HP CEO Meg Whitman And 5,000 Jobs Cut

Unlike Michael Dell, who last year succeeded in wresting control of his namesake firm from shareholders, Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman still has to perform the delicate balancing act between executing her long-term transformation strategy and satisfying Wall Street’s fixation on short-term results. And as always, the employees are caught right in the middle.

Citing “market and business pressures,” the technology giant reported in a recent filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it will fire another 5,000 workers by the end of 2014, bringing the total layoff count to 34,000. That’s up from the 29,000 the company predicted in the previous quarter, which is 2000 more than what was originally planned.

“Due to continued market and business pressures, as of October 31, 2013, HP expects to eliminate an additional 15% of those 29,000 positions, or a total of approximately 34,000 positions, and to record an additional 15% of that $3.6 billion in total costs, or approximately $4.1 billion in aggregate charges. HP expects to record these charges through the end of HP’s 2014 fiscal year as the accounting recognition,” the company stated.

Hewlett-Packard didn’t disclose where the layoffs will take place, but in a late 2012 interview, Whitman said that Indian employees will be largely spared thanks to the region’s strategic importance. “We not only have all our business units here, but also our R&D and back office,” Whitman noted at the time, adding that she’s trying to capitalize on HP’s existing assets as part of a broad push to drive business growth.

The former eBay CEO’s strategy has culminated in HAVEn, a tightly integrated platform for Big Data applications that combines technology from Vertica, Autonomy and ArcSight. It’s the central pillar of HP’s vision for analytics.