Posted on 05/23/2012 2:22:48 PM PDT by Lorianne
Hewlett-Packard announced Wednesday that it is slashing 27,000 jobs in a widely expected maneuver aimed at slimming down the struggling tech giant.
The company expects the layoffs, which amount to 8% of its worldwide workforce, to save $3 billion to $3.5 billion by the end of 2014. The majority of that savings will be reinvested in research and development, HP said.
The changes "will further streamline our operations, improve our processes, and remove complexity from our business," Meg Whitman, HP's CEO, said in a prepared statement. "While some of these actions are difficult because they involve the loss of jobs, they are necessary to improve execution and to fund the long term health of the company."
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
Oh sure. Next thing is they’ll expect to make a profit. Capitalists!
Hey Meg, replace them with low wage illegal aliens from your mansion. Problem solved!
How many of the 27,000 are foreign employees??? None I’d bet.
Jobs will always ebb and flow in a large corporation but unless they lost one or more major customers all at once, how can any corporation have that many excess people where they have to make these huge cuts all at once?
Such poorly planned job purges put a huge strain on other sectors to absorb those now unemployed especially in tough times.
Periodic hiring/firing to closely balance the business needs of an organization is the hallmark of a well run company. Laying off 27K is mismanagement on a galactic scale unless, again, they lost one or more major customers.
Jobs will always ebb and flow in a large corporation but unless they lost one or more major customers all at once, how can any corporation have that many excess people where they have to make these huge cuts all at once?
Such poorly planned job purges put a huge strain on other sectors to absorb those now unemployed especially in tough times.
I would be interested in seeing how many of these people are near retirement age.
Boeing dropped ~19,000 from 4Q 2009 to the end of 1Q 2010.
Admittedly, a lot of that was fallout from the Mechanic’s Union strike that cost Boeing billions and set the 787 program back by ~ 2 years . . .
I sure hope they start with the dumbasses who write their over-bloated printer software and drivers.
Agilent kept the "high-tech" part of the original HP "technology vision". HP kept the name and hared off into every possible computer tech wild goose chase imaginable under Carly Fiorello. HP product quality plummeted, Agilent's remained true to the original HP product quality ideas.
HP was trying to beat-out Dell in the PC market, while Apple and others were working on R&D for iPhones and “tablet PCs” (phone + computing devices) and the like.
O.K. now Dell and HP top the PC world and neither is competitive in 3g/4g mobile communications or iPad, iPhone type devices - which is the growing segment of ‘personal computing’.
If they can reduce costs without those reductions vastly eroding income/revenue, they can possibly buy enough R&D and acquisitions to gradually compete in areas they have left to others up to now.
I am surprised they didn’t cut more positions sooner. Maybe they are just starting to figure out the labor mix they need to retain.
P.S. Full disclosure. I have a personal stake in their success. I recently bought a new HP PC.
Agilent is making some nice stuff. I’ve got one of their Function Generators and it’s a breeze to use, as opposed to the old HP 8116A with it’s indecipherable controls.
HP sold its soul when they spun off their test equipment division. HP’s test equipment was their badge of excellence and now they are just another brand name for Chinese products.
Bean counters are always telling GM to end the Corvette; it will never earn profit. It may be true but how you put a price on prestige, or a culture of precision?
Anritsu now populates my shop.
Can't say, but in 2008 HP bought my employer of nearly 30 years and I got the axe at age 58. I still have some friends there, and hope they fare well.
Good. Maybe they’ll fire the HP employee who stole my credit card number to buy itunes and cr@p.
Same here. Saber though, not EDS. I wish they would sell us back to someone who knows the consulting business rather than just bump us off.
I agree *totally*. All in the name of selling ink. Ludicrous!
Amen.
They treat people as fungible... a body is a body. There's a reason the person in the US with experience is worth more than a rookie somewhere else off-shore.
And they aren’t just offshore anymore. We have a high ratio of H1B and Green Card holders, so much so it feels like I am the one who works in a foreign country!
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