HP CEO Meg Whitman To Employees: No More Telecommuting For You 477
McGruber writes "AllThingsD has the news that Hewlett-Packard has enacted a policy requiring most employees to work from the office and not from home. According to an undated question-and-answer document distributed to HP employees, the new policy is aimed at instigating a cultural shift that 'will help create a more connected workforce and drive greater collaboration and innovation.' The memo also said, 'During this critical turnaround period, HP needs all hands on deck. We recognize that in the past, we may have asked certain employees to work from home for various reasons. We now need to build a stronger culture of engagement and collaboration and the more employees we get into the office the better company we will be.' One major complication is that numerous HP offices don't have sufficient space to accommodate all of their employees. According to sources familiar with the company's operations, as many as 80,000 employees, and possibly more, were working from home in part because the company didn't have desks for them all within its own buildings."
HP? (Score:5, Insightful)
This one was aimed at Microsoft, but HP certainly deserves it too.
http://2eq9hztv2wc1k6odx469m9znq0.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/Screen-Shot-2012-11-06-at-10.53.18-AM.png [netdna-cdn.com]
Thank You NSA (Score:4, Insightful)
NSA has killed telecommuting as we knew it for the foreseeable future (20 years, at least, hence).
Re:Thank You NSA (Score:5, Insightful)
Bah, this is just a sneaky way to start lay offs. They have 80 000 without a desk, what should they do?
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That sounds utterly horrible. I'm sorry. How can companies operate if they can't even afford enough desks??
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What's the difference if you're at work or home? The NSA can get into your network either way.
Erm, ok. (Score:5, Insightful)
CEO makes blanket policy decision, backs it up only with "Because I said so," film at 11. In other news... this is the human equivalent of marking your territory by peeing on something, then kicking up grass. Will it screw a lot of things up? Of course. Will anyone complain? Assuredly not. Is it news? No. We have a term for this kind of behavior in corporate america: Tuesday.
Re:Erm, ok. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Erm, ok. (Score:5, Insightful)
Telecommuting is nice for the workers, and I too like it, but is absolute shit for creating quality work in a timely manner. Slag at this all you want, but that is my perspective from two projects implementing the same system using two different management policies: telecommuting versus 'no telecommuting'. And 'no telecommuting' produced better work.
You're using personal experience to make your argument. Well, good for you. Glad it worked out in your case. However, not everyone agrees [research-advisors.com]. I was lampooning this CEO's blanket policy decision. Blanket policies are universally bad -- there has never been one that didn't leave a trail of carnage in its wake. "Ruling a kingdom is like cooking a fish. Don't overdo it." -- Lao Tzu. Effective leadership is more about a direction than a destination. It is less about policy and more about guideline. And great leadership is so transparent you don't even notice it. Everything just seems to click. Well... things at HP aren't clicking. And this CEO is coming in and trying to prove herself with a nice big shakeup. This is what almost every CEO does. It's like when people buy a house... they invariably paint it a different color as soon as they can! The other color might have been their favorite color. It might have been the best color for the house. But it has to be changed, because until it is, for psychological reasons that person won't consider the house "theirs" until it does.
This is about painting a house. It's about marking territory. Because if it wasn't, then the CEO would be making that decision on a per-business unit basis. Some lines of work function better with it. Some don't. Investigating and then making a decision shows thoughtfulness and consideration of the complexities of the business. Shoving a policy down everyone's throats screams "I gotta paint my new house!"
Re:Erm, ok. (Score:5, Insightful)
That just means they didn't appropriately adjust their communication style for telecommuting. I have seen organizations that absolutely forbid telecommuting that are just as disconnected internally. They COULD go sit in another group's work area and hash it out but they don't. They COULD call a teleconference and hash it out but they don't. They could even implement an internal discussion board, but you guessed it.
There are quite a few very successful large projects out there (just about any free software) where the developers have never met and may never meet. In other cases, key players meet a few times a year.
Telecommuting can either result in a huge disconnect or the people can actually think about communication and become more connected than ever just because they were finally driven to think about it.
In general, I have noticed that for some reason telecommunication companies really suck at communicating.
Re: (Score:3)
I telecommute usually a day or two a week and I'm definitely more productive on the ways I do. I'm not distracted by others in the office and I'm far more rested as I can get an extra hour's sleep instead of having to deal with the early wake up followed by the stress of the commute.
Ultimately it depends what you're doing, I agree if people are working from home all the time and communicating you'll have problems, but that doesn't mean you need to ban telecommuting altogether - on the contrary that means yo
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What ticks me off to no end is that you may rest assured that nobody gets fired for that blunder. Or, rather, nobody who is actually responsible for it, because it's certain that SOMEONE has to be blamed for it. Can't be the CEO who is too stupid to figure out that it's impossible to actually pull that shit off, oh no. Someone that expensive can't be wrong, right?
