Conference 7.286::digital

As I said in #38.13, the rumors have come true.  I was shown the memo since
it directly affected my project and my planned excursion to SIGGRAPH this
week:

There were several points, and I don't remember the ones that didn't
affect me to closely, but I'm sure of:

  The goal is to cut Q1FY86 travel costs by 75% over Q4FY85, therefore:

  - no international travel until further notice
  - no non-revenue generating domestic travel until further notice
  - no external training
  - there were some restrictions on interplant travel reimbursement, 
   however, I don't remember them exactly  

  Other little items on the list include:

  - no offsite meetings
  - no company food/drink at meetings
  - outside consultants are to be phased out
  - contract workers and temps were either phased out or fired 
   outright, I forget which
  - relocation granted on an exception basis
  - there was also something about company-sponsored activities,
   but I don't remember that verbatim

------
I'll see if I can borrow a copy of the memo and verify the uncertainties.
(Or if someone with a copy could for me...)

In any case, I was supposed to be on a plane for San Francisco yesterday,
heading for SIGGRAPH.  Our group spent over six hundred dollars per person
in pre-registration already, but we were told no go, cancel the tickets.
Our management did stick their necks out and decided to pay for a fraction 
of the people that went.  Others decided to pay their own plane fare and
meals.  Unfortunately, due to some recent car repairs, I couldn't pay for
the full fare ticket that DEC Travel got for me and there wasn't anything
available on the cheap flights.

The international flight restrictions affects the project I'm on directly:
conference calls are really not sufficient at times.  And I'm not sure
whether I can deal without interplant travel reimbursement.

I agree that measures such as these are necessary to allow Digital
to show a profit this quarter; after all, as long as they keep coming
up with ideas, they don't have to lay anyone off. 

But I can't help feeling that they are "penny wise, pound foolish" measures, 
and the arbitrary cutoff dates on them seem only designed to throw projects
into havoc and piss a lot of people off.  (Including me.)

Is this going to be the new DEC?

tim lasko

I disagree with these measures being penny-wise but pound-foolish.  I find
them pound-wise and not at all foolish.  Let's be honest--things like off-site
meetings and company-provided food at meetings have been badly abused.  To
cite just one example, you should see the spread that the SARA committee
puts on for their in-conference-room lunch.  OK, maybe they save time by
having lunch sent to the conference room, but wouldn't cold cut sandwiches
suffice?  Why the mini-banquet?

As far as the trip to SIGGRAPH cited in 48.1 goes, to an outside observer,
it sounds like it really wasn't necessary to DEC's business for the lot of
you to go, and that your management did the right thing by sending only those
who really needed to go.

Austerity measures are always a bit painful and inconvenient.  I don't think
the company is going to come to a screeching halt from any of the new measures.
I'd rather have this than layoffs.

--PSW

	At a recent manager's meeting, it was mentioned that some internal 
financial analyst had estimated that if DEC ran it's business like the others 
in the industry, and trimmed the deadwood when necessary, our stock would be 
worth $400 a share in a year, and margin requirements on us grunts out here in 
the trenches would be below 40%.

	Frankly, layoffs don't look so bad, especially if you're one of the 
ones delivering 45-50% margins now, and getting dumped on in spite of it!

Re -1
This note looks bad to me.

Layoffs don't look so bad until you are under the hammer. There has
to be a way to motivate people without layoffs. Like firing them. A
layoff is a temporary measure. If you want to remove dead wood - a
lovely phrase - then do it openly rather than waiting for a bad time
when you can disguise it as a general layoff.

Dead wood is wood that isn't going to grow anymore. Wood that isn't
contributing anymore. Dead people would be non-contributory staff!
Live people would be better. So sure, all dead people should be fired.
All live people who appear to be heading towards deadness should
perhaps have their manager appraised to find out why the person isn't
doing better.

There would be s no dead wood in Digital, but for dim managers!

...Chris.

   Layoffs are not, generally, temporary, except in some unionized
   industries in which people are laid off/rehired based only on
   seniority.  
   
   Digital has obviously got to cut its expenditures, and you can be
   certain that there will be fewer people working for DEC six months
   from now compared to today.  If there are layoffs, then it will
   tend to be the least productive people who are no longer here.  If
   there are no layoffs, (with the current policies that include
   severely reduced salary increases continuing), then it will tend to
   be those people who are most attractive to other companies that
   will no longer be here. 

   Which would you prefer?
   
