Hewlett-Packard Reviews in Sacramento, CA Area

Pros

The engineers that i work with are extremely intelligent and helpful. They are the only reason i have stayed with the company for so long.

Cons

Everything that made the company great during the Bill and Dave days have been stripped away from us. Work/Life balance has become a thing of the past.

Advice to Senior Management

Everyone thinks of their job as a paycheck and nothing else. That used to not be the case. Loyalty has become a thing of the past.

Pros

Great products, good engineers, generally good people.

Cons

Completely political environment that rewards managing up more than achieving results as described by the pay for performance culture.

Advice to Senior Management

Flatten the organization and eliminate middle layers. Too much bureaucracy.

Pros

Its work, hi tech and the company is doing relatively well

Cons

Lots of change in objectives, mgmt, organization etc. A lot of confused people so the employees are continually cleaning up messes that have been created by this environment. Not getting real work done or being able to give inputs on this. Career and recognition are talked about but never executed on.

Advice to Senior Management

You had better start getting back to your primary asset, your people. You give surveys but never take real action on the results. Seeing how you have treated top people (being laid off) really communicates a total lack of interest not only in the people but how you understand and run the business. This really breeds a total lack of confidence in the mgmt to move the organization forward. We are surviving the recession but there is going to be a mass exodus from HP when things turn up and it will be a major blow to the company.

Pros

At this point in time, the job market is tough, and it is just plain good to have a job.

Cons

HP used to treat their personel as valuable, not merely "resources" to be treated poorly at the whim of management. The HP way is, unfortunately, dead and gone. This used to be such a great place to work! Oh how the mighty have fallen. Now HP is just fine with being "like every other company."

Advice to Senior Management

Bill and Dave wanted everyone in the company to earn a bonus when the company was profitable. They said so. Make it so. No more shell games. Treat people better and the company will prosper.

Pros

Salary is good, but now it is performance-based, which is ok, but... see cons
Enjoy working with other colleagues.
flexible time - there are no set hours that force you to be at work at a certain time.
Work can be challenging... in a good way.

Cons

An excellent performance may or may not be rewarded if your business is doing well. Employees are held accountable for meeting goals and aspire targets. But the company may or may not provide rewards/bonuses to employees meeting their obligations or aspire targets. How do you keep star performers when you repeat this every year. You can't!
Benefits package is worse than what the State of California offers. It gets worse every year as we try to make our benefits fit more like industry peer standards or worse.
Large bureaucracy makes it difficult to get things done quickly; less agile.
Education and career improvement suffered over the years. Limited budget == No conferences, no travel, no education, no growth, no skill improvement.

Advice to Senior Management

Improve employee satisfaction to retain key talent. Poor benefits/rewards will leave you with unhappy poor performers.
Balance shareholder demands with employee satisfaction. Employees have taken a hit with reduced pay, reduce benefits, reduced retirement, no pension, all for the sake of shareholder value.
Some good talent were laid off at no fault of their own as businesses shrunk. Remove EC approval requirements needed to bring them back on board when employment opportunities arise.

Pros

Big brand name
Great international experience
They treat all employees equally poor, no favorites
Flexible work hours
Good work/life balance if not on mainstream project

Cons

Forced ranking creates gladiator environment that pits Engineer against Engineer. Forced ranking is not always a bell curve as advertised by upper management...sometimes divisions are forced to "calibrate" their workforce by upper management. Calibration disregards normal bell curve and is replaced with skewed curve such that up to 30% of the employees are rated unsatisfactory instead of the normalized 5-10% number. Calibration is one way Corporate eliminates a larger than normal number of employees for termination. These targeted employees are usually replaced with overseas jobs via outsourcing or by piling the work on others willing to work long hours and weekends. Years of layoffs and forced ranking has eliminated any dead wood at HP. The remaining Engineers at HP are smart and tough to compete against....they are the HP "Gladiators". If you feel like a challenge, come join our ranks. If you thrive on a toxic environment, and desire to work for one of the worst companies, there is a short career waiting for you. HP is constantly looking for new victims as they continuously fire people rated at the bottom of the curve and are replaced with the best Engineers they can find. This cycle has gone on long enough now that good hard working Engineers that didn’t get the top projects are let go now.

Advice to Senior Management

Either listen to the feedback provided by the yearly "Voice of the Workforce", or quit giving it as it consumes time and money.

Pros

For me, HP has had Flexible work hours, letting me get my job done and have time for my family. Granted, I still have to coordinate with others and their schedules, but otherwise I have a lot of freedom to set when I work. I like working with my peers. They are good hard-working experienced employees. My direct managers have been very good, and HP seems to do a better than most at training both men and women to manage. Lastly, so far I have had Interesting work to do.

Cons

HP was founded on a set of principles that respected employees as much as the top chiefs. This atmosphere has completely eroded. At best, HP now is an average place to work, where lower-level employees are treated as financial liabilities and not assets to the company.

Advice to Senior Management

If you want better than average employees, start rewarding and treating the workforce likewise.

Pros

You will get paid for work. Just don't expect above average as HP is a below average company.

Cons

The best reasons to work for HP are dead, gone, and buried next to Bill and Dave.

Rather than figure out how to adapt to the new economy with new products, sales, and marketing, they just hack the wages by moving engineering jobs to cheap overseas sweatshops.

Advice to Senior Management

How much more money will you waste with the short sighted decision to simply move a $100,000 engineering job to a $20,000 Indian engineer?

Time and time again, projects that move to India do not succeed. Why? HP is the bottom employer in Bangalore, which causes a turnover rate worse than teenage dishwashers at a local restaurant.

Typically, 2-3 engineers are required to replace one US engineer. Their work ethic is different and they are on the make for a better job.

Wake up and smell the curry.

Pros

Flexible work schedules
Bright co-workers
Many employees are still holding on to the original HP ideals

Cons

HP is hell-bent on cutting costs and being "in line with the industry", yet demanding top performance from employees
Compensation is deplorable. Many people are not even on the appropriate pay curves
Time-off policies. We get time off, and we get told when we're going to use it.
Benefits have eroded to nearly nil.
Becoming more high-pressure, short-schedule
The products we create are no longer all that interesting from a technical perspective

Advice to Senior Management

Open your eyes, smell the smoke, and put down your violins. Employees are very dissatisfied with the current state of things, especially "pay for performance" where even top performing employees continue to be underpaid while the execs pull in multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses.

Pros

flexible work, i'm lucky to have a good direct manager the first time at HP now. it is the only thing that keeps me at HP those days.

Cons

too many people doing nothing. few people that does the job are super overloaded. horrible coffe in the kitchen!! people is lately hysterical and emergency became a routine.

Advice to Senior Management

hire managers that have skills