Dell cheers Q1 with workforce decimation

Dell will decimate its workforce over the next year, eliminating more than 8,000 jobs. The company released word of this restructuring as it dished out first quarter financial results that beat market expectations. Reinstalled CEO Michael Dell vowed to make cuts during a recent interview, saying Dell's headcount has grown by …

[Anonymous Coward]

Dub, Reggae & Roots From The Melodica King

"Decimate" - you're bound to have someone telling you that Dell doesn't actually employ 80,000 people, and that 8,000 is even worse than a decimation. It's a duodecimation. I think. Maths was never my strong point.

[Ashlee Vance]

Dellimation

Before this gets out of control, I'll note that Dell's headcount was 82,800 full-time staff and 5,300 part time staff as of May 4, 2007, according to Dell's filing today.

AV

www.theduckrabbit.com

[Andrew]

Good time to cut staff

I was made redundant in 2002, along with 30% of the workforce of my firm (I guess you call that tridecimation). I knew things were bad when recruitment consultants weren't returning my calls because they had been made redundant too. Dell are controlling their costs and choosing to lay off staff at a time when they can actually get jobs, instead of holding on until everyone else is in trouble too. Good for them.

[Shane McCarrick]

Possible future customer service issues

Letting go of 10% of their staff when they have just launched Linux on home boxes, and are preparing to shift a load of kit through Walmart...... I spy unprecedented customer service issues in the very near future.

[Steven Walker]

Cringely

So he was half right but accidentally said IBM when he meant Dell?

[Michael Corkery]

depends which Dell plant you're in really.

They've confirmed 450 job cuts in the Limerick plant, but the Irish economy is on the downturn. Growth is slowing, personal debt is extreme and most significantly wage inflation is pushing investment away. The lasty 8 months have seen multiple closures and cancellations of investments, and the Fianna Fail government have failed to bring in the same quality of jobs as the outgoing ones. Hopefully most of them will find something (Limerick has become a little bit of a tech campus), but I could see quite a few people losing out big on this one. To be fair, Dell will probably offer the standard redundancy, hopefully a bit more, and that could buy them some time.

I guess these things are inevitable periodically - let's just hope that there's no larger downturn coming.

[Dillon Pyron]

Contractors

I'm one of the 5300 contractors. We've been told that some of our contracts will be cut short. In other cases, new contractors won't be brought on when our contracts expire. Dell limits contractors to 9 months or 1450 hours, which ever comes first. For me that will be about 6 1/2 months.