Fuck, fire that idiot. Out of a cannon, preferably. It could save a lot of lives and most likely a company.
My wife worked there for 25 years (Score:5, Informative)
This is just typical - they're trying to shed employees, cut staff, make money. That's what the Compaq merger was about. It had nothing to do with computers and had everything to do with Compaqs crappier HR policies which were adopted as HPs, saving the company millions, forever. My wife lost a week and a half of vacation time because of that. Dicks.
Re:My wife worked there for 25 years (Score:5, Interesting)
While Carly deserves her share of the blame for the fall of HP, let's not forget that it was her successor, Lew Platt, who split HP into two companies. Prior to that split, HP was more like Samsung and less like, say, Dell.
Re:My wife worked there for 25 years (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:My wife worked there for 25 years (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought they sold ink, or at least that's where all the profits come from.
Re:My wife worked there for 25 years (Score:4, Informative)
The vast majority of its profits come from "Industry Standard Servers" I.e. the Proliant range. Another good chunk comes from Software (things like Arcsight for example), Storage (LeftHand, 3PAR, tape solutions), and Printing & Imaging (which contrary to Slashdot trope, is not solely comprised of selling ink).
They also have Professional Services (ex-EDS), Cloud, networking products, big-iron stuff and various other bits & pieces.
Also contrary to standard Slashdot group think, HP are very profitable and the stock has doubled since Meg Whitman took over, so she seems to be doing something right.
Re: (Score:3)
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Stock shows to be down 9% since Whitman was named CEO Sept 22, 2011. What are you talking about?
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Re:My wife worked there for 25 years (Score:5, Informative)
Lew Platt was Carly's predecessor, not successor. Lew split off Agilent first, then Carly came along and enacted the first ever lay-offs inthe company's history, because she was enamored with the draconian Cisco model leadership, which boasted a mandatory firing of the bottom 5-10% of the workforce every year, which was in direct and utter opposition to the HP Way (the basic concept that if you trust your engineers, give them what they need to succeed, they'll rise to your expectations and do a great job). The summer prior to the Lay Offs, Carly begged the employees to give back part of their pay to avoid lay offs, claiming it would avoid the inevitable. Then she "cut the fat" as she saw it... and then bought Compaq... then she butchered both those companies... which left all those who endured the lay off wondering why they'd donated their salaries to finance their eventual lay offs. It was a new low in leadership, that has only gotten worse with the ridiculous scandals and such that continue to plague a once decent company.
Re:My wife worked there for 25 years (Score:5, Informative)
Worked at HP as a contractor before Carly Fiorina came on board.
Initially HP treated its engineers so well that I was actually contemplating working there as permanent staff. Then Carly came on board and basically killed everything that was good about the company. At some point she asked staff to waive one day of wages, because HP was going through some difficult period; a couple of months later she gives herself a 16 million dollar bonus.
Carly should write a book: 'How to kill company wide morale and get rich in one easy lesson'.
Before the Carly, people were still working around 19:00 just to finish up bits, because they felt like they were heavily invested in the success of HP, shortly after the 'merger' with Compaq at 17:05 the whole office was empty.
Quite happy I never signed on as permanent staff.
Re:My wife worked there for 25 years (Score:5, Informative)
That's a lesson in HR policies.
Treat your people right and you can have anything from them. Overtime, unpaid if necessary, people will even accept a pay cut, especially if temporary, to pull the company through. Treat people right and their loyalty will allow you to survive any kind of hardships.
Treat them as expendable assets and you may expect to be treated as such: An expendable job position that can be traded for another one at the drop of a hat.
Prisoner's dilemma at work. I cooperate and copy. In other words, yes, you can fool me once. But then you can expect that I'll stay with you just as long as I need to find another position, and don't expect me to go that extra mile or do anything more than the bare minimum necessary. And don't expect me to give you anything extra, not even a glass of water if you're drowning.
Re:My wife worked there for 25 years (Score:4, Insightful)
You are perfectly right, but the system is working as intended, it is very simple: what do people in charge use to control the others? currently, money. Therefore money must be the most powerful medium. Therefore all interference to the power of money must be removed. Culture, scruples, old style political, religious and military power. Some removals are healthy, some not. The overall effect is subtle and powerful slavery.The story of the last centuries is the story of the progressive removal of such impediments.
Are current HR practices turning workers into expendable drones with no whatsoever care for anything in their company except the money? Perfect. That is paired with managers who have no whatsoever care, and even knowledge about the product they sell. How in hell they get to power positions? Simple, they interface with, and obey the rules of the financial system.
