This came as a surprise to investors?
I was an Enterprise Services employee during the time of the merger, after which I was a DXC employee until I retired. I heard that, as one manager put it, "we'll save $1 billion by eliminating duplicate positions. You don't need to worry about those layoffs, because you probably don't know them anyway."
That seemed, at best, wildly optimistic at the time after some back of the envelope calculations. In order to save $1 billion, you need to eliminate about 10,000 positions (assuming on average $100,000 per position). Where would you find 10,000 duplicate positions?
HR? Finance? Accounting? You can save a few positions but it takes a certain number of people to handle the workload, and the total workload wasn't going to change. It takes a certain number of people to manage those people, and that doesn't change. You lose a few at the top, but nowhere near enough to make those numbers.
Facilities? Where possible you could merge facilities and reduce staff somewhat. Of course, merging facilities means moving people and equipment, so is a cost short term.
Sales? Sales and pre-sales teams that were competing for the same markets could certainly be merged and trimmed.
Account teams? The point was made that for the most part CSC and HPE-ES had non-overlapping customer lists, so the potential here was small.
IT? IT would be busy for years merging systems.
So were there really 10,000 duplicate positions, particularly after the staff reductions that took place in the years leading up to the merger?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
