About a year ago, Hewlett-Packard unveiled plans to split into two companies, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, encompassing software and services, and HP Inc., a PC and printer business. Research activities previously housed in HP Labs would go with the business units. That split will become official on 1 November.
Today, the company announced that this restructuring will involve reducing the workforce by 25,000 to 30,000 people, or 10 percent. Most of those jobs will be eliminated on the Enterprise side.
Perhaps these employees can fill the tech worker shortfall that is driving Facebook and others to call for expanding the H1B system.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2015, @07:14AM
Ain't no jerbs, joe. Wanna do those layoffs, man, pay me to watch the tv box.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2015, @08:34AM
In contrast to the govt's dummied-up numbers, the figure for USAians who want fulltime work and can't get it is 23 percent. [shadowstats.com]
...and that's not even counting the folks who are working fulltime--but for poverty wages--who can't afford to buy manufactured goods (even if those -were- being produced in the USA).
The Multiplier Effect is completely broken.
That's a DEPRESSION.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2015, @08:39AM
Good news, citizen! We're going to pump you full of ANTI-DEPRESSANTS until you STOP COMPLAINING.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2015, @10:24PM
Zippy, is that you?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by K_benzoate on Thursday September 17 2015, @03:56PM
The economy of the future is a warehouse full of goods and no one to buy them. Doesn't matter how cheap the marginal cost to produce a widget is. If someone doesn't have a job, because the entire supply and production chain has been automated, they can't afford a widget unless it's FREE. But a business can't exist giving away it's products. It also can't survive without customers. Capitalism has no inbuilt method to correct this. In fact, left to run without interference it over-optimizes for a local maximum and then burns out.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by SunTzuWarmaster on Thursday September 17 2015, @04:26PM
Firstly, never trust ShadowStats. Every time I've attempted to trust them it has totally blown up in my face. As an example, they claim that the US is misrepresenting inflation by changing the calculation not including it in their reports. "OMG they are hiding it!". However, in *fact*, they were including the old estimates as an Appendix in the regular report. Generally, every time some government agency changes a calculation, ShadowStats says "they are hiding something", and then attempts to calculate a *wildly inaccurate* proxy. ShadowStats says that we have had 5x price increases since 1990, which is laughable (https://voxrationalis.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/the-absurdity-of-shadowstats-inflation-estimates/). Because you are new to this, here is how *your* statistic blows up:
http://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/2015/06/15/deconstructing-shadowstats-part-2-in-search-of-an-alternative-measure-of-unemployment/ [economonitor.com]
TL;DR version of the above link: The ShadowStats number that you linked to says the following: "We consider a person to be 'unemployed' if 'unemployed' means that they but had not looked for a job in 12 months, and were unemployed in 1994 or anytime thereafter. No one ever exits this category." Note that an 'unemployed' (has not applied for a job in 12 months) person in 1994 may now have entered any number of states in reality. Such states include: employed, dead, looking for work (reported in the BLS numbers), or no longer wanting a job (reported in BLS numbers).
The ShadowStats numbers attempt to serve as a proxy for this person, and include them among the 'unemployed':
"Do you work fulltime?"
"No."
"Do you work part-time?"
"No."
"Are you able to work?"
"Yes."
"Do you want a job right now?"
"Yes."
"Have you looked for a job in the last 4 weeks?"
"No."
"Have you looked for a job in the last 12 months?"
"No."
I personally have a hard time calling this person 'unemployed'. Your above unemployment claim is that this is a person who "wants fulltime work and can't get it", which I feel is a misrepresentation of the above person, even if the metric were accurate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2015, @10:11PM
never trust ShadowStats
So, keep believing the numbers that the presstitutes spew--the figures from USA.gov??
...not to mention the whores in the accounting industry who rubberstamp the govt's numbers [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [cbslocal.com]
Riiiight.
I personally have a hard time calling this person 'unemployed'
It must be nice to be fully employed and be able to look down your nose at others who, 50 years ago (before Reaganomics), would also be fully employed with a family, a fairly new car, and making steady payments on a mortgage.