Re:My wife worked there for 25 years (Score:5, Insightful)
Worked at HP as a contractor before Carly Fiorina came on board.
Initially HP treated its engineers so well that I was actually contemplating working there as permanent staff. Then Carly came on board and basically killed everything that was good about the company. At some point she asked staff to waive one day of wages, because HP was going through some difficult period; a couple of months later she gives herself a 16 million dollar bonus.
Carly should write a book: 'How to kill company wide morale and get rich in one easy lesson'.
Before the Carly, people were still working around 19:00 just to finish up bits, because they felt like they were heavily invested in the success of HP, shortly after the 'merger' with Compaq at 17:05 the whole office was empty.
Quite happy I never signed on as permanent staff.
One really wonders how our capitalist society could be transformed if even a small percentage of CEOs had the personal integrity to give themselves a perfectly nice $160,000 bonus and distribute the rest of that $16 million back to the people who work for a wage. Think how motivated employees would be if they actually shared in the company's success.
Oh god, did I just turn into a Marxist or something? Fuck.
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One really wonders how our capitalist society could be transformed if even a small percentage of CEOs had the personal integrity to give themselves a perfectly nice $160,000 bonus and distribute the rest of that $16 million back to the people who work for a wage. Think how motivated employees would be if they actually shared in the company's success.
Oh god, did I just turn into a Marxist or something? Fuck.
Things like that do happen sometimes. Typically only in private companies or public companies that are stilled chaired by the founder though.
It's a great thing for employee morale and loyalty; of course, caring about people other than yourself instead of treating them as disposal cogs is un-American[*].
[*] Irony: This is how Communist states work as well: people are disposable, no one is indispensable, only the greater glory of the corporation... sorry, the state, matters.
Re:My wife worked there for 25 years (Score:4, Interesting)
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Polishing the brass on the Titanic... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey Meg,
Just a word of warning; this will not work. If they can't figure out how to communicate with IRC and all the rest of the internet at their fingertips, they're sure as fuck not gonna get along any better when you cram them in a conference room at the ass crack of dawn and shake them up to see if they fight.
Sincerely,
The Whole Motherfucking Internet.
But it is! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:But it is! (Score:4, Interesting)
This is the cheapest way to get a lot of people to just resign without severance pay.
The problem with the "make things worse so people resign" approach is that you tend to lose your best people first, since they're the ones who can find another job most easily.
killing many profitable projects with that decision
Clearly I'm not up on the latest business strategies - I thought killing profitable projects was a bad idea. If it's done for the sake of some illusory goal, whose benefit can only be measured after the CEO has left, then it's pure bull. If you want to get rid of unnecessary bureaucracy, then change the managerial requirements for projects (e.g $10k expense requires VP approval), and maybe fire some useless bureaucrats. Do *not* do it by killing profitable projects.
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You hit the nail on the head. Of course, this strategy doesn't take into account the fact that most of the productive workers tend to know their worth and will jump ship while the less productive workers will cling on to their jobs for dear life. Chalk this up to another decision made for a short-term gain while setting the company up for long-term failure. That doesn't matter, though, because
Copycat (Score:2)
Meg is a copycat CEO.
Management Sucks (Score:2)
So on the one hand due to executive incompetence, product quality suffers, sales go down and the stock tanks, then some CXX suggest cutting down on office space and having employees telecommute to save on overhead, then due to executive incompetence and marketing/sales trumping product design and innovation, sales go down, and the stock tanks. Now they say they need employees to come in to the (now non-existent) offices, yet something tells me that it's just another example of executive incompetence resulti
Re:Management Sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
Well as long as HP doesn't try to sell telecommuting to other companies because they obviously don't know how to do it http://www8.hp.com/h20621/video-gallery/us/en/customer-care/computing-and-mobile-devices/network-and-internet/1251324810001/hp-home-office-telecommuting-equipment-basics/video/ [hp.com].
Layoffs without calling them layoffs. (Score:5, Insightful)
Suddenly require them to come into the office. Many won't be able to, so you can downsize without the bad publicity or cost of layoffs/severence-pay.
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Which then means that the staff will match management in competency.
Re:Layoffs without calling them layoffs. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually in large parts of the US they're open to lawsuits for constructive dismissal, if the office isn't nearby. Being forced to drive 10 miles to the office wouldn't likely work, but if it would force you to relocate it would definitely qualify. Most likely anyone who is forced to change by this policy will be offered some severance if they don't want to change, just to avoid the lawsuits.
The HP Office (Score:2)
From what I hear, Dunder Mifflin has some spare office space - which is already stocked with HP computers.
