Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

What does it mean if you got promoted to grade 11 last year and suddenly ipf dropped to .9 this year ? On the layoff list

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Post ID: @OP+1oQstXTe

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You had to be on a plan or totally incompetent to get a .9 IPF. Those notifications go up well past a 1st line manager and it gets pointed out that you should be on one. No go on that one without the full story.

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Post ID: @5tcs+1oQstXTe

That is a question that is important to discuss with your manager. Perhaps you were given feedback eluding to this rating but didn't listen to it. Perhaps you were NOT given any feedback. Either way - its best to ask your manager and get a direct answer.

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Post ID: @4wvt+1oQstXTe

The highest IPF I ever saw was 3.00. That was the rating that the CEO (I think it was Chuck) gave ALL his reports in the executive team. Yeah, it was a year of tight budgets and bonus pool was depleted (we were begging for 1.05) but all good at the top.
How do I know this? It was in the annual report’s compensation statement.

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Post ID: @4dmd+1oQstXTe

@1xnv+1oQstXTe, I ran into a similar situation when I first joined Cisco.

Had a great manager who worked remote (and out of state) while managing a large team in RTP. He ran a lot of interference between us and the Sr. Manager. He finally got tired of being remote and took a local in-office job resulting in the entire team reporting up to the Sr. Manager while they looked for a replacement manager. Once he was gone & no longer running interference, that Sr. Manager started letting his likes & dislikes be known and surprise, surprise, he really liked his golf buddies and didn't like the rest of us.

Once a new manager was hired as an internal transfer, he quickly saw which way the wind was blowing and decided to manage out everyone the Sr. Manager didn't like. From a team that had kept everyone it hired, many from its inception, and only losing people to promotions that resulted in lateral moves. Then, with the new manager, it only took 18 months to replace 50% of the original team. By 30 months, the Sr. Manager was promoted to Director & took the early retirement offer in 2011 and the team was down to only 30% of the original team. The worst thing was, as part of trying to manage everyone out since they weren't doing annual LRs yet, once they put you on a PIP, you couldn't transfer laterally out even if some other manager wanted you. I had to get LR'd & wait a year for a manager I liked on another team could manage to get me onto his team and I've been back ever since. It su-ks when a good manager leaves.

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Post ID: @1ajx+1oQstXTe

You must be psychic. Promoted to grade 11 a few years back, then LR'd six months later. All it takes is for the person who gave you the promotion to move on, and they you end up working for someone new. Extra tough if you are a senior person on the new team. My old great manager promoted me, move on; then no matter what I did, I could do nothing correct for the new management. Most of all, getting promoted puts a target on your back. Tread lightly.

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Post ID: @1xnv+1oQstXTe

@nkv+1oQstXTe, only HR can answer the question about the percentages, but here is what I know after 15 yrs at Cisco even if half of those were as a contractor.

The Individual Performance Factor (IPF) is a measurement of _your_ performance. 100%, or what used to be known as 1.0, is "average" or "satisfactory". Below 100%, i.e. 90% is bad. It means you're performing below average or unsatisfactorily.

Each year, each BU gets a bucket of money to divide up for bonus amounts. The amount varies from year to year depending on revenues and company performance. Each BU then divides that bucket between its Sr Directors who divide it between their Directors who divide it between their managers. Then the managers have to decide how to split their small bucket between the employees under them.

If they award a highly paid person a 1.5 or 150% IPF, that might eat up the majority of their bucket leaving very little for the lower paid employees. Depending on the size of the bucket, and how it changed from the previous year, a manager can give you a lower IPF for the same performance just because there isn't enough money in the bucket to give everyone the same IPFs as last year.

I've never had a 100% IPF, much less an IPF lower than 100%. This year it was 115% and that's the lowest I've ever received. Usually above average performance is rated between 120% - 145%, but I've heard others say they've received an IPF of 150%. I don't know exactly how high an IPF can go, but I've never heard anyone talk about higher than 150% anywhere other than an anonymous forum like this where people can say anything.

