back to article DXC Technology utters words 'hiring' and 'digital' 105 times in Q3 earnings car-crash

DXC Technology's trigger-happy CEO mentioned the word "hire" or "hiring" 27 times during last night's conference with financial analysts. It's almost as if Mike Lawrie was trying to make a point. As for his use of the term "digital" – he uttered it a full 78 occasions. The exec picked up the blower to explain why his business …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Buzzword Bingo

    Mike is great with using all the buzz words, but it is starting to wear a bit thin. It will be interesting to see what the year end figures are like and whether the investors still keep faith with him. I hope not for the sake of the business.

    1. discalced

      Re: Buzzword Bingo Redundo

      It's *starting* to wear a bit thin? I found it no better than sadly amusing two years before I got my redundancy. In my case "Workforce Reduction" was the only CSC/DXC bingo phrase that ever did me the slightest bit of good.

  2. Johnny DeepFreeze

    Three words... "Dead Man Walking."

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Nope ... "Rich Man Milking"

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    12 weeks is a lifetime

    The most telling thing in this call was how the analysts went back to being pussycats after last Q's savaging. They had Mikey and Pauly on the back foot last time.

    Now, a mere 12 weeks later they are all calm and content again... but nothing has changed.

    DXC can't change a lightbulb in 12 weeks, let alone its own global enterprise.

    But lets not rock that share price eh Wall Street....

  4. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "This, El Reg is sure, will bring some comfort to the workforce, who have seen 40,000 colleagues already sent down the redundancy chute since the business"

    I wonder if it'll also bring some legal ammunition to some of those 40k. Surely nobody'd be so mean as to use his own words against him.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    That’s strange...

    We’ve just been told there is a hiring freeze in the U.K.

    (Along with a global travel ban)

    Yeap, we’re doing nicely....

    1. Alan_Peery

      Re: That’s strange...

      There are 218 UK positions listed on DXC's website right now.

      https://jobs.dxc.technology/ListJobs/All/Search/DXC-Location/United%20Kingdom/

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: That’s strange...

        None of which will be filled in the near term...

        1. Alan_Peery

          Re: That’s strange...

          Some clearly are, as I met a new colleague last week on account.

          Yes, I work for DXC.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: That’s strange...

            Some of those positions may well be filled... for the next 12 weeks. Then the QoQ earnings will mean YAROC (Yet Another Round Of Culling) or as DXC will say adjustments/downsizing/rightsizing or whatever.

            I'd have to be pretty desparate or the package is out of this world and something like 4 times my old salary (so that I can get a year's income in one quarter) to even consider going back to DXC.

            I was let go in a very, very early round of culling as HP tried to absorb Compaq.

          2. This post has been deleted by its author

          3. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: That’s strange...

            You are one of the ‘fortunate’ then...

            So your new colleague arrived last week before the hiring freeze was announced on Friday?

            Go figure, I guess that hiring freeze works just like most things and starts at one point and continues after, rather than going back through time to stop people being hired in the past

  6. Erik4872

    Digital employees

    Digital is 2019's buzzword. Last year it was serverless and NoOps.

    I don't want to wish another recession on anyone, but my hope is that the next one is going to slow down the hype train for a few quarters as companies just try to survive. Just like the Dotcom Crash it'll give us time to shake off the hangers-on, figure out what's useful that we got from the previous bubble, and get on with work.

    As for these outsourcers...I doubt DXC is in any better shape than most are. My boss's boss just got a title with "digital" in it and he's been hit up by every single one of the Indian outsourcers trying to sell him their wrapper around AWS and Azure's management APIs as a digital transformation in a box. Even with firing every worker in the US and Europe, DXC still has too much overhead compared to Tata/Infosys and I doubt they have anything better to offer.

    1. discalced

      Re: Digital employees

      "Digital" was the 2017 buzzword... Mike 'n' John Lawrie made the Buzzword Generation Team redundant.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

  7. Anonymous DXCer

    Where Have All the Leaders Gone

    DXC staff and share holders deserve a leader, not a bean counter. Somebody that inspires them to believe that DXC can do great things, that DXC is unique, and has a vision. Somebody that has studied and understands leadership. Who has read or follows Simon Sinek or his like, and gets the formula - take care of your staff, who take care of your clients, who take care of the shareholders. DXC is chasing its tail cutting costs, but depriving existing clients of the staff needed to deliver services. Staff morale is at an all time low, most having had no raise for years and being told be grateful for a job. Staff are afraid to move, for fear of being the new guy on the block and hence the next exit for the new team. And DXC cannot hire and retain staff in India. If they cannot do that well, how can they move onshore positions to India? It is all a recipe for disaster. Yet the leadership has an arrogance that they don't care to hear what anybody else thinks or has to recommend. I hope the board of directors will bring in somebody that truly gets it. Somebody who has a passion for client service - as that clearly needs to be the focus in a services company. No service = no clients! Not cutting costs to greatness - that will never succeed.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Where Have All the Leaders Gone

      The problem with your argument is that good service and good people cost money, but DXC's customers buy on price alone. The people who have to endure DXC's service might not be happy, but Finance, Procurement, directors of the customer company don't know and/or don't care. So long as the initial bid is cheap they're content.