Re:The HP Office (Score:5, Interesting)
Apropos which, I found this series of posts [ribbonfarm.com] fascinating reading.
Sample:
[William H. Whyte, author of The Organization Man] saw signs that in the struggle for dominance between the Sociopaths (whom he admired as the ones actually making the organization effective despite itself) and the middle-management Organization Man, the latter was winning. He was wrong, but not in the way you’d think. The Sociopaths defeated the Organization Men and turned them into The Clueless not by reforming the organization, but by creating a meta-culture of Darwinism in the economy: one based on job-hopping, mergers, acquisitions, layoffs, cataclysmic reorganizations, outsourcing, unforgiving start-up ecosystems, and brutal corporate raiding. In this terrifying meta-world of the Titans, the Organization Man became the Clueless Man. Today, any time an organization grows too brittle, bureaucratic and disconnected from reality, it is simply killed, torn apart and cannibalized, rather than reformed. The result is the modern creative-destructive life cycle of the firm [emphasis added]
Six posts in the series, each shedding much light on modern corporate dynamics. TL;DR version is "the executive class has gone feral."
Also worth reading is another post of Venkat's, "You are not an artisan".
False rumor? (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife works for HP (as a telecommuter) and she's pretty high up - and I'm pretty sure this is false. There were rumors of a 'no telecommuting policy' for the last couple of months, but nothing came of it. I'm guessing Meg & Co took heed of the negative feedback on that idea.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You can have me at 9am at the office. Don't expect me to do any meaningful work before 12pm, though. But you may rest assured that I'll be gone by 6pm, because I don't want to fall asleep at the wheel while driving home. I tend to be kind grumpy, too, if you pull me out of bed before noon.
Top management needs to learn that there are more important things than their ego. Like productivity. I don't give a shit about my superior's ego. I don't care whether he needs that feeling that he can dictate my life. If
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You have a problem with someone working 6 hours a day? Most workers don't really work more than maybe 3, but because nobody gives damn about the actual results the way to look good is to fool around for 12 hours per day. Pay by the hour, get hours. If someone had the balls to actually give goals and say; "this is what we will do this week, when it's done I don't want to see you at the office" They'd get it done on monday. But this always continues by "Oh, since you were so quick, here is some other things t
Re:False rumor? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's something I had to fight out with a superior of mine in another job I held.
I did what you suggest. I gave my team goals to work to. How they achieved them, I didn't care. I should mention that coming from the "tech" side of the trade and not the "management" side, I actually knew what's possible and what isn't, and I have a pretty good idea what an average, normally skilled person can accomplish in what time with what results to be expected. I set goals and I expected people to meet them, but aside of the usual milestone reports, I didn't really give a damn how much time they spent on the project or in the company at all. I've literally had people in my team that I never saw aside of the weekly meetings, they came and went as they pleased and they did some work from home too. Neither is anything I cared about as long as the work got done.
This of course caused some envy since other teams had "stricter" rules. A direct comparison between my team's work and the others soon showed, though, that my approach is the correct one. My team was very motivated (hell, I could literally pick and choose who I want for my projects, people were very keen to switch over to me), they were very productive (because some things you just can't do in the noise of a cubicle hell with its frequent interrupts) and they enjoyed that only job perk I could give them: Self organization and working at your own pace.
In a nutshell, if you have someone who can get an 8 hour job done in 3 and deliver top quality, the very LAST thing you should do is dump another 8 hours of work on his shoulders. Send that guy home to enjoy 5 hours of free time. Do NOT make the mistake to think that you can now fire one guy 'cause he can do that guy's job. Treasure such a person. You will NEED him the moment a project milestone is out of reach, you have a week to do a month's work and he is the ONLY guy who could pull that off. Then you will ask him to put in 60 hours this week to save your ass and he will gladly do it, knowing that the rest of the time he works 15 hours a week and gets paid for 50.
Re: (Score:3)
Bingo.
Anyone who worked from home will know the feeling that you sit there in front of your computer, headphones on with some music, dressed in something comfortable (or, depending on your personal preference, nothing), musing over some code and suddenly you notice that it's time to turn on the lights 'cause it's getting dark... and then you notice the clock and realize that it's already 10pm.
You simply keep going when you're on a roll. There's no such thing as "oh, I want to avoid the evening traffic" or t
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In short, working from home is for single people without kids.
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That's the great thing about a free market. You don't have to hire me, and I'm by no means obligated to work for you. And I guess I may speak for the both of us when I say that we're both very happy about that.
So they'll cram them all into the building... (Score:3)
...so they can 'innovate' by not being able to hear themselves think because of the 'collaborating' going on at the desks around them.
I work in a place like this. Its easy to identify the people that are actually getting shit done. They have headphones to block out all the jabbering.
