Axed from IBM for remote working? Don't go crying to HPE

"Digital tools are great, but having a conversation face-to-face is a faster means to an end," she said.

So how does that work in a global company which has people working on the same project in India, Germany, Britain, East Coast and in California?

It f*** does not. Unless everything, but the tail of the list is treated as scum with no voice, no say and no contribution to the cause of joyous Californicating. Righting the company my arse.

Absolutely!

When working at home I took the time of one commute ...Co. got the other (so free hours)

How does the colaboration crap square with off/right shore model?

Just an excuse to lose heads

Bunch of dinosaurs who haven't even realised they are dead yet... operating in in old world consulting and outsourcing model.

So really all that world-wide collaboration that's supposed to have produced Linux is just a stunt. It must be a group of grunts crowded into a cubicle farm because you couldn't do it any other way.

Sr. Network Engineer

It's managers who don't know how to handle their remote staff. You need to still do all the things a good manager would do in the office, but do it remotely. Most managers avoid communicating with staff who are remote unless it's via email.

Giving flexibility gets flexibility

When a company gives the trust and flexibility for people to work remotely, they often get a lot more back - in extended working times for example, I'll happily trade some of my normal travel time for work time as overall, I gain personal time and flexibility.

Similarly, if there is something to finish off, then if I'm working remotely, the problem of having to run for a train or leaving to miss a traffic hot spot isn't an issue any more, so you can work until its done and meet that deliverable deadline.

If I'm remote, then I can work around things with more flexibility, for example getting a hair cut or walking the dog between rain showers whilst I wait for that international call with the customer in some remote part of the world that's outside of my normal time zone - it makes absolutely no difference as long as I deliver the working day and get the work done - since it should all be about what is done, rather than how or where.

If they are worried about the workers vs shirkers problem is the same if people are in the office as when they are not, so measuring work output is a simple way to figure which pool the person is in.

Then there is the working environment - my home office is set up much better than the cramped basic desk and cheap corporate IT components, its also a lot quieter than the open plan offices, so I can concentrate more and be on calls without everyone having to mute all the time to block the background noise.

The other big point is that companies were dropping office space due to the cost overhead of car parks and floor space to make themselves more competitive. How many of us asked for them to pay for our home office set up or to support it ? How much does it really cost for them to buy you a headset and provide you with a Lync/Skype (or whatever its called this week) and configure for help desk remote control when its necessary - its peanuts compared to the office space !!

Come on corporates, wake up to where your real assets are and start treating the work force like the grownups they are,

Another Deckchair Shulller

First, one will be collaborating with others around the world and will need to talk with them. For example I have been on conference calls with colleagues in Scotland and South Africa and I am in the US. Obviously, no competent manager is going to authorize travel when 30 - 60 minutes on WebEx gets the job done. Where I was sitting does not matter (office or home office) only that I have access to the right tools.

Second, morale is critical to any organization but especially to one that is struggling. High morale is probably as important if ignored part of any turnaround. The staff has to buy in to what needs to be done. Treating them as children is not going to cut it.

Third, many above have pointed out the inherent flexibility the home workers have. If they need to step out or do an errand they can plus not worrying about traffic means they are more relaxed and can easily work over without a major problem.

Fourth, companies that are too concerned about where one physically is have serious mismanagement problems at the top. They should be concerned about the amount and quality of work being done not where the arse is.

Missing the point

"... that in order to right lighten the ship at her newly severed enterprise company, employees need ..."

Isn't that much clearer now?

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Microsoft/IBM/HP are where they are now because of where their best (former) employees are now...

The HP Way: The problem is banning the solution

The old HP became a globalized entity, with R&D spread around the world, and sales teams selling into a global marketplace. That HP ran into problems, and hired the wrong person(Carly) as part of applying the wrong solution to the wrong problem. Layoffs ensued. When that didn't work, HP tried again. When the new solution (Hurd) started to treat the rudderless mass of HPs fossilized middle management as a problem, Layoffs ensued. The startled Eunochs of the forbidden city then poured poison into his ear in the night, leading to a new solution(Apotheker). He tried unsuccessfully to turn HP into SAP and shed billions off their stock value. Layoffs ensued. The powers that be then chose another Carly, in the form of former ebayer Meg Whitman, who's main accomplishment seems to be in doing one of the things they fired Leo for.