      Then when DXC start to recover the margins they really want by reaming out the customer, the customer accepts that the changes and variations are their own fault (just a cost of doing business). And if they need to balance the books they'll cut their remaining IT team and raid the IT investment budget. Every three to five years when the reaming out gets painful they'll re-source the work done by DXC, having learned no lessons about the business model of ITO and BPO vendors, and give the work to somebody else who low-balls the tender and promises the Earth for tuppence. Rinse and repeat.

      DXC's problems stem (regrettably) not from dissatisfied decision makers at the company taking their business to better providers, but from the fact that there's even crapper, more mendacious ITO outfits who under-bid DXC, before fleecing the customer just the same.

  8. TheBorg

    Titanic of the IT services organisations .... will the captain jump before it completely goes under ... perhaps the share holders need to act to save some of their investment

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's a scam

    The new employees are largely apprentices with roles being advertised at 14,500 pounds salary. The UK Government, I believe pays half. The plan is to train up these new entrants to take the jobs of experienced staff. They will get away with breaking UK employment law by the usual 2.8k uplift to convert from compulsory redundancy to voluntary. They know that nobody will turn down the extra money as they will need it so they force people out and make them pass knowledge transfer as part of the deal. Only thing is, you can't pass all the years of knowledge that quickly and nobody being forced out will go out of their way to document everything. So you will have the sales people doing the usual BS knowing full well there is insufficient capacity to do a proper job and the company will consist of inexperienced kids being put under terrible pressure and the remaining experienced staff having to juggle too much work and already covering for those that have gone. But oh, digital and agile is the saviour. Except it's not if you've got kids scripting up solutions not fully thought through and not properly tested due to over promising. Getting everyone pulled off other projects to bale things our in a scrum and supposedly learn each others jobs is no suitable alternative to proper planning and testing and experience. It gets worse with each round of redundancy. The apprentices will leave if they are any good after 18 months because they will see others who are three or four years down the line and still on terrible salary. You can't polish a turd.

  10. MikeO3

    Last sentence pretty much sums it up... "And shareholders matter more than anything else. Clearly."

    The company certainly doesn't give a crap about it's employees or customers. Mikey is scaring the executive team off the ship faster then rats jumping from this sinking ship.

    1. Spamfast

      The invisible hand will make it all better.

      Unfortunately, the board has a legal requirement to put the interests of the shareholders first.

      If the shareholders can prove that they haven't, they can sue.

      Adam Smith was such a dick.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: The invisible hand will make it all better.

        "Unfortunately, the board has a legal requirement to put the interests of the shareholders first."

        Interests. Long or short term?

        "If the shareholders can prove that they haven't, they can sue."

        If the shareholders aren't happy they don't need to prove anything. They can vote out the board at the next AGM. If enough of them get together they can probably call an EGM and do it sooner. Whether they're happy depends on the nature of the shareholders and the above question applies. Long or short term?

        1. Spamfast

          Re: The invisible hand will make it all better.

          "Best interest" would be decided in the court proceedings. Short or long term would be part of that. Most shareholders these days seem to want short - part of the current problem with big business, especially financial ones.

          If the shareholders just vote the execs out, the execs get to keep all their goodies. If the shareholders sue and win, they can claw some of it back and also send a message, not that it is attempted very often. (The shareholders generally being other companies whose execs are cronies of the first company's execs.)

          The point is that even if a company is making vast profits, considering the employees' interests beyond the bare minimum requirements of employment legislation can only be justified if the board can show the shareholders that it benefits the bottom line - by law. This is the reality of modern capitalism which some of us with ethical tendencies - whether from religious belief or because we understand that humans are social animals - find repugnant.

          When you do occassionally get management that understands that a happy, secure workforce is a more productive and profitable one in the long run, some glans of a beancounter (aka CFO) comes along and takes it all away to improve this year's figures or increase the dividend on his own shares.

          1. asdf

            Re: The invisible hand will make it all better.

            At least here in the US fiduciary duty of the directors involves the long term interest of the business not directly the shareholders. That its to the shareholders only is yet another a lie and con Jack Welch help make common "knowledge".

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Funny how when you treat your customers like sh*t they leave. No wonder "Legacy" services are declining, as for the sackings, err, remix, yeah, except for the execs, age discrimination is rife hey? Same as IBM.