Not happened, probably can't, most likely won't. (Score:5, Informative)
I work for HP, many levels below our CEO.
This undated document has not been distributed to employees. Most of us first heard of it today in the tech press. There is no actual *room* at all the HP offices to pull in all the employees. In fact, I understand that back when HP first started pushing telecommuting, they took the opportunity to do the logical thing, and shrink and close most of their field offices.
So, short form, this news isn't news, because it's not a happened, and probably isn't.
Re:Not happened, probably can't, most likely won't (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, so you still think you work for HP?
Re: (Score:3)
Sure. I worked at a startup once where one junior scripter just stopped coming in. It was right after a bit of a reorg, so nobody was really sure who his boss was. He hadn't been there long and came in with a huge hiring spurt, so nobody missed him. What he was doing was so unimportant, nobody noticed the lack of output. We figured it out 3 months later- he hadn't signed up for direct deposit, so the paper checks piled up on his desk and was eventually noticed by our receptionist. If he had just been
No doubt you've heard about Apple's flying saucer. (Score:5, Informative)
To be completed in a few years here in Cupertino. Almost all the real estate for it is coming from former Hewlett-Packard sites. As far as I know, the only part that isn't is Pruneridge Avenue between Wolfe and Tantau. I understand they'll be plowing that under as well.
There were two campuses. One was Ridgeview Court, which sprawled across seven or eight buildings south of Pruneridge. (I'm pretty sure these were among Tandem Computer's facilities before Compaq and then HP.) The other was a campus to the north of Pruneridge. It's all being torn down for Apple's new digs.
HP also had a facility in Mountain View too. Something's happening there now, I think, but it had been empty since roughly 2002.
All they've got now, for the most part, is a complex in Sunnyvale that used to belong to Palm, and Phillips before that, no bigger than anyone else's in the neighborhood.
I realize these are only a few sites in Silicon Valley, but the same thing probably happened in other places across the country where HP had a presence. It's a pity HP couldn't have been a bit more forward-thinking, but that died with the HP Way about the time what's-her-name finished having her way with the company.
It's about time... (Score:3, Insightful)
.
Contrary to the opinion of most [clueless] managers, it is not about the slackers.
,
It is about communication among the team.
If you hire good employees, then you should not need to be concerned about the number of hours they are working, except to make sure they are not working too many hours.
.Lee Iacocca - "I hire people brighter than me and then I get out of their way."
Re:It's about time... (Score:4, Insightful)
Lee Iacocca said a lot of great things. Unfortunately almost all of them are bullshit. A more accurate quote would go more like, "I come on board for an inflated salary, get the government to bail my company out, loot the employees' pension fund, take credit for other people's ideas, then cash in my stock options and sell a work of complete fiction that I call my autobiography." My uncle retired from thirty-some years at Chrysler and didn't have enough hours in a day to bad talk Iacocca. I think the thing that most annoyed him was Iacocca taking credit for saving the company by inventing the minivan. The initial version of Chrysler's copy of the Toyota minivan was already at the Proving Grounds being tested when Iacocca came on board, he just delayed the project by insisting on cosmetic changes. Jimmy Carter saved Chrysler, by declaring that the Federal government would only by Chrysler cars for the next ten years and going ahead with the production of the M1 Abrams tank.
Figures (Score:5, Funny)
Just when I finally got rid of all my pants.
Re:Figures (Score:5, Funny)
I wouldn't sweat it - there's a lot of Unix shops around. I assume you can grow a beard?
Stealing Mayer's bad idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Meg Whitman - a totally hideous person - mean, small, vindictive - has no ideas of her own, so she's just stealing Marissa Mayer's bad idea. Both are insanely wealthy people who literally have no clue how the proles who work for them actually live their lives. Step by step, the US stumbles toward its own French Revolution, but ours will make the one of 1789 look like a walk in the park.
I've been telecommuting full time for over 7 years (Score:5, Informative)
I've been telecommuting full time at home for over 7 years. Over half of our company is full time telecomuters spread across the USA. We are very successful at it and work very hard.
It is not like people imagine it. You wake up and get to work in the home office and stay disciplined. A lot to times you put in extra hours too. You get a lot more work done because you don't have office politics. Lots of phone calls, conference, video chat, and texting. If people don't see you fully engaged, producing, you will get fired. --- It is that simple. But you don't deal with traffic, hearing people backstabbing in adjacent cubicles, and all the bullshit that you wish you could get rid of to get your work done...
Sure you can take a break now and then, but if you get into goofing around people will be quick to notice just the same in this day in age. As long as you work hard and produce major results who cares. Studies have shown time and again that telecommuting produces greater results. Just don't do half and half. -- I don't think that works really well and leads to the stigma.
