Dell Reduces Workforce as Part of Broader Cost Cuts (reuters.com) 55
Dell reduced its workforcereduced its workforce as part of a broader initiative to cut costs that included limiting external hiring and employee reorganizations, it said in a filing on Monday. From a report: As of Feb. 2, 2024, it had nearly 120,000 employees, down from about 126,000 a year earlier. The layoffs come after sluggish demand for its personal computers for nearly two years partly contributed to a 11% drop in revenue in fourth-quarter earnings posted last month. Dell expects net revenue in its client solutions group (CSG) - home to PCs - to grow for the entire year, it said on Monday. The segment's revenue had fallen 12% in the fourth quarter.
Stop listening to customers, start losing them. (Score:2)
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Dell and end of pandemic computer buying for WFH (Score:1)
How many ways can the same "Company X sales shot up in 2020-2021, expanded headcount, and now is laying people off" stories can we have?
Re:Stop listening to customers, start losing them. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Stop listening to customers, start losing them. (Score:5, Informative)
Because services are way more profitable than hardware.
The profit margin on desktop PCs is 3 to 6%.
The margin on technical services and consulting is 50 to 60%.
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The profit margin on desktop PCs is 3 to 6%.
The margin on technical services and consulting is 50 to 60%.
And twice that with half the staff! :-)
(Can't do that with half the hardware.)
Re: Stop listening to customers, start losing them (Score:1)
In your head, plenty of 3rd parties that provide consulting on Dell and Dell-EMC gear including Isilon, ECS etc. The fact is that Dell often stops supporting their own gear before the 3rd parties because they want to sell the hardware. The hardware + licensing has a 50% markup, the service and support is simply not profitable partially because most of it is done through third parties and contractors in India, causing delays due to bad communication and those Wipro people in India LOVE to run up the bill, ev
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What, to you, makes a PC exciting?
Last time I found computer hardware exciting I was buying surplus-before-their-time high-end dual Xeon workstations from the local college surplus when school programs were closed down prematurely or unexpectedly and the equipment sent for disposal. That was the better part of fifteen years ago now.
I'm using a seven year old laptop at home and it's still more computer than I actually need. What I do need are physical page-up and page-down keys, SD-card readers, and copiou
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What, to you, makes a PC exciting?
Features which reflect experience using the product. For example, it's close to impossible to get a laptop that has a pointing device other than a trackpad. This is despite the fact that many users absolutely hate them and they cause usability problems (palm motion / frubbed clicks). It would be nice to have more ports even on smaller devices, as you point out. I also didn't say it was cool to make everything a dongle-on-the-end-of-a-cable. Just because USB and Thunderbolt can connect external devices at hi
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Framework's laptops are (IMHO, obviously) pretty exciting. Apple's ARM laptops would be more exciting if they were somewhat cheaper and/or Apple didn't seem hell-bent on making all of their software worse with every release. Or if I could run Linux on them... keeping an eye on Asahi.
Desktops haven't been exciting since I was building my own from parts back in the early 2000s (IMHO, YMMV, etc.).
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Well, perhaps start making some hardware people could like or get excited about besides the bland crap that keeps coming out. Even Alienware got boring after being bought by Dell.
Given that the one big "exciting" thing that all the PC makers are touting these days is adding some kind of AI chip, I'll stick with cheap and boring.
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Alienware is "exciting" for me, because of continued AMD GPU driver instability. . . .
And here I thought buying AMD versus Intel+Nvidia would be better.
And maybe it would be, if I were running Linux on this thing.
Dell continues going downhill (Score:2)
I don't understand why their products have been going downhill for years now. Reminds me of HP.
It seems that once you get locked into corporate and government procurement contracts, you just give up on quality.
I've had two Dell laptops forced on me over the last five or six years, and they both suck. Poor battery life, they get hot, only sometimes wake up from sleep, and general clunkiness. My experience with Macbooks and Thinkpads has been much better, but my workplace has a Dell contract...
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That sleep problem is a real bear sometimes. Brand new laptop goes to sleep, won't wake up, requires unscrewing the bottom panel and removing the cable from the battery. WTF?
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Long press on the power button won't get its attention?
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Not always. Sometimes. Changing Power Settings from defaults seems to help in a more permanent way.
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> It seems that once you get locked into corporate and government procurement contracts, you just give up on quality.
RFP and RFQ are like 60-80% weighted on price. I don't think quality is even a metric in the weighting.
Knowing that layoffs mean (Score:2)
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Sometimes the ADP numbers are better than BLS and sometimes they are worse. A reasonable person would assume this should be the case since they are two different data sets.
