Learn from uss experts that have already gone through what HP is putting you guys through as it gradually replaces each of you domestic counterparts with ever cheaper offshore workers. 1. Never write any code comments, period. Or if you do, don't try to explain how things work in writing (minimize verbal comments as well) 2. Create silos of local work groups and work face to face only... No email on how/what you've done, nothing should be written, this is very important. 3. If overseas teams ask you how to do things, give them a broad brush overview, no details are to be provided to them. Ever. 4. Write rather complicated code that is more difficult to understand, provided it does not affect the underlying performance/reliability. If it’s simple, make it complicated. 5. Don't write complete design documents, make sure the key things are missing. If you write design documents, write just enough to get management to think it's done, but not enough for engineers offshore to do anything reasonably useful with it. 6. From time to time, take a vacation day off on a very short notice, and let things just "explode" after you hand off your work to offshore teams. When you come back and things are not working, the fire-drill will be in progress. At that time, send lots of email about what a terrible job people have done... 7. Always, always and always blame problems on offshore teams, no matter how small. 8. Always blame the reason why you problems can't be fixed earlier is because there is a huge time zone difference between your location and those remote offices. 9. Hold meetings only at times that work fine for you but are in the middle of the night for those offshore teams (works really well with India). 10. Make sure your meetings you conduct locally are as efficient as possible and make your local U.S. totally in sync and ahead of the work schedule before you even meet with the offshore team. That way you will ensure that they look incompetent. 11. The best meetings are the ones held at 5:00 p.m. on Fridays, since that will be Saturday overseas (Asia) so the ones that most won't show up. And the ones that do show up, end up having to take time off their personal schedule to do it... Make sure this is a recurring weekly meeting... 12. At the last minute, reschedule those meetings for the next week (yet, continue to meet locally and carry on your business). 13. Make sure you send out detailed meeting notes to senior management, indicating who attended and more importantly, who didn't attend... 14. When someone screws up overseas, always make sure you take the initiative to nicely fix the problem, and make sure you send out at least five emails telling management how you fixed the problem, describing in painfully detailed fashion how things got so screwed up and how you fixed it. And most importantly, if you're going down, you might as well create as much havoc internally inside the company as possible. Nothing is worse more than a company has so much internal conflict that productivity and reasonable efficiency comes to a halt... It's 10x worse than any sort of external competition... Sit back and enjoy – have the management enjoy "cost" savings by offshoring...
7 replies (most recent on top)
@ Anonymous139550 - it's all over news today. I hope you got your answer.
What you described is what goes on at HP everyday and what makes working at HP such an awful and stressful workplace.
Would it be a lot better to just really do your work well in hopes that you can be irreplaceable. If you are still replaced, at least you made some mark in the organization. You never know when HP or your old clients call you because you always do it better than anyone and more proessional than anyone. If your client does not want you to be replaced, at least you won the battle.
Now, if you are below average employee, by all means follow those guide but I am wishing that you were just being sarcastic
Anonymous136681. In my team, you would be the first fired. It may sting for a little while, but we would get over you quickly and be more productive afterwards!
RE - in the upcoming purge
When does this "upcoming purge" start, if you know?
If I owned a company I would not want you working there. You sound like an AFL/CIO unionized Longshoreman. Yikes, no wonder HP is in trouble, if we have programmers like you. Meg is probably reading your comments and thinking, "Damn, I'm doing the exact right thing !" Your thinking is so 70's.
With 24 years of service, I'm fairly sure that I'll get WFR'd in the upcoming purge, but I'm choosing to see it as the start of a new adventure. So much depends upon how we look at things.
The problem is that management does not care. Meg does not care. It's all about the cost savings for the share holders. HP is out of date, out of touch and with the brain drain caused by their actions they will always be behind the eight ball within the industry. Many of management do not even have a clue what their employees are working on. Management is old, their thinking is old, their policies are old and they all lack the courage to explain to Meg that her actions will end up crippling the company. They cannot attract younger, smarter people with their 1950's style of management. If HP was sincere in cost cutting they would start with the top heavy management who's only concern is the next position they are inline for. HP is a house of cards and with current plans and actions it's just a matter of time before it comes crashing down.