the new IT leaders are all about cost cutting and morale in IT is at an all time low. these 'leaders' have now released their formal cost cutting plans called pathways. one pathway is special, its called workforce transformation. this pathway is tracked by the leadership team under a metric called 'reduce headcount' and its roadmap has two milestones: first one is this fall and the target is 12-15%, second milestone is in spring 2021 and has no target (at the moment).
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Well, this thread has been destroyed by the mods.
Seems like anything mentioning I&D is carpet bombed.
Do you honestly think leadership in IT cares about Linux or RedHat? Cisco IT is focused on stock awards and empire building. Stock awards are obtained by sending jobs to India or quietly converting full-time employees into contractors.
Of course the leadership in IT doesn't care. But Engineering leadership cares as it's the foundational part of everything they do is built upon. Without it, they can't keep up with, or ahead of, their competitors for each of the products they develop. But they probably care more about empire building and nepotism more.
Between the two, that's why Cisco keeps kicking the keepers of the tribal knowledge to the curb and bringing in more contractors.
"As a member of the leadership team"... just because you're a people manager doesn't make you privvy to everything.
The COO hired this incompetent CIO so that large parts of IT can be outsourced next year. Don't expect anything to change as the COO is the driving force behind this, the new CIO is just the delivery arm. Its also the only thing this new CIO has ever done, just google it. I would expect the cuts to be higher then the mentioned 15%!
Do you honestly think leadership in IT cares about Linux or RedHat? Cisco IT is focused on stock awards and empire building. Stock awards are obtained by sending jobs to India or quietly converting full-time employees into contractors.
While @xtb & @sbj have valid points, I was referring more to Cisco keeping up with technology.
RedHat releases new versions of Linux, but we're still trying to get rid of End-of-Life (EOL) versions of RedHat. Having people who know how to regression test all of Cisco's internal apps, code, and processes against new RedHat versions is critical, and learning how to do that from one release to the next isn't a good use of resources. Keeping that knowledge in-house from one to the next is how you get things done timely and correctly. Keeping just that one tech lead and having him have to train, oversee, and manage the process with all new people is not.
I can think of three scenarios where Cisco IT wrote code to replace home-grown internally developed apps (hosted by BU, Business Group, TAC); and by the time the code was ready, the original application was no longer used in the market. Millions of dollars. Waste!
IT has another metric and that's how long it takes to deliver projects. As they continue to reduce headcount, it takes longer & longer to get work done. While contractors can be smart people with good skills, it takes time to learn how to get things done at Cisco and learn our systems/processes. They can't exactly hit the ground running and deliver immediately, so just throwing contractors at the projects doesn't solve the problem.
Kicking all the people with years of "tribal knowledge" about how things work and get done at Cisco to the curb in the chase to cut costs & improve profits ends up costing more in the long run. When you can't deliver the infrastructure that Engineering needs to deliver new products to market in a timely fashion and our competitors beat us to the market place, then we lose revenue. Speed and agility in the market place is still important.
There is too much corruption and nepotism in IT. Vice Presidents hiring friends without relevant experience, and managers hiring family members as contractors.
I have no idea if the OP is correct or just trolling, but it’s in line with what I expect to be going on. Q3 earnings call next week, and I bet there are late night candles burning in CFO mansion trying to figure out what the guidance for Q4 and, most importantly, FY21 is going to say.
The reality is unknown, but I know finance are war-gaming some scenarios for FY21, many of them bad (for us). If you believe that Q4 will be 15-20% down on expectations, then FY21 planning will be working with those sorts of numbers. And CFO will have to have a story of how to build profitability and gross margins again in light of that.
As a member of the leadership team, i am challenged to understand your thought process here. We are all in this together. #staycinnected.