HP to lay off 27,000 employees by end of 2014 | Hacker News Reader

HP to lay off 27,000 employees by end of 2014

aljazeera.com

35 pointsrangibaby14 comments

Bad: We're sorry, but we have to let XX,XXX of you go. Here's your severance packages, etc etc.

Really Really Bad: We're sorry, but some of you will be let go, sometime in the next years. Try not to think about it. Ok let's be productive out there people!

> "Hewlett-Packard, the world's largest personal computer maker, has said it will layoff roughly 27,000 employees or about eight per cent of its workforce.... generate annual savings of $3bn to $3.5bn by the end of 2014."

This feels inevitable for HP. After various takeovers and the economic climate (in particular on their PC division) it seems an easy decision. Most of the redundancies will be made up of early retirement, but always seems like a loss of talent. There must be some veterans there with 40/50 years in the business.

And it makes it much harder for HP to attract or hold on to top talent. The perception that it's a sinking ship is self-reenforcing.

WebOS seemed to get a lot of positive reviews. Maybe there's a place left for it, but it seems unlikely at this point.

webOS is a good OS, but HP has abandoned it.

And unfortunately no one will hire (most of) these experienced employees even though they probably are very good.

That's a lot of engineers for the industry to suddenly absorb.

More "old-fashioned" companies will not balk at hiring a 30-year HP veteran, I think... So long as he's knowledgeable and capable as anyone else who's worked 30 years in the industry.

It's concerning, however, when one interviews a 5-8 year veteran who has less skills than a new grad. Don't get in that rut. :-)

Yes, there are many 30 year old programmers writing sloppy unstructured code that would have been drummed out of the freshman programming class I had to take, longer ago than I should admit :-)

Uh, which skills? organization, or enterprise hoo-hah buzzword bingo???

> We are setting HP on a path to extend our global leadership and deliver the greatest value to customers and shareholders," CEO Meg Whitman said.

Yeah, who needs workers who toiled over the company, screw them. Yippee for capitalism.

At this point, I think calling this sort of thing "marketism" is more appropriate. This "do anything for the share price" mentality really isn't capitalism, it's slavery to the stock markets. These people are thinking of the next quarter, but should be thinking about the next decade.

I cannot help but think the stock market is destroying these companies before their time. I really don't see a way for HP to recover at this point. They may have all the pieces, but the outside pressure is just unbelievable.

This is exactly why I feel happy to see how Zuck executed FB IPO. They got money in the bank for a long time, Zuck probably still have the biggest shares/voting right, Wall Street got punked before they can toy Zuck around and spit him for fun.

First, no one is owed a job any more than they are owed a date with a beautiful person, or a steak dinner. Employees are (should be) legally free to leave a job, and employers should be legally free to fire at will, for the same reason that romantic partners should be free.

Second, those workers are paid for their efforts as long as they're employees. The word "toil" brings images of slave labor to mind, which is utterly inappropriate in this context. If a person is making less than the objective value of his labor is worth (that is, the market rate), he's free to stop "toiling" and get a better job, if he can find it.

When the market changes, the company doesn't need some of its employees. The converse is also true: those employees don't need the company. What they need is to find another arrangement that can put them to the best use available, so that they are working toward a profitable goal (basic overlooked fact: employees are paid today on the expectation that what they do results in profits tomorrow).

I visited HP's Houston campus a couple years back. The non-sales folks all seemed rather down and weary. There was a complete lack of energy in the offices then. I can only imagine the mood now.

And as always this bad news for the tech labor market makes wall street happy as its stock is up quite a bit in after hours trading

HP will be a sell for a while. If they're already setting themselves up for negligible or negative growth through 2014, it won't make much sense to buy HP, either in stock or in their products.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com