You heard that right. About 4% of current workforce will be LR'ed. The announcement will be made during the Q4 earnings release today. The LR that happened at the end of July is not part of this new LR (you can say it was unofficial).
This will be the first time Cisco has acknowledged a layoff since John handed over to Chuck.
There will be a major re-org in the next few weeks as well in all departments and BUs. Several mid management will gutted as a cost-saving measure. As usual, older folks in GR11 and GR12 will be heavily impacted.
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@10x0Lqno-7fhe: It’s impossible to get anything meaningful done at Cisco, so regardless of age, your choices are to rest and vest or leave. I’m a leaver, but there’s definitely an argument to be made for resting and vesting if you’re early or late in career.
@10x0Lqno-7fhe - and they try and fail at the same approaches already attempted by the "rest and vesting" employees. Brilliant id–t ur
As a former executive leader, I do have to say there is a balance between seniority and hiring early in career people. There were many occasions where the more senior people were simply "resting and vesting" - not interested in learning new skills, doing all they could to 'hide' from challenging work, in order to simply cash in their stocks and RSUs (and take a pretty decent salary). Maximize ESPP and they're looking at another 15% guaranteed return. There isn't a place for people like that in any company. Hiring early in career people brings in a fresh perspective and people who have been learning newer business models and technology. On the other side, these new people typically don't have well developed people or collaboration skills (thank you, phone screens and social media) and bring new demands to the job (flexible hours, remote work, free stuff). Those people can be a drain on an organization because of all the distractions. And automation being introduced minimizes people's critical thinking skills, they're simply executing repeatable steps, and not creating new technical IP. I don't envy the people still at Cisco, but I also think painting a broad brush about age discrimination is wrong as well. The primary roadblock is finding executive leaders who know how to manage this balance and blend of people.
Bonus Time! For the survivors.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/08/14/cisco-lays-off-nearly-500-workers-in-san-jose-and-milpitas/
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/dow-futures-down-over-300-points-on-global-growth-concerns-yield-curve-inversion-2019-08-14
- the party is just starting...buckle up...
Cisco’s problem in a nutshell - Zero innovation and poor leadership. They’ve hired too many “C player” executives from other companies.
Whispers of summer layoffs, which created prominent, headline-grabbing distractions in Cisco earnings for several years, were silenced last year when the company did not announce a workforce reduction. Robbins has instituted restructuring changes across the fiscal year, as Cisco continues to acquire companies and consolidate their operations.
I read this somewhere, and it seems pretty accurate. It seems like there's more "stealth" layoffs instead of the mass summer culling. I listened to the earnings call and I didn't hear anything about the LR, but I joined late and may have missed the announcement.
I did see where the restructuring costs this year were in the same ballpark as the previous year, so that lends credence to the "instituted restructuring changes across the fiscal year" mindset instead of the headline-grabbing distractions that the summer culls represented.
So our department head has been hiring from the outside and growing his empire. However, he doesn't like the existing people who built the department which are mostly 11s and 12s. When will we know which departments are affected?
Q1 guidance does not look good. More heads to be chopped.