Yesterday, we received an email from the data center V.P, saying that he is requesting everyone to use their personal PTO days from 6th -11th July. This is so that we “enjoy” the summer and take a break. What does this mean? Does it mean like a mandatory PTO like the year end shutdown? Also, does it mean these PTOs signal an upcoming LR?
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Anyone that says it's illegal for Cisco to mandate employees take PTO is full of c-ap. I hate how they do it but it's definitely legal. A simply google search provides why: The Fair Labor Standards Act does not regulate paid time off (PTO). Unless the employee is covered by an employment contract or collective bargaining agreement that says otherwise, an employer can typically mandate that employees take PTO even if they didn't request it.
Right. Except, what you fail to realize, because you have OBVIOUSLY never run a department or business unit at Cisco, is that most departments have global resources. Those resources may be in places like Germany, France, Israel, Belgium, and many other countries who ARE protected from such measures. Additionally, any red-badge employee (AKA a contract employee) is, by definition, under contract and may be protected. And, FYI, blue badge executives Grade 14 and up are on contract. And guess what, they are protected too.
Trust me we are careful how we ask what we ask. And the reasons behind it are opex driven 99.999999% of the time.
Anyone that says it's illegal for Cisco to mandate employees take PTO is full of c-ap. I hate how they do it but it's definitely legal. A simply google search provides why:
The Fair Labor Standards Act does not regulate paid time off (PTO). Unless the employee is covered by an employment contract or collective bargaining agreement that says otherwise, an employer can typically mandate that employees take PTO even if they didn't request it.
This is how business units (and sales and CX) play games with their opex budgets.
PTO comes out of a corporate bucket of money, rather the department’s budget. Your regular pay comes out of the department’s budget. PTO does not. This is why PTO is a separate line item on your paycheck.
So when a dependent goes way over budget, you’ll suddenly start seeing the leadership “remind”, “strongly encourage”, “ask”, the worker bees to take PTO. This eases the budgetary pressure from the department.
I never abided by this when I was there. Because PTO is something you accrue. It’s earned, not given to you. It’s technically illegal for them to force you to take it, which is why they are careful to not say it’s mandatory. And, you’ll want as much PTO saved up as you can when it comes time to end your relationship with Cisco (whether you decide for leave or they decide you are no longer needed). You can take that time as Paid vaca or get it paid out to you in a lump sum when you leave.
AWS put the DataCenter BU on PTO long ago. Stick a fork into these obsolete products.
FWIW, IBM just had everyone do this for Q2. It was "strongly suggested" from top down.
All reds can’t get cut. Some can, but all would mean a productivity disaster.
If you cut all the reds, then blues would have to actually work all day long. Most of the reds on the teams I've been on deal with the day-to-day repetitious tasks or grunt work while the blues work on project work.
Blues don't get their hands dirty doing things like account creation, tier 1 trouble shooting, etc. They plan system upgrades or rolling out new apps/processes.
All reds can’t get cut. Some can, but all would mean a productivity disaster.
interesting
@1jgv+15qIeCKI - Are you insinuating that all reds will be terminated after that date? If so, that's doubtful. There's been plenty of claims about all reds getting cut on this forum ever since I've been here. It's yet to happen. Let's not fear monger.
Before the annual year-end shutdowns, there was the recession of '08 and Cisco forced all it's US and Canadian workers to take a week's PTO in the 4th quarter and encouraged workers in other countries to also take a week if that countries laws didn't permit Cisco to force them to. The dates were open, but it had to be within Q4.
It was to help burn the operational expense (OpEx) by reducing future payroll obligations, i.e. liabilities, instead of having an LR. There was a lot of blowback on Cisco from employees who had scheduled non-refundable travel vacations either before or after Q4, and losing an additional week's PTO caused them difficulties. Plus there wasn't enough advanced notice of the required PTO to allow people to plan for it, and people were taking it at different times, so work piled up and projects got delayed by a week if a person in a critical path was out.
Cisco decided that the PTO burn OpEx reduction was good for the books and decided to keep it around, They learned from the negative feedback and decided to make it the same week for everyone so that project managers could plan around everyone being gone and no work getting done.
Given that this is by a BU only and not company wide, I'd say it's just that BU trying to bring down OpEx rather than getting ready for an LR. Doesn't mean that the annual Q1 LR won't happen, because I've learned to expect it after so many consecutive year of Q1 LR's.
Depending on how much PTO isn't being taken by employees, and how much revenue is down, it could get bloody. I'd rather take a stay-cation and have a job than get LR'd and have to look for a new one at this time and deal with new insurance plans, reset deductibles, etc.
They made security folks do the same last quarter
Companies are going to try different measures of reducing future payroll obligations , ie PTO. I'm assuming they project x% of PTO will be burned in a given year/ quarter and if it lags significantly, like it would now, they need to bring this number closer to projections. I don't think it necessary means a massive LR, it's just one way companies will attempt to stop the bleeding rn. Other companies are going to do the same or cut bonuses, within promotions etc.
Yep , Blue Badge blood is about to spill. No more red badges to screw over after 7/25. Plus they have to pay for thousand eyes now!
Because everyone could use a staycation right now?