[via BetaNews]

A source close to Hewelett-Packard indicated over the weekend that the company plans to cut at least 15,000 jobs from its workforce, with the biggest cuts coming to the IT, sales and service divisions. The news comes as HP said in a filing that it planned to offer new CIO Randall Mott a $15.3 million pay package.

Sources said that the job cuts would save the company an estimated $1 billion per year and were being done to improve cost efficiency compared with HP’s competitors. The official word on the layoffs could come as early as this week; company representatives said they would not comment on the speculation.