Meg and Carley are totally ignorant on full time telecommuting and the huge benefits. I think they are these hardcore career obsessed women who look down at family orientated women and say "heck no to those people telecommuting"... If they could they would probably ban maternity leave or kids to work as distractions. 20% of workers telecommute. Their mentality is that people are lazy by design an they need their people to be in cubicles.
In today's day in age unlike the 90's you've got instant messaging, facetime/skype, google video/chat... Most EDA tools can be local and licensed via a VPN license server.... I've been in countless meetings where we video collaborated work in real-time seamlessly. You don't need an office anymore for many types of industries. We would do complex engineering design online all the time.
It is ironic they don't like telecommuting but they force many of their employees to full time collaborate via video chatting, email, text to all the other divisions around the world....
We are headed to a contract for hire employee world as employers try to find legal ways not to offer health benefits, or trim staff like we're JIT inventory. It just makes sense that knowledge work be telecommute. It is far more efficient, cheaper for the company, and greater results.
Since HP, Intel, etc are companies where 30% is office politics and fun and games (I happen to know personally) they would benefit significantly.
Re:I've been telecommuting full time for over 7 ye (Score:4, Interesting)
HP bought EDS 5 years 5 months ago. That's the firm my brother was happily telecommuting for, for years. I guess he was expecting this to happen eventually. After all, why else would government work be privatized and then bought and sold by the likes of Ross Perot and Meg Whitman? It was all part of the nefarious plan to contract to perform government work for less by avoiding the costs that the government customarily pays its employees. Its like union busting but on a larger scale, and NOW its payday for them! But please America, don't be so naive that you don't see the truth about corporate America and the state of the economy. Its all just smoke in mirrors, and they intend to lower their costs and increase their profits now that they have stolen the business from you citizens. So, isn't it about time we stopped these assholes?
Shut up Meg (Score:4, Funny)
:-)
A syre sign of doom (Score:5, Insightful)
Usually, when a business is in deep trouble, the management starts removing perks of all kinds (even the ones that don't cost anything). When they get strict about office hours, take the funny posters down and push the dress code, update your resume, you're about to need it.
Other Memo: Make It Personal (Score:3)
Perhaps more interesting is the memo that broke today from when HP was delisted fro the Dow Jones Industrial Average (having occurred last month):
"I hope that every HP employee took today's announcement personally," she said in the one-page internal memo on September 10. Calling HP's departure from the benchmark index it joined in 1997 a "blow to our brand," Whitman said the moved showed many people still harbored doubts about her turnaround plan. "We need to make every sale," she stressed in the memo, which was seen by Reuters. Whitman's urgency is easy to understand. Two years into what she has always described as a five-year effort, HP's sales and profits are still sliding and Wall Street is losing patience. The stock has fallen 17 percent in the past three months and is down more than half its value since 2010.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/08/us-hp-restructuring-analysis-idUSBRE9970XL20131008 [reuters.com]
So Whitman has a turnaround plan which is clearly failing. This kind of "employees need to get more intense" plea is usually one of the last gasps of a failing company, IMO. Also notes that one her major moves was to throw executives out of their offices and into an open cube farm. So "rearranging the deck chairs" is quite literally part of what she's doing.
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:5, Insightful)
And honestly, it's not clear at all that HP has anything to believe in. If you say, "During this critical turnaround period, HP needs all hands on deck," you better have an actual way to turn the company around.
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah.. during the planning stage for the "shift".. wtf do you need people sitting in the office unsure of what they should be doing?
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:5, Funny)
Feeding their dog? Walking around in their underwear? Reading Slashdot?
Don't that's going to cut it at the office. :)
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wearing attire different for the time when one works for someone else than one wears for one's self can help reiterate to the person that professional time is just that, professional.
Certainly there are examples of this not holding true, as there are individuals that will act professionally in casual attire, and there are individuals that will act casually in professional attire, but it seems to hold that more people are professional when in professional attire than are professional when in casual attire.
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:5, Insightful)
BS. Wearing a monkey suit might be good if you spend a lot of your time out and meeting business-persons. In the workplace, it's often uncomfortable and distracting.
Where I work, weather ranges from -30c to 30+c depending on the time of year. Wearing a suit is sweaty, uncomfortable, and frankly results in some personal odor issues for people who are prone to perspiration.
We also have people who bike/walk to work. They wear reasonable clothes for work, but they're also easy to change in/out of.
Suits make suits feel better, but they're not for everyone. While a Hawaiian shirt and a g-string aren't work appropriate, reasonably comfortable clothing is fine for most people. Starting a professional, respectful workplace starts with attitude, not clothes.
