It’s the best I’ve felt in years. Enough said.
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20 yr Cisco veteran who took the ER last Fall and separated in Oct. I since landed a better job with more pay, unlimited (yes — unlimited) vacation and other fantastic job perks. I feel appreciated and proud to be part of an organization that has a clear vision and seems to care about its people. My only regret is how much I miss my former Cisco colleagues. Misery loves company??
Life exists after Cisco. You can do this. Good luck to each of you.
Laid off 2014. Yep I still visit this site for morbid curiosity. Like slowing down to see a wreck. I guess I was hoping my assessment was wrong and maybe I would see Cisco become a great company again. Nope. 6 years positively affirms Cisco is walking dead company.
I was LRd after 3 plus years. I was devastated! I had received great reviews and even focal raises. Cisco
did give me a great package and I had a job at a major competitor in 10 days.
I was so brainwashed while at Cisco- that Cisco was the best company in the world. How wrong I was! Now I have about 10% of the stress, 10% of the internal politics to deal with.
Work hard and don’t burn bridges! You will be fine in this world!
The ELT was selected to strategically manage Cisco's decline. Twenty years of horrible acquisitions and internal politics decimated this company.
Worst part is not the layoff. It is how awful everything is while you are there. ZERO accountability in the engineering. 50 PMs with 50 roadmaps. Failing products. Since there are no users, no growth, no revenue, and no traction, people have nothing to do. They just talk their way through. That explains why Cisco has seen no stock growth during the time when every tech stock has seen exponential growth.
Voluntarily left Cisco a year ago to pursue other opportunities after working there for 5 years.
So. Much. Better.
More pay, no fear of job loss, more "me" time... I'd never go back to Cisco. Screw that place.
There is indeed life after Cisco.
I was LR'd three years ago.
I took my time there way too seriously.
It was because I was sole breadwinner and we were raising a family.
Miss the people but not the work politics. Toxic. I let it control me because of the money.
Invest and save as much as you can while working there. Use the BrokerageLink on the 401k. Learn to trade.
Once LR'd my life started over.
Family raised. Thanks for the help on that Cisco.
Could retire. Not going to. Too much good honest interesting technology work out there.
Working now because I want to, not because I have to. Because of BrokerageLink and educated, informed, and professionally 3rd party reviewed investing management.
There is indeed life after Cisco.
Thank you for your service.
I worked for Cisco for 3 years from 2011 to 2014. This was one of the worst times in my life. I was working on Cloud/Virtualization product which was being managed by a manager who had an M Phil degree from India and the director who only knew how to play games.
I can't remember how many times in a week I had to literally teach this dumb a– of a woman the concepts of virtualization and cloud and the work I was doing so that she could impress her bosses. Every single time she would bungle up terms and technology and then blame me for playing politics with her in teaching her the technology.
Imagine being a technically sound guy and surrounded by people, who were only fit to work in a farm picking vegetables. Yeah...that was my life. I was glad it was over.
Cisco is not the end of the world. Remember that.
OP here: to answer a few questions.
“Ok boomer!” I am actually a millennial not a boomer
“Why are you on this site” Haven’t been on this site in months but I was speaking with a former co-worker who linked me here
“Are you retired” No
Reading the posts here made me realize how much pain that Cisco employees are in because of the fear based leadership and looming layoffs. You do not realize how unhealthy that is until you are on the other side. It is similar to leaving an abusive relationship with a narcissist and then finding a loving one with a healthy individual.
I thought my post might give people hope that there is life outside Cisco and so far it’s been a great experience.
Ok boomer!
I'm not the original poster of this thread, but I can tell you that I've been gone for 2 years, and I actually come to this site (not often, but every now and then) to see where there might be potential to recruit for my org in my new company. As an example, if I see a lot of threads about unrest or large cuts in a certain BU, I start pinging my old contacts from that BU about potentially coming over to work with me. 14 people over the last 2 years have taken that plunge and are happy they did.
I have also posted several times here assuring people that life after Cisco does exist, and work can be fun and engaging again. There's also more to a job than the constant fear of losing it, and its a refreshing change of pace working for a place that is growing like gangbusters and not shrinking like George Costanza after a swim.
Cisco employees, regardless of the role(s) they are in, generally make for VERY good hires in new companies (cloud companies, start-ups, and even old-school tech) for several reasons. Being at Cisco generally means you've had to touch a lot of different products and services, and are familiar with creating large end-to-end solutions out of those different systems. Or you've had to manage complex customer relationships. Or you've had development experience that requires massive system scale. Or you've had to support systems with constant, long-term uptime and 5 9's+ SLAs. All of this experience means the world outside of Cisco is your oyster.
That said, we all know there are MANY people at Cisco who have become complacent and let their skill sets stagnate. Or they've found roles where they've been able to hide for a while and do the bare minimum to get by. These people are the ones who will have a tougher hill to climb when their number is called in the next LR. So always keep your skill sharp and diverse, proactively look for new and interesting work outside of Cisco, leverage your network, and you'll all be okay in life.
then y r u still comin to dis site?
Yes.
Are you retired or looking for new work or working elsewhere