Hewlett-Packard – “HP: a comedy of errors and mismanagement masquerading as a Dow Jones Industrial Average stock”

Pros

The best reason to work for Hewlett-Packard is that you already have a job there and the job market is in tough shape. Seriously, if you value your work experience and hope to achieve recognition for technical excellence, look elsewhere for your employment.

Cons

HP has been lead by some of the most incompetent management I have ever witnessed. The place has absolutely stagnated in the time that I have been there. Ever since the merger with Compaq, the "HP Way" -- the promise that the company made to its employees about how they would be valued -- has been completely and utterly thrown out. All of Compaq's rotten management strategies, such as regular, recurring workforce reductions, were brought in, and the Compaq folks poisoned the well of good management that once made for a healthy, growing HP. With the recent acquisition of EDS, we are now not only being exposed to HP mismanagement, but EDS mismanagement as well. The group that I work for was the most profitable in HP in Q4 2008. After the EDS merger became effective, we became the least profitable (as we were in the part of HP that was folded in under the EDS brand.) We have taken the brunt of the punishment for this -- unfair wage reductions chief among the items I could name, continual pressure to take vacation time at the company's convenience (so as to get the untaken vacation time off the books and thus make the company look better on Wall St.)

HP is now governed strictly by the bottom line on Wall Street. Instead of being an engineering tour du force with a nice line of profitable products, we are vendors of the mediocre. We supply the cheapest services possible from the lowest wage countries. If an employee needs support from our internal IT support, he's better off finding a colleague who can fix the problem for him. All of our benefits management has been outsourced to companies who care only about the bottom line instead of the wellbeing of the people whose care they have been entrusted with. As for senior management, the recent debacle where Mr. Hurd was forced to testify before Congress to answer for the illegal privacy-robbing shenanigans of a board member should tell you everything you need to know.

Even more concerning is the brain drain that is going on at the company. The best and the brightest, of course, are headed for the exits. Technical training has been cut to the point where it is impossible to get. As someone else mentioned, travel within the company has been restricted to the point where you may never meet your boss in person, much less anyone who works for you. I have subordinates that I cannot train in person who are not effective in their job performance as a result.

When the job market improves, I will leave. In the meantime, I'm hoping the wheels don't fall off the company during this current economic downturn while I still need it for employment.

Advice to Senior Management

Bring back the HP way and refocus your efforts on the job satisfaction of your employees. Re-emphasize technical aptitude and training. Stop acquiring junk has-been companies just because you think it makes the portfolio look better. And most of all, restore our salaries and the bonus programs! Do these things and you will once again be assured of profitability. Fail to do them and watch the formerly great ship known as HP sink.