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's my experience that for many people, excessive casualness at work leads to treating work as casually as
It's my experience that other people most certianly do judge me (and probably you) by looks, including dress. There was one period early in my career where I decided to dress as casually as I could get away with. I also grew my hair down into a ponytail. Slowly while this was going on, somehow at work my perception changed from a bright young go-getter to a useless slacker.
When things got the worst for me career-wise, I decided to physically clean up. After all, its trivial to do. Certianly much easier than actually changing my attitude, right? So I started dressing up. One day at work I just started showing up in dress slacks and shoes, tie and jacket. breifcase instead of backpack. I cut the ponytail off.
It wasn't as obvious during the slow transformation, but the sudden change back was dramatic. Overnight I was right back to being a praised go-getter. Not only that, but I noticed that salespeople in stores would talk to me again, as would panhandlers. When I was ponytail guy, car salemen in patrticular would just act like I didn't exist. Even if I was there to buy something.
If you haven't tried it yourself, you'd be absolutely amazed how much other people's perception of you is based on looks. The thing is, dress and hairstyle are pretty much entirely in your control. You may have a style of each you prefer, but from a strict economic perspective, if you don't do both to maximize your preception at work, you aren't hurting anyone but yourself. So that's what the value of ties is.
The whole experience also left me with a new appreciation for folks with ethnic, weight, or general attractivness issues. While I was being studiously ignored by car salesmen until I left, there was a black guy on the lot getting the same treatment. I could go home and cut off my pony-tail. What could he do?
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:5, Funny)
Nissan motor company. But they also had a CEO that could execute. With a katana if necessary.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:5, Insightful)
HP is also a consulting company. Perhaps they should work on new killer apps to use all those new CPU cycles and actually give people a reason to buy new computers. HP could get into 3D printing and mass market it.
HP needs R&D right now. Most companies cut it in 2008 and they need it badly at this point.
Re: (Score:3)
Had is the word. Most of their newer printing stuff is minor tweaks on major designs that were developed at branches that were shut down. The don't have the people left that can do major R&D.
When you get rid of (spin off) your R&D department [agilent.com] that tends to happen.
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:4, Interesting)
if they don't get a CEO that has a plan and knows WTF they are doing
I assure you that most CEO's indeed have a plan and have a very good idea about what they're doing. Except usually that plan has everything to do with manipulating the short term stock price and CEO bonus levels and nothing to do with the long term health of a corporation.
Re: (Score:3)
"But that bitch Marissa did it, and the analysts all rave over her! Desks? Bah, those slackers don't really need desks, buy a few thousand bean-back chairs for 'em!"
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:5, Funny)
Those deck chairs aren't going to move themselves...
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, if you're going to do something like this, you need to give your developers something to believe in, a reason to work for the company. Otherwise your developers will see it and find another place to work.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was exactly what they are after. Removing existing perks (such as working from home) is a good way to increase the rate of natural attrition. It is a standard management technique: basically you annoy your staff so that they find jobs elsewhere, and you don't replace them. If your company was in enough trouble that you are going to need a round of redundancies, doing this means that you save a money by not having to pay those employees out, as they are the ones that resigned.
My objection to this technique has always been that by doing this, you essentially lose the people that have skills and can get jobs, and keep the people who don't have skills and can't get jobs, weakening your company. I'd generally rather choose who to make redundant, even if it costs a bit more, and keep the people who I know are actually productive around.
But bean-counters rarely seem to have the capacity to understand that argument.
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:5, Insightful)
My objection to this technique has always been that by doing this, you essentially lose the people that have skills and can get jobs, and keep the people who don't have skills and can't get jobs, weakening your company. I'd generally rather choose who to make redundant, even if it costs a bit more, and keep the people who I know are actually productive around.
Correct, mostly. I have seen this happen in a number of companies I have worked out, The mgr starts a round of layoff, either by laying people off of annoying workers until they quit, what also happens is that the smart, talented workers they want to keep read the writing on the wall and leave. The mgt tries to compensate by ramping up the off shore offices but soon discover that it's damn near impossible and really expensive to replace the good people who walked out.
Rinse then repeat.
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:5, Insightful)
But bean-counters rarely seem to have the capacity to understand that argument.
Most companies cannot really evaluate people. They don't know the value of the people they employ. Bonus are given based on the success of the project you are working on and external sign of failure of you direct colleague. Deep down, bean counter know that. They know that if they are going to cherry-pick people, at best they will fire random people.
Also, when you pay executive hundred of times the salary of regular employee, at some point you start to believe they are worth it. With a team of rockstars like that, why would you care about relative performance of cheapo employee ?
