back to article HP: Yes, we plan to axe another 7,100 European staffers

HP has confirmed that more than 7,000 workers in Europe are headed for the chopping block, with sources telling us that a good whack of the cuts will be made in Enterprise Services. In June 2012, HP began consultations with union and staff over plans to get rid of 8,000 jobs in the region, and it confirmed that thousands more …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    let's face it

    If you are still working for HP Services (Enterprise or other) you have lost all sense of self worth. No value in working as a galley rower as the infrastructure above you crumbles.

    Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori:

    mors et fugacem persequitur uirum

    nec parcit inbellis iuuentae

    poplitibus timidoue tergo.

    RIP B&D

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: let's face it

      You could remove "HP Services" and put "ADD NAME HERE" and the same could apply for many, many, many more companies.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So, the culling goes on...

    ...and on, and on. The loyal staff that have worked their nuts off and made huge scrifices for this company, on the back of management promises, are getting shafted yet again.

    And all the while the likes of deadwood Livermore, who doesn't know her a&*e from her elbow, sail on unperturbed to yet another obscene bonus and pay hike.

    Whitman, she just looks like a female version of Hurd - cut, cut and more cuts. I also feel sorry for HP customers- they will be shafted as well - they just don't know it yet.

    1. GotThumbs
      Megaphone

      Re: So, the culling goes on...

      If they are soooo crucial to the profitability of the company....then let them build/form their own company and compete against HP.

      These people get paid to work and a big part of their job is to make the company profitable. None of these people are working for free, so they are NOT saints. Wake up and realize...companies do not exist to serve the employees. The company answers to investors and no one invests on failing companies or unprofitable companies.

      Only a fool thinks he is irreplaceable IMO.

      Everyone is replaceable and that's why you have to maximize the companies profits to remain within the company. Just showing up to work each day is NOT sufficient.

      They they are so valuable, then they will be working again soon...else the unions need to build their own company and employ all those workers.

      ~Best wishes

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Stop

        Re: So, the culling goes on...

        "Everyone is replaceable and that's why you have to maximize the companies profits to remain within the company. Just showing up to work each day is NOT sufficient.

        They they are so valuable, then they will be working again soon...else the unions need to build their own company and employ all those workers."

        You are talking about the crap of CEOs that plague the world, right?...

  3. CCCP

    Business is not charity

    I'll get flamed, but if a company is not fit for purpose, something has to give.

    Unite in particular seem hell bent on even destroying companies in their pursuit of influence. Just look at Grangemouth. (though a last ditch concession from Union seems just to have emerged)

    Yes, capital has to be reined in, but that is the role of governments and, increasingly, supra-governmental bodies. Not irrelevant unions.

    1. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: Business is not charity

      You are right, businesses are not charities and should always look to managing costs. But you can also save yourself right out of business.

      I've seen far too many places where the employees did not have the resources to effectively do their job.

  4. c:\boot.ini
    Boffin

    Never work for a quoted company - period.

  5. GotThumbs
    Paris Hilton

    Unions.....bad for business IMO.

    Lets see the Unions and union members form their own company and run it successfully IMO.

    Unions were important decades ago, but now they just hinder/harass businesses IMO.

    No one invests in unprofitable companies. Let the Unions invest in HP by using all those millions in union dues and buy the company stock.

  6. Fatman

    RE: HP has confirmed that more than 7,000 workers in Europe are headed for the chopping block

    NOW you know who is eventually going to pay for Leo's Boondoggle - HP's rank and file.

    I am glad I don't own any of their stock.

  7. ecofeco Silver badge

    There's an old saying...

    "It's good to save money in business, but you can save yourself right out of business."

    Ask Dell how that works.

  8. Oh Homer
    IT Angle

    Not "interested in making IT my future"

    I think he meant "Windows PCs".

    That's the problem, not "IT".

  9. Cream_DJ
    FAIL

    It was all going so well...

    Working for E.ON for 10 or so years and all was going well, then news of the appointment of some former HP stooge into the E.ON ranks broke out. Within months, Aschenbrenner had decided that E.ON needed to outsource its I.T... then who should be awarded the contract for infrastructure and end user computing but Aschenbrenners former cohorts! Coincidence? or just good business sense?

    A couple of years suffering with substandard IT, the air among the people of E.ON is rife with the annoyance of the poor service and hidden charges provided by HP, and with the reduction of staff, and offshoring work to those who fail to fully grasp the English language is sure to make things worse.

    I parted HP's company 3 months ago, took the redundancy and ran, seriously the best decision I have ever made! I just feel for my former colleagues and friends in Enterprise Services, who still have the misfortune of being in HPs employ! (albeit not for much longer)...

