Hey I also work in Glasgow. We were told that 37 were going from Tech (or was it 39, I can't remember!) What do we know about other depts?

While all of this 'look over here' hand-waving is going on at Dell, please keep an eye on the global numbers. In particular, watch staff numbers in the USA and EMEA (Dell's two highest-employee-cost regions) and, simultaneously watch the numbers in China, Malaysia and India.

I'm not going to say 'offshoring by stealth' but someone might.

"Seemed to me that around 60% of Dell staff were 'monitoring' the actual real work done by the other 40%."

Shhhh! That sounds like pretty much every blue chip I've ever worked for. The longer I work in IT the more chaff there seems to be put in place to prevent any real work from being done. Oh for the heady days of the early nineties where the key message was "JFDI". These days I can't even sneeze without putting in a change notice three weeks in advance. The changeover seemed to coincide with the switch from managers who knew IT (because they'd done it in their past) to managers who can barely use excel let alone properly encrypt sensitive data.

Back to the subject, if you were one of those affected my heart goes out to you. Having been dumped on in the past you have my sympathy. Good luck for the future.

is also a nice hole where long term serving incompetents tend to hide and get raises every year

Bill, because he's willing to hire everybody at Yahoo (volume offer)

Statutory redundancy ? A good payoff ? Help with finding a new job (i.e. free access to recruitment consultants).

You get the feel for a company on how it acts in these circumstances.

My heart goes out to those affected - in my experience though, in 5 years time over 80% of people will say this is the best thing that ever happened to them. Right now, they will understandably be feeling terrible.

Having had a not-too-pleasant experience with Dell's support in India, I guess all customers are now consigned to that awful call-centre in Mumbai. From my experience as a customer, Dublin was brilliant - staffed by people who knew their stuff.

But... what do the bean-counters know? It took my plumber 35 years to build a reputation and now he's inundated with business. Dell and the rest of the big players are only interested in today's profit. Who cares if they destroy the infrastructure and confidence of their customers as long as they can produce a profit for their fat shareholders?

" I'm not going to say 'offshoring by stealth' but someone might......"

Hmmmm.. I worked for Dell for 16 years in UK Bracknell office. I got "redeployed" when production went to Limerick and again when the bulk of Tech Support went to Bray. I finally got made redundant 2 years ago when the choice was to go to Glasgow or leave. Dell is no respector of reputation, loyalty or personal value, the only thing that is important is the minimistaion of cost and the movement of staff from one lapsed government-funded freebie opration to a new one is nothing new.

This time I think you'll find it's a bit different - Dell are under pressure to cut costs globally and all operations are likely to face cuts. So the service you can expect just got that bit poorer.

It could be that the longer serving employee's are more expensive as they have built up 9-10 or more years worth of raises (if Dell do give raises).

Whereas the <1 year employees are still on the basic wage without the increases..... and less likely to get a raise as they won't be able to meet targets/standards without the experienced staff there.

Good luck on finding new jobs, our local rag has just changed from advertising 1000's of jobs to 100's of jobs.

Logically thinking experienced people are getting paid the most money.

"first in last out approach" does not work anymore.

The way it looks to this old timer (not, of course, necessarily true at all, but someone's got to say it):

Dell never was anything but a commodity box shifter and financial engineering operation. Michael Dell has already extracted more than the entire profits since the start from the business for his personal use. Economic forces are chipping away the pedestal on which his cash making contraption is built. Remember that IBM sold its PC business to Lenovo for $2B, but Dell's market cap is still $40B.

Dell needs to drastically cut costs, which means getting rid of expensive Europe and North America staff. But Dell actually needs more staff to maintain and preferably grow sales to feed the $18B constantly borrowed short term from suppliers et al to keep afloat (why does this remind me of sub-prime?). So Dell have been dumping the most experienced, most expensive staff and replacing them with overseas outsourced staff, and some cheap local fire fodder whose time will also come. Overheads and total head count (including subcontractors) have gone up, even as Dell is supposedly "slimming down".

In order to keep the plates spinning, Dell has also been forced into retail sales and has channel-stuffed new resellers throughout the world each quarter, artificially inflating sales over the past year.

It can't go on. Michael Dell hoped for a turnaround that would allow the problems to buried under growth, but Dell (revenue $60B, market cap $39B) is not significantly different from Ingram Micro (revenue $35B, market cap $3B). One of these days quite soon, Dell may be out of the USA and headquartered in SIngapore; the move is already half done. Amid a major slash and burn operation in Europe an North America and a share price below $10.

If you're one of the lucky ones being let go with a redundancy payment, keep your work habits squeaky clean in your final days. Remember browsing, email and keystroke loggers, and avoid a sudden fast track dismissal that puts you out the door with no redundancy, your former colleagues possibly none the wiser.

And if you're an employee and don't believe the general gist, why do you think Intel pulled the plug on Dell's preferential terms a couple of years back? Perhaps they know Dell's time is ending. Why do you think IBM sold out to Lenovo four years ago? And why do you think Dell's market cap has gone from 8 times Apple's to one quarter of Apple's in just five years? The market knows too.

And what happened to that SEC investigation that Dell tried to bury under $100M plus of paperwork? Maybe the option of a fast exit to Singapore is helping to keep it unresolved.

40 years in the business can make you a bit cynical!