Re: (Score:3)
My objection to this technique has always been that by doing this, you essentially lose the people that have skills and can get jobs, and keep the people who don't have skills and can't get jobs, weakening your company.
Most techniques for getting rid of unneeded workerssuffer that problem to some degree. Even if you keep the redundancies secret right up to the time you make them people will still wonder "am I in the next round".
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:5, Insightful)
Six months down the line, when those people are in the unemployment line and have given up looking for work, it'll be "We need more H1B visas, we can't find enough workers!"
Re: (Score:3)
I once bluntly told a supervisor that they had just laid off all of the wrong people.
All of the old timers with the most direct experience and lots of tribal knowledge were just shown the door. Compared to that, what was left were just a bunch of "entry level graduates".
Re: Runnin' on Empty... (Score:3)
The reason they need all hands on deck is to rearrange the chairs.
Re: (Score:3)
She gets people into the office, the rest is up to them! :-)
Re: (Score:3)
If you say, "During this critical turnaround period, HP needs all hands on deck," you better have an actual way to turn the company around.
Yep most people will interpret it as "During this potential nosedive period HP needs to limit your chances of jumping ship"
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the kind of decision-making that earns people of her class millions if not up-front, then at least in out-the-door compensation. Low-risk to her ass, while such a major-change seems both plausible and relatively do-able as she seems to be smart, with no concept or care for how things have actually been done up until now, and the people involved. Hell, Marissa Meyer at Yahoo already has enacted this thinking months ago; and not the freshest of ideas. Meg thinks her bosses on the board will appreciate such a decisive move, and also The Changes She Enacted. This piddly decision has CYA written all over it. It takes no measure into the talent that chooses to telecommute (using HP IP and modern-technology) into consideration, or their personal investments, and certainly stresses the workforce and pool of talent.
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:5, Insightful)
If that's what you tell me for putting my resources at the company's disposal, for saving them money by providing my own "office" along with my own office supplies and blur the line between work time and leisure time enough that a call at 10pm usually starts with "oh good, I see you're still logged in...", expect my 2 weeks notice in the reply.
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:5, Insightful)
More importantly....
It's 2:00AM, some "very important server" has just gone down.
[Pointy Headed Management]"We have to get this server working or we'll lose millions an hour"
[Worker]" Sure, no problem, I'll drive in which should take 2 hours so I don't telecommute."
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:5, Interesting)
[Worker]" Sure, no problem, I'll drive in which should take 2 hours so I don't telecommute."
I did that once (I lived 90 minutes' drive away)... it was the first and last time they ever thought a physical presence in a 'war room' to fix a gimped VM was that important to have.
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:5, Funny)
It's 2:00AM, some "very important server" has just gone down.
[Pointy Headed Management]"We have to get this server working or we'll lose millions an hour"
To which I would reply: "I thought you moved all those jobs it India so that we could have a 'Follow the Sun' model and none of us would have to woken out of a sound sleep, Bangalor will take care of it. Well, what happend to that plan?"
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:5, Insightful)
expect my 2 weeks notice in the reply.
I'm sure they expect many 2 weeks notices. A move like this is probably a precursor to a mass layoff, unless of course they 'meet their numbers' in people who quit due to the new policies.
Re:Runnin' on Empty... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:RIP (Score:4, Informative)
Please. Carly killed it over a decade ago.
Re:RIP (Score:5, Insightful)
The HP Way died on a dark winter's day in 1999, when Bill Hewlett experienced a failure of willpower reminiscent of the fall of Isildur, and failed to drown Carly Fiorina in his swimming pool.
Re:RIP (Score:5, Funny)
Well, that's perfectly understandable. If her effect on the pool water quality was anything like what she did to HP, he'd have been stuck with 30000 gallons of toxic waste in his backyard.
Re:reasons (Score:5, Interesting)
I had to snicker at that "unite and inspire them to achieve higher levels of excellence" line. Not only because it's the typical management bullshit crammed into a single line, but because I can just see how "inspired" the people will "unite".
Considering that HP has by no means that amount of space necessary to accommodate the amount of people, it will be a tad bit ... well, let's say crammed. And somehow the image of how three people crammed into a cubicle try to achieve any level of operational excellence makes me snicker... though I can see how they have to be quite innovative to find a way to get ANY work done in such a setup.
And yes, I'm pretty sure it will unite them. In their hatred towards their company, at least.
Re:Not necessarily terrible (Score:4, Insightful)
it's almost impossible to manage several employees remotely.
I honestly can't fathom how this can be the case. How hard is it to have basic metrics to balance against weekly status reports? I don't see how physical location does anything to create accountability for one's work output, and is no substitute for management.
Re: (Score:3)
There is no excuse for management not tracking