I was recently let go by HPE and it effect a few folks in my region. But I haven't seen any postings or notifications that there was a layoff? Severance package was weak and loyalty is definitely lost. HPE was heading in the right direction and now seems lost to me.
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Was this third layoff in Sunnyvale or Palo Alto? I know of the following layoffs: 6/5 which I was laid off and 6/19 and now another one?
: @O8XA5xI-2osi, you nailed it!! Sad but true!! Those are not technical became so called "managers" or "leaders"( there are a few exceptions ). The incompetent dramatized the work assignment when they can't deliver. Instead, they manipulate those above them how busy and too much work. They would "ID" those allegedly "slackers" and dump the work on them!!! Then complain having to "mentor" or spend more time to train these "slackers". When in fact the alleged "slackers" already overloaded with work. How did HP/DXC get where we are today?? The lack of leadership and full of incompetent deadwoods kept on moving up and managed to fool ML, MW, etc. Sad but true a great organization once was but no longer ...
Comments in response to ExHPEer = @O8XA5xI-2bsj ...
'1) Yes, getting excluded from the inner circle is a problem that I have seen. Putting very little into your code, in the way of comments, or putting the comments in Swahili hybridized with incomprehensible techno jargon or insider-decodable-only, is one of the ways, in software-land, to keep on excluding others from contributing to your code, your tightly held "rice bowl". I have written code that was long-form and easy to follow. My co-workers made me re-do it in a really-really-really tight, terse, hard-to-follow way, even though execution-wise, it was the exact same thing! Long-form uncompiled form takes up more room on my hard drive, but so what?!??! It's all about excluding others, is what it is...
'2) 80-20 or 95-5, yes, I understand. The REAL problem, though, which is prevalent, is managers who have favorite employees, and have not one single technical clue, on who is doing the hard work, and who is not. All you have to do is to repeatedly assert to the boss, "I am doing the really-really-REALLY hard stuff, and so-and-so over there is slacking off and doing the easy stuff"... Then you are in like flint! The boss, more often than not, doesn't know spit from shinnola!
@O8XA5xI-1lau is mostly right. That's why I left when this realization dawned on me. Let me explain. (Keep in mind my experiences are within a software development organization so yours may be different.)
Of course there are many good and hard working people at hpe. Many I worked with felt like family to some degree. But the overwhelming majority of Engineers are on complete autopilot these days.
Know the usual 80/20 rule? It was that way when I hired on years ago. At the moment I left it had become more like a 95/5 rule. To make matters worse the 5% seem to cling to all the good work and keep it within themselves. The remaining 95% are left with the choice, leave or be increasingly marginalized.
I was part of 15% that got squeezed out of the Inner Circle so I chose to leave rather than become unemployable. Anyone in the same position who is smart made the same decision or is seriously contemplating it right now.
This distillation of the 15% of the old 20% has been catastrophic. The executives call it right-sizing. I call it "bright sizing."
--"They stay at HPE because they get paid fairly well and produce very little--
Not sure what your background is in regards to Compaq/HP/HPI/HPE, but your comments sound like sour grapes. Folks that I've worked with are in large part hard working, innovative and focused.
"They stay at HPE because they get paid fairly well and produce very little."
A sweeping generalization... Sad to say, it is often true of a lot of folks. Sadder still, the following is a more fully detailed and accurate summary (for way-way too many employees).
"They stay at HPE because they get paid fairly well and produce very little, except for illusions in their boss's brains, about just HOW MUCH more competent and worthy that they are, than their scapegoat co-workers, who will then be laid off, instead of them."
That's how you stay at HPE, under "rank and yank". If you are "merely" working hard, and do NOT want to play the unethical "gotcha games" at all, you are gone! If you decide to go half-way, and play the "gotcha games" only in self-defense, you have to play office-politics self-defense, 20% to 25% of your working day, just to fend off the attacks. Some entire work-groups, by now, have been decimated by the cumulative effects of the resulting hostile environments (as well as layoffs, of course), to the point that they are non-functional, producing next to nothing.
I have seen it, I am not making this up!
They're afraid to leave because they're too comfortable with what they've been doing at HPE for decades and don't want to spend the time to learn something new.
They stay at HPE because they get paid fairly well and produce very little.
To the person from referencing loyalty; there is no loyalty anymore at HPE or any of its other companies. People stay for two reasons:
1) they are afraid to leave HPE and go to another job, then find out that company is in layoff mode: normally last hired, first fired.
2) they rather stay in hopes to get a severance package but still may be a chance of company's decline that they may not receive anything at all.
People do quit HPE to go to where the grass is greener, I have seen it...
Also, there's a lot more loyalty (actually wanting and trying to do a good job for customers especially, and then also for the stockholders) flowing from employees, than there has been, flowing from greedy, selfish, and arrogantly egotistical upper management!
Loyalty is fine, yes, but the devil is in the details, as usual... From whom, to whom, and for what purpose? I would not want to spread finely ground plutonium dust around the planet, even if it somehow helped a few stockholders here and there...
No one ever quits HPE and as much as they whine, they stay until they are laid off, so obviously loyalty is fine.
When you say "Severance package was weak" this mean they changed again or still the same as before? I know they change sometimes, when I got the notice was not good also, but seen to be worst every time.