Hewlett-Packard Reviews in Portland, OR Area

Pros

During times of downsizing HP attempts to help workers find work within the company.
Ability to telecommute depending on type of work being performed.
Flexibility to leave for health appointments or home repair visits.

Cons

No Pay Raises
No Bonuses
Not really a 401k match (although looking from the outside I'm sure it says one of the benefits is an employee match)
Not very impressed with co-workers (although plenty of other people have stated they are)

Advice to Senior Management

"Lead!"
Someone said, that it appeared the desire for HP is to have all North American employees voluntarily quit. If that is the goal, keep doing what you're doing and the talented people will leave when they get the chance (economy gets better or spouse starts working/increases income).

If that is not the goal, then start making and driving decisions. To often it feels like there is an absence of leaders able to make decisions and drive work forward.

Pros

Coasting on the reputation from the pre-Fiorina glory days
Some of the old values still linger

Cons

Outsourcing has gutted the company
Promising projects get scuttled and sabotaged prematurely
Lots of trouble getting ideas to market
The company has become very risk averse

Advice to Senior Management

Lead, follow, or get out of the way
Fund more skunk works

Pros

hugh corporation, solid company, worldwide locations, fortune 50, there are other growing business to move to, printing business will remain.

Cons

mature business, severe cost cutting efforts, limited growth opportunities inside the group. low employees moral, unappreiated by the management. limited site future.

Advice to Senior Management

cost cutting, uncertainty is site future, unappreicative management has created low employees' moral. Mass exodus when economy recover from the recession.

Pros

The Engineers and peers at HP are top notch. I would gladly work with anyone on the site again. The Engineers are highly skilled and very motivated. Lower level management is doing the best that they can with what little tools that they have been given.

Cons

The company has turned it's back on the employees. We are regarded as liabilities rather than the assets that we really are. The bottom lines of the real estate and IT groups are more important than actually serving the workforce and enabling us to do our jobs.
There is a real sense that Mark Hurd hates paying to develop products and that he would much rather just buy up companies that design a product.
Benefits have eroded completely since I started at HP, and I no longer have any sense of loyalty to HP.
Most design work at HP is now outsourced.

Advice to Senior Management

Start realizing that your employees ARE your company. Without us, there would be no products and no revenue. We already have a steady loss of the top talent, and once the economy turns around, nothing that you can offer us will keep your key employees around.

Pros

My fellow employees are the best reasons to stay with the company. We all want to do a good job and satisfy customers!

Cons

Management makes us feel like our contributions are just "average", despite the fact that we're working all hours and making significant contributions! (We want to believe again in a great company that are based on the famous HP Way. Current management makes it impossible.)

Advice to Senior Management

You are destroying the legacy of a great company. Bill and Dave are my heroes. Wish I could have met them in person.

Pros

-- Rank and file and first level or two of managers work hard, are smart, and treat each other with respect
-- Company is working on interesting opportunities and is a leader in most spaces

Cons

-- Senior management and corp policies don't value rank and file, only the top 10% performers in the ranks.
-- Pay packages great for senior mgmt while benefits and everything else is cut for all (two class society)
-- SEnior management in printing group changes strategic priorities every 12 months making it hard to build momentum.
-- Constant reorgs make it hard to build momentum

Advice to Senior Management

Put policies in place that value the rank and file employees.
Pick a strategy and stick to it.

Pros

Good salary for current employees, good overall company financial performance, some chance of bonus and 401K matching, excellent coworkers, competent senior management, good financial outlook

Cons

Constant random layoffs, general management apathy towards employee retention and advancement, mediocre first and second level management, non-existent feedback and rewards for achievement, terrible employee rating and ranking system, forced selection of "needs improvement" employees, limited/non-existent travel and training, focus on outsourcing and job transition to cheaper labor (India and China), ever shrinking benefits, vanishing severance and out placement assistance, difficult transition from hardware and consumer electronics to services and commercial/enterprise focus, and a new mean-spirited "no re-hire" policy for anyone laid off from HP.

Advice to Senior Management

Mark Hurd, you are doing a great job of improving HP's financial strength and market competitiveness. But HP HR and first and second level HP management are doing a terrible job and need urgent improvement.

Start valuing employees and treating them with the respect you claim to, and weed out mediocre and incompetent people managers. Drop the "no re-hire" policy. It is unnecessary, ineffective, and only increases anxiety and dissatisfaction of both current and past employees. Do you really want to sour so many people against HP, both as employees AND as customers? Consider the total number of people that will be collectively laid off from HP, and think about how you are treating this target market.

Pros

There are a lot of good, solid engineers that I get to work with. The lower level management seems to know what they are doing.

Cons

I am not compensated fairly. The upper level management seems to be completely lost. I watch them squander their resources to boost one quarter's numbers. Oh yea, and they cut everyones pay, even the people that were already earning less than they were worth.

Advice to Senior Management

You can't cost reduce yourself to success. Anyone can cost reduce. If you cost reduce you will only end up average. To win you have to Innovate. Bill and Dave understood this.

Pros

I recently quit HP after 17 years and, to be fair, I could not find a job that paid as much. Part of that was my seniority, part of that is the current job market. The hardest part of leaving, though, was not the money, but the people. They are still some of the best and brightest people I've had the pleasure of knowing.

Cons

No opportunities. None. Zero. It is all about cost cutting and expense controls. In that kind of environment, everyone is only worried about maintaining their current position - forget about learning, growing, developing new skills, advancing your career. Toiling at a dead-end job, even a high paying one, became a depressing mental burden and eventually the reason I left.

Advice to Senior Management

Focusing on expense controls, revenue growth and profit margins is definitely a viable way to run a business - look at Walmart. However, most of the people at HP, I believe, will not be satisfied with that over the long-term. If you run the company like Walmart, you will eventually get Walmart employees and that probably won't work well in the high-tech, IT services market.

Pros

There is less dead wood in the engineering teams than at any other place I have worked, and if you get on the right teams, the projects are interesting and fun.

Cons

The pay has been totally stagnant for over 5 years. The benefits are worse, and the premiums have gone way up. Upper management panics about every little number, every single quarter.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat your people with respect, stop worrying about next week's bonus that your employees are not even eligible for anymore. They still want to do great things for you, but are tired of getting shafted in the process.