As a shareholder, I’m a little confused as to what’s going on over at HP. They’ve recently decided to cut back on telecommuting, giving employees the option to come to the office or find other employment.
As a former HP employee, who worked for their Managed Services division at a customer site, I felt a terrible disconnect from HP and whatever culture there may have been at the offices. Disconnected from everything from HR to company events and watercooler talk. Unaware what resources from the rest of the company I could get involved in a work-related problem. So I can certainly see the merits of getting people together.
But I also know that within HP, a lot of what I did see was that some of the poorer performing people were being kept while the good people were leaving either by choice or by mandated cuts. While I think that the slackers are more likely to be the ones quitting instead of coming into the office, I also fear that some of the better people who work well within this arrangement will decide it’s simply not worth it for them.
My experiences were shaded by the presence of Carly Fiorina and her management culture, I’m sure… and I’m not sure if Mark Hurd is going too far to “let’s get more like IBM” or if he’s all about cutting out the bullshit and getting things back on track.
I’d like to see HP come back from where it was, beat Dell in the server market, and recover from the Itanium disaster… despite the disconnect I had with the corporation during my 4 years there, I believe that they’ve got the ability to restore prestige and reinvigorate the IT industry. I just hope this change is part of that, and I’m not so sure.