I am a bystander in all this but I can't help asking this question:
Since Cisco has been doing senseless layoffs for so many years, most probably by now there are more ex-employees outside of the company than employee within the company
There is a high chance that these ex-employee might become hostile to the company and sabotage Cisco at any cost (ex by selecting and advocating other vendors for their needs)
How does Cisco deal with this ?
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"By now there are more ex-employees outside of the company than employee within the company" - yes that's for sure. Cisco started reusing employee id numbers some time ago - but still these id numbers are approaching a million of issued ids. Go figure how did that happen ? "Great place to work"?? Nope - great meat grinder of "workforce" numbers - more likely...
Uh well. Several people were laid off and went back. One person did that 4 times.
Vendors and contractors are considered the lowest caste at Cisco. Inconsequential.
I beg to differ. In many teams, the vendors and contractors are the people who get the day-to-day work done. Employees only do "project" work like system upgrades or deliver new enhancements. Without the red-badge staff, employees wouldn't have time to do any of their work that they're paid to do.
The work I do is essential to my team. If they let me go, or I leave, they will certainly be replacing me with someone else to do my work.
I had a company lay me off where I'd signed an employment agreement stating that I wouldn't work for their competitors OR customers for a period of 3 years after leaving them. When I hired on, I agreed to it because I didn't foresee leaving the company and had no idea how many companies in the local area fell into those two categories. I was pretty naive back then. When they suddenly told me I was gone, handed me a check for 2 weeks pay and offered another 2 weeks if I agreed not to sue them and reminded me about the non-compete agreement I'd signed before escorting me out the door, I told them to fly a kite and that I'd accept employment at any company that offered me a job and they could sue if they wanted to. They never did. As a simple IT guy, I wasn't involved in any of their development or proprietary secrets, so they knew they couldn't prove I was taking proprietary data or processes to their competitors or customers. They were the ones who should have been worried about bitter/hostile ex-employees with the stingy severance pay they provided. They let 5 people go, then 2 weeks later let me and 6 others go, then waited 27 weeks (one week past 6 months) to close our office letting 49 people go. The bean counters figured it was cheaper to let 12 people go early to get the office headcount below the 50 person WARN act's requirements and quietly work to move enough knowledge from our office to another office during that 6 months to close them down.
Like that company, Cisco would have a hard time proving that I did anything negative to them by encouraging a new employer to buy competing products and discouraging Cisco products/services.
Simple answer, you can’t.
Vendors and contractors are considered the lowest caste at Cisco. Inconsequential.
Vendors and contractors are considered the lowest caste at Cisco. Inconsequential.
What about all the vendors and contractors impacted, they weren't 'paid off'. That's who shareholders need to worry about.
Yes everybody got six salaries and doubled their income after leaving Cisco. The lay offs are not toxic manifestations of incompetent management, they just want you to do better in your career so they just randomly lay off people to avoid being acused of nepotism.
In case you did not know, there is a big line up of employeers waiting to grab you and stuff you up with lots of money. It is free money for everybody, like in free air.
I don’t care, I’m not bitter. I’ve been worrying about getting laid off for years from Cisco and wasn’t surprised it finally happened to me when it happened. I got an offer from Cisco’s biggest competitor in a particular networking area less than 2 weeks after the October announcement, getting paid more than at Cisco. As far as I’m concerned I got cashed out to leave. The only thing I’ll miss is all of the RSUs I left on the table.
I prided myself of doing the best job possible at Cisco and I’ll pride myself on doing the best job possible at my new company.
I'm actually ok with it. I mean, I got nearly a 6 month payout from Cisco.
And I have doubled my salary, since leaving Cisco.
Why complain.
Best thing that ever happened to my career was getting laid off at Cisco.
Why can't cisco sue Zoom CEO or all those former ex-Webex employees who fled there after being LR'ed from Cisco?
I tell my customers to buy Arista/Juniper/HP/etc gear instead of Cisco's. Because of me, Cisco missed out on about $300 millions in sales since mid 2017.
Come sue me Cisco, ugly b–ch!!!
make sure to un-recommend product wherever you land. once you dump all your stock.
A company that is rotting from within and is almost cancerous, does not need any hostility from these employees. These employees, some of them are lazy who had not skills and either way it does not matter what they do. The good ones, they will find something and won;t be bitter about this gutter. I left and I cannot be happier. The fact that a good employee or many such good ones get LRed and go join competitors of move to better companies is a far deeper loss for a good company. Company losing good assets is a far reaching consequence(good ones) than any sabotage.
The Pentagon people who worked for Cisco are in trouble
It is that little text in the severance package that stipulates if you negatively interfere in anyway with Cisco, their suppliers, customers, or anyone else that may do business with them that you immediately forfeit your entire severance. That includes the tax you paid Uncle Sam that you won't get back from the government. They will put liens on property and garnish wages. Not a direct co-worker, but someone I had been around when IBM did it. They had the proof, filed the claim, and won. Even if your severance is only $25k, 1/3 of that probably went to taxes and if you spent nothing you have about $17k left. The repayment is immediate and collects hefty interest until paid.
discredits them. labels those impacted as lazy or poor performers.
You can't sue a client or its employees for a preference. I suspect this will be a hidden bias that any LRed person is prone to.
Making the decision not to buy and use a certain thing should take you a couple of seconds.
Through legal means would be my guess. In this economy I doubt most of us have much extra time for a Quixote-like vendetta after trying to find, or excel at, a new job.