Do they ever disagree on reality (BLS shows up, ADP shows down) or just the strength of numbers (103k vs 130k jobs added but jobs added nonetheless)?
Is the accusation the administration is strong arming ADP into fudging their numbers? The BLS?
Do you have proof of this post-facto data manipulation since BLS publishes it's methods and dat
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Sometimes the ADP numbers are better than BLS and sometimes they are worse.
Wow, they've both been around for decades. So, yeah, pretty safe bet there, Keynes.
Do they ever disagree on reality
Well we'd all need to subscribe to your "reality", first. A delta in the numbers that's big enough impacts how the numbers are reported YoY and MoM. So, they don't have to be completely inverted to create a problem in perception. The media will claim the figures are improving or declining based on trends (thus it matters when they get revised showing a different trend), not based on the simplistic idea only of adding or losin
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OK, I did read that graph, and it looks like the numbers were revised downwards in 9 of the previous 24 months with 4 months essentially unchanged. Doesn't seem like they are "fudging" the numbers to underestimate inflation, but more like they are following up early numbers with more accurate nu
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That's just it, BLS has stated how and why they revised. Your job to back up the positive claim you are making is to show what evidence you have for something being underhanded.
Just ADP having different data is not enough to make that assertion stronger than unfounded.
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Your job to back up the positive claim you are making is to show what evidence you have for something being underhanded.
Oh, I see. If I cannot tell you exactly what the BLS was thinking when they got 4/5 reports wrong (to the benefit of the current administration) or I can't show you exactly which equation or data source they rigged or intentionally mishandled then it's all coincidence? When you have a giant hole in your chest right after a loud bang would you disbelieve it because you couldn't see the gun?
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I mean technically you haven't shown your original claim to be true, you didn't link to anything showing these numbers had been changed and in fact changed "in favor" (whatever that means) to the current admin so I am taking you on faith that that is even true, but yes in that case even then you need to show me evidence that it was "rigged or intentionally mishandled".
The default assumption coming from BLS, throughout it's history, whatever party is in charge, is that numbers are updated as more data comes
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"in favor" (whatever that means)
Well, clearly if you don't know what that means you aren't following the basic thesis, and honestly explaining it to someone who is just looking to play lawyer isn't really productive. So, I'll just do a half-ass effort, here.
We have a huge deficit spending problem (do you need proof of that too?). So, lower interest rates are going to benefit the government in several ways. First, it lowers the interest payments as the government has to be lower rates on T-bills they sell. Second, as they refinance deb
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You know what, chalk this up i your win column because I cannot even follow what you are implying here. Nothing here is evidence of "juicing the numbers" in the way you are describing. This is both an "all roads lead to rome fallacy" since any numbers i give you can be suspect or just more evidence of the juicing and also "my enemies are both strong and weak" because if the admin really had the control over everything in way you are implying they would just make the numbers what they want from the outset,
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Nothing here is evidence of "juicing the numbers" in the way you are describing.
Hedonics [bls.gov] and substitution [investopedia.com] are clearly two ways the BLS manipulates the numbers. That Investopedia article I just linked on substitution describes it like this: "The new methodology takes into account changes in the quality of goods and the effects of substitution. Substitution, the changes consumers make in response to price increases, also changes the relative weighting of the goods in the basket. The overall result tends to be a lower CPI." So, are the folks at Investopedia part of some "vast right wing
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According to BLS they started using hedonics in 2018 (note: not the Biden admin) and since then it's used twice a year.
https://www.bls.gov/advisory/t... [bls.gov]
Ok, so show me any of these manipulations are outside the norm of previous administrations. Do you have evidence BLS is doing something out of the ordinary this year as opposed to their standard SoP. You say "4 out of 5 reports revised" but is that particularly weird? Do they not revise reports at all previously?
I don't know if you understand what you are
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Ok, so show me any of these manipulations are outside the norm of previous administrations.
The absolutely are not outside the norm for previous administrations. It's an election year norm. I've already given you the data multiple times. You keep asking like what I've already given you doesn't count, when it totally does count.
It seems like you think I'm some kind of partisan trying to setup Trump to look good while Biden looks bad. That's not my thesis at all. I'm saying the BLS, and to a greater extent the FOMC is trying to help the incumbent. It's done this before.
You say "4 out of 5 reports revised" but is that particularly weird?
