
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Is Said to Plan About 5k Job Cuts - k3oni
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-21/hewlett-packard-enterprise-is-said-to-plan-about-5-000-job-cuts
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CommieBobDole
I've watched the slow-motion trainwreck that is HP and HPE though the lens of
working with ArcSight, a very expensive and formerly segment-leading
enterprise SIEM tool.

HP spent a billion and a half dollars to buy them in 2010 and then immediately
didn't seem to be able to do anything with it. They ignored needed updates
while competitors got better every year. They didn't even seem to be able to
actually sell the thing - I had a large client who wanted to upgrade to the
latest version (more than a million dollars in licensing costs alone), and
couldn't get anyone at HPE to return their calls to actually sell him the
thing; after six months of trying to give them his already-approved budget,
they gave up and bought a competing product.

Now they've sold it off to Micro Focus, who seem to be a company whose
business model is milking dying software for support and professional services
money.

HPE is an organization that has grown so dysfunctional that it's essentially
incapable of operating. Somehow I doubt laying off 5k people is going to help
that very much.

~~~
le-mark
This is a recurring theme with a lot of these types of large companies
(Microfocus, CA, Compuware, BMC) they'd buy up companies with niche or larger
products, and the products would wither and die. If not simply disappear. One
of my long term side projects has been an editor for fixed length files that
uses cobol copybook to map the files. A common use for this type of thing is
editing/viewing ACH files. There was at least one of these for PC's, but
disappeared into one of these companies a long time ago. Note I'm looking for
beta testers if anyones interested (email in profile).

~~~
CommieBobDole
Definitely - CA is particularly bad about this; I've always thought of it as a
killing jar for companies.

Though with ArcSight, there really is no reason it had to go this way. When HP
bought them, they were the undisputed market leader in an extremely lucrative
and growing segment that has continued to grow in the years since.

If CA is a like a trucking company that buys old but still serviceable trucks
on the cheap, and then runs them into the ground without maintenance, HPE and
ArcSight is like buying a Ferrari at top price, leaving it to molder in the
woods somewhere for a decade, then selling it for scrap. Just a ridiculous
waste by a company that has nothing going for it but momentum.

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fred_is_fred
Having previously worked at HP for 10+ years I can clearly state that HP is
always in the midst of some layoff. After the first Carly purge of 2001 they
decided to make it stealthy instead of big bang.

Edit: I decided to share what the Carly purge was like. We all knew that on a
certain day we'd have the layoffs. Walk into the office. Conference room doors
had windows on them, they were all papered over. Conf rooms had lots of boxes
of tissues and bottles of water. You'd sit at your desk and someone would come
by and tap you on the shoulder. It was pretty miserable. After that experience
I think they decided that they'd announce stuff like this but do it much lower
key, not all on the same day and very privately.

~~~
CydeWeys
Wow. After something like that happened I'd start looking for a new job
regardless of whether I was laid off or not.

Similarly, I started looking to leave my first job out of university when they
started offshoring some of the engineer positions to Ukraine. They weren't
laying anyone off in the US but it was clear that they were trying to hire
more people in Ukraine, which might put downward pressure on the wage raises
of the US-based workforce, so I started looking and got out of there within
months. The offshoring never did quite work out for them though (turns out
that it's hard to offshore _consultants_ ).

~~~
fred_is_fred
The economy sucked in 2001 and I was in that weird position where you're in
between new college hire and experienced (2-3 years). I tried looking for a
job, it was terrible. I ended up sticking around.

