Dell Plant Closing

There’s almost nothing good you can say about a plant closing.  Especially with potentially 9,000 people losing their jobs.  (See: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-and-Notebooks/Dell-Closing-Austin-PC-Plant-in-Cost-Cutting-Drive/ )

The PC vendor announced March 31 that it would begin cutting costs and improving its efficiency in the second half of 2009 fiscal year. Besides announcing the closing of the Austin plant, Dell reaffirmed that it plans to eliminate nearly 9,000 positions as part of the cost cutting.

 The only thing I’d like to say is, “fight for it!”  I remember working for a huge company, where the average workday (in our engineering department) was five hours.  Of course, this was a 8-hour shift, but nobody worked it.  We got our coffee in the morning, caught up on the previous night’s adventures, and then did a little work before lunch.  After lunch, a little more work, and then water cooler discussions of the evening’s plans.

Needless to say, that company cut 40,000 jobs in the late 80’s.  I don’t remember ever fighting for the company’s survival, or even for competitive positioning.  The culture simply wasn’t there.

I’m sure this is not the case with Dell.  They are highly competitive.  Sometimes things like this are out of our control.  But let’s fight for our positions anyway!

–ray

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