   --Don

Re .2:

Let's not forget that the purpose of providing food at meetings is to
improve productivity.  It saves time and it may prevent irritability
in people who suffer from low blood sugar.  But while having food at
meetings is important, I see no reason for Digital to pick up the tab.

Why don't we ask the food service people to implement a program of mobile,
pay-as-you-go snack wagons?  If a meeting needs provisions, you make a call
and the cafeteria dispatches a roach coach...

JP

About the SIGGRAPH discussion in 48.1 and 48.2:  I disagree with PSW's point
that only the necessary people were sent to SIGGRAPH.  Because Tim's management
decided to send some doesn't mean the ones left behind didn't need to go.
In my own neck of the woods, we sent the people doing booth duty, one other
person who was likely to go anyway, and our manager who had to be in town
for a workstation summit.  The half-dozen other engineers, including me, all 
of whom had registered for classes, were told at noon on Wednesday that we
were no longer going, so DEC threw away the $570 - $750 per engineer 
already spent on preregistration.  SIGGRAPH isn't just a trade show, it's a
professional conference, superior to NCGA, at which I did my sting at booth
duty and although I think I derived some value from talking and making contacts
with customers, several of those I know who went to the seminars complained
about them being light-weight.

If we're just in the business of building more of what we already have, then,
yes, all we need to send to SIGGRAPH is folks to stand about in the DEC booth.
(And after awhile, everybody will know what DEC builds, so we won't even
need to do that.)  But I'm in the business of designing *future* products for
DEC, and hanging around in my office isn't going to broaden my viewpoint.
We don't have all the graphics expertise in the world at DEC, and so if we
can't do some outside training or travel, we sure aren't going to get much
better.

If I'd had more warning than 4 days, I perhaps too could have been prepared
to pick up the tab for my plane flight, stayed with friends, and thus gone
to SIGGRAPH this year.

This wasn't a goodie that was snatched from my drooling lips.  This was more
like a message that DEC is dropping concern about the professional development
of its technical staff.  If layoffs will cut deadwood while attrition will
only leave deadwood behind, then you can say the same about cancelling
conference trips just before they leave: what reasonable productive person
really wants to put up with this? 

L S Chabot

While I can sympathize with those who are left behind, DEC does need to cut
costs and so long as there are a couple of people at a conference who can
attend the talks, pick up the proceedings and then re-present the material via
trip reports and talks to their groups, DEC's needs can probably be fulfilled.

At our weekly staff meeting we have a 1 hour technical talk with rotating
responsibility for doing the presentations. Many come from the literature, or
from people's personal expertise, or from outside speakers both internal and
external. Just after conferences, the next few weeks are highlights of what
people heard at the conference. Generally there's a couple of weeks of
summaries where talks are presented as 5 to 15 minute summaries, followed by a
couple of weeks of single paper presentations where the very best papers are
done in a 1 hour format. These are often a month or two later if we were able
to get fuller versions of the paper from the author than the short one in the
proceedings. 

We also make the proceedings and course material available within the group for
people who want to read it but weren't able to attend. For big conferences in
our field we try to get one copy of every courses material. For related fields
we get only one or two. 

Now this sort of rehash isn't as good as being at the conference, but it is a
lot cheaper. Given that important conferences in our field have been in London,
Hawaii, and San Francisco in the past year, we couldn't afford to send people
to all of them. Now with international travel reduced we could have a problem
getting even one person, of course. The fact that there are technical talks 50
times a year does make up for it though. Also, we try to make sure that
everyone goes occasionally.

The economic situation is a reality. We can bitch about it and be unhappy or we
can try to be creative in getting the best we can out of the resources at hand.
The later is better for the company and better for your own stress levels. 

As to who goes, I will be saddened with my corporate hat on if we lose some of
our best people, but with my selfish hat on, if a few of the guys above me bail
out while I'm doing my best for the company in the most visible way I can, it
ain't gonna hurt my career. It all comes down to attitude. If you want to be
depressed about all of this that's your choice. I'm determined to make the best
of it both personally and on the behalf of DEC. I'm happy. Are you? 

JimB.

Re .6:

Everyone under my manager (~30 people) took Introduction to Deming at
MR3 last winter.  Tobin's was catering the course, and the quantity of
food and drink supplied was much greater than 30 hungry people could eat.
They knew how many people they were feeding, too.  It must have cost
thousands of dollars for uneaten food.  (Not the real cost of the food,
but what Tobin's charges for it).