As for people who have looked and looked and looked and looked and looked and still can't find a job and have realized that they are wasting their time and resources because, as Steve Jobs noted, those jobs have been exported and they aren't coming back:
Insanity: Doing the same over and over and expecting different results.
To simply keep up with USA's population growth, over 120,000 new USAian jobs are needed each and every month. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [dissidentvoice.org]
That is absolutely not happening--nowhere near that.
You left out 1 item in the method of how USA.gov determines unemployment figures:
They ask if you have a 2nd job; if so, you count as TWO EMPLOYED PEOPLE.
In addition, they do this by phone.
As such, homeless people aren't counted; neither are the 2.4 million USAians in prisons.
The gov't numbers are complete crap.
They have been since Clinton re-rigged the method--that's since at least 1994.
USA.gov's numbers come from the same gov't that said there were WMDs in Iraq. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [dissidentvoice.org]
Over 100 million working-age Americans do not have a job [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [dissidentvoice.org]
USA population in 2014: 318.9 million
Oh, and the "recovery" is an illusion [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [paulcraigroberts.org]
For Joe Average, his income has declined since the economy imploded and his accumulated wealth has eroded by at least half.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has a more meaningful number called "U6" [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [counterpunch.org]
...though you're still depending on the same bunch of purposeful liars.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by SunTzuWarmaster on Friday September 18 2015, @01:42PM
First, I'm not sure what WMDs have to do with a jobs debate...
Second, you cite 100,000,000 Americans who are working age, but not working a job. That seems a bit high, and I'm wondering where it came from. It appears to come from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, actually. Source is here: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS15000000 [bls.gov] (instead of linking to a blog post). The real number seems closer to 94,031,000.
Why could that be? Well, first, it considers 90 year olds in this category. Second, it considers 16 year olds and college students.
43,601,000 of these people (http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/) are on social security retirement.
~19,000,000 of these people are in school (bad source, but close enough http://mollysmiddleamerica.blogspot.com/2012/05/people-not-in-labor-force.html) [blogspot.com]
~5,200,000 of these people are stay-at-home moms (http://www.infoplease.com/spot/momcensus1.html)
leaving 19,401,000 of these people in the category of "don't have job, don't want one, haven't looked for one". Something like 6% of Americans are in the category of "not retiree, not student, not in labor force, don't want to be" category. That's probably pretty reasonable. Some of these people are mooches, but some of them are early retirees, trust funders*, "taking a few years off", or whatever.
*Just a speculation, but about .95% of Americans (3M or so) have trust funds (among those, many are enough to afford to not have a job, source:http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/dear-mona-how-many-kids-have-trust-funds/)
For the record, I'm not saying "never trust a non-Government statistic", I'm saying "never trust ShadowStats". ShadowStats appears to have an agenda and manipulates numbers to have that agenda. In fact, the article I linked previously uses non-Government independent estimates.
(Score: 5, Informative) by MostCynical on Thursday September 17 2015, @07:27AM
http://www.cnet.com/news/tech-layoffs-hit-3-year-high-of-51529-in-first-half-of-2012/ [cnet.com]
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2289075/data-center/126887-Biggest-Tech-Industry-Layoffs-of-2013 [networkworld.com]
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerkay/2014/02/06/layoffs-in-tech-now-a-permanent-feature/ [forbes.com]
So, if 20,000 to 50,000+ are being laid-off every year, can anyone explain what all the H1B-holders are doing?
It wouldn't be that they are being paid less, would it?
http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/29/how-google-facebook-and-others-pay-their-h-1b-employees/ [techcrunch.com]
http://www.workpermit.com/news/2005_10_26/us/us_h1b_visa_holders_earn_less.htm [workpermit.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2015, @07:47AM
Capitalists cut costs by paying the absolute minimum for human resources, so they can sell cheap shit to consumers. Are you going to stop buying cheap shit, stupid fucking Consumer? HUH?
