So, how many people got laid off from the research centers?
8 replies (most recent on top)
You don't have to have separate research centers in expensive locations for product development. It simply is not a sufficient reason to keep them especially when the company is trying to survive. In addition, these research centers were not the major resources for product development in SLB's history. In fact, most of the new product development has been done by the resources in business units.
Of course, it's not a good idea for one business unit to take all of them, but why can't we just absorb the resources in these centers selectively into different business units and cut some operating cost? Look around you. That's what's going on in other parts of SLB now.
What I see is no one wants the research centers tied to their business unit because they are huge costs with no direct income, it would be too much for one division to pay for. But they are necessary to develop new equipment. So it seems they have a separate division for test centers. All the other departments would be paying an overhead fee to schlumberger, but that also spreads all the test center costs over all the other divisions instead of just one.
-1wpj
Partly because of worthless SETC management
For some reason, SDR employees get much faster promotion than others in EMS. Why?
especially, some of the software center did not produce new stuff but make new skins
Agreed. It's not cost-effective to have these centers while the company is struggling to survive. Some of their resources can be absorbed into other business units and the organizations can be restructured and/or merged.
They had some layoffs, but compared to EMS, it's a drop in the bucket. Research centers are basically cost centers. SLB is spending a lot of money to separately manage these centers. Definitely needs some cleaning and TRANSFORMATION for company's survival.