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tootie
"she said she’s pushing to cut “layers” in the organization and become more
efficient"

I hate this kind of nonsense. You can't just get rid of thousands of people
then say "efficiency" and retain full productivity. At a place like HP that's
bidding on 8 or 9 figure deals, you absolutely can't function without a
sizable bureaucracy.

~~~
alexasmyths
Sadly, there is another economic reality: most good businesses are actually
very inefficient and could cut 10% without missing a heartbeat.

Here's the key: when businesses develop dominance in a market, they get fat
margins - and they often just 'hire'. It becomes instinctive to think that
'people create value' and so they hire. Moreover - VP's, Directors, Managers
are all trying to build their status, and they 'push to hire'.

I worked at a post-startup-stage high-growth company, and my VP was given
directive to 'hire 100 people'. Completely not driven by business needs, or
project needs, or ROI. 'Just hire'.

There is sometimes good strategic reasoning for 'just staffing' up i.e. scrape
all of the talent in an area way from competitors, be a 'real company' to
validate the upcoming IPO etc.. but it's really perverse.

Google, FB, MS - all guilty of this. Regular companies just the same.

I'll bet 1/2 of finance today could be replaced by computers - or frankly
nothing. 1/2 of Hedge Funds could just put their money in indexes, drop their
staff and get the same results.

Large successful companies often spend billions on 'new projects' that are
doomed to fail - one could argue that 'failure' is part of the innovative
process, yes, but it might be more efficient to invest/partner with startups.

When big, lumbering companies start to wane, well, they can't afford all the
graft and have to start letting go.

It's an odd cycle, and it's surprisingly not as directly related to
productivity as we might want to imagine.

I once worked with a large internal marketing team of maybe 25 people, they
did almost nothing. Nobody was really sure what they were there for. They 'did
stuff'. They were smart, nice. But they were very irrelevant - and I took
pains not to discount their effort, i.e. not realize that they were 'important
but unrecognized' cogs in the wheel. No. They were hired 'for hiring sake' and
'worked' for the sake of 'work'. This is common. A lot of big, entrenched
industries are like this.

~~~
peoplewindow
Don't you mean 100% of all hedge funds could drop their money in index funds
and get _better_ results? That's the way I interpreted the outcome of the
Buffet bet.

~~~
bjl
That'd be true if all hedge funds were actually trying to just beat the S&P.
The vast majority, however, aren't trying to do that all; they're trying to
create different risk/return profiles than you get by just indexing large-cap
US companies.

------
JBlue42
Why do people keep putting forth Meg Whitman for a possible presidential run?
Obviously, even a baboon would be better and more consistent than the current
POTUS but HP has such a terrible reputation and seems like it's always in
crisis mode, laying people off, etc. not to mention they can't even keep a
support page up. I guess she's making money for someone and those folks would
like to see her in office but maybe we should stop thinking that CEOs are
qualified to run the country.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/71kkr0/thank_you_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/71kkr0/thank_you_hp_for_your_great_printer_support/)

~~~
zghst
Well unlike corporations, governments have completely different pressures than
the market. Being president is much different than a track record of strong
corporate performance. Since the US is an oligarchy, its about being well
connected, the ability to source and channel political talent, and represent
the voices of the elites.

~~~
JBlue42
Sad but good point.

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s73ver_
You know, the thing that really gets me about these things is this: Most of
the people getting laid off did nothing wrong; all most of them are guilty of
is choosing the wrong company to work for. Meanwhile, the executives and
managers are guilty of mismanagement, yet they're getting rewarded for doing
this.

~~~
cosinetau
When engineers make mistakes in software, do we not want forgiveness? A chance
to learn from mistakes?

I get the ire, but the world is a dirty place.

~~~
s73ver_
When I make mistakes in software, I don't get rewarded for it. And it sure as
hell doesn't mean a lot of people lose their jobs.

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genzoman
I worked for HP during their split. HPE paid some firm 500k for their new
logo. Their logo is a green rectangle, something you could do in MS Paint in
literally a second.

HP/E is way too bloated and IMO has very poor management. They have a nice
patent portfolio, though.

~~~
adam12
So by your logic, the more you pay for something the more complex it should
be?

~~~
Quarrelsome
pretty much. Or rather: the more you pay for something the harder it should
have been to produce.

I think in almost every situation you shouldn't be spending a half-mil on a
logo redesign. That's super excessive.

~~~
atbentley
99 percent invisible has a podcast discussing this issue with a designer who
takes the opposite position. A main point is that a simple, reproducible logo
is ideal.

