Dell Delivers April Fools Joke One Day Early, Only It's For Serious

Dell today announced plans to shutter one of its Austin manufacturing centers, which will leave some 900 Austinites out of a job by January 1.

The Round Rock-based computer giant recently pledged to lay off at least 8,800 employees, or ten percent of its worldwide workforce, in an effort to reduce operating costs.

"The actions Dell will take during fiscal 2009 and beyond are expected to position the company to further accelerate growth in its five focus areas: global consumer, enterprise, notebooks, small and medium enterprise and emerging countries, while improving profitability and cash returns," wrote the company in a press release.

"In addition, the company will take further actions to reduce total product costs across all areas, including design, manufacturing and logistics, materials and operating expenses. Dell expects that the initial benefits from these actions will begin to be realized in the second half of this fiscal year."

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By Allen Y Chen in News on March 31, 2008 8:11 PM 0 Comments

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Comments [rss]

LordEric

According to people who have worked at an enterprise level for Dell a LOT of their problems stem from a very disorganized corporate culture that, despite their "on-demand manufacturing", is very slow to respond to market change. It's always a shame to see hard-working middle class workers get the boot because of their bosses incompetency.

seth

When I worked at Apple during the dark years of ~1997, Michael Dell was gloating over his company's success. An interviewer asked him what he would do to turn Apple Computer around. He said, "Liquidate the company and return the money to the shareholders."

Well, bitch, maybe if you woulda spent some of those billions inventing stuff beyond just figuring out how to reduce production costs, you'd have some interesting crap for consumers to buy. Instead, you're getting out-Dell'ed by overseas cost-reducers.

Seth

LoudMouth

Sure. You could have it a couple of months, get used to it, grow to almost like it, and then have something go horribly wrong which you would be blamed for and could not get fixed by the nincompoops in Dell New Delhi.

leggyblonde

would you give it to me?

LoudMouth

MrEntropy is right, Dell employees should walk out since they work for a monster that is just going to send their jobs to China and India. I wouldn't use a Dell if I got one for free.

MrEntropy

Maybe it's just time they sell the company to someone that can actually make it work. Or just let it die. At this rate everyone will be afraid to show up for work just in case they get fired.