HP Lays Off Unix/IA-64 gurus 341
A reader writes "On Tuesday HP announced that it is closing a lab in NJ. This was an HP-UX development lab, responsible for porting HP-UX to IA64. The lab employed top engineers, including some who have worked in Unix kernels for over 20 years (originally from Bell Labs, Novell, and other companies). " That report came from a soon-to-be former employee.
Re:Weird... (Score:4, Informative)
Linux is not taking any market share from HP/SUX. We're talking about high end machines, many of which are sold with clustering software which allow multiple machines to share a single hard drive through fibre channel. HP/SUX comes with VxFS, a jounaling file system, built in. It comes with a much better volume manager than any linux distro I know of.
For all intents and purposes, Linux and HP/SUX cost the same. Sure, Linux can be customized to do just about all the things that HP/SUX does out of the box, but that costs money. If you want source code, HP/SUX source code is available. Not many people want it though.
THIS IS BAD!! (Score:1, Informative)
I am really shocked on this news. Dont these so called managers have the slightest idea on whom to axe, and whom not to? These people are really good. They deserve better treatment. They have been working on these technologies for over 20 years, and are absolute gurus in their fields. They are being treated as 'unskilled labor'...
The company decides...
We need to layoff 6000 people.
hmm...Lets see.
Lets close down one of the research labs. Who cares who works there. To hell with them.
This will keep the stock holders happy.
It is really ironical since it is due to these people that the stock holders got what they want to protect today!
ankit
Re:Linux moving in front (Score:4, Informative)
Looking good for the stockholders? (Score:3, Informative)
And, of course they can't layoff any sales/marketing people, and all those tech-support people have to stay, so...
Mind you, the long-term bottom line might not be too rosy.
Article gets it wrong (Score:5, Informative)
I work at HP, so I have some insight about what is going on here.
While it is unfortunate for those involved, it makes no sense for HP to keep a small facility like that open. Sitting here in Fort Collins, I can survey rows of empty cubicles and much larger base of people to support.
Here and other sites, there is a ton of IA64, HP-UX, and Linux work going on. The article would make you think it was all done at this small plant in NJ, but it just isn't so. In no way does this closing represent a lessening of HP's support for IA-64, HP-UX, or Linux for that matter.
Re:What will they do? (Score:2, Informative)
staff in the building, in other business units,
who will have to find other offices).
Some of the 120 (not sure how many) have been offered a chance to
apply for 20 jobs in Fort Collins, Colorado.
Those not offered or who don't get a job in Colorado get laid off.
Those are the numbers.
Re:Less Diversity..This sucks! (Score:3, Informative)
It seems to me that laying off some of your top OS engineers is really stupid.
I used to work there, and 90% of us (including myself) did not want to move to California. At Florham Park we got the best of both worlds, a west coast style company, without moving to the west coast. There are many costs with operating a division across the country. You get about 4 hours of communication a day. You get in and work for 3 hours, then you get an hour of phone time, then you go to lunch, then you get another 2 hours of phone time, them they go to lunch, then you get maybe 1 more hour of phone time. Besides the fact that collaboration when you're not face to face just doesn't happen (and there was a minor culture clash anyway which is problematic).
I'm sure the top unix gurus working there were given the opportunity to move to California. Most of them probably declined.
H1B != incompetent newbie (Score:2, Informative)
Please, don't make gross generalizations like that. You don't need an H1B to be an incompetent newbie, and you can be an H1B-holder and a good programmer.
Re:Less Diversity..This sucks! (Score:1, Informative)
Descendent of AT&T Unix System Labs (Score:2, Informative)
Carly, Borg Queen eliminates Unimatrix0 (Score:1, Informative)
on the IA-64 architecture. The bridges are being burned on PA-RISC chip development. 11i Version 1.5 is the only production enterprise release available for the Itanium architecture and beat IBM so badly, they threw in the towel. Windows
and Linux are still testing beta. HP-UX was available back in June. The entire filesystem team for HP-UX was located in NJ and was responsible for implementing Veritas filesystem technology in the HP kernel. All this experience is lost in one fell swoop.
The NJ site consisted of roughly 120 elite engineers that were acquired in various forms from AT&T Bell labs, Novell, SCO, USL, and others many years ago. Originally the plan was to reduce the HP workforce by removing low performers in the company. Then when that wasn't enough they instituted a "geographical strategy" where they wanted to consolidate to Cupertino, CA. and Fort Collins, CO. the HP-UX development community, thus the reasoning behind our demise.
HP will have almost no IA-64 expertise in the company after the layoffs are completed. There were a few engineers scattered in Cupertino that at one time reported to the NJ site management chain. A few of those have already since
left the company. The remainder of the HP-UX development team will continue to blunder into mediocrity. Fort Collins to it's credit does have a handful of top people that worked IA-64 from the workstation side.
With the Carly at the helm HP's future has never been so bleak. Morale is completely gone in the company as well as the acknowledged death of the HP way. Often times the senseless restructuring decisions are justified with glorious name-droppings of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard.
We are told that "this is what Bill and Dave" would have done. I fully disagree. Bill and Dave would have invented HP out of a company jam and implemented paycuts across the board to avoid layoffs. Bill and Dave realized that emerging technology and engineering resources are a company's valuable assets. Carly, a medieval history major, has no technical fluency to understand these concepts. The operating system division is run by someone with a degree in forestry. She only looks to cut costs by closing sites regardless of what engineering talent resides there. She hopes to buy or acquire rather than invent technology. The ramifications
of Carly's pattern of behaviour can now be witnessed in the spiraling demise of Lucent. This will soon be the way of HP within one to two years. Carly has already declared that the Compaq merger will affect profits for the next two to three years though I expect it to be much
worse. With the planned acquisition of Compaq, Carly has doomed HP. Most HP employees have gone into work slowdown mode waiting to see who will be laid off next. Hard work or critical projects have no bearing on an employee's value to Carly, so why bother?
The estimates of an additional 15,000 to 30,000 layoffs after the merger have been explained as the minimum required for a first phase with unknown additional ones planned. Most of the business units in Compaq are a duplication and product lines will be even more confusing.
Carly was unable to alter the culture of HP's 63 year history and cannot effectively manage 90,000 people. How will she fare with another 60,000 people? The plan at HP before the merger was to focus on a 3-OS strategy. With the Compaq acquisition, this will become a 6 OS company,
7 if you count HP's MPE. Customers should be very
concerned about their OpenVMS, Tru64, or Himalaya NSK systems. Before each grand decision, insider trading data shows Carly and the EC cashing out large amounts of stock options or selling shares. Of course she reassured employees that she shares in our pain.
The entire IA-64 team is considering moving to a
competitor company such as Sun or IBM as a further
side-effect that will come back to haunt HP. You will never see a more fervent effort to reduce HP into obscurity.