[http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/negative-space-logo-
de...](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/negative-space-logo-design-
michael-bierut/)

~~~
nradov
Sure simple is good but a rectangle? Come on.

------
skrebbel
This article says that HPE has 50k employees. According to Wikipedia, they
have almost 200k.

Who's right?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett_Packard_Enterprise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett_Packard_Enterprise)

~~~
mfer
What we knew as Hewlett-Packard is now broken up and part of several
companies. First there was HP, Inc and Hewlett Packard Enterprise with the
bulk of the employees at HPE. Then HPE spun out the Enterprise Services
division (now part of DXC Technology) and Software division (now part of Micro
Focus). Those combined were a majority of the employees. What you have left in
HPE today could be 50k people.

~~~
AnotXOR
Warning: Rant coming.

Will MicroFocus retool their software support pipeline? I hope so, because I'm
starting to advocate we drop all their software because their first line of
support is utterly incompetent. For example, I had to submit a ticket recently
about a product we use. On the form, I selected the closest option to the
software we had, say Product X, though my exact product wasn't listed. My
inquiry was extremely specific and could only possibly be about one thing. Yet
the first tech just threw the ticket back at me asking "can you clarify what
version of product X you're on?"

It made absolutely no difference what version of PRoduct X I was on, so I
wasted a good 48 hours so far. Then I wasted another 48 hours educating this
person on what the product I was using even did.

If you need enterprise support at this point with HPE/MicroFocus, you have to
escalate your tickets immediately and act pissed off or you certainly will be
by their inept first line because they make it rather difficult to actually
get someone on the phone that knows their own products.

Edit: To be clear, this happens with everyone I've ever met that has to engage
HPE software support. I'm genuinely curious if anyone has any positive
experiences because I've yet to encounter one myself or by proxy.

~~~
poulsbohemian
What you are describing is not new -- I was at an HP partner for about 5 years
and it was always like that. One way around it was to buy into their premium
support plan, where you got a named support contact. There were very few
competent support people, but the ones at that level were solid. Secondly, yes
-- the moment you put in a ticket, you also make a phone call and you ask for
your ticket to be escalated. It also helps to call your sales rep and let them
know you need support. Often that was the key, as they would put a lot of
pressure on from the inside. I don't know the current MicroFocus world as
well, but it was also possible to buy support contracts from partners like my
firm, where those official support partners would also work to back-channel
things for you.

If your issues are with the BSM / APM stack, shoot me an email I'll be glad to
help. Also happy to refer you to MicroFocus partners that I trust and would
use myself.

------
fetus8
As an HPE employee, we've been hearing of major layoffs for the last few
months, and they're supposedly going to start in November...

~~~
lost_name
Not that this is really any help, but an acquaintance of mine works for HPE
and notified he was being laid off yesterday, and his last day is today. He
was with HP (now HPE) for maybe 4-6 years.

~~~
adrianN
How is that legal?

~~~
dsr_
Why wouldn't it be legal? Virtually every US state has zero notice
requirements -- tell your employee that they are being fired, laid off or
otherwise no longer going to work here, pay them what you owe them
immediately, and you're done.

"Two weeks notice" is a social nicety, good for maintaining good relationships
and status. If you don't care about those things, you can quit or fire on the
spot.

~~~
southphillyman
I hate that there is such a double standard with this. Corporation can
eliminate my employment at any time with zero notice and suffer minimal
reputational impact. If I decide to quit right now and walk out of my office,
I have to worry about long lasting reputational issues and "burning bridges".
I get why it's like this, corporations have all the leverage, just hate that
the dynamic exists.

~~~
nonamechicken
Almost all of the Indian IT companies have a 3 month notice period. If we were
to quit before that, we may not get the service certificate which would be
needed for a new job.

At the same time, they can fire us (usually being called into HR room and
forced to resign) at will. Even if there is any compensation, it will be 3
months basic pay (basic is only a percentage of the full salary).

Thus we get to enjoy the bad things of capitalism without any of the
protection it offers.