  10. Darren Barratt
    Unhappy

    Definitly not.

    In my 20 years in proper work, I've been through the redundancy process 4 times, and have been preparing for redundancy for nearly half of that 20. I've actively discouraged my son from going into IT, since it seems to bear the brunt of cutbacks whenever things get tough.

    Everyone in IT will face redundancy by being replaced with computers. As they get more powerful, there's less need for the more esoteric skills (give it another few years and it'll be batman computers, where you just ask them to do things!).

    Most of my work has been financial sector, and I've seen the highly paid, highly skilled guys squeezed out, unless they move into management, where their tech skills get dusty. Most people I knew who thought of themselves as coders are really just bolting together off the shelf solutions.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Definitly not.

      If your primary skill is backstabbing people faster than they can do the same to you; if the Byzantine Empire sounds like an "exciting" place and time you'd love to have lived in; if you think of a paperclip as a "tool"; if you wish to never contribute the tinyest smidgen to society by creating something useful yourself; if the three main things you're in it are "money, money and money"; if you'd be proud to belong to a despised reviled acclaimed social class of parasites thieves lovely folks only second to lawyers in the eyes of the ordinary wage slave; then by all means, get an MBA and become a manager.

      Without a doubt, you'll be worse off than that as an IT professional in terms of both finances an security. What I'd really like to know though is how many working in IT today made that choice because it seemed to be a guarantee-carrier to well-lined pockets the way medicine and law always were, and how many did it because it simply was what they wanted to do...?

      I guess that answers the original question as well then.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Some facts

    I am working for HP ES in so called Eastern Europe. Important facts are missing from this story. Here nobody is going to fire anyone, actually they hire and hire and there are still many open vacancies. Reason? People doing the same work in UK, Holland etc, quite often with having less knowledge, earn 3-4 times more than we do.Not 30% more, 3 times more. Don't want to loose your jobs to these damn eastern europeans? Maybe it's time to agree to earn less? Or maybe come to live here, we invite. In other way you just lost in evolutionary struggle for existence. And yes, we do speak english usually, within people below 40 practically everyone speaks better or worse but communicable english. And most of us also another foreign language. How about u?

    Anonymous from obvious reasons.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Some facts

      Anon for the reason I work for HP.

      I can assure you the "Eastern European" lot often have less knowledge than they think. Instead they follow process and churn out advice based from pre completed sheets (often written by the people they are trying to give the "help" to).

      God help you if you want someone to break a bit of process to help a customer in need, everything from HW quotes to services tasks takes a minimum of twice as long as needed because they aren't capable of operating outside of process. It also often comes back wrong, so you end up having to do it yourself in the first place. Thats is before the language barrier even comes into the equation.

      There are the odd areas of decent people out there (migration centre being one), but they are often in the minority rather than the norm.

      The only reason people use them is that they force them to (off shoring back office functions). Main criteria was they were cheap!

  12. Melanie Winiger

    Amazing AC

    I learnt something new:

    "People doing the same work in UK, Holland etc, quite often with having less knowledge, earn 3-4 times more than we do"

    I think you earn a lot more than someone "with having less knowledge" (sic) in other parts of the world e.g. the Indian sub-continent.

    Don't gloat about your piitance of a salary.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Chaos

    The company has lost the plot. My take on the fact that so many redundancies are planned for western Europe is that Whitman is wanting to avoid being in the US papers for reducing staffers over there. Why ? Well she wants to run for office again of course.

    Whilst i understand the need to lower costs, that is already being done on an account by account basis as contracts are renewed. This is all about sending a dumb ideological signal to the stock markets, the long term consequences are not understood by HP management.

    Carry on HP and the trend towards insourcing will continue to gather pace, as your and other IT providers service continues to slide into the shit.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Missing a trick

    What I am hearing is that the competitive model for HP is changing. What i don't understand is that many poeple are basically walking dollars, for many people every hour you work is chargable to the client, or the client has been sold a fixed pool, of full time equalivent resources. Hence if the firm gets rid of you the charging capacity goes down and the cycle of staff being required occurs and hence the need for contractors and therefore the costs go up and profits go down.

    There needs to be a proper look at resourcing and at redeploying/reskilling people. It must be cheaper to reskill than to make redundant. I do not see the investments being made in this area in HP which is the old EDS and whilst R&D is important it is only 1 piece of the bigger jigsaw, and I think the HP leadership team are missing a real trick here..

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Missing a trick - lost the plot more like

      Thats what HP leadership excel at.

      HP is losing enterprise services customers hand over fist, they dont get it end of story. Corporate Stockholm syndrome is deeply ingrained into HP management, the culture of making staff (and to a lesser extent customers) unhappy is now a core unwritten HP value.

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