Also, at the end of each day, Tobin's would try to take back all of the
unopened cans of soda so that they could sell them back to DEC again.  We
tried to take back as much food for our coffee nook as possible, but there
was more of it than the people stopping by our office area could carry.
				/AHM

	I am not trying to justify lay-off in DEC but consider the 
following:

	Company		No. Employee	Yearly Rev.  Rev./Employee

	Digital		89,000		$6.5 Bil	~$70K per employee

	IBM		500,000		$50.0 Bil	~$100K per employee.


	I know groups in Digital that are short of people 1-2 more people
can make a big difference in their operation and I know other groups that 
there is no reason for their existent.

	These figures do not really indicate anything. What we may need 
is shuffling some of our resources to where they are best suited and needed.
There is no good way of doing this.


Razmik

RE: .-1

A lot of the higher revenue/employee is explained by IBM's grossly high
prices.  Although the "IBM price umbrella" has come down lately, they still
charge a lot more for their stuff than other companies do.  Another part
of this is that IBM's sales force is more efficient than ours is.  A lot
of that is due to the higher turnover in our sales staff--I've heard that
the average DEC salesman has been with the company for only 6 months, and
thus spends a large amount of time in in-house training rather than selling.

RE:  layoffs

Part of KO's justification for the DEC no-layoff policy is that, when the
temporary industry downturn is over, and we need to staff up for more
manufacturing, we'll have trained, experienced people to take those positions.
Layoffs mean hiring new people and incurring training expenses.

Neither DEC nor IBM has labor unions.  The main reason is that both companies
are "people companies" that are willing to put employee concerns ahead of
profits occasionally on issues such as manufacturing layoffs.  If you think
that no layoffs is inefficient, it's nothing to the inefficiency that would
result from unionization.  I'll take the no-layoff policy, thank you.

Incidentally, IBM also has a no-layoff policy just like DEC's.  Therefore,
this policy has nothing to do with the higher revenue/employee at IBM.

--PSW

re: .-1

DEC doesn't have a no-layoff policy.  It's really more of a habit than a
formal policy.  It's great P.R., but there's no written policy that I
know of that forbids layoffs.

re 48.8: Well, it sounds like there are more people devoted to the technical
development of everyone in your area.  Or at least there are more people
in your area.  The weekly staff meeting technical talk sounds great, and
I'm going to make noises here.

There are two small problems I have with those who talk about layoffs not
effecting them, except towards the "selfish" end of making more opportunities,
money, etc; and my intent is to remind us by reiterating someone's earlier
note that layoffs don't seem so abstractly good for the company when by some
misfortune you're concretely under the hammer.

First, making good for DEC is, I think, the aim of most of us (anybody for
whom this isn't true needn't raise their hand).  But lately, this path for
me has been strewn with the cancelled projects of the past year.  I'm sure
this has happened to others too.  What happens when the Powers That Oversee
Layoffs decide to cut the engineering deadwood, and lo! they see "Those folks
ain't shipped no bits and ain't sold no vaxes!"  

Also, in all the layoffs I've seen other places, the junior people tend to
get cut first, rather than the folks with the 10 year trinkets.  After all, 
they don't have all the financial responsibilities or the emotional 
dependencies (or the heavy coffee and donut habit), and are therefore more
likely to weather joblessness without nervous breakdowns.

So, some of us might have reason to be a little more concerned than others,
maybe, but who knows: I saw the aerospace industry crash in the late sixties,
secondhand, and a lot of people fell in the RIF who thought they were secure,
who thought they were necessary, who thought they were productive.  It would
do some of us good to think charitably about those who might get caught in
a DEC layoff.

No, I'm not lying on the floor crying and moaning (although the 10-foot cord
on my lk201 would certainly enable me to do so, I can't figure out how to
tilt the vr100 down without causing it to fall on the floor).  When I hinted
that some people might not like working for a company that calls them back
from the airport to say they won't pay for the conference now, this was to
point out that *some* good people who might retain their jobs through a Perfect
LayOff during which only *bad* people lose their jobs, that these *some*
good people might leave anyway.  This time I was trying to come up with reasons
why some good people might get included in amongst all those who get the
axe.  I'm in an area that has seen several good people leave
recently, and I'm sorry to miss old friends, sure, but more I feel a bit
of an underpopulation--not enough productive bodies around.
                                 
