Christmas shut-down in Silicon Valley

[dkf]

Workers at some of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies will find themselves spending an uncommonly long time with their families this Christmas as the technology industry responds to the downturn with office and factory closures and enforced holidays.

Usually limited to traditional manufacturing industries such as the ailing carmakers, the year-end shut-down is this year sweeping through the office suites and research and development labs of information-age companies.

Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, Advanced Micro Devices, Texas Instruments, Dell, Adobe and CSC are among the tech industry heavyweights to be taking a break, with some closed from December 22 until January 5.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4b8139ba-cf8b-11dd-abf9-000077b07658.html

[Greyhound]

1. Anyone want to wager that executives will continue to be paid while the few workers

that remain get to make do with unemployment that they cannot collect because state budgets are gone?

I especially love this line; HP said: "The only workers left to keep the lights on will be those involved in critical customer support".

HP has virtually no customer support having outsourced it all over the last 10 years or so. My former department was one of the last remaining.