• Don't hope for much. Past experience tells us those laid off will not be treated well. EDS has been known to time layoffs to minimize severance paid.
• Leave when you can. Given the prospects of a skimpy severance, you might as well get out sooner rather than later. EDS has a sordid history as a service provider. Although the guys in the trenches are long gone, the management culture that brought you the $8 billion Navy-Marines IT debacle is alive and well and is now moving to a new host environment. Trust me — another six months at the company will not add anything to your resume. Start your job search now.
• Aggressively market yourself. Polish the resume on standards like Monster and CareerBuilder. Make sure to also hit specialty sites like Dice.com, Cybercoders, and Jobfox. Update your professional networking pages. LinkedIn is an obvious one, but have you thought about your college's alumni directory?
• Clean up your online persona. Yes, most employers don't actually waste time checking your social-network profiles. But why take chances? Play it safe and delete anything even vaguely unprofessional from your Facebook and MySpace pages.
• Attend mixers and job fairs. Not because you'll get a job there, but just to get practice interacting with other people. Your next job will require more face time, not less.
• Meet with the headhunters. You may not love them but they can be effective. Visit your friends at Robert Half and the other usual suspects.
• Keep your sense of humor. HP's layoffs are large in scale, but you're not the first person to endure a flurry of pink slips at the workplace. Some of the revenge stories written by other people in the same situation are epic.

(Photoillustration by Jackson West)

VeriSign chairman Jim Bidzos
An employee's advice to senior management:

Don't drag out the divestiture process in an effort to get a few extra bucks. And if you're going to kill the whole thing, be honest with employees about opportunities.

AMD chairman and CEO Hector Ruiz
An employee's advice to senior management:

AMD needs to go back to basics. What business is AMD in, who do you need onboard to lead the company in that business, who do you need that can create demand for the product, and what do the customers want? Ignore the "how" and focus on the "who." Stop treating employees like costs and more like assets. Threatening cubical hoteling and pushing the "do more with less" story is oppressive, not inspiring. The most marketable talent will leave first.

EMC CEO and chairman Joe Tucci
An employee's advice to senior management:

Senior management needs to respect its employees, listen to feedback and not bury its head in the sand as it relates to issues of sexism and lack of diversity. The culture continues to be predominantly young white men and this is largely because people hire who they know. "Breaking the glass ceiling" requires a lot of sacrifice! They will cite a few examples of high profile women, but these are the exception, not the rule. Work/life balance is not a priority in this company. Most of the highest ranking professional women in this organization are unmarried or do not have children. They need to recognize the need for more flexible work options that promote the importance of family. And most importantly, there need to be consequences for illegal and unethical behavior, regardless of who commits it! People cannot be protected from this. There are too many blind eyes turned when sexual harassment, illegal business practices, or other unethical acts occur.

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang

An employee's advice to senior management:

Be more open to the workforce opinions. Be more humble. Be less political. Listen more, do more, and quickly.

eBay CEO John Donahoe
An employee's advice to senior management:

Streamline the process so people can focus more on getting their work done. Share more of the details of the vision for eBay and the competition of eBay.

Symantec CEO John Thompson
An employee's advice to senior management:

Open your eyes to how the actually successful companies are doing it. Use your talent pool and clear the way to innovate internally. Shift the focus from salesmanship to inherent quality. Build products that sell themselves rather than needing an aggresive sales cycle to move.

Hewlett-Packard chairman, president and CEO Mark Hurd
An employee's advice to senior management:

Stop screwing the employees. Stop reducing benefits every week. Stop saying you plan to invest in research and development when you are actually reducing everything except your bonuses. Start treating people as people. Get some moral fiber.

EDS chairman, president and CEO Ron Rittenmeyer
An employee's advice to senior management:

As I said above, either learn to trust the junior leadership you put into place or replace them. Set goals and then GET OUT OF THE WAY and allow the leadership the flexibility to execute to them. If they don't perform, release them. The micromanagement culture has to stop.

IBM chairman, president and CEO Sam Palmisano
An employee's advice to senior management:

One thing is missing though, an acceptance of the fact that there are "superstars" in the world, and that these superstars perform several orders of magnitude better than regular employees. What is missing within IBM is the ability to seek out, and nourish these superstars. Over time superstars will leave IBM because they will get much more recognition in other organizations. This has an impact on IBM's ability to deliver some things.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
An employee's advice to senior management:

There is a severe lack of leadership in the company. With so many things going on it takes executives too long to commit to business decisions and too long to pick up on competitive responses to disruptive technologies.Microsoft promotes based on 2 facets - technical knowledge and political saavy. What Microsoft does not promote based on is leadership ability, managerial ability or business saavy.

(Photo of Ballmer by AP/Sarbach)