The claim that cutting remote workers is because the company is in "Turnaround" is funny for a few reasons. The company has spent more years in turnaround since the y2k then not. Another is HP's own statement of "the HP way', which does not state thou shall run the ineffectual middle managers playbook from 2002.

For giggles: The HP Way

1. We have trust and respect for individuals.

(But not enough to trust remote workers to log into an online meeting on-time)

2. We focus on a high level of achievement and contribution.

(But put the company in the hands of those with a track record of underachievement)

3. We conduct our business with uncompromising integrity.

(Firing Hurd was uncompromising, but HP has had its ethical conundrums, like surveilling employees)

4. We achieve our common objectives through teamwork.

(But only if it happens in the same office as management, which fears phones and webcams, See #4)

5. We encourage flexibility and innovation.

(Like you being flexible about the drive in when we hired you to a telecommuting position)

Oh, and spare yourselves the legal headaches HP, this post wasn't sent from Palo Alto, call the molehunters off.

"When you're in a turnaround, making decisions in real time, conference calls don't work"

Two things -

- If HP is making business decisions in less than the time that it takes to dial into a conference line, that explains a lot.

- They know there are web conferencing applications that allow face to face video, screen sharing, etc, right? You would think a technology company would want to use technology.d

come into office so we can lay you off...

Having employees on-site makes it easier to spring a surprise layoff on a department and verify that everyone is "under control" of extra hired security to oversee you packing your office and being walked out.

Next it will be ...

Everyone will work on HP time... i..e. West Coast USA time. Then all those so important decisions can be made with everyone present.

Perhaps it should be Indian time as (like IBM) all the development is done there. 13.5hours from the west coast.

She's just making sure that her exit package goals are met so that she'll get paid in Platinum. Then she'll run for office... {please no}

No problem getting a desk to sit at though

Because of all the staff laid off over the past four years, you can pretty must sit where you like in the office now and pick the best hardware available from the pile of desktops, laptops and monitors in the corner.

Most of the people on my team are in different countries

And it makes no difference where I am as I'd need to use e-mail and Lync anyway.

And I guess the same is true in IBM and HPE too.

The thing is once Yahoo, IBM, and HPE have these great ideas it sets the ball rolling for CxOs in other companies to have them. If it happens in mine it won't improve my morale.

Reality compared to theory

I used to work for HP. Distant upper management used their email missives to tell us all that we'd have to return to working in the Bracknell office. Everyone ignore them. Nothing was done. Bracknell was (and still is) often close to empty.

Good luck selling those collaboration solutions. You just failed Question 1.

Tyrannosaurus Meg

Despite living only 7 miles away the I rarely went into my HPE office. The last time was to hand in my laptop after I'd had the email confirming my VR payments were agreed. The place was like the Marie Celeste such were the swingeing cuts that this parasite has overseen.

Talk of people being unproductive is nonsense, we are all over 18, we all have a work ethic and if we weren’t trusted we’d never have been given the bandwidth to work remotely in the first place. With us all working on disparate projects across many accounts what is the point of driving to an office to sit with people that you are not working with? A colleague of mine was forced to drive into Telford from Coventry, around 75 miles each way, to sit on Skype all day talking to people in Erskine. He’s gone too because the reality is that Whitman has used "back to the office" as a shoddy tool for justifying mass job losses, forced relocations and generating VR applications from disillusioned staff.

It makes me laugh when she talks about turning the company around. She has done nothing but split it and sell to get her bonus payouts. It’s a husk.

As another poster says HPE is a dinosaur that hasn't realised it's dead yet.

Yabba dabba doo another dino!

How dumb can some of these mega-CEOs get.

You're trying to run a tech company, where the vast majority of the true asset value of the company is in the heads of the staff. You're job is to encourage and enthuse them not piss them off,

I also agree with the earlier comment, that pointed out, if you need to make decisions in short almost instant timeframes, then you are in serious shit or just planning to make reckless choices.

Pissing off your staff is one thing, but when word goes round that you love to piss staff off, you'll only get the bottom scrapings of the barrel as workforce.

WFH increases productivity

I WFH one or two days a week and on those days I get between 50 and 100% more actual work done than when in the office. To be fair, in the office I am also mentoring newer staff but the constant distractions and interruptions have a HUGE effect on my productivity. I have pointed out my increase in productivity and my managers agree that me WFH is good for me, the company, and our customers.

Now if you have people WFH who are slacking or being less productive, then that is a management failure. What you managers need to do is remove the right to WFH **for that individual** rather than punish everyone for the laziness/screwups of one of a few people.