  12. rwill2

    Looking at the earlier comment with https://jobs.dxc.technology/ListJobs/All/Search/DXC-Location/United Kingdom

    It looks like weblogic engineer, BA, PM, and architects - surely they have them inhouse and could upskill for agile and cloud?

    There are exciting opportunities like "51145527 - Data Processing Clerk - Cheque" and "51135926_2 - SFTP and EDI Integration Engineer" that sounds bleeding edge AI powered crypto with mixed reality UI on a quantum computer type jobs [sarcastic].

    But I did see data scientist roles for those who want to live in Newcastle so there is hope!

    https://jobs.dxc.technology/ListJobs/All/Search/DXC-Location/United%20Kingdom/keyword/data%20scientist/

    1. The Pi Man

      Exciting

      Anytime I see a job role described as “exciting” it makes me cringe. Who are these clowns that write these job specs, do they really think the word “exciting” is going to attract better candidates? Fuckwits. Every single one of them.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Exciting

        "Who are these clowns that write these job specs"

        They're obviously highly principled, otherwise why would they put in such warning words?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Exciting

        The new head of Cyber (the ex-BT dweeb) told an all hands meeting that his plan to retain skilled staff was to make the work exciting.

        That was it, no training, no pay rises, just an exciting place to work.

        I'm sure he's excited... excited by his bonus which is fully funded by the pay rises the workers should have received.

        I'm sure there is a special place in hell for these people....

    2. TheBorg

      Even if they bought me a house and got me a chauffeur to drive me to the office i would not work for these clowns .... over 75 percent of people leave a job because of their manager .... in DXC that will just be one reason

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Upskill means trainign spend

      Upskilling means training which means spending money and having people not working for the duration.

  13. gfx

    Que?

    Never heard of them, looked at the website and still no clue what they do... Useless management drivel.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Que?

      It sounds like you have a clue. That's what they do, useless management drivel. It's a sort of variation on the Beeb's motto: management shall speak drivel unto management.

    2. 1752

      Re: Que?

      "DXC Technology is the world's leading independent, end-to-end IT services and solutions company,"

      Nope, me neither. My attempt at understanding leads me to "management listens to cloud enabler moves everything to cloud via third party via promises of money, sunshine lollipops and rainbow"

      1. Charles Calthrop

        Re: Que?

        Lucky you. In my field they're like japanese knotweed, they're bloody everywhere

  14. El. P-Less

    Poor Management Planning - Am I Surprised... No.

    Digital this / Digital that...

    Doesn't matter what you call it, it's poor management strategy and planning all wrapped up with 'spin' and overused buzzwords

    Disappointing... yet again!

    (10 year tenure at HPE>DXC)

  15. Charles Calthrop

    great news

    everytime I am brought into a project and they're involved my heart drops.

    For every good person they have they have 3 utter usless ones,

    1. BigSLitleP

      Re: great news

      I get the opposite feeling. I tend to rub my hands together with glee.

      On one of their projects i tend to come in, have to wait for months as everything they do is behind schedule. Basically sit around, drinking coffee and getting paid. Then they run out of money or "change directions" and i'm out of there. Wait a week or two, then it's on to another "fantastic, exciting digital project".

      10/10, would definitely get paid for drinking coffee again.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lots of buzzwords

    Sure we can add some buzzwords too

    "Punching above their weight"

    "P155 up in a brewery"

    "Laid in a brothel"

    etc

    All he is interested in is the type of wood used for the decks of his new shareholder entertaining yacht.

  17. Miss Lincolnshire

    A very short conversation

    I was called by an agent as I travelled home last Thursday evening. "Interesting contract opportunity" they said , "fits your profile" I was told. Then they asked me if I knew of a company called DxC.

    Talk about a conversation killer.....

    1. Jay Lenovo
      Alert

      Re: A very short conversation

      I know that agent.

      He also places cows looking for work with McDonalds.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not sure what made me laugh more

    On Monday mornings something or other call, it was clear that the UKIIMEA leadership have read this article and taken it as a personal challenge to exceed 105 mentions, I've never heard the word digital so often.

    Of course they extended the digit to all staff, when there was no mention of reward in over an hour of digital wittering, and when the inevitable questions arrived, they spectacularly failed to answer them.

    Between the articles on here, the way below market rate salaries they are offering digital hires, it's no wonder they are struggling to fill the hundreds of digital vacancies and that was before details of our toxic CEO was published for all to read, which only confirmed what every DXC employee already thought.

    https://www.crn.com/news/managed-services/fired-dxc-evp-stephen-hilton-fires-back-at-ceo-in-14-3-million-suit

  19. autogen

    133,000 now 130,000

    DXC’s own website show global employees dow

    another 3k since I last looked...

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