Pros

Very complicated, highly matrixed global business environment delivering solutions to all customer segments with a huge portfolio of products... can serve as a great training ground for future career opportunities. The HP brand still has great "street cred" and there is equity in being associated with a market leader and Fortune 50 company. Most employees are of the highest caliber - intelligent, experienced, respectful, interesting and interested. The opportunity to have flexible work options provides more choices to fit your lifestyle (telecommuting,job sharing,flex time, etc.).

Cons

The new leadership team is clearly "penny wise, pound foolish" and an outrageously arrogant bunch. I think it will be very interesting to see where HP is a few years from now. The short-term cost controls may drive the stock price up and put Mark Hurd on the cover of BusinessWeek but are definitely putting the company's mid-to-long term innovation and growth at risk. Employee morale is at an all-time low. The culture is steeped with resentment, fear and depression. Senior management decisions appear to be based solely on internal politics and expense reduction without any clearly defined, customer winning strategies. The customer-focused, solution-centric, people-powered environment this great company was originally built upon (the formidable HP Way) is gone.

Advice to Senior Management

If you continue to under value the workforce as you have, it will begin to erode our customer and product experience. Talk to employees and listen to what they have to say. Address the issues. This is the last of the great regimes, I think. Every other day I learn of another major talent choosing to leave the company - not because they are threatened by workforce reduction but because they want to use their brains and passion again in an organization that values their contribution.