Corporatespeak for a new year

And, surprise! It's a lot like the BS of the old year.

This today from an EMC quarterly earnings news release:

On December 30, 2005, EMC approved a plan to rebalance its workforce, which will result in increased focus on new product development and the company’s ability to target, reach and support more customers around the globe. During 2006 approximately 1,000 positions will be affected as the company expands its sales coverage around the world and grows its product development team.

Wow. Sounds like EMC's going to be doing a lot of hiring, right? Now read the next line:

The adjustments are expected to be complete by the end of 2006 and will result in a fourth-quarter 2005 cash charge of approximately $80 million to cover the cost of employee separation benefits.

Ka-ching!

Later in the release was this bit of dense quotation from Joe Tucci, chairman, president and CEO:

While we continue to focus on improving our overall cost efficiencies, we also plan to utilize this rebalancing to invest in sales and R&D in order to accelerate our innovation engine to capture an even greater share of our expanding market opportunity.”

That's terribly helpful, isn't it?

Here is the translation by Charles Forelle in Saturday's Wall Street Journal:
(we'll forgive the use of "in the wake of" -- this blog normally being a wake-free zone)

EMC Corp. said it wil lay off about about 1,000 employees, or roughly 4% of its work force, as it looks to trim management layers built up in the wake of an acquisition spree.

The data-storage vendor described the move as a "rebalancing" and said that as a result of additional hires to augment its sales force and product-development teams it expects to end 2006 with more employees than it had at the end of 2005. ...
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Score: Journalism 1, PRspeak less than 0.