Those in middle management and up are responsible for the downward spiral this company is heading towards, yet they are not being held accountable. The fat needs to be trimmed at their level, and yet the only thing getting cut are worker bees who are trying to keep this company afloat! We need to keep our top talent and get rid of all these layers of upper management that only care to line their pockets.
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Layoffs are never a good solution, unless your company is in dire risk of going out of business. But layoffs have become the "easy button" for all tech companies with public stock.....requires very little mgmt thinking, especially since there are no performance reviews (but we all know there are stack rankings done by Dir/VPs on a quarterly basis).
And multiple layers of redundant mgmt has been a serious problem at Cisco since at least 2008, or before. The original hunger games at Cisco began in ~ 2001, when the internet bubble popped and Cisco dumped tons of people.......HR went downhill from there.
A friend of mine told me this:
When he joined Cisco as a new grad there were 4 hops to Chambers:
manager, director, VP, SVP
When he left there were 7 to Robbins:
manager, 2nd line manager, director, senior director, VP, another VP, SVP
And he was a tech lead with a few reports too
Talking about redundancy
The layers of top management need 3rd and 4th houses. Eliminating a few thousands jobs will help.
Cisco VP Playbook
- Layoff Americans
- Replace them with temp workers or outsource the jobs
- Obtain bonus for cost savings
- Buy a beach house
Welcome to Corporate America. You are either a VP or a wage slave at Cisco.
I had a meeting the other day with someone I hadn't met yet, so I looked him up in the Directory beforehand. This guy has a Manager who reports into a Director (which is to be expected), but then that Director reports into a second-level Director, and then there's a VP who reports into a second-level VP, before finally reporting into an SVP. To me, that seems like a REALLY tall reporting structure.