Posts Tagged: 6000
HP will lay off up to 6,000 employees over the next few years
Add HP to the list of tech companies cutting staff. The PC maker plans to lay off as many as 6,000 employees over the next three years. The cuts are part of a broader restructuring HP announced during its Q4 earnings call on Tuesday (via Gizmodo). The company estimates its “Future Ready Transformation plan” will save it $ 1.4 billion by the end of fiscal 2025, in part by reducing its headcount by at least 4,000 employees.
“The company expects to reduce gross global headcount by approximately 4,000-6,000 employees,” HP said. “These actions are expected to be completed by the end of fiscal 2025.”
HP employs approximately 51,000 employees globally. The company’s most recent fiscal quarter saw revenue drop by more than 11 percent year-on-year to $ 14.8 billion. CEO Enrique Lores blamed the poor performance on macroeconomic conditions and “softening demand” for the company’s PCs and printers.
Following Tuesday’s announcement, Lores said HP’s restructuring plan would “enable [the company] to better serve our customers and drive long-term value creation by reducing our costs and reinvesting in key growth initiatives to position our business for the future.”
HP isn’t the only tech company to announce significant job cuts in recent weeks. Twitter completed multiple rounds of layoffs after Elon Musk took control of the company on October 27th. Meta and Amazon also announced job cuts this month. In the case of the social media giant, the 11,000 employees it let go on November 9th represented the first mass layoffs in the company’s history.
NASA’s DART asteroid impact test left a trail over 6,000 miles long
NASA's successful asteroid impact test created a beautiful mess, apparently. As the Associated Press reports, astronomers using the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) Telescope in Chile have captured an image revealing that DART's collision with Dimorphos left a trail of dust and other debris measuring over 6,000 miles long. The spacecraft wasn't solely responsible — rather, the Sun's radiation pressure pushed the material away like it would with a comet's tail.
The trail is only likely to get larger, according to the researchers. It should eventually stretch to the point where the dust stream is virtually unrecognizable from the usual particles floating in the Solar System. NASA didn't create headaches for future probes and explorers. The space agency chose Dimorphos (a moonlet of the asteroid Didymos) as the deliberate crash wouldn't pose a threat to Earth.
The capture was about more than obtaining a dramatic snapshot, of course. Scientists will use data collected using SOAR, the Astronomical Event Observatory Network and other observers to understand more about the collision and Dimorphos itself. They'll determine the amount and speed of material ejected from the asteroid, and whether or not DART produced large debris chunks or 'merely' fine dust. Those will help understand how spacecraft can alter an asteroid's orbit, and potentially improve Earth's defenses against wayward cosmic rocks.