A lot of these budget cuts would be easier to take if so many of us hadn't
seen flagrant waste in the past six months or so: lots of people attending
earlier conferences, too much food (and dang! Tobins-donuts showed up at
our staff meeting the day after my last time here, and I'd gone out and bought 
real donuts!), an exhultation of outside contractors, "business meetings" 
which are "business" in that everyone says "DEC" once, and banquet lunches at 
AMCs.

Hope I haven't insulted anyone--any jibes you see were really only feeble
and undirected jokes on my part--after all, I probably don't even know you!

Yes, cheers!  Let's all keep our spirits up so we can continue good work.

L S Chabot

PS: In the nasty sour-grapes department, is there any truth to the story that 
all the UIS people went to SIGGRAPH?  (Anybody who got left behind, speak
up so I can defend your honor?)  --lsc

PS: In the positive note department, does anyone else have any other ways
in your group shares progressive technical information?  --lsc
                                                              

Hmmm...
	Looks like you people out east are going to have to lay off the fancy
feed and eat like us Midwesterners...

Seriously though, I'm a co-op student working for the Central Region Software
Services.  This talk of cutbacks looks like it might hurt my chances of getting
a REAL job with DEC

-Mike
(CRVAX1::LAMPSON)

RE: .* 

Back in 1982 or 1983 when I was working in VAX diagnostics in Tewksbury,
a co-worker of mine said that a friend of hers that had been working in
Salem had been layed off along with an unknown number of other people
that had been working in Salem.

Jack

Now that a new, more "restrictive" salary/promotion structure is in place,
management has a more difficult job distributing rewards evenly.  In some
places, the guideline "Pay Performers" is taken to heart, but elsewhere,
it just means that when all is said and done, top performers are given little
more than nonperformers, with the explanation/excuse "well, the average raise
was XXX, so XXX+1 is a pretty good raise, be happy and get to work"!  Its
no wonder good people leave the company, since doing so can net them a 30%
raise!  Lets pay these people what they're worth, and in the same manner,
pay the nonperformers what they're worth!  There's no better way to trim
the so-called dead-wood than to deny/limit raises until their performance
merits it.  If raises are to average 9%, giving a performer 13% and a 
non-performer 5% seems to serve justice better than the 10%/8% differential
that seems to be prevalent.  After a substandard raise, I'd either be   
substantially more motivitated or looking for a new job.  In either case,
the corporation would benefit.  Other companies (GE, IBM...) seem to be able
to reward performance, DEC management seems more inclined not to offend 
non-performers.

danny

Here here from Hudson. I couldn't agree more. Nor I'm sure could many others
out there who find that is true with a majority of the stuff you hear at
review time. I had in the past (several years ago) got the majority of work
with the minimum raise. I of course went in search of better opportunities
and did get my just reward. I would hate to be a manager with a group of
real good performers and a handful of aces who work nights, weekends and
such. What do you do then? Should you give the workaholics rasies that 
peel off the top of the other good performers?? It's definitly a sticky 
situation. There are I'm sure other factors that play very important roles
in dishing out raises like, where in the scale people are and if they're
under minimum. All in all performance is what you want to pay people
for, and the people that perform the best should get the most.
	steve            

This business of 'fairness' in raises has always made me wonder, and
moreso since I work in Field Service...

A scenario:

Organization/group/office/whatever "A" is top-notch, all super performers

"B" bunch is the pits, lame, etc.

"A" and "B" are equally staffed, and are equal as far as job codes and
positions go.

When the $$ pie gets cut (on a high level), and each smaller piece gets further
cut, I suspect that 'performance' only gets looked at once it is time to
sub-divide the pie for the last time (to give the raises to the individuals). 

The "A" group and the "B" group probably get almost the same size hunk
of pie, so the worst member of "A" (who performs much better than the best
of the "B" group) does not fare well at all.

I ain't complainin', but I know it happens. 

I spoke once with my manager about such matters, and (the manager) admitted
that there was not too much in place to take care of/compensate for situations
such as the above. 

Lee

re .-1
There isn't much in place, but sometimes some good & imaginative managers
will arrange some sort of a bonus for their performers: for instance everybody
gets to go to a conference.  (Of course, this may not include folks like
the secretaries who may be just as hard working.  Or more so!)
But it does mean there has to be some bit of pie left over somewhere to fund
it.

re .-2
I know of several cases that top level balancing of raise targets has been
done between groups based on the group's overall performance. It really is
up to all the managers down the line to do this. I have seen it work well.