

HP to lay off as many as 525 at webOS GBU - m_st
http://www.precentral.net/hp-lays-100-webos-gbu

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j_col
As a Touchpad and Pre3 user, I can honestly say that these guys done a great
job in delivering these devices (I love them both, yes I am a long-suffering
webOS fanboy), and this is a terrible reward for all of their hard work. Wish
them all well in their post-HP lives.

~~~
hvs
Unfortunately, "hard work" is not something that inherently deserves a reward
(or is it its own reward?) in the business world. You can work _really hard_
on the wrong thing. I hope the developers were compensated well for putting
out a good product, but I wouldn't associate their getting laid off with how
hard they worked, but that the company miscalculated.

~~~
j_col
I agree that you can work really hard on the wrong thing, but in my opinion
the Pre3 and the Touchpad are the _right thing_ (and I'm not alone in this).
The reasons why they didn't sell (in my opinion) are that they were priced
wrong on the initial release, the marketing was poor to non-existent (in the
case of Europe for example, where there was no marketing), and finally they
were just not given enough of a chance (who cancels a new device about a month
after it is released? And in the case of the Pre3 it was _never_ released
outside of Europe...).

All of these things are the fault of strategic management at HP, not the
hardware engineers who are losing their jobs.

~~~
jackson71
The Pre3 and the Touchpad _are_ the right thing? They may have _been_ the
right thing in HP/Palm's eyes at the time, but they're dead now. Flatlined.
Time to let go.

I hope the hardware engineers land on their feet at other companies, but I
have a hard time believing for a moment that 525 folks comprised the Hardware
division alone and nobody else was caught up in this. Developer Relations and
webOS Development seems to have escaped the axe this time, but if I were
working there I'd be looking over my shoulder more than a couple times a day.

Unless webOS gets a new lease on life through either a coherent strategy or
new hardware licensees (preferably both) VERY soon, it's dead. They had one
massive dry spell during the transition to HP that killed what market share
and most of the developer mindshare they had; they're not going to make it
through another one and have both consumers and developers give it yet another
chance. All but the most dedicated webOS developers have already left as it
is.

My prediction: Once the CM7 (Android Gingerbread) port hits, most of the
people who bought the Touchpad at firesale will evaporate away from webOS
along with whatever developer revenue was left to be had, dual-boot or not.
webOS will end up an embedded OS for menu-driven appliances and other
applications of their ilk, but never see another non-enterprise consumer
mobile device again.

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RexRollman
I can really feel for the fans of webOS. I was a user and big fan of BeOS when
it was dying and it totally sucked.

~~~
cpeterso
And then Palm acquired BeOS IP in 2001 for $11 million.

~~~
RexRollman
And did nothing with it! They eventually sold the IP to an asian company that,
as far as I know, also did nothing with it.

That's why I fear for WebOS and its future. It seems like once an operating
system is sold to another company, it often just dies. The one success story
that comes to my mind is Nextstep, which became Mac OS X, but I think that its
success has more to do with Steve Jobs than anything.

------
m_st
webOS software devs are still there.
<https://twitter.com/#!/SirKneeland/status/115994758777815041>

~~~
veemjeem
Yes, but for how long? If I was there and saw one side of the team cut, I'd
start polishing my CV. Maybe HP moves the software people around so that they
never get "cut", but honestly I don't think there's much hope for anyone still
working on that platform.

HP's stock is at its lowest point in the last 5 years. I'm not sure if it can
afford to keep those Palm people around.

------
jbhelms
I am a contractor at HP in Roseville. While we are not associated with the
WebOS team, there have been talks here about layoffs. I work on the HP
Networking/Procurve team. We have been told that our team is being integrated
with HPIT, but the problem with that is the HPIT team is on the east coast, so
that means the chances of even the employees keeping their jobs is slim. All
of us contractors have been warned that our contract will most likely end at
the end of October. While I don't know for sure, I would guess that the WebOS
team will be folded into some other HPIT team if they are willing to relocate.

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dpio
Isn't that like half of Palm? This sucks. The Apothekerlypse continues.

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franze
must be true, their stock is rising
[http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:HPQ](http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:HPQ)

~~~
rbanffy
Look at HPQ two years from now, when it has no product to sell.

I don't buy their software strategy. Neither does the market.

[http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1...](http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1316548800000&chddm=25024&chls=IntervalBasedLine&cmpto=NASDAQ:DELL&cmptdms=0&q=NYSE:HPQ&ntsp=0)

See when Dell and HP start to diverge? Guess what happened on August 18th.

~~~
franze
great graph

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knotty66
What do /did these 525 people do exactly, if they weren't developers or
developer relations? Middle managers?

~~~
Xuzz
Hardware.

~~~
jackson71
Which leads you to wonder...525 people were assigned to hardware development?
Really?

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albb0920
Buy and destroy, just like yahoo.

