Hewlett-Packard Reviews in Sacramento, CA Area

Pros

Flexible, Efficient, Technology top of the market. Great place for an entry-level.

Cons

Salary below market, very small bonus, no stock options, work overtime (weekends) can be as long as 4 - 6 months in 2010. Do not value much in family life and personal life.

Advice to Senior Management

Do better job in project management. Take care of employees.

Pros

Co-workers are pleasant & competent (for the most part)
Flexible work schedule (dependent upon job & manager)
Good health care package

Cons

Senior management only cares about budgets not people.

Constantly being told to do more work with less resources.

Pay cut, frozen wages, reduced 401(k) make it feel like there is nothing you can do to have any impact on your pay.

Very talented people are now streaming out the door on a weekly basis because of the aforementioned ridiculousness of how employees are paid.

So large of a company can often be very difficult to get anything done, let alone in a timely manner.

Organic growth is not valued, only acquisitions. Even those strategies seem strange as often the acquired companies are squashed to conform to the machine (read business week & Forbes articles for explicit examples)

Advice to Senior Management

Quit sacrificing employee morale to save money & trying make Wall Street happy. In the long run without good employees the company will start to implode.

Stop making poor decisions - i.e. hiring a no-name CEO who has no experience with hardware & Wall Street was baffled by this choice (this shows a complete lack of planning and forethought)

Now is the time to stop slashing budget & start re-investing before it is too late, this has already cost the company untold amounts of money in lower quality people & products.

Pros

Anyone would be proud to work at Hewlett-Packard but make sure its directl management and not sub-contractor.

Cons

Pay raise extinct and always described to us as none-existent at our group yearly review meetings.

Advice to Senior Management

Exterminate sub-contracted management and handle all employees directly.

Pros

HP makes great products
There are still a lot of outstanding employees around

Cons

Employees are a commodity
HP no longer has any respect for employees
Lay-offs are constant
HP has become a political nightmare
Current CEO choice is a disaster
No raises in 8 years

Advice to Senior Management

Management needs to begin repectin employees again. HP must begin to provide raises again, give stock options and end lay-offs. Only managers are doing well at HP. Over 80,000 lay-offs and counting...

Pros

Very engaging job content for this role

Cons

Very difficult to get the processes standardized because the relevant data sources on the market are always changing.

Advice to Senior Management

Promote from within. Our CEO should have come from one of our internal SEVP's.

Pros

Work from home. People are very nice and friendly. A positive area if you like to sta stagnet in what you do.

Cons

bad compensation plan, up movement in company limited and when you do you do not get a salary adjustment. Bonus structure is setup to make the rich...richer.

Advice to Senior Management

Get a clue and listen to your employees....and then do something about. Your take surveys every year and then only act on the ones that don't cost you money.

Pros

Generally energetic workforce. Organization works hard, in general, at understanding the oddities of software development, as opposed to manufacturing (I'm an acquired EDS employee.)

Cons

The organization seems more "marketplace" focused than it used to be...less focused on research and development and innovation...sell, sell, sell...

Advice to Senior Management

Return organizational focus to innovation, rather than just being the number one in sales. Sometimes it makes more sense to be the maverick. Let's get back to "invent"ing!

Pros

Work at home is typical now, no more office politics!
Do your job, get a paycheck. No worries about "inventing" anymore.

Cons

Long-standing unspoken no-rehire policy.
If you are lucky enough to be rehired, years of service is reset to zero.
Rather outsource than promote from within.
Management is out of control.
Bad management is financially rewarded and behavior is offensive.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop covering up bad behavior in management.
Bring back the integrity that Bill & Dave instilled.
Respect your people and your people will respect you.
Take a management class... most of you haven't!
Change is good, but the way HP has evolved over the years is NOT good!

Pros

having a job in the Sacramento area
work-life balance and flexible schedule

Cons

the work-life balanance and flex schedule is a pro but it will bite you in your evaluation if you use it often.
poor management. a lot of yes-people.
stock options hogged by upper mgmt, directors and up
bad cafeteria, cheaper to buy outside
too much work, good people who leave are not replaced
declining benefits
401k matching tied to company performance
pension plan suspended
no espp
bad work environment, open area 3 ft high cubicles like those on TV

Advice to Senior Management

HP is on a downhill since Carly Fiorina. Everyone though Carly was bad, Hurd is 3x worse. All Hurd did is make the rich richer, filthy rich to be exact. As what I said, HP is only good if you dont have a job.

Pros

HP is loaded with great people who care and are supportive. Their character values are to make a difference and help those around them.

Cons

Management has become intrusive and hierachical - taking a former company strength (empowerment at lowest level) and becoming a new weakness, at least for employees.
Management is well-compensated via bonus structuring, while individual workers are not... becoming an environment of haves and have nots.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus less on efficiency and more on effectiveness (less penny wise, pound foolish).
Help employees feel significant again, rather than mere pawns in another massive organization.