I'm a red badge and I got cut after 5 and a half years. Last Friday was my last day. Was told I was renewed for another quarter then suddenly told I'm outta here. I know entire red badge teams that got let go too. It's time to look elsewhere for most contractors at Cisco. The job market for skilled remote IT people is actually pretty good right now. Good luck.
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The old school term for red badges is “temp”, as in temporary employee.
Yes, for the last 30 years, I’ve called contractors temporary-temporary and. regular employees temporary-permanent
God bless you
Cisco limits contractors/on a W2 to 18 months so five years was multiple contract gigs or as a vendor or 1099.
Or as a managed service via a statement of work (SOW). Using SOW's allows Cisco to keep red badges much longer than the 18 month period. Generally, after a period of time, Cisco decides that the project that was running the managed service needs to come "in-house" and they convert the contractors. Or, they decide that the managed service is no longer necessary, and the SOW workers can be let go.
I've seen projects where a managed service comes in and develops a process and sets up automation around it, then an employee takes over running and maintaining it and the managed service is terminated. Sometimes one of the SOW workers is converted to an employee to keep it running.
But, yes, it really hurts the red badge person who thought they had employment till the end of the quarter suddenly gets let go and they don't get any severance or pay "in lieu" of notice, but employees do. At least have the common courtesy to give them 2 weeks notice (or pay if you're worried about disgruntled workers stealing proprietary data).
During one of the previous Cisco Check-Ins, in response to a question from an employee asking what Cisco did for terminated contractors, this was the BS response:
When we reduce the number of contractors at Cisco, their employers (our suppliers) provide them any needed support. In general, they are not losing employment, rather, they are assigned to work on different customers.
I can't recall a time since the '80's or '90's where consulting agencies kept their employees "on the bench" for 2-4 weeks while they searched for another client/customer to take them on. My most recent staffing agency, where I got converted to a Cisco employee and later LR'd, has a policy where their employees' benefits expire at 11:59 PM on their last day of work at the client's office. Where's the needed support in that? My co-workers from that same staffing agency did lose employment because there was no work at different customers available. And that was pre-COVID economy when jobs were plentiful.
Cisco limits contractors/on a W2 to 18 months so five years was multiple contract gigs or as a vendor or 1099. (All of the above are issued a Red Badge). If you worked for 18 months as a W2 red badge, you have to leave Cisco for sis months before you are allowed to work again. Point is, no job is perm, doesn’t matter what color your RFID badge is. LR, non renewal of “contract”, it’s all just the company playing musical chairs with their Human Capital. Never believe it’s ever in your best interest at Cisco. If you get let go, carry on and don’t look back.
Red Badge, Blue Badge, it is all temporary.
The old school term for red badges is “temp”, as in temporary employee.
Companies many times use temps so that when business slows down, temps are let go to allow the company to protect regular employees.
Cisco plays this game to it’s full extent with one exception. While they are letting go a large number of red badges to save regulars, they maintain a larger population of red badges to save on salary and benefits costs. They game the H1B program hiring a massive number of Indians, who actually do jobs that have no special skills that are not available in the US citizen labor pool.
While I feel bad for red badges losing their jobs, they are just temporary employees and should expect to be let go at any time.
The last comment is that Cisco puts themselves at risk by keeping a red badge for such a long period of time (5 yrs). The longer the red badge stays at Cisco, the more they appear to actually be a Cisco employee and not a temp. My last company we could not keep temps for more than a year to avoid them thinking they were not a temp.