Hewlett-Packard to axe as many as 30,000 more jobs amid restructuring

Posted:
in General Discussion edited September 2015
The restructuring effort that will see seminal Silicon Valley firm Hewlett-Packard split into two companies will also cause an additional 30,000 employees to lose their jobs, the company has revealed.




HP chief Meg Whitman announced the planned cuts at an analyst conference this week, according to the BBC. That could boost the total number of job losses as a result of the split as high as 85,000.

The move is expected to save $2.7 billion yearly, with a one-time $2.7 billion charge.

"We've done a significant amount of work over the past few years to take costs out and simplify processes and these final actions will eliminate the need for any future corporate restructuring," Whitman is quoted as saying.

HP announced plans to split its enterprise and consumer offerings into separate companies late last year. Whitman will remain in charge of HP Enterprise, and both companies --?the other will call itself HP Inc. --?will continue as publicly-traded entities.

The split and resultant job cuts represent an ignominious end for the company founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939, which led the rise of Silicon Valley and remains one of the world's largest corporations. HP has largely missed the boat on the post-PC era, thanks in part to the revolving door of executive leadership?-- chief executives Carly Forina, Mark Hurd, and Leo Apotheker were all hired with great fanfare and eventually fired for poor performance or misconduct.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 47
    Actually the part founded by Hewlett and Packard is doing just fine these days. HP as we know it is just a spinoff of the original business.
  • Reply 2 of 47
    This represents roughly 10% of their employees. They are probably still way too fat.
  • Reply 3 of 47
    Only saving grace...still make the best desktop printers IMO
  • Reply 4 of 47

    This is what corporate executives do when they don't have a clue about how to grow the business.

  • Reply 5 of 47
    This is what corporate executives do when they don't have a clue about how to grow the business.

    H-P is lucky they haven't been crushed by Chinese knockoff companies yet.
  • Reply 6 of 47

    Like Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman loves to lay off Americans. And unlike their good friend Mitt Romney (elected Governor once), who loves to lay off Americans and ship their jobs overseas, neither will ever be elected to anything.

  • Reply 7 of 47
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by TheWhiteFalcon View Post



    Actually the part founded by Hewlett and Packard is doing just fine these days. HP as we know it is just a spinoff of the original business.



    Are you talking about Keysight? (formerly Agilent)

  • Reply 8 of 47
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by AppleZilla View Post

     

    Like Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman loves to lay off Americans. And unlike their good friend Mitt Romney (elected Governor once), who loves to lay off Americans and ship their jobs overseas, neither will ever be elected to anything.




    They also love to put American money in other countries.

  • Reply 9 of 47
    pmzpmz Posts: 3,433member

    Turns out is doesn't require that many people to keep churning out average PCs with no innovation.

  • Reply 10 of 47

    HP was on it's way out when they branded their own iPod.

  • Reply 11 of 47
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Jerry602 View Post



    Only saving grace...still make the best desktop printers IMO

     

    Lately, not so much.  Their business-level lasers go through consumables like teens go through Gatorade, and are similarly temperamental.  Competitors manage to deliver quality AND efficiency.

     

    At home, after decades with HP, but seeing their build and driver quality decline, I switched to the Epson Workforce series, and never looked back.

     

    As always, this is a single, arbitrary data point.  YMMV.

  • Reply 12 of 47

    Wow. Fiorina and Whitman (and Hurd too, with his relentless cost-cutting view of the work) have thoroughly gutted a once-great American company. The Board has been a shameful disaster as well.

     

    What a tragedy.

  • Reply 13 of 47
    paxmanpaxman Posts: 4,729member
    "We've done a significant amount of work over the past few years to take costs out and simplify processes and these final actions will eliminate the need for any future corporate restructuring,"
    Umm... OK, sure.
  • Reply 14 of 47

    This isn't going to sit well with those employees' union.

     

    Wait...

  • Reply 15 of 47
    tbelltbell Posts: 3,146member
    jerry602 wrote: »
    Only saving grace...still make the best desktop printers IMO


    I disagee. They are cheap. Brother makes a better printer.
  • Reply 16 of 47
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by TBell View Post





    I disagee. They are cheap. Brother makes a better printer.



    A decade or so ago the HP LaserJets were real workhorses. We output 200,000 black toner pages before needing service, then another 100,000 until we finally switched to fully networked color Xerox floor model. Now the HP small business lineup is total crap in my opinion.

     

    We also have large format Epson ink jets which are really high quality. Haven't tried the HP large format.

  • Reply 17 of 47
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by AppleZilla View Post

     

    Like Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman loves to lay off Americans. And unlike their good friend Mitt Romney (elected Governor once), who loves to lay off Americans and ship their jobs overseas, neither will ever be elected to anything.




    It won't just be the US that gets hit with these 'Rightsizing'. They will hit Europe pretty hard as well.

    I got chopped not long after the take over of Compaq closed. Still won't buy anything made by HP.

  • Reply 18 of 47
    Yep. Most American companies of run by people knowledgeable about getting tax breaks and tax payer money from one government or another, knowledgeable about their golden parachutes and office politics, and whose knowledge amounts to little more than looking at spreadsheets.

    As Steve Jobs said, the best companies are run by engineers/scientists. They actual know important stuff.
  • Reply 19 of 47
    Wow. Fiorina and Whitman (and Hurd too, with his relentless cost-cutting view of the work) have thoroughly gutted a once-great American company. The Board has been a shameful disaster as well.

    What a tragedy.

    It would be more tragic if they were unable to fire people to meet current market conditions. They're not a job center, they're a business.
  • Reply 20 of 47
    chadbagchadbag Posts: 1,999member

    How long before we start seeing such articles about Apple?  I would think at least 5 years, but all this talk of original TV content development, Apple cars*, and a lot of other things that will end up being money pit distractions compared to the core competencies of Apple, and achievable at the scale Apple needs as a large company.

     

    Hopefully Tim and company are agile enough to be able to drop things that don't look like they will work and find new things no one has thought of before, or new ways to do old things.

     

     

    *I don't think an electric car in the next 10 years will be able to sell enough to make a difference to Apple.  In 10 years, most cars will still be fueled by liquid fuel or a variant of NG or a hybrid with an engine running on such fuels.  Small commuter cars in urban areas will be the biggest concentration of electric cars still, but it will still be a minority.

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