For an election year, it's
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One
Re: Simsalabim, Election year layoffs are imaginar (Score:2)
Yeah the NWO, the Illuminati and the Annunaki are conspiring with the deep state and the lizard people to keep Lucius DeBeers as president for 4 more years after which the WEF will appoint George Soros as world dictator with Bill Gates as his deputy.
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Re: Simsalabim, Election year layoffs are imagina (Score:2)
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, I'm taking the piss. I don't really care which senile geriatric takes the throne in 2025.
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Because all those numbers have been accurate up until this very moment, right?
BLS numbers haven't been based in reality for a long time. There was even a story on here [slashdot.org] about all the ghost jobs employers list but have no intention of ever filling. Clearly those numbers are being included in the number of job openings being reported each month. You think that just started now?
When you're only getting
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Because all those numbers have been accurate up until this very moment, right?
No. They've been utter garbage since about the early 1990's (if you mean CPI and PCE). Hedonics, substitution, and other ridiculous manipulations have distorted them greatly. Yes, that includes when Trump was in office. He is just as guilty as Joe Biden, but not as relevant at the moment.
You think that just started now?
Nope, I just think Jay Powell knows he's done for if the bad orange man gets elected and is trying his hardest to help the incumbent. You think the last FOMC meeting where he refused to raise interest rates was because he r
Re: Simsalabim, Election year layoffs are imaginar (Score:2)
"It's almost as if there was an election looming and someone was trying to juice the numbers..."
Oh, my sweet, summer child. The numbers are the same lie under every president, except that they become a bigger lie as things get worse. Trump benefited from the same bullshit math that is benefiting Biden now. And before them, etc etc. They don't have to do anything special because the lie is baked in. Once you're no longer eligible for UIB you fall off of the unemployment stats. That means six months out of wo
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No, they don't drop you from the U3 numbers if you're actively looking for a job, and even then, you're included in the U6 numbers if you want a full time job but can't get one (i.e., U6 includes involuntary part-time workers, but not students, not retirees, etc.).
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"They" ("both sides") predominantly report the U-2 rate.
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https://twitter.com/SteveRattn... [twitter.com]
If you include older workers it hasn't fully rebounded since COVID. A lot of older people suddenly retired and haven't come back.
Dell actually needs more people... (Score:3)
A hardware company is going to have razor thin margins. Yes, it is nice to have something that can run twice as many VMs for less power, and incremental improvements, but Dell needs to start getting out there and figuring out the market, and perhaps tune EMC for storage solutions that are affordable, as well as other hardware items which would be useful. For example, some new SAN/NAS innovation, a MinIO cluster so one can have on-prem S3 object locking, a backup program that is on par with Veeam, Nakivo, or Commvault (Networker is something to kick to the curb, as it won't deduplicate unless you go for a crazy expensive Data Domain appliance).
Software-wise, perhaps support for Proxmox and XCP-ng, because they don't own VMWare anymore, so might as well support other virtualization platforms.
Of course, some R&D into ARM or RISC-V servers can't hurt, just because some businesses want hardware-level boundaries, so having high density ARM-based servers in the server room in something like a HP Moonshot like configuration would be useful to ensure Spectre/Meltdown type exploits can't jump out of a hypervisor, because the boundaries are at the server level, not just a hypervisor.
Throw in some SDN like NSX, and that can make some solid money. Focus on bang for buck and ease of security.
Well, what they need to do is obvious (Score:2)
Shut down the company and give the money back to the shareholders.
useless reps (Score:2)
I buy a fair number of Dell computers. I can always find my own best deal without talking to a Dell rep. When I've interacted with a Dell rep, a rep that tells me they can help me out with discounts, the rep provides a quote for more than what I asked for. I show them a configuration and price, they take that, bump up the Dell support to the max and send it back. WTF? Adding maximum insurance is not reducing my costs and is not helpful at all.
So, Dell, feel free to fire all of your useless Sales people, o
I was laid off (Score:3)
The article cites Feb 2nd, which happened to be my last day when Dell laid me off. I was in the storage division (formerly EMC), and a number of people were let go. Dell typically does some layoffs every year, but this was more than usual.
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Thanks for the kind words.
Yes, it's hard to find postings for jobs that match my experience level, so I'm also applying for things with lower requirements. I've had several interviews and a bunch of phone screens, including one interview today that went really well.
I can't comment on what Dell does for employees that it lays off, but I will say that between whatever they may or may not do and my investments, I'm not in any immediate trouble. That's not going to be the case for more junior people.
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Remember the stealth layoff? (Score:2)
https://it.slashdot.org/story/... [slashdot.org]
Apparently that wasn't effective enough.