Hewlett-Packard Reviews in Detroit, MI Area

Pros

Flexibility to work from home for most accounts. Working with good co-workers who collaberate on projects. Immediate mangers seem to care about employees.

Cons

No consistancy on who can work from home and who could not. Constant looking over shoulder because of job cuts. Salary cuts. Paid way too little for experience. Wanted employees to get certified yet will offer no help. Certain teams get training whereas everyone else has to fund it on their own. The contact need to look for new positions as your project has been completed.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop the project based team where peopel mvoe from project to project. No one is expert in area, leads to bad morale, hard to scheduld vacation time when you do not know where next project comes from.

Pros

Flexibility of work location - home/office

Cons

if you are a US Citizen, you are at risk of work force reduction in order to move more jobs offshore

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on Services and delivery of services, Offshore is NOT always the best solution.

Pros

Flexibility to work from home. Very Good benefits. Nice facility. Local managers are support their staff admirably

Cons

Poor Pay.
Senior management taking away tools of the job
You'd like for an IT company they'd have go to IT pros on-site. Instead it is a self-service help environment.

Advice to Senior Management

Service Delivery Emplyees need to be paid enough to support their families. They are way underpaid. HP is a hardware company that does not understand the importance of providing service to the accounts they took on when they took over EDS.

Pros

solid company
got some what decent tool for developer
got very good reputation because of the brand
some what good benefits for employee
good place for intern or start a career

Cons

low cost cutting
lots of work load because of the job cutting
no raise only salary cut
career growing are very limited

Advice to Senior Management

The managment better change the way to treat employee with respect otherwise the talented people will leave. The company will not be where it is today without a talented people behind.

Pros

. Opportunity to work with talented people.
. Access to state of the art resources.
Opportunity to work with top tier customers.

Cons

. Little regard for the quality of work life.
. Single minded focus on short term financial performance
. Too much focus on pushing HP hardware.P

Advice to Senior Management

. Pay more attention to your people.
. Focus on what the customer really needs, even if it does not include HP hardware.

Pros

Large company. Various locations. Flexible work options.

Cons

Work excessive hour
Too many layers of management
Continious layoffs
No company loyalty, only employee loyalty

Advice to Senior Management

Treat employees well who actually do the work to make management look good/informed.

Pros

Brand name is well recognized. Some cool stuff going on in R&D. Some good people as colleagues. A few good leaders.

Cons

You are just a number no matter how good you are. Leadership talks the talk about growth, promotions etc but all the star performers get is more work to do.

Advice to Senior Management

Develop a vision for the company and communicate it

Pros

Working remotely is about the only good thing left now.

Cons

HP is killing the atmosphere of working with the smart people. The salary squeeze was not right. The managment had no guts to even sign the salary cut in April. HP senior management is clueless about how to become a good technology services provider and compete with IBM. They just want to come up with slogans on beating IBM but when it comes to nourishing their best resources the rank and file employees they can not look beyond selfish motives of short time gains and big bonuses. We have a big "Agency Problem" at HP.

Advice to Senior Management

You employees are you best assets. Listen to them, act on their concerns, create a flourishing working environment for them.

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.

Pros

The best reasons to work for HP are all prior to the Compaq purchase.

Cons

HP (HP Way) is gone forever.
Extremely bloated with senior-mid level management which are preoccupied with themselves
Ton of spreadsheet monkeys that have no idea what it takes to actually work with customers. They are quick to forget that customers pay the bills.
Majority of middle management are ex Compaq people.
If your a customer and meet 2 HP people (1 blue HP and 1 red HP) you'll be able to tell without a doubt who the professional one is. The HP blue person of course.

Advice to Senior Management

Take 2 or 3 layers out of management.
Get off the gravy train by riding on the backs of employees.
Get real and actually talk to customers and not "industry" analysts.