On Wed, 2023-02-01 at 11:40 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> US DK UK
> headcount reduction      laid off   fyret redundancy
> bad performance          fired      fyret sacked
> bad attitude             fired      fyret sacked
> bad/criminal behavior    fired      bortvist sacked

--
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

On 2/1/23 7:19 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2023-02-01, Douy Xebis <aarr@uodobdu.db> wrote:
>> On 1/23/2023 8:09 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>> On 2023-01-22, David Turner <dturner@islandco.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I heard from an old friend and Dealer in the VSI neighborhood that a few
>>>> more got their pink slips a few weeks ago.
>>>> This has got to be unnerving for the employees
>>>>
>>>
>>> Ok, that's rather different from people choosing to leave and finally
>>> retire. It's also a little worrying if true, because where VSI are
>>> finally at with VMS means they should, if anything, currently be hiring
>>> more employees to handle the workload from people moving to x86-64.
>>>
>>> Do you know for sure that people have been fired by VSI or is this
>>> really still people just deciding to leave VSI to retire ?
>>
>> About a dozen engineers were fired.
>
> Well, that's not a good sign. :-(
>
> Are you allowed to say whether it was in an area that VSI has decided
> not to proceed with or was it general cost cutting to get the expenses
> down ?

As far as I know or can remember (and I was never an insider), the head
count traditionally went up during a port to a new architecture and was
reduced afterwards, and we are now in a situation of a new port that has
been recently completed for some definition of completed. Of course the
port traditionally finished within a year or three of starting and was
never called a production release until it had been built with native
compilers. So, we're in unprecedented territory, and it's hard to know
what staff reductions mean. I expect we'll find out eventually.

On 2023-02-01, Craig A. Berry <craigberry@nospam.mac.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/1/23 7:19 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>> On 2023-02-01, Douy Xebis <aarr@uodobdu.db> wrote:
>>> On 1/23/2023 8:09 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Ok, that's rather different from people choosing to leave and finally
>>>> retire. It's also a little worrying if true, because where VSI are
>>>> finally at with VMS means they should, if anything, currently be hiring
>>>> more employees to handle the workload from people moving to x86-64.
>>>>
>>>> Do you know for sure that people have been fired by VSI or is this
>>>> really still people just deciding to leave VSI to retire ?
>>>
>>> About a dozen engineers were fired.
>>
>> Well, that's not a good sign. :-(
>>
>> Are you allowed to say whether it was in an area that VSI has decided
>> not to proceed with or was it general cost cutting to get the expenses
>> down ?
>
> As far as I know or can remember (and I was never an insider), the head
> count traditionally went up during a port to a new architecture and was
> reduced afterwards, and we are now in a situation of a new port that has
> been recently completed for some definition of completed. Of course the
> port traditionally finished within a year or three of starting and was
> never called a production release until it had been built with native
> compilers. So, we're in unprecedented territory, and it's hard to know
> what staff reductions mean. I expect we'll find out eventually.

Regardless of whatever marketing name VSI management put on it, I don't
really regard the current version of x86-64 VMS as production-ready.

I'm mentally thinking of it as more an Alpha/Beta level release and as
such it's at the point where there should be a real final push to get it
over the line and into _real_ production-ready status.

Therefore, now is _not_ the right time to be getting rid of engineers IMHO
because the port is very actively still in progress.

Don't forget also, there's still major new bits of work required such as
expanding the maximum volume size by implementing a new filesystem.

Simon.

--
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.

On 2/1/2023 8:21 PM, Craig A. Berry wrote:
> As far as I know or can remember (and I was never an insider), the head
> count traditionally went up during a port to a new architecture and was
> reduced afterwards, and we are now in a situation of a new port that has
> been recently completed for some definition of completed.

I would distinguish between port and enhancement as:

port - the effort to bring everything running on current VMS Itanium and
not declared dead (never to be ported) to run on VMS x86-64

enhancement - add stuff to VMS x86-64 that does not currently run
on VMS Itanium (could in some cases be backported but
I would not keep my breath on that)

The port is close to done, but they are missing some pieces most notable
the compilers!

>   Of course the
> port traditionally finished within a year or three of starting and was
> never called a production release until it had been built with native
> compilers.  So, we're in unprecedented territory, and it's hard to know
> what staff reductions mean.  I expect we'll find out eventually.

The smaller staff longer time for this port compared to previous
ports *should* mean less reason to downsize engineering.

Also more enhancement work is waiting than with previous ports, because
enhancements need to catch up 15-20 years or so. That again *should*
mean less reason to downsize engineering.

I am aware that mr. *should* is pretty unreliable. :-)

Arne