Can any of your teams realistically afford to lose even one person? I know mine can't. We're stretched thin as it is since we have lost a few people in every single round so far and they never hired anybody to help us. I think losing somebody else is going to cause a chain reaction of the rest of us leaving. There is only so much you can do before you realize you've reached your limit.
22 replies (most recent on top)
Can any of your teams realistically afford to lose even one person?
There was never a time at Cisco where I didn't have a long list of people that Cisco would have been better off without. I can point to endless projects that overran by factors of dozens and programs that overran by years because:
- Technical leadership made egregious mistakes costing the company more than many of you can imagine
- Managerial leadership said "spend a day each coding these things so we can say we met the schedule and then we can spend the next three years fixing all the day hacks"
- Static analysis shows the coders couldn't
- Cisco released software over decades where whole subsystems didn't come up which doesn't speak well for testing
- Marketing repeatedly saying we needed 150 features by the following Thursday or Cisco would collapse and three years later came back and said "if we remove these 100 features can we get something out the door?" indicating those 100 features should not have been in the initial list
The sad thing is so many either never worked at effective organizations or are too far removed from such experiences to know how ineffective Cisco's software development is. Done properly from the beginning you could have worked 40 hour weeks and continually delivered far earlier.
What do you do?
"I'm a project manager of executive scope synergy directive FY321 strategic communications cybersecurity info senior leadership excel powerpoint"
bullsh-tjobs.com
Cisco needs to layoff all vp, director and senior managers, all of the above 3 category doesn’t even have technical skills or can write single line of code, no market perspective, all of the above make sure the engineer to work for them but not for companies growth, technical leads can handle all of these, I see hierarchy where svp is reporting to svp and vp is reporting to vp, what the heck is going on. Engineers are working very hard and they just get penny. If Cisco wants to climb higher then they definitely need to clear the management trash
OP posted a great question - but at ELT level, they do not think this way period.
Intercloud is the answer !!!
You can easily cut 50% of SBG and nothing will happen. Have more employees to report to each useless SBG directors and senior directors and eliminate the leader layer. Consolidate the VP levels and have more directors and senior directors to report to each VP and eliminate many useless directors and VP's.
Same applies to many other organizations.
"If they really want to save costs and improve products they can easily eliminate 1 of the 3 teams and 2 of the managers and have a single manager and larger team handle the software. But that reduces the growth potential for the directors and above , so they will only cut more engineers…"
The above statement is very true. There are too many layers of management at Cisco with no real work to do. So to show off themselves as relevant, they micromanage their employees and get credit of the employees hard work. Then when layoffs come, they layoff the hardworking talented employees to save their own jobs. Management job is to support their employees, help them grow and develop and more but not to steal their work and lay them off.
Nope, team of five, just lost two. A must succeed project just started. Pressure from manager to pull rabbit out of our a-s, to save his a-s. I love working as part of a team, with goal, but those days have long gone. Sad because Cisco is still a market leader in Networking gear, but has pulled out of hardware markets favoring, vapour software solutions which no one wants. Chuck is out of touch, out of ideas and needs to go.
I run into people all the time who do one thing at Cisco. It’s a small sliver of activity that can easily be consumed by a team that executes well. Example, one guy who shows up after a Project Manager collected everyone’s critical assets, reviews them and sends them to 3 VPs to review and sign off to get a SKU for a product. That’s all he does. He’s been at Cisco for ever. Nice guy. But come on.
So many who are like this and they’ve been in the same role….those are the people to cut
@nnt so true lol. The wording will be "you are the best of the best and we can't do without you. We are 1 Cisco"
BS. There are 87K people at Cisco with revenues around $55B. In my time, there were 55K people there with revenues around...wait for it...$50B. GET TO WORK you slackers.
people will be upset for a few days then they will get the big party in vegas and hear how great the future is now and how they must be the best of the best if they are there.
Yes… i could cut a chunk out but their are friends with Directors and drinking buddies so they wont go…
In my org, we lost 6 people in Feb and around 4 last year, and more before that and only single digit replacements so far. That’s only the layoffs, there has been attrition as well. But the honest answer is that the older products I worked on had smaller teams. Now they have split single files across 3 managers and so you have duplication of work. If they really want to save costs and improve products they can easily eliminate 1 of the 3 teams and 2 of the managers and have a single manager and larger team handle the software. But that reduces the growth potential for the directors and above , so they will only cut more engineers…
Don't worry. When they cancel your project there will be enough people.
But y'all watch all those clowns type "hello from " in the next Beat.
Not a chance I hate it when someone goes on vacation to workload is unmanageable
The CEO is getting a nice pat on the back and a bonus for the $28B spend on buying Splunk.
Will it possible your direct manager passing the wrong information to the decision maker ?
My team certainly can’t afford it. We are a really small team to begin with and we are working on 4 large projects at once.
Cisco is known to throw baby out with the bathwater. It is not going to be different this round, and the next round ...
Chuck is in it for Chuck, period.