back to article HP redundancies all about getting 'cheaper, lower skilled' bods

HP engineers in Blighty's Customer Delivery Services unit were warned of redundancies yesterday, with more than one in 10 workers expected to pick up a P45. The trimming is all part of HP's multi-year Make It Better restructuring programme that will see a total of 29,000 workers laid off by the start of its next fiscal year …

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  1. alain williams Silver badge

    Oh no - more monkeys!

    Good for sorting out problems where they can be given a simple procedure to follow. Hopeless when there is something unusual.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    getting rid of expensive experienced guys

    and replacing them with a cheaper lower skilled workforce

    nonono, you got it wrong, this is to give the lower skilled workforce a chance to develop their skills in the challenging market.

    And lower rate? Well, you can't pay them the same high rate, cause they're less-skilled, innit? Absolutely nothing to do with increasing our own profit margin, nosir!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: getting rid of expensive experienced guys

      My company outsourced out IT to HP a couple of years ago. From a mediocre IT service in-house we went through fifty shades of HP:

      Dismal, then to:

      Disinterested: then:

      Dreadful, then:

      Laughable; then:

      Appalling, then:

      Shocking,

      Insulting,

      Inept;

      Incompetent;

      Cack-handed;

      and so on all the way to where we are now, at which point HP's service can be summarised as "Shite". And this news says things can indeed only get worse.

      I hate having anything to do with HP - their scummy, useless "Global Service Desk", their shitty "service" ordering portal. And the former in house IT employees (mostly all obliging and helpful when they worked for us) have all been turned into disinterested jobsworths whose response to anything is "gotta-raise-a-ticket-for-that", or "do it yourself".

      A pox on HP, and a pox on our retarded directors who signed up for this (and then found themselves shafted by contracts that they clearly hadn't read or understood).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: getting rid of expensive experienced guys

        I feel for your IT department as the same happened ere and agree with them.

        Raise a ticket and get in line as you failed to mention almost all of them got the boot.

      2. mrbawsaq

        Re: getting rid of expensive experienced guys

        About the same as my experience of HP outsourced IT services at a previous employer.

        I once had to raise a ticket to port out my phone number when I was leaving, but couldn't log in to the ticketing system because I didn't exist in it. Their response - raise a ticket to get added to the ticketing system! My response - threatened HR with legal action if they didn't let me take my phone number with me (which I had ported in when I joined) whilst reminding them that it wasn't my job to motivate external suppliers to get things done. I did get my number back in the end.

      3. The Godfather
        Thumb Up

        Re: getting rid of expensive experienced guys

        I like your style.....

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: getting rid of expensive experienced guys

        > HP's service can be summarised as "Shite".

        I think I work at the same place as you do...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And naturally

    It will be only the 'indians' who get their P45's, not the plethora of HP Managers who always seem to escape the chop.

    Mind you the same behaviour can be traced back to round about 1993/94. I got the boot in 1998 and was surprised that I managed to survive that long (close to 25 years)

    Anon only because I'm not that far away from getting my HP Pension.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh great, We spend ages on the phone to india who dont have a clue, we finally jump through all the hoops, we have to deal with their resourcing out of some eastern european country where they couldnt find a brain cell between them. We finally get the relief of an engineer who on the whole are really good but now we will get some low skilled monkey. Our problems will never be sorted. HP sort it out and give who ever thought this up their P45 because they are clearly a moron. Now wheres that number for IBM.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      IBM eh?

      They rely on underpaid Manpower t̶e̶m̶p̶s̶ contractors, who after two years of being lied to, get fed up and end up doing the bare minimum to not get fired.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        IBM? lol

        If you don't get through to a contractor, you'll get through to someone who ended up borged into the corporation because their startup had valuable patents.

        Underpaid. Mostly because pay increments in IBM rely not necessarily on work done, but on CCing management on mediocore matters to look busy.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    As one of the "expensive experienced" guys...

    I'm intending to apply for VR this time, and go back to contracting...

    As a techie at HP, I currently split my time between:-

    (a) Filling in paperwork and dealing with red tape;

    (b) Trying to work around paperwork & red tape;

    (c) Fixing things that our "best shore" colleagues have either broken or can't get working in the first place;

    (d) Designing, testing, and creating documentation for those colleagues to use, so they don't have to think too hard;

    (e) Fielding queries from people (which are already answered in the documentation, which they have);

    ---

    (a) & (b) are just annoyances...

    (c), (d) & (e) are necessary - but if removed, no one will notice straight away. A year or two down the line is where the problems start. We've already seen this happen from previous culls - item (c) is becoming more frequent as problems are cropping up.

    In HP's supposed "performance is rewarded" culture, and having had several top rate performance reviews (let's not mention my time at EDS where they just didn't bother even pretending to have these), my salary has still gone up ny less than 1%/year on average. With costs of living increasing, that's a net reduction - and that's for a top performer in the techie area. No doubt managers and sales types do better out of this system.

    Just wondering now why I stayed so long...?

  6. Cream_DJ

    Reading the above comments...

    Makes me wonder how many of you work/ed for a well known UK energy supplier, as this all sounds very familiar?

    I jumped ship due to customer service taking a nose-dive, and being powerless to do anything about it... The less than competent management reluctant to do anything to improve the situation, as long as all tallies up on their weekly "excuse report" as to why the don't meet targets/satisfaction levels, all is well...

    Useless!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Reading the above comments...

      If it was the well known GB (or is that BG?) energy supplier that I'm thinking of, the one that took 4 phone calls to set up a direct debit in the first place, then upon leaving GB and phoning to settle the final bill, informed me that I was in credit.

      Then, a few months later at my non-GB address, I get a random bill for 40 quid, then a random bill for 150 quid, then a phone call later, a refund for 40 quid?

      Utter shambles.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Reading the above comments...

      "Reading the above comments... Makes me wonder how many of you work/ed for a well known UK energy supplier, as this all sounds very familiar?"

      As the AC behind the "50 shades of HP" comment, I must congratulate you on observation. I can't say it's the company you had in mind but certainly the right sector. In my case we're talking red not blue, if you get my drift.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Glad to be out

    As an ex HP employee who escaped via a TUPE to another company... I really do feel for anybody working there. It's not easy living under the constant threat of redundancy while having to cope with almost weekly reorganisations and having to take up the slack for colleagues who have already been dumped just so they can squeeze a little more profit. Is it any wonder they have such a bad reputation with anybody who has to deal with them on a daily basis?

  8. John439

    The company have openly admitted this is not about getting rid of staff its a cost cutting exersize. Work done by employees will now be replaced by an evening shift and directly replaced by new apprentices. The job still exists so how is this redundancy legal?

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