EDS: 20,000 Job Cuts Over Next 2 Years (20,000 jobs!!!!)

[UpInArms]

http://www.reuters.com/financeNewsArticle.jhtml?type=businessNews&storyID=6197368

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , one of the world's biggest computer services company, is likely to cut up to 20,000 jobs over the next two years, the company's chief executive said on Thursday.

"Over the next two years, we'll see a lot of change," said Chairman and Chief Executive Michael Jordan. He said 15,000 to 20,000 people -- about 15 percent of EDS's global work force -- "will go out" on top of about 5,000 jobs cut in the past year.

Jordan said the job cuts were part of EDS's plan to eliminate about 20 percent of its cost structure, or about $3 billion. He spoke in response to a question about the company's head count at a Smith Barney technology conference in New York.

...more...

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Send the whole company out...

Send Perot with them, and give some grants to a new startup to take their place.

That would change some tunes, fast.

They have decided the American Worker is their biggest competitor. Fine. The American Worker needs to put them out of business.

[Ruffhowse]

2. How much ya wanna bet those jobs are being offshored? But according

to Bush, offshoring is GOOD for the economy. Yeah, right.

[hatrack]

3. But Dick Cheney says that we're forgetting about eBay!!

Don't worry about those 20,000 lost jobs - we'll all make our living selling stuff to each other on the Internet! "400,000 people make some money trading on eBay."

No, I am not making this up.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x814425

[OneBlueSky]

4. I'm tellin' ya, a GREAT Kerry tv ad would be . . .

a scrolled listing of ALL of the job cut announcements of the last three years or so . . . followed by "We can do better" . . . would also make a great newpaper ad, if the Dems are doing any of that . . .

[barb162]

5. Lou Dobbs on CNN does this

one of the reasons I love his show. He is very against what the lost jobs mean to this country. Imho, this country won't be able to recover if this goeson much longer. We keep shipping out our tech stuff,laying off the techies, not good. Heard Lucent is going to do another 10-15% again of its people.

[Jack Rabbit]

6. I used to work for EDS

They've always been overrated. The only thing upon which the programs they wrote could be relied was crashing in the middle of the night.

In the early nineties, EDS went on a corporate brainwashing campaign called "quality". "Quality," I told my bass, "is when the data is accurate, the reports are in the users' hands on time and the cycle duty monitor gets a good night's sleep." In keeping with the memo, she tried to convince me that it was "something more than that," but to this day I don't know what more it is. Besides, even if it is something more, it is as I said at a minimum and we weren't meeting that minimum by any stretch of the imagination.

EDS wasn't that great under Perot, but after GM bought him out it really went down hill. Perot too often favored style (e.g., stract business suits and shiny shoes) over substance (working code), but at least their was some substance. At least those of us who wrote good code were valued for it. By the early nineties, the idea was to make money by making the customer think we were doing something great for him by feeding him a line of bullshit. If you couldn't con him, you didn't fit it. Not being a good occupational liar, I didn't fit it and lost my job.

It was painful, but I'm not ashamed of it. I'm proud of not having played by their rules. Those who made those rules are worthless.

Today, I find myself again in a spot where I have been working the same job for nine years, starting with a middle-size company that was taken over by a corporate giant that ruined it. I find myself bound by corporate red tape (don't let anybody tell you a large corporation is more efficient than the government -- six of one is half a dozen of the other). Today, I was so frustrated with the bureaucracy and the impersonal corporate culture that has grown around me that I wanted to slam my security badge on my keyboard and walk out, once and for all.

To those 20,000 at EDS who will lose their jobs, I offer this: It will be painful, but, if it's the same outfit for which I worked in the eighties and nineties, you may be among the lucky ones.

[Hotdiggitydog]

7. EDS won a huge, huge, $7 Billion government contract...

To install something called NMCI. Navy/Marine Corps Internet. It is a complete and utter failure. Quite the boondoggle, and everyone I know who has an NMCI computer seat loathes the blasted thing. Slow as crap, they can't load ANY executable files on the machines without big government permission (and paying a hefty fee....). Bottom line, NMCI sucks and EDS should go bankrupt for their failure in the endeavour.

[area51]

8. Bush "recovery"

Wow, look @ that Bush "recovery" go! </sarcasm>