I was one of the 300 in June. I was informed by email on the monday morning that my "position has been identified as one of those that is no longer required" and asked to go to a meeting telling me what happened next. The following day the meeting was postponed (definitely postponed and not cancelled). The customer expressed their displeasure in a fairly big way and finally on the Friday of the second week I got a phonecall to let me know that they had "reviewed the situation" and I was no longer at risk. I wasn't the only one this happened to.

They've got to make the numbers back up somewhere and heaven forbid that it should be one of the three managers that I report to. Or one of the six people who have to approve my expenses if I travel to another site, 5 of which wouldn't recognise me if I bit them and probably couldn't tell you which planet I'm on from one day to the next let alone which site.

And they seem to be puzzled as to why morale is low.

I so glad I left Nortel just before CSC took over their I.T. operation. Morale was low then, it must have a new definition of "low" now!

Yeah, it's quite normal for companies to chop the ones doing the work, and keep the ones that are basically just overhead. That's because they let the ones who are overhead determine who gets the chop. Idiots, the lot of them.

I worked for CSC 2002-2005 as an infrastructure/solutions architect; previous threads re:CSC morale I can't concur, as I concentrated on a type of client that CSC is entirely ill-suited for - a dynamic financial organisation* in central London that required leading edge IT to match its ability to quickly change to the fickle needs of the financial markets - i.e. to match the product cycle. We designed and installed completely non-standard CSC architecture and kit, as thats what the client demanded. (* hence 3 years, otherwise I would have left)

On that account, minor operational changes were the Lines of Service responsibility, as architects and project managers weren't required. Anything a bit bigger needed a Proj Mgr... a redesign needed my input also.

The announcement that Proj Mgrs aren't required on smaller accounts is two-faced: for small projects Proj Mgr processes are fundamental for CSC to function, and the management beat the drum with religious zeal to maintain it: to "bye-bye Proj Mgrs" is just about reducing cost.

CSC is best suited to companies with long product cycles**, since it takes CSC so long to do anything: I was in GEC-Marconi before CSC - a major project required about 4 of us... CSC required 40+ (no kidding) for adding an extra DPNSS link to a PBX; meeting in CSC had 42 present...

[**A perfect match for CSC is BAES ... product cycle is average 15 years (by comparison, a FOREX transaction on the financial account is 15 seconds)]

My partner left CSC in the first round of "Voluntary Reduncancies" a year and a bit ago, at the time most people who were good at their job and could get a job elsewhere took voluntary redunancy and ran. Everyone suspected it was the first round of many redundancies that were going to happen.

Expect hundreds more jobs to go over the next couple of years or so as they offshore everything they can, apart from the top heavy management structure, oh no, that will remain.

Having left CSC recently of my own accord I can comfortably say I am very glad to be out of there, but I feel sorry for ex-colleagues who are trapped in a company with morale at an all time low. The people who actually deliver solutions and projects are treated with contempt by senior management, and you wont be suprised to hear they are completely devoid of any strategy to improve the fortunes of the company and address the malaise