Unfortunately, not just a rumor (as I was on that meeting here in Houston this morning). Several EG Supply Chain GBU roles will be moving to Puerto Rico before the end of the calendar year. The original plan was to execute before the FY end, but they decided to push it out to Q1 due to Hurricane Maria. They also mentioned Slovakia, but it looks like the impacted roles will all end in Puerto Rico.
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This isn't news. Been doing it for a year that I know. Any GBU folks leaving the group are replaced with only low cost regions. HPE believes in open borders and lowest cost workers. If the job can exist in CR, PR, or India...it will exist there.
God/Mother Nature does not like HPE! It had Maria backhand-slap Puerto Rico into uselessness (no power, no Internet). Houston got a kick in the balls twice with Harvey and a 1-in-10000 year rain/flood back in April 2016.
My guess is HPE will eventually start including Houston/Puerto Rico WFRs into their "optimization" plans and relocate operations/organizations out of both of those sites. That is the HPE I know.
HPE could just do "Cloud Computing" is the power is out! Just ask Meg. Good Luck to All!
They won’t rethink moving the roles there. They don’t care if the people there can do a good job or not. Upper management don’t care about customer service (or even business continuity). All they care about is about exploiting Puerto Rico’s tax loophole. Sorry, I meant to say, tax “advantage” strategy...
Disasters can probably be sold to the market as a one time excuse. One has to remember non-GAAP rules.
They might be rethinking that strategy. Currently no internet there for the foreseeable future and US workers picking up their slack. If all jobs are in PR, what happens if, God forbid, there is another disaster.
From Puerto Rico with love.
EG supply chain jobs have been moving to Puerto Rico for years now (and not only from Houston). If not, ask the people in Erskine and Germany. Their Procurement teams dissapeared completely. With HPE wiping out 10% of its workforce in the upcoming weeks/months (5,000 positions), I doubt headcount will be added in the Island (but rather the roles be absorbed by the people already there). “Optimizing” costs is no longer a strategy at HPE. The only strategy is to desperately “eliminate” costs in any possible way, in preparation to the final demise. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those same guys in Puerto Rico get axed as well very soon. This is the end, guys... This is the end...
@1bh, of course you can. It would be more than surprising if the HPE Puerto Rico site doesn’t have access to enough diesel (at least at this point in time) to keep generators running for the most basic functions. To run a Control Tower you just need the people with their laptops and internet connection. If the site “basics” are still not running 2 weeks after the hurricane, then the disaster plans failed miserably and the people in charge of it deserve to be fired (and when I say “basics” I’m really far from referring to “normal” operations).
Can we work without power
The only BIG surprise here (at least to me) is that we still have anyone from the Supply Chain team still physically located in the US. I thought those roles were gone long time ago!
I believe they are just Control Towers taking advantage of some tax loopholes. Typical HPE strategy of "eliminating" jobs by moving them to lower cost Countries or tax advantage territories. Nothing new. The overall devastation there has nothing to do with their ability to run Control Towers (as they don’t manufacture the EG products there). They just need an Internet connection, and that’s it. Good for them... but very bad news to the ones kicked out just in time for the Holidays.
Puerto Rico in Q1? Delusional at best. Sadly, Puerto Rico is gone.