Conference 7.286::digital

> -- the nearest facility is 25 miles away

Is that any closer than the unemployment office?

      Re. .1, No, there are (at least I would be very surprised if there
    aren't) unemployment offices much nearer to them than that.
    
      WELSWS:: is at Welwyn, in the UK. That 25 miles is probably to
    central London, not an easy, cheap or pleasant commute.
    
    Ken

    	Creative solutions include much more home working - Welwyn is a
    sales office, and most salesmen don't need their desks *all* the week.
    It is possible that many employees could work from home at low cost if
    the Welwyn office was reduced to a microvax with dial-in lines. There
    is maybe a village hall in Welwyn that could be rented for a few hours
    per week for group meetings.

Welwyn is only partly involved with sales, there are also a significant
number of development and support staff here who have nowhere to go, as
well as a very large collection of equipment.  The meeting tomorrow looks
as if it is merely intended to discuss the possible issues, I doubt if any
permanent solution will be reached before the closure of the building
occurs.  So what are the alternatives?
	- work in the nearest office, at London.
	  Groovy if you have a large quantity of money to set aside for
	  the train journey, and like to spend lots of extra time
	  travelling.
	- work at a slightly less near office.
	  No space at Birmingham, Reading & Basingstoke are too far to be
	  of any practical use, Cambridge has its own problems associated
	  with it (it's owned by a VAR, and is too small anyway), and
	  Colchester is owned by MCS, who are apparently trying to keep
	  themselves separate from DC.
	- make staff redundant.
	  Insufficient funds, as well as nasty legalities because of support
	  contracts, which are unlikely to be transferred to other parts of
	  Digital.
	- relocate staff elsewhere.
	  In a fortnight?!
	- work from home.
	  the waiting lists for an ISDN line are apparently in the region of
	  6 months, and it is not practical to use ACB to carry out development
	  and support tasks.
	- obtain smaller premises at same location.
	  I'm assured that this is not an option, even if the funding was
	  available.
Er, well.  There you have it.  So I have no idea where I'll be `working' at
the end of the month, but I await the decision of management with great
interest.

Chris.

NB apparently the closure of this site was on the cards several months ago,
but they didn't think it was worth letting anyone know until now.

    Welwyn was my Digital "home" for my first seven years in the company
    (December 1978 to September 1985). My memories of the place (albeit the
    buildings in Welwyn village, not the fancy office block in Welwyn
    Garden City) are for the most part very happy ones. I'm sorry to see it
    go. 
    
    But more than that, I'm sorry to see it happening this way. It's a pity
    that those in "authority" continue to mess with the lives of those in 
    the trenches without giving them due warning and time to interact,
    prepare, etc.
    
    To all at Welwyn, especially those who were there when I was there
    (Nick, Stephen, Alan, maybe others), commiserations for the present and
    best wishes for the future.
    
    - Richard.

    re: the slow availability of ISDN lines.
    	It looks as if management is going to have to put up with reduced
    efficiency in work currently done by the Welwyn staff for several
    months, whether they choose home working, relocation, firing everyone,
    ...   14.4Kb. would allow acceptable file transfer rates for a home
    Easynet node with a file spooler for most activities.

    	We should probably adjourn to RUMOR::TELEWORK for any technical
    discussions.
    
    	Reasons why I couldn't work entirely at home if I moved my
    workstation there:
    1) Its present configuration doesn't include a postscript printer.
    2) I would need 9600Bd rather than 1200Bd modems
    3) I have to attend weekly group meetings
    4) Beaurocracy.

    Re .-1
    
    Your business requirements are generally of no concern to facilities
    folks when they close your office.  They're measured on cost of
    facilities, not your productivity, hence the infrastructure you need to
    make yourself useful at home is part of another stovepipe's concern.
    
    8-(

This is all giving me a nasty feeling of deja-vu.  I'm one of the people
who used to work for Philips IS until it was bought up by Digital, and
the situation that has developed at Digital is almost identical to that
within Philips IS towards the end that almost caused its downfall.  It's
a shame that Digital hasn't learnt from Philips mistakes, and once again
I find myself working for a company where inter-organisational rivalry,
bickering and squabbling seem to have become more important than the
business.  :(

Chris.

>    Your business requirements are generally of no concern to facilities
>    folks when they close your office.  They're measured on cost of
>    facilities, not your productivity, hence the infrastructure you need to
>    make yourself useful at home is part of another stovepipe's concern.
 
      The version I heard was that facilities told the UK
    territory manager that there was no-where else the people based at
    Welwyn could be relocated to. They were told that relocation was their
    problem, not his, and to stop being obstructive and get on and do
    their job, ie close the facility. I don't know the truth of this, but
    in view of some of the other management decisions made in this company,
    (like across-the-board headcount reductions regardless of workload or
    profitability), I could believe it. We're still trying to recover from
    the mess created by the ill-conceived attempt to close the repair centre
    at Colchester. A stupid, political decision, fortunately now reversed;
    though not until a lot of people had been made redundant. 
    
    Ken

r.e renting space in the local town hall for meetings. Stop wasting the 
Corporations valuable money! Chinese Restaurants will give you a banquet 
room for free if the number of people is sufficient. I call this 
Belly-commuting.

As to the question of commuting to work, this is an another example of your 
selfishness towards DEC, Digital Equipment Charity. Most buses that I have 
seen have a long seat at the back that is perfect for small meeetings of 4 
or 5 people. Some chewing gum can be used to stick important communications 
under the seat. Oh, and by the way, make sure all the drivers have signed 
their non-diclosure agreements.

Seems like the latest attitude is "get all resources off the books and fix 
that revenue/resource metric, worry about the consequences later". I hope 
some sense comes for you from this so-called "decision".

- John

    <re. the Phillipes now DEC downfall>
    
    Perhaps we are now seeing a kind of super-virus that infects
    managements when buy-outs or take-overs occur? 
    
    martin

    	I like the idea of Belly-commuting. Most of the early versions of
    FTSV (the DCL SPOOL command) and ACB were designed on paper tablecloths
    in local bars/restaurants, thereby saving DEC stationary costs.