~~~
s73ver_
"Thus we get to enjoy the bad things of capitalism without any of the
protection it offers."

As it is, I think you do have all the protection capitalism offers.

------
iokevins
HP Alumni resources:
[http://www.hpalumni.org/index](http://www.hpalumni.org/index)

Excellent resource for HP/HPE staff leaving the company.

------
simonh
No wonder Meg wanted the Uber job.

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balozi
Just in time for quarterly earnings report.

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cosinetau
Last year before I graduated, I was offered a very lucrative software
engineering position in Nowhere, Arkansas. It seemed interesting, but in my
10$/hour opinion I had other goals for myself, and there didn't appear to be a
community that would help me grow where they wanted me to work.

On top of this, one of their VPs made a hard sell of the position, which,
didn't make me feel particularly comfortable so I politely declined.

This article didn't mention Arkansas, or Software positions at all. I'm
curious in any SME's opinion if I've dodged a bullet?

IBM is also building up a cloud provider solution, in addition to Google,
Microsoft, and Amazon's solutions. I feel like a lot of shops are pretty
entrenched in AWS, and HPE is kinda new and seems to be pivoting a lot.
Somethings got to give in that market, no?

~~~
sgs1370
re: IBM, I'm not sure that SoftLayer/bluemix is getting a lot of traction.
AWS: IMO they are the leader to be defeated by the competitors, doing well,
cutting prices, making it easy for devs. Google: have heard positive signals
especially around ML. MSFT: don't know a lot but I heard they are going to let
you run your own Azure on-prem. HPE as a IAAS provider? I doubt it

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rm_-rf_slash
Maybe I'm just not as knowledgeable as the elite of the _hackerati_ , but I
haven't noticed HP doing anything relevant in at least 10 years.

These days everyone I know codes on a Mac. Most bulk order desktops I see are
Dells.

I ask seriously, with no intention to troll: what is HP good for these days?

~~~
skrebbel
This article isn't about the laptop and printer manufacturer, it's about a
gigantic enterprise software consultancy.

~~~
planteen
The also still make enterprise hardware (servers, storage, networking).

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pbhowmic
I have been contracting with HPE for some time now and I went through the
HPE/HPI split and asset spinoffs to DXC & Microfocus. I did not realize until
now that HPE headcount had shrunk to the point where 5000 layoffs represented
a 10% reduction in the workforce.

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bryanwb
Meg is running this company into the ground. Carly helped kick off the process

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alexnewman
Any HPE software engineers looking hit me up at posix4e at gmail .com

~~~
saip
Likewise, any cloud infrastructure engineers in the Bay Area that might be
looking, shoot me a mail - sai at floydhub dot com

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zero_one_one
Could we be possibly be looking at HP taking HP/UX the same way that Oracle
took Solaris? i.e. tossing it overboard?

~~~
X86BSD
God I hope so. The last time I touched HP/UX was 2001. I still have
nightmares. It's a wretched UNIX. It was running veritas, another wonderful
pos software.

~~~
zero_one_one
Nothing like long-term legacy support contracts for a bit of cash injection...

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pm90
The cloud market is super competitive right now. HP tried to develop its own
OpenStack based cloud but AFAIK it didn't turn out very well at all.

I'm wondering what their strategy is going forward. Are they still in the
cloud business or are they gonna stick to the hardware/server side of things.

~~~
Top19
Their mistake was buying this cloud company, Attunity, for $11 billion, and
then realizing the company had completely defrauded them with fraudulent
accounting. They had to do a 100% write-off.

~~~
eppsilon
I think you mean Autonomy?

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csnewb
I'm in ArcSight/HPE now under Micro Focus. Does this news still affect us?

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zghst
I am glad I didn't accept their job offer. Nice people though.

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tostitos1979
Anyone know which division HP Labs falls into?

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tiernano
Title should really be HPE, since hp is the consumer side, and the jobs effect
the enterprise...

~~~
k3oni
You're right, changed to HPE.

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dingo_bat
Title should be HPE.

