Fujitsu to axe 1,800 jobs across the UK IT giant Fujitsu is to axe 1,800 jobs in Blighty – around 13 per cent of its UK workforce. The Japanese godzilla denied the move was driven by Brexit but was intended to allow to "better compete and grow in today’s global IT marketplace." A Fujitsu spokesman said the company is planning a transformation program that will …
Global revenue has remained flat at Fujitsu for a number of years
Ah, so this is probably down to the chasing of short-term performance figures.
No doubt next year, they'll record excellent performance.
And two years after that, they'll report high overheads - because clients are leaving them as they can't meet SLAs, and they have to hire expensive contractors in to get certain key jobs done. (Luckily, they have experience from a previous employer. Wonder who that would be?)
The joys of short-term capitalism. Simply making a profit, steadily, year on year isn't enough these days...
"The joys of short-term capitalism. Simply making a profit, steadily, year on year isn't enough these days..."
All too true. The modern large corporate has meet or beat its quarterly guidance AND grow revenue to satisfy its shareholders. Nothing else, least of all employees, seems to matter.
"The modern large corporate has meet or beat its quarterly guidance ..."
Interestingly enough, Unilever seems to have ditched that:
"When Polman became chief executive of Unilever in 2009, [ ...] As one of his first acts, he announced that the company would no longer publish quarterly profit updates, as they encouraged short-term thinking."
https://www.ft.com/content/e6696b4a-8505-11e6-8897-2359a58ac7a5
Might buy some shares in them :)
Unlikely since there's no jobs in half the EU, or they would have to take a huge pay cut and overcome the hurdle of learning a foreign language. Realistically they're far more likely to stay in the UK working in IT or move to another English speaking country.
OTOH if skilled people can't find work, the government does fund startups, so perhaps one day the UK government will be able to employ the services of a British IT company so the profits made from our taxes don't go abroad.
The EU unemployment average is 8.9%, including a few countries with lower unemployment than the UK. Finding a job elsewhere in the EU should not be such a problem for anyone in IT, especially not if you speak English as that is a major asset in some countries where that is less common.
those 1800 will be able to re-locate to other EU countries, eh? Oh, the glory of a free labour movement.
Why would they want to? To join the dole queues of France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece, etc?
UK unemployment could double, and it'd still be below those sclerotic basket case EU economies.
>UK unemployment could double, and it'd still be below those sclerotic basket case EU economies.
It all depends how you count, mate ;-) Those "sclerotic basket case EU economies" do not have slavery contracts (zero-hour contract, anybody ?).
As for skilled workers in IT, there is a shortage across the continent ... of course, if you are the secretary type, Windows-only because I dunno wot "line of command" or "whatever you call that thing" is, you are out of luck ... Linux/UNIX admins are rarer, and highly paid, especially if they have xp, a clue, or both ...
>> "Anything not connected with cloud is at risk," our source claimed. <<
Sounds like they're pulling a page from IBM's playbook, and basically any services vendor these days. I've heard from IBMers that people are being dumped unless they can show how they contribute to "cloud, social, mobile or cognitive" stuff...so all those people keeping that "luddite" infrastructure running are done for.
I know the public cloud is coming, but I do feel the insistence that it's going to replace all on-site hardware is overblown. I think like everything in life there will be a healthy mix of everything once the Second Dotcom Bubble pops. The only reason it hasn't already is _because_ of the public cloud...companies with silly business plans can stay in business much longer when they don't have to build out networks and data centers themselves.
Yup,
Well who is senior management going to get rid of?
Is it the teams (or at least the managers) on the sites you see in the canteen and meetings every day or the ones a few hundred miles away?
Derry/Londonderry won't get hit as Fujitsu will still have to pay back grant money for the "center of excellence" that was created there. I mean a centre of excellence where there are senior systems designers (known as CSAs) who where deemed unfit to be 1st line support staff (some where simply moved out of harms way)
There's already feral packs of IT staff roaming Belfast with all the US companies who hoovered up staff with high salaries, then closed down the Belfast operation ditched them because the grant funding ended 18 months later.
For the last 18 months Fujitsu management have been running a European wide program to re-align the company across Europe (Fujitsu mirai). Duncan Tait expressly stated that this would not involve any headcount reductions - a couple of months later they lay-off 2K UK people - bet he wont apologise for misleading everybody.
This really does demonstrate why Fujitsu are in so much trouble, the management teams mislead the workforce and thus de-motivate everybody, nobody really cares about the company anymore. Why any company or individual would buy product or services from this bunch of comedians is questionable.
And the Brexit statement is untrue too - the management team in the UK expressly told the UK workforce to vote to stay in the EU - it was 'better for the company and better for employment'.
This post has been deleted by its author
Sadly the useless 30% ie the tiers of management and those who appear to do nothing except attend meetings are almost immune within Fujitsu.
No doubt roles will be passed to overseas teams who simply ignore anything that isn't windfall or incredibly low hanging fruit.
The remaining Fujitsu staff will have an increased workload as even more dross will float up to the 3rd line support folks.
Losing some of the large numbers of management would be a much better idea but won't happen.
Even better would be the bid teams that offer services that either can't be built on the budget, or accept over 10,000 devices for which the support teams receive no income
Of course it's a great plan. The only thing holding Fujitsu back was having too many people, clogging up the hallways and trying just too hard to solve customer problems. Without all the surplus people getting in the way service levels will sky rocket and it will be double bonuses all round. Me thinks not.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