(Score: 5, Funny) by Dr Spin on Thursday September 17 2015, @07:53AM
After exposure to Carla Fiorini, they are all mentally scarred and damaged beyond hope.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2015, @08:02AM
We're a generation of men raised by women.
I'm wondering if another woman
is really the answer we need.
I look around,
I see a lot of new faces.
Which means a lot of people have been
breaking the first two rules of Fight Club.
I see in Fight Club the strongest
and smartest men who've ever lived.
I see all this potential.
And I see it squandered.
(Score: 1) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday September 17 2015, @05:05PM
Bend over, manlet. Our domination over you is complete! Uwahahahahaha! Suffer! Take the 14" spiked strapon of the matriarchy and BEG for the pain! Hyahahahahaha!
...seriously, we don't "own" anything. If women owned this world why in Cthulhu's unholy demonic name are we treated worse than cattle in half the world?!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2015, @08:05PM
So you're saying you own only half of the world? Don't you wish you could eat the whole thing?
(Score: 1) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday September 17 2015, @08:33PM
Got news for you, buddy boy: men own the WHOLE thing. And the specific men who are putting YOU through the meatgrinder and standing under it with their mouths open to drink your blood and listen to your screams of agony have TRAINED you to blame women, the poor, the blacks, the Jews, the gays, Muslims, etc. as you're thrown into the funnel.
Women are not your problem. A specific, small subset of men are. You have far more in common with the average woman than you do with this small set of men, despite sharing a chromosome.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday September 17 2015, @08:52AM
HP to Cut Some 30,000 Employees
I know corporations are people, and I've heard of self harm, but that's taking it a little too far.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday September 17 2015, @10:29PM
HP's on its way to oblivion: cost saving and no new products/services means death by starvation. It may take a bit for the carcass to rot, but the stink is already there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday September 18 2015, @07:31AM
I'll try again...
HP to Cut Some 30,000 Employees
That's pretty mean. I'd rather be fired!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Thursday September 17 2015, @11:18AM
How can there be a shortage of workers in the technology industry with the non-stop purging companies have done since 2001? Enough workers should be freed up by these constant purges to fill demand for a generation or two. I'm not an economist (I may not even be a human being), but even I can figure out there's a strong disconnect between supply and demand when technology companies are getting rid of workers as fast as they can, but also talking about a "shortage" - are we living in la-la land now? Nothing makes sense anymore.
And why would any rational actor choose to major in a career field like information technology or computer science when the only thing you hear about this sector is companies purging workers? What other headlines would someone who was following information technology only through mainstream media (not tech press) ever see? Disney purging workers. HP purging workers. IBM purging workers. Amazon is a churn-and-burnout hellhole to work in. My point is that if there's a "shortage" the first thing you should do is make information technology a more attractive field to work in. Anyone smart enough to work in this field is smart enough to read the headlines and not want to work in it. The technology world in general needs an image makeover in the worst possible way to convince people there will be any jobs left at all in a generation.
What I don't get is the extreme, vertiginous disconnect in the technology sector between the constant purges and the constant talk about a "shortage" of workers. They can't both be right.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2015, @11:47AM
There is a shortage of naïve workers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2015, @12:05PM
You're right, but please also keep in mind that 'Human Resources' may leave the pool by retiring (early or not) or by getting disillusioned by the industry and finding another industry/field to work in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2015, @12:20PM
It's tough to have a career in IT these days that doesn't have involuntary gaps in employment. But it's not so tough to have a career in IT that pays decently well, if you've kept your skills reasonably sharp and you're prepared to move to where the jobs are. I realize that might not be a good option for some people.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 17 2015, @12:57PM
Picking up and moving to where the job is is easy enough when you're 22 and all you own can fit in a backpack. It's only after a year or two when the startup you moved to Nashville for folds up that you look around and say, 'Wow, there really are no other IT jobs in Nashville, TN, for a 1337 coder like me!' So you ditch that girl you were a bit sweet on because she doesn't want to move to Austin, where you think there might be jobs. So you head on down the highway to Austin, find something making a little less than you were before but you're willing to take the hit and prove yourself to your new employer because you know, you know that in no time they'll recognize how 1337 you are and promote you. Except the guys working next to you are, like, 15, and stay up all hours of the night on Red Bull coding shit you wouldn't wipe your ass with but somehow manages to not completely crash the system, and you're starting to feel aches and pains trying to keep up with them. 4 months later the PHB introduces you to Anil, who's an H1B fresh from Hyderabad and who the PHB wants you to help get up to speed. 2 months later, when you've taught Anil the *right way* (that'll show those whippersnapper 15-yr olds) to code, the PHB hands you a pink slip. "Ha!" you say, "How are you going to keep things going without ME!" "Oh I talked to Anil and he thinks he has a good handle on it," the PHB replies with just a shadow of doubt in his voice.
