Thread regarding HP (Hewlett-Packard) layoffs

When I started with HP in 1989 I began in manufacturing and worked my way to customer support, quality support and many engineering roles.

After 28 years, was handed the dreaded "WFR" and told it wasn't personal. It sure wasn't. No thanks for my dedication and certainly no empathy.

I have not purchased any HP products since my WFR and have really worked at persuading others to avoid them. My hope now is for the demise of the company especially since they have been in the hand of China for years now.

Okay OP. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps I was too harsh on the comment below this one.

Perhaps you were trying to be helpful and say, "Hey look, you got laid off. Here's an opportunity." But the delivery of that came off as arrogant and you may have not meant it like that. I have issues communicating certain things as well sometimes. You think that it's positive in your mind but when it's said, it comes out differently.

Assuming you meant well, then thank you for trying to help. But it would a difficult challenge for some people to flop careers like that and it's not a guaranteed method of avoiding getting laid off.

I still hold my opinion that HP is greedy with their stock buybacks and dividends being handed out after layoffs but I do think there are some incredibly smart and nice people at HP. It's not just HP. Layoffs are happening everywhere and I won't pretend that HP is the only one doing this.

I do strongly advise people to work for smaller companies where greed is not as prevalent and they focus more on retaining headcount.

Again, I apologize for what I said. I'll look at it from a different perspective. Good luck with customer experiences and hopefully it can help turn HP around. Honestly it's about dąmn time that HP does something about their horrible customer services. Do your best to help people want HP products to avoid more layoffs.

Look at these fools downvoting the comments on this post. The only thing you should be downvoting are the brown nosers like OP who think customer experiences has higher precedence over R&D and product management. So cute...

WAKE UP OP... Stop focusing on useless resources like customer experiences and worry more about if HP can even create demand for their products.

All thoughts and no strategy. The only action and strategy this co is about cutting cost and hc, increasing dividend and share buybacks despite business downturn, taking huge debt to sustain share price via dividend and buy backs.

I can only recommend HP to entry level engineers. Hear me out...

Once those young folks get out of college, they become so eager to try to join large companies like HP. They manage to get their foot in the door, they're excited about their "big" salary. They start working for about five years, they start realizing that their technical knowledge from their university education is not being used. They get confused. They witness company culture that says that they are important to the company, enjoy some happy hour days at HP, have some laughs, make some friends – uh oh, wait a minute. Now the company isn't changing their strategy and sales are starting slump. Corporations are going to choose this unfortunate junior engineer to leave.

So now they have two options: they can try to find another luxurious company like HP pr they can try going to small company.

Suppose they choose the latter. The junior engineer is d-mbfounded because they thought HP was the golden goose of companies. They preached that they were important to the company and cared about their wellbeing. Interview after interview at large companies, this junior engineer is starting realize that they wasted their first few years at a company that resorted the technical skills they were supposed to use to a third party. Junior engineer is discouraged because what if they forgot how to use such technical skills to make them better in their career? Companies that this junior engineer was interviewing for were not impressed with this junior engineers responsibilities because they had only spoken about higher level responsibilities, more business oriented operations rather than real engineering.

Junior engineer is feeling reluctant and starts interviewing for small companies. They land multiple interviews. Technical questions were being thrown left and right. Junior engineer wasn't able to answer some questions that they thought they would learn at HP. Embarrassed, they were not able to land the job. Junior engineer took it upon themselves to do some extensive research and become more well equipped for the next time. They interviewed for another small company. Answered technical questions pretty easily but not entirely 100% perfect. Company later offered them a job.

401k match is much higher, some benefits are free, pay is 30% higher than HP, work culture was described as rather positive but more involving yet really manageable, there were travel opportunities. At first the junior engineer was a little uncomfortable with the idea of traveling since they had never done that before but at the end of the day, it could be exciting.

After starting, this junior engineer was really utilizing their technical prowess, no thanks to HP but rather from their university days. Job security seemed really strong because since their company was raking in more cash, so was their customer base.

Lesson learnt from the junior engineer: all that glitters is not gold. Companies like HP aren't good for anyone's career unless they are close to retirement.

This is story is about me.

I was that junior engineer. When I was a child, I was enthralled at the idea of working for HP because I was actually rather good at building things and fixing my own electronics as a kid. I thought this is what I could for HP. Even in college, I was eager to work for HP. Once I got into HP, I thought I could change the world... but then something called "roles and responsibilities" got in the way and my director not wanting me to do any of my aspirations but instead do some really d-mb cr-p. I thought I could make my own stuff – nope, just do some research, talk with marketing, and handover your research over to an ODM to let them do everything else. That was not the vision I was thinking of when I was a child.

Everyone is better off leaving HP.

Nice try OP but who needs a career when we can just live off the earth’s natural resources?

This OP is clearly a recruiter OR an HR shill. Ignore the guy, as he knows nothing about the
“HP Way”.

Nonsense, CS was also impacted by WFRs and reduced budgets. More cuts will be coming when the executive leadership realizes that this team never delivers on time, can't manage budgets or can create / execute anything despite millions of dollars of investment. Too many so-called thought leaders and no software coders/firmware engineers/creatives to support this.
The next step is to bring CS back under the business units like it was before.

This is the HP way!

Sounds like a recruiter.

This board is definitely being monitored by HP, and there are shills like the OP that downvote any negative comments. The company has sunk to a new low after Buffett exited his position and realized what a joke the HP management is.

I have also noticed the same shills writing rave reviews on Glassdoor and Indeed, some of which really defy logic (stable jobs, no layoffs, happy employees, stable raises, etc.).

@yra

Likewise. I didn't realize that being a "thought leader" means you get paid for just having the ability to think.

I think we all identified what HP's problem is: they get paid to think and not DO. Makes sense now in retrospect.

Tell you what OP. If you can list five things that HP is doing differently from your competitors, I may take you a little more seriously.

Incredible.

"inspiring thought leaders"
Vomited all over myself

OH GEE! I should have thought about that before I was laid off! Well, too late! I already signed my severance agreement.

To switch from engineering to consumer services would literally require me to get a labotomy in order for me to get even remotely interested in that.

How about advocating for HP to gain back their technical prowess so that your engineers would support you on the consumer services side? Before I was laid off, a colleague and I were creating a roadmap and executive statement to present to my director about how HP can get that process back instead of letting the ODM do whatever they please with our products. My manager and director were aware of my plans.

But it's clear that HP doesn't care about this. Their bottom line is product, business, and branding, not the actual technology.

Goodbye HP. You're in for a rough ride... a very long rough ride.