The calculation for determining the bonus is as such, which will show the importance or impact of a positive (or negative) IPF (and the company performance factor/CPF).

(IFP) X (CPF) X (Eligible earnings) X (Prorated Bonus percentage) = Full Bonus Amount

If you have a 100% IPF and the company CPF is 100%, you make $100K and your bonus percentage is 7% (which is what most non-manager or higher employees have), then your bonus amount is 100% X 100% X $100K X 7% = $7K.

But, if your IPF is .9 or 90%, then that becomes 90% X 100% X $100K X 7% = $6.3K, or a loss of -$700. Conversely, a 115% IPF increases your bonus by $1050 to $8,050.

So you can see how a 90% is not very good.

To your question about "but does it necessarily need to be 100% to continue working at Cisco, yes it does. It may not bite you the first year, but it has an impact. Cisco, under the Chambers era, subscribed to the Jack Welch philosophy from GE of letting go the bottom 10% each year. Back then, Cisco had formal rankings and ranked everyone on the bell curve. If you were in the bottom 10%, you got put on a performance improvement plan (PIP) and if you didn't improve over the next year, you were fired. Then Cisco discovered that it was much easier and less time consuming to hide the rankings, stop managing people out via PIPs where performance had to be "documented" and just start doing LRs. People who don't perform, or more importantly, don't perform well enough to justify their higher salary due to years of experience, get LR'd each year without warning and then teams will replace the higher paid, more expensive workers with contractors and later convert them to lower grade employees than the person they replaced in order to save Cisco money. Back in the day where we had formal performance reviews, a 90% would have you in the bottom 20%, or possibly the bottom 10% and you were ineligible to get a bonus that year (in order to help fund the above average bonuses given out) as well as being ineligible to transfer to a different team. They justified that by saying it was to prevent managers from transferring bad employees to other teams w/o letting the new manager know what they were getting, but it also prevented good workers from getting out from under toxic managers who played favorites.

Wow, looking back at what I just typed, I've rambled on, but it helps to put the IPF in perspective and show why/how a 90% is really bad.

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Post ID: @1njc+1oQstXTe

Dead man walking.

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Post ID: @1hbn+1oQstXTe

IPF 0.9 isn’t good and your leader should be making it clear BEFORE a 0.9 what your value and focus areas are. Thats a poor leader giving a 0.9 with no explanation. I’m in SCO and have a gd11 not performing well after a year and was told to “ding” him with a 1.0! Most of my 8 got 1.2-1.65 this round.

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Post ID: @kjs+1oQstXTe

No biggie. First year after promotion, the IPF is going to take a hit. If it’s still <1 next year, then start looking.

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Post ID: @syk+1oQstXTe

IPF below 1 is not a good sign. You're a showcase of Peter's principle.

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Post ID: @toc+1oQstXTe

I wonder what percentage of the employees are IPF 90%.
90% sounds very good, but does it necessarily need to be 100% to continue working at Cisco?
That many people surpass 100%?

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Post ID: @nkv+1oQstXTe

Odds are management perceives as a newly minted Grade 11 you may not be performing as well as people who have been at that grade for ages, and at a well run company this is the way it should be. Since everyone can't be above average this isn't necessarily a problem. If you are performing at the 45th percentile and paid at the 30th percentile you're doing as well as your group (Cisco frequently lays off whole groups independent of the member's abilities.) If it's the other way around you could be in trouble.

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Post ID: @uzn+1oQstXTe
What does it mean if you got promoted to grade 11 last year and suddenly ipf dropped to .9 this year ?

I'm 100% sure your manager explained you your IPF. What did he tell you?

On the layoff list

We don't know before you tell us why your manager thinks you deserve 0.9.

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Post ID: @jle+1oQstXTe

It means that whoever gave that IPF think that you underperformed. Better to start looking.

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Post ID: @gdc+1oQstXTe

You think that's how they determine how you get laid off??

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Post ID: @lhh+1oQstXTe

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