“Hewlett-Packard Co. is expected to announce deep cuts in its workforce Wednesday afternoon when the world’s largest personal computer and printer maker is scheduled to release its latest quarterly results,” The Associated Press reports. “The payroll purge could lay off 25,000 to 35,000 workers, based on recent media reports that quoted unnamed people familiar with HP’s plans… CEO Meg Whitman has made it clear that she believes the company needs to trim its expenses to offset declining revenue and free up more money to pour into research and development.”
“HP currently employs nearly 350,000 people. If the recent reports pan out, that means HP is looking to jettison about 7 percent to 10 percent of its workforce,” AP reports. “The financial pressure has been building on HP since the company replaced cost-cutting specialist Mark Hurd as its CEO amid questions about his relationship with a former actress who worked for the company as a contractor. Since then, HP has had trouble responding to the threat posed to personal computers and printers by the rising popularity of smartphones and tablet computers such as Apple Inc.’s iPad.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Good luck to all those affected at a once-great (long ago) company. May you someday find a company where you can really “invent.”
Apple probably could have bought the HP campus in Cupertino for far less if it had waited!
The only innovation and creativity in most big companies these days is on the financial side.
Meg Whitman is a disaster in progress.
Job creator.
How so?
When she publicly admitted (FINALLY) that her maid was an undocumented worker, she fired the maid.
Meg = Job Loss
HP emulating DEC will prove nautical in its metaphor, and for the loyal HP employee, heartless in its execution.
For those about to go adrift, you have my heartfelt blessing of good fortune and timely rescue.
If you will remember, Compaq bought DEC, and then HP bought Compaq.
I have a friend who started with DEC (a great company), got swallowed up by Compaq (a crappy company) and is now with HP (a formerly great company). I’ll have to get in tocu with him later this week to see how he fared.
In the meantime, the real HP lives on, but is now known as Agilent.
Poignant memory. During my six years at DEC, 40,000 people lost their jobs. And almost another 40,000 before the Compaq/HP acquisitions. The real DEC lives on in the hearts and minds of those who served.
Lets cut the working people to trim payroll instead of the CEOs salery and bonuses.
Regardless, if the executive compensation package were $1, a company with poor business strategy and execution would find revenue growth, expense management, and employee status quo, equal impossibilities. Same scenario for taxing the rich.
A gift to Jerry ‘assclown lube’ Brown. These are ‘Jerry’s Kids’ now. Hey, wait, got an idea. Why not soak the rich again, they’ll pay wont they Jerry, you stupid ass.
This is what you get when a bunch of anti business Democrats run the state of California.
So, it isn’t the responsibility of the CEO getting paid multi-millions in compensation, (Carly Fiorino and Meg Whitman are both Republicans). It’s the gubmints fault, what’s a Condumb to do. Yeah, that must be it.
Please explain how failures at management level over many years by a company’s executives operating in multiple locations around the world – is in any way attributable to one state’s governance operatives who change jobs with the wind on a regular basis.
This ‘commie’ Brit would love to know how American blame culture works.
I once nearly lost a close friend in Britain. At that time, I mentioned that I was consulting to the British tax authority. This led me to believe that guilt by association is an international blame culture.
Any institution will fail when it runs itself out of money. At least companies just go bankrupt on their shareholders and suppliers.
Governments going under take down EVERYONE, including the worst hit on the fixed income retirees and the lowest income workers.
The governing politicians don’t seem to understand how the bills they pass increasing government and spending will ultimately doom this country.
HP troubles were caused by bad judgement and bad management long before Meg came in. Meg is the 4th CEO in 12 years at HP. In the 2010 California election she spent over $140 million dollars. This tells you a lot about Meg and even more about HP. RIM, Nokia and now HP. Forget good CEO’s, it’s hard enough just finding competent CEOs.
Wait, isn’t the CEO body count 3 in less than 3 years? Leo Apothe-whoever that killed Web OS and Mark Hurd seemed to be in and out very fast.
Meg will be a flash in the pan in the revolving door CEO saga. Regardless of what she does, and however good or bad it may be, it won’t be enough or fast enough, someone else will be brought in.
Should have stuck with Hurd.
It’s my understanding that Hurd was reasonably competent. The board forced out over unproven allegations of having a mistress. Then that board hired Apothecary, without some members of the board ever meeting him.
HP’s biggest problem is its Board, not its CEO(s).
Interesting detailed article “How Hewlett-Packard lost its way”: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/05/08/500-hp-apotheker/
The HP way.
What would they research? Things like, oh say, a slick, popular mobile operating system? Oh, wait…never mind.
HP needs to send out a notification to all those people being laid off that is they have a child support obligation, they can get free help from the state to have the order modified, and that they need to make the official request right away, as it can take up to a year to get a hearing. This is a right they have under the 1988 Child Support Enforcement Act, and is detailed in the Federal Child Support Enforcement Handbook for Non-Custodial Parents. Unfortunately, the states refuse to distribute the handbook, which is free from the feds. Here is the material from it.
http://ChildSupportRights.org