I see HP stuff as at big box stores where they're competing for the least informed computer purchases.
Does the smart money buy HP? When was the last time it did?... Exactly. HP is a dying company.
Current management needs to get the axe and the company needs to be restructured there after.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
MBA1: We should fire all the workers, look how much money we would save. MBA2: Brilliant!!
Being an Indian, I understand the frustration when support goes out to some dude in India who barely speaks English. I have been there myself, not only that, I have been asked how I made it to Canada.
Nonetheless, those that do make the H1B cut are not the same that answer those phone calls. H1B may be fresh grads, however most have engineering degrees, at the start of which they had to compete against 500,000 applicants for a under 10000 seats. Further, seats in Computer engineering which are valued more so than others are probably around 1000.
Furthermore, there is a contrast in fee, in US, a student might have to bail out if he cannot afford the education, so not only do you have to be smart, you have to be rich, contrasting that to peanuts, the competition gets very very tough back in India.
So joke all you want, those that do make it to US are rather smart and hard working.
I'm not saying they are not exploited, they are. The solution is simple, the employer has to prove, H1B is needed as local talent cannot be found, if thats the case, do not tie H1B to an employer, let the employee roam free. You will see a drastic cut in H1B and abuse of new immigrants.
As others have commented, HP used to be a great company. I have a stack of what used to be very expensive electronics test equipment in my home lab, all of it with an HP label, except for a Tektronix scope. The equipment I have is between 20 and 50 (!!) years old but it works flawlessly and accurately.
HP started Silicon Valley.
But Hewlett and Packard died and the bean counters took over.
HP is the poster child for how greed can completely destroy a company. Simple case in point, an "honest broker" would sell printers at a fair price, and sell the ink at a fair price as well. The product would compete on its merits. Instead the crooks at HP will sell you a $50 printer to get you hooked, and then sell $40 ink cartridges that are 1/4 full. Instead of investing in way to make their printers better value, the invest in ways to embed DRM in the print cartridge because that's how they can maximize profits. A child can identify this as immoral. I personally am looking forward to the final end for this disaster, like Zenith, RCA and other former greats.
The bean counters spun off the equipment branch into Agilent and moved it Malaysia; sending the know-how on how to build the world's best test equipment overseas. Does the US have the capability to manufacture the world's best test equipment anymore? Hell no, the "tribal knowledge" is lost. It will be impossible to get this back, unless the Malaysians decide it will be cheaper to ship the whole factory back to the US. Good luck on that.
This is also why you can't get to space in an American rocket anymore, better brush up on your Russian skills. America is so medicated with the TV, hearing about Kimye and whoever Miley was twerking with last week, its a disaster.
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.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
She can't outsource American citizens and make things appear better; that is, other than deporting a bunch of people... which was probably in her campaign platform. (No, I'm not saying that would help the country but it would be consistent reasoning.)
So... did HP rob the pensions yet?
How can anybody let her get away saying such extreme BS like that? Corporations and capitalists LOVE to fire employees. That is point of the game; to pay as little as possible and get as much for the shareholders as possible. They ONLY hire people out of extreme necessity and as soon as it's possible they fire people. They aim low as possible in every nation they reside in. That is just good business. They resent having to pay anybody because that is overhead taking away from their profit margins.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Unless you were comparing ancient P-class HP blades to more recent IBM blades, "no contest" and "junk" are both complete and utter BS. I've also managed a variety of blades and rackmount servers for 10+ years and they're on par with each other, each having both advantages and disadvantages. I actually prefer the HP blades (C-class), especially as of Gen8. The old P-class blades were an interesting attempt but not quite there yet. HP discontinuing the P-class and superseding them with the C-class was the right decision and put HP ahead of the competition for several years until things caught back up.
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
http://saveie6.com/
Steve Jobs I respect.
At least he makes something people like and are willing to buy. If you hate the shiny iTurds you are free not to buy them. However, he does not do the same horrible shit HP does.
HP puts 185 watt power supplies and changes the freaking components on the fly to save $.005 based on market conditions on the same model. So you can ahve +32 different combinations of the the HP 8500???! Sucks when you create an image as I never know which site at work has which HP 8500. They all ahve different hardware which is most likely defective.
I can not image Steve Jobs saying SCREW GREAT PEOPLE! I want cheap labor for our iMac or iPhone. After all talent is a cost and because of my brand I can sell and do no need to innovate?! Less people means we can make more money etc.
Apple would have been dead in 1999 if it were not for the iMac and then the explosion or products that came later based on the products
http://saveie6.com/
... and the good performers, innovators, and managers as well. You are left with those who just need a job because they have a questionable resume.
People forget companies do not create great products. PEOPLE DO! I can't make the best widget in the world without the best engineers. ID Software needed John Carmack to make doom back in the 486 days before 3d cards. It was not the brand image that created it. It was the employee.
HP cares more about financially engineering its stock price to rise each quarter and then sell it when it can't maximize than to innovate.
Fiona really did a job on that company. Most of the innovators went to Agilent systems which makes more money than to try to monopolize the pc market which is what Fiona wanted by buying compaq and just focusing on this. Bad bed and the Bill and Hewlett way is gone. As good employers were fired if they did not leave already as senior folks cost money etc.
http://saveie6.com/
"Capitalism may not be fair, but it's not stupid."
hahahahaha.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on