HP's going down the cubes

Carly the cubist boxes clever to downsize

By Andrew Thomas • Get more from this author

Posted in Business, 26th September 2000 10:58 GMT

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In a move straight out of Dilbert, HP is trying to save money by making its staff work in more cramped conditions.

A disaffected mole from HP in the US informs us that CEO, president and chairperson Carly Fiorina noticed that, while the average sized cube in the IT industry measures just eight feet by eight feet, workers at the Great Stan of Printers were lording it in palatial eight by ten cubes.

"Never mind that most engineers have two or three computers with monitors in their cubes," moans our deep throat. "Never mind the fact that during the development stages we might have kit measuring three cubic feet sitting in our offices. By God, we can squish ourselves into eight foot by eight foot cubes because the rest of the industry does."

The move to the new econo-cubes requires that an entire row of cubicles be taken down and reconfigured to the new size.

"That's 10 engineers that can't do a damn thing except stand there and hope nobody tries to steal their chairs," continues the source. "Of course it takes longer than a day so we end up having 10 engineers down for two days. And it'll have to happen roughly 40 more times for each building.

"But it'll save us money. It might make our product late for release costing us millions of dollars, but it'll save us money."

We dread to think what Carly will do when she discovers that Intel cubes are eight feet by nine feet. ®

Register cuboid

All Intel employees - including the board - work in identical cubicles. You can check out Andy Grove's cube on this Webcam. Rather mysteriously, Andy never appears to be at home.

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