Mostly pointless...

Other than having a complete project team present in an office, which would be useful and efficient, there is not much point in insisting everyone attends an office. My experience of being in the office is that many sit all day wearing Skype headsets on calls to those in other locations much as they would (and could) do at home.

How long is Meg going to keep banging on about this semi-mythical turnaround? Perhaps she's forgotten that back in 2012 she promised to turn around HP (all of it) and have it growing by 2016...

Aruba

Funny that I as a potential customer am being fed an ad for Aruba while reading this.

Try running an offshored business during normal work hours from an office, it doesn't work. I regularly start early for the far east and India as well as finish late for the US. In between I deal with EMEA. To think we voted for Brexit and jobs are now going abroad.

All empires fall

Horace Smith's "Ozymandias"

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,

Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws

The only shadow that the Desert knows:—

"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,

"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows

"The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,—

Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose

The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder,—and some Hunter may express

Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness

Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,

He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess

What powerful but unrecorded race

Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

Damn right it is down to good managers

In a previous life I was a field service engineer and if I was not at a customer site I was not making money for the company and had little activity I could be involved in.

One glorious sunny summer Friday lunchtime my manager was talking to me and said 'This is the sort of day to be walking a golf course and not sat in an office'. Taking the very broad hint I laid out a sequence of things I needed to do in other buildings and his response was 'See you Monday'. The flip side, when he called me on a Saturday morning to ask me to fly out to a customer in Jordan the next day for two weeks I said 'what flight?'

So many problems all come down to managers either not understanding their role or not being allowed to step outside of the box

Call centre management approach to knowledge worker professionals

TUPE'd to HP ES 5 years ago and have never seen a bigger shambles from the top down. Stuck it for 2 years before making the jump and never looked back.

IBM and HP are trying to manage professionals like minimum wage call centre staff (and I've been one so this isn't snobbery). Treat workers like infants and they will act like it. Trust professionals and they will deliver.

I delivered a multinational transformation project without meeting 90% of the team in person because we didnt need to (and they were spread across Europe).

Presenteeism at it's finest from IBM and HP. Twunts...

The WFH jokers. Pretending to work and doing another job. How many people at Yahoo were running start-ups and claiming a full wage?

You'd have to be a very isolated role to be able to work from home more than a couple if times a week, max.

These people are supposed to be creating innovative technology. What while they drink tea and wankimg from home.

Get to work you lazy twats.

You can tell

They're backwards looking rather than embracing the future and steering towards mutually beneficial arrangements.

With better broadband speeds available to most, it would be trivial to set up virtual office space with remote workers appearing on screens in the office & vice versa. With always on two way audio, it would remedy the often incorrect assumption that those working remotely are slackers and deliver real time collaboration where needed.

After 20+ years commuting for 2.5-3 hours a day, the last 6 years of my stint in a large corporation (one that often used its own products to promote teleworking) was wfh. I'd never been as productive. Alas the few who do slack and spoil it for the many along with the powers that be, put an end to pretty much all teleworking.

I decided the effects of 10-12 hour days + the commute on my pre-existing heart condition was no longer worth it & I chucked it in. I'm self employed now. & although earning less than a quarter of what I did previously, I'm happier for it. Money isn't everything as the saying goes. As long as you've enough to cover the basics.

Load of bullcr$p

Load of bullcr$p that Meg is...

As a former employee of HP at the Marlborough, MA facility I can tell you that the company had installed seat sensors at the facility, yes to detect employees actually sitting in their seats. So nothing that HP/Meg does surprises me. HP is a joke and one of the big companies that practiced the horrid "Rank and Yank" employee ranking system. Yet another way to get rid of 5% of the workforce.

Thankfully Microsoft, HP, Computer Associates, GE realized that "Rank and Yank" was demoralizing all employees. It is funny how these big corporations always seem to come up with ways to make employees miserable.

And buried in the story...

So the Megster has been at HP for 6 years now, and the company is still circling the bowl.

I guess that is an achievement of sorts, but still.

There may be an argument for "all hands on deck," but not if you are just going to have them rearrange the chairs.

Imagine a world...

Imagine having to get your arse out of bed, put some clothes on and go to work everyday for 8-10 hours rather than just sit on a bridge for a few calls, write a couple of slides and then run your start-up on the side, pick up the kids, watch TV. Not forgetting to claim your full pay check.

Sounds outrageous. Inhumane.

Nobody would every do that.