Mass redundancy marathon nearly over at HP

HP is making what looks to be a final round of UK redundancies before it breaks apart and is seeking volunteers to jump rather than be pushed. The organisation is nearing the end of its mega, three and a half-year redundancy programme that will have included the exit of 58,000 people by 1 November, the start of HP’s fiscal ’16 …

[Pascal Monett]

"walk voluntarily"

Somehow I think they'll reach their designated goal, what with the atmosphere being rather toxic these days.

The real question is ; after all these years of hearing about how HP is not a good place to work (at all), does it stand a chance of changing ?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nearly over"

I'll believe that when I see it. HP's only competencies are botched strategy and lay-offs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Nearly over"

Their layoffs do end, but usually within a year they have a bad quarter and the only reaction their management knows to Wall Street when asked "what do you plan to do about this dip in profitability?" is more layoffs to reduce their top line expenditures. They seem to believe that employees are only a cost, and never make any contribution to revenue unless they're sales people.

[createahandletheysay]

Long long years.

This has been going on every quarter since 2008. That's a long 3 1/2 years.

[Anonymous Coward]

Skills Gone

And meanwhile companies like the one I work for who stupidly outsourced their Infrastructure support to HP suddenly realise that all that local knowledge all their IT staff had is no longer available. While I'm sure the guys and gals in India and Bulgaria are competent*, they don't know how anything is configured or set up for us.

* I'm trying to be kind and I'm sure it's red tape that stops them being helpful or maybe it's their bad English v my bad Bulgarian. But I do sometimes wonder if they are just stupid and unhelpful. It certainly feels that way sometimes..

[Jay 2]

Maybe all these cost savings will enable HP to sort their shitty website out so I can actually find stuff. I'm getting fed up with having to use Google to search their site. Also very annoying is the amount of dead links or empty pages when trying to navigate their support site for firmware etc.

[Steve Davies 3]

Ordering from HP

Don't you realise that their Order system is crap but for a reason.

I guess that you have managed to order something from HP without going through a reseller?

If you have indeed done this then....

Well Done. You are a winner.

Please become our head of UK Sales tomorrow.... {see Icon}

Even ordering from IBM is a bit easier than HP who just seem to be taking the Sauce when they should be the Daddies of IT kit.

now you just get in the 'Branston' (pickle)

[jonathanb]

Re: Ordering from HP

I ordered some things from their website many years ago. The ordering process was OK, but they put an iPaq in a box big enough to take a Proliant server. The delivery man thought the box was empty and he would need to take it back, I opened it in front of him, and he was surprised when I told him the little thing taped to the bottom of the box was indeed what I ordered and everything was OK.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear you.....

I've been complaining about it to them for years. And years. And years. It never gets any better, it certainly has a tendency to get worse. Its almost to the point of being useless. Have an up vote from me.

[Anonymous Coward]

HP (Horrendous Practices)

I never understood why HP has always made upgrading their hardware product drivers so difficult. IBM and DELL had this honed down to a science years ago, for FREE.

I once had to pay 200 Euros to some HP dweeb in Germany before we could download a vital HBA driver upgrade. Without the Upgrade Pack, it was the only way to keep a mission critical server's boot disks from experiencing repeated corruption and performance issues.

Did it suck? Yes.

Did we buy HP again? No.

what you sow, is what you reap

[asdf]

“These proposed changes are are part of a company wide lack of strategy going on 15 years and to give HP management the short term bonuses it bad needs”.

FIFY.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was given the chance...

...to volunteer for redundancy from HP a few years ago - I grabbed it with both hands and went. It was the best decision I ever made - no more constant worry about getting laid off, no more talking to HP managers with about two brain cells about how to improve our services, no more arguing with HR about that lunch (a cheese and pickle sandwich and a diet coke) I put on expenses when working on a customer site, no dread of going to work every morning, no bollockings for using Access for a small project just to hold data whilst on a customer site (that's dark IT don't you know), no more arguing with my manager because he found a route to a customer's site that was 10 miles less than I claimed, no more dealing with customer complaints about HP service ("What the fcuk is going on at HP...")... I could go on and on.

[chairman_of_the_bored]

Re: I was given the chance...

''no more dealing with customer complaints about HP service ("What the fcuk is going on at HP...")'

HP UK service used be be the envy of the industry - call the support line and knowledgeable individuals would handle your call and if necessary pass it on to second line support (who sat a few desks away) and if that failed you would be handed on the the "guru" (who sat only another few desks away). There were very few occasions when a problem was so intricate that it had to be passed to a "follow-the-sun" system. Then the bean-counters moved in; even internal calls were passed to India.

YES YOU BASTARDS I HAVE APPLIED THE LATEST PATCHES AND REBOOTED 16 TIMES

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I was given the chance...

You are right about HP UK service quality in past. I was part of that chain of escalation and it even amazed me at times the way customer problems got FIXED quickly with the minimum of fuss because of the quality of the people, their motivation, knowledge and skill. But...that was in the dim and distant past. All the "good guys, and gals" had started to leave, or had left, when I went.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a redundancy programme that has expanded greatly since first announced back in 2012. Back then it was stated that 27,000 people would go. The number has grown gradually to the c.58000 we now see.

Meg and her merry band mentioned on the Q3 results con-call to the analysts that there is a restructure in the offing for Enterprise Services. I suspect that any ES redundancies under this restructuring will be additional to the existing programme.

[Anonymous Coward]

The 1%

Fucking over the talent so they can get their million dollar bonus.

Fuck them as they flush HP down the toilet for their own gain.