Its a hard truth but Cisco really is a great company. I came from the brutal environment that was HPE, previously EDS. I saw my team shrink from 50+ to 4. Layoffs happened monthly. I saw my company go from EDS to HP to HPE to DXC. That is what happens when you are part of a dying org. We were defeated by the low cost labor of India / China / Brazil / Costa Rico. At least Cisco has areas of brightness (even if they are purchased) among the darkness. And Cisco pays decent. Collect your check and keep on developing new skills. Control what you can and try not to worry about what you can't. As bad as things are at Cisco there is still great name recognition. There will be opportunities when its time to find another company.
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Frequently, "good" companies end up laying off people.
So call good companies mean those in which no or little pressure working environment. Directors and managers usually speak nice words. If a project is overdue, no problem, they accept whatever excuses. People talk work-life balance than project deadlines.
Eventually, .... you know,
This is article is the truth:/ ... I can say first hand the problems that exist here are in most tech companies ... actually forgetting tech... just companies in general ... the only difference is that Cisco has an active layoff board for this site
Cisco has some world class hardware engineers. Without a recommendation from someone I trust I’d throw away any software or management resume from there. When your seven week performance improvement project takes over three years and that code is 13 times slower than the code it replaced and even more buggy, despite all the bonuses and accolades the project failed miserably. Because endless failure is so often rewarded people grow anti-skills rather than skills along with the cluelessness not to recognize it. Many of these people weren’t id–ts going in but they were when they came out so beware and be aware before it happens to you.
I will never forget the day I took the stairs from the fourth floor of Building 23, where immersive telepresence was, to the third floor, where the UMI/consumer telepresence team was. The entire floor was cleared out over the weekend. Nothing was there. It was eerie to walk around there.
Same thing with the Flip phone, which was in one of the teen buildings (18 IIRC but could be wrong). And it was replaced with an outplacement office (that I called “outpatient “) for a couple of months and didn’t require an FTE badge to get inside.
Still in all, not a bad place to get laid off from. There are much worse places, like places that just slowly die and just want you to quit (hellooooo Riverbed!).
Not here to bash but I could tell you the exact same story of my previous group at Cisco. 40+ people at one time, slowly dwindled over time to ~10 as people left and were not back filled or were LR’d. Recently, the entire team was axed. Reality is that Cisco is no better or worse than all of the other large tech company’s out there, there are pockets of good sprinkled in with a whole lot of not so good. I agree though, develop your skills, try to stay up to date on the technology, and ffs, find a better job somewhere if you are not happy.
EDS indeed maybe wasn't a great company, just spun-off GM IT arm, wasn't it ?
Herd mentality, you have zero security at cisco. leave now and hone your skills at azure aws or a company that complements them like an identity vendor
What does name recognition actually mean? You can be incompetent and work at nVidia. Are you saying that when you are incompetent at nVidia, you're somehow less incompetent than your Cisco counterpart? And how does that help at the end of the day?
The same can be said for IBM and Lenovo. Once the quarterly layoffs start at tech companies it means leadership is gone, there is no vision, and the company is now run by bean counters instead of innovators. Once innovation is lost, you are simply a follower. I have been in so many meetings at the tech companies I worked for that they are better off taking the $250M expense to run the business to just end it and buy $250M worth of Apple and Amazon stock. It has a greater return on investment. The sad thing is that it is the truth for places like IBM, Cisco, HP, etc. Old dinosaurs that are just junk companies now comparatively.
Cisco is considered not top tier...start to look elsewhere.
layoff is the norm q over q
Cisco no longer has the name recognition it once had. It is not in the top tier like FAANG, it is in the second tier, companies like nvda msft twtr are. Hell it is questionable if it belongs to third tier. Given a shot at one of those mentioned names, who wouldn’t jump ship? It is now in the same conversation with names like IBM, Intel, yawn
2 thumbs up!!!