So you're on the street again, SXSW preparations are already in full swing and fully staffed, and since that festival consumes Austin for 8 months out of the year, you're counting your pennies and wondering how you're gonna stretch through on ramen and couch surfing until something opens up again in the area. Then you recall your dictum, "Go where the jobs are!" You stuff everything into your backpack, hop on a Greyhound to Richmond, VA, and somewhere in the Appalachian highlands you have an epiphany, that you've been used and will continue to be used, and that "going where the jobs are" is a ruse that has burned through your youth and given you no chance to build a life.
Whoops, guess I should have prefaced all that with *SPOILER ALERT* for that life plan.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by rufty on Thursday September 17 2015, @10:19PM
-1 depressingly insightful
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Friday September 18 2015, @01:08AM
and he thinks he has a good handle on it," the PHB replies with just a shadow of doubt in his voice.
You were spot on except for this. The PHB most likely won't have any doubt, but should any cross his mind he won't give a shit because he's planning to move on before the shit hits the fan anyway.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2015, @11:20PM
In Neoclasical Economics (aka Capitalism in the 20th Century), there is something called The Multiplier Effect. [google.com]
The (Neoliberal) Chicago School of Economics doesn't recognize that concept and that bunch has become the advisors for the elites for the last 3 decades.
Having **working people with actual disposable income** that they can use to buy products and services doesn't enter into the Neoliberals' equation for wealth generation.
(Apparently, already-rich people buying each others' existing properties at ever-inflated prices is "wealth creation".)
What the 99 Percent gets from Neoliberalism is a downward spiral.
As long as Wall Street's whores hold the reins of gov't, you can expect more of the same.
Social Democrat Bernie Sanders wants to make some tweaks around the edges of the current system.
It is unfortunate, but he is the ONLY one (with anything that might be called a high profile[1]) who is in favor of ANY movement in a direction away from the downward spiral for the 99 Percent.
There is no high-profile candidate who wants to reduce the 54 percent of USA.gov's budget that is pissed away on military aggression (which causes much of the planet's population to hope for the death all USAians).
What we needed in 2008 was another FDR (who put 15 million USAians to work rebuilding|building the public infrastructure).
What we got in 2008 was yet another of Wall Street's whores (mandated payments to health insurance corporations; bailouts of failed Capitalists; more weapons procurement; etc.).
[1] The Green Party's Jill Stein has a vague outline of a Green New Deal [google.com] but who here recognizes her name?
-- gewg_
(Score: 4, Insightful) by http on Thursday September 17 2015, @02:47PM
Companies merge, and workers get fired. Companies split, and workers get fired.
It's all excuses.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 18 2015, @12:54AM
My division was sold to a competitor, so the company could concentrate on their "core business". The new owner has already announced that one of the departments is consolidating at the corporate headquarters, instead of spreading the workload to our group that does the same tasks. The new owner bought us for one or two of our products, and are dumping the rest. Nothing that has been said in any meetings makes you feel like you are part of the long term plan of the new company. I think it is only a matter of time until I get swept out, but where to go? Name a technology corporation in the U.S. that isn't shedding workers? I don't think there is one. All IT workers in the U.S. will be screwed in the long run.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2015, @06:12PM
So we can expect a offsetting 30k reduction in H1Bs, right? Right?