Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Working with many, but not all, of my peers in Engineering.

Instead of complaining, here are some observations and suggestions.

1. Layoffs are continuous and without cause, yet wide enough and just under the legal limit to not have to state them, per SEC and labor regulations.
2. The work-life balance is to balance your life to work more.
3. First-line management is remote, and therefore has little visibility into the real work, outside of status reports and the occasional phone discussion.
4. Mid and upper management are hired, mostly, from outside the company. These are managers, not leaders, who bring in their own ideas that may or may not fit HPe; it is just a random shot.
5. Pay is stagnant. Bonuses are a joke. They would be better to just have an additional three-day weekend instead of the insult of the bonus, the lack of a bonus, or no pay raise after working your butt off and making solid contributions to the company's bottom line.
6. The company needs to start to grow again organically, instead of managing the financial statements to appear to have the company grow.
7. Each position in the company has to have measured outcomes. Each group and layer of groups also has to have a purpose and deliver to that measured outcome. Have these outcomes be public to the group's peers. (I have seen frequent holes in this.)
8. All upper management should make group meetings meaningful to the bottom, not the middle or their peers. And not entertainment, or a checkoff on a checklist.
9. Find out why the impact players are leaving.

Stop piecing the company to oblivion.

Throw away all the old statements of what the company is, because they are a statement of what the company was.

Determine who you are, what you want to make or sell, or both.

Read Machiavelli's "The Prince" again, and learn what you have been doing wrong with the layoffs.

To work remote or not should be a group's decision, backed by upper management, and not from some edict passed down by Meg Whitman because she hasn't a clue why the desks are empty.

Instead, the groups, not the individuals, should be held accountable for the outcome, not the method of the outcome.

And Ms. Whitman, if the space goes unused, just remove it from the group and have them hot desk, regardless of their title or position, including yours.

With all the disruption within the company, the expectation that everyone is fine is not true. The workforce is having survivor remorse or looking over their shoulders, waiting for the hammer to fall.

This is not a way to grow or even sustain the company.

Do what you need to do. Do it fast. (Paraphrasing Machiavelli.)

And get down to business so the employees can be more productive, not just busy.