I haven't been working here for long and I would love to know how employee benefits have changed over the past 10 or more years, have they improved or have they gotten worse in most cases? I guess there was not much improvement, but I’m interested in how it was before with health insurance, opportunities for promotion, etc.?
7 replies (most recent on top)
Two government actions had major impacts:
1) Requiring regular stock options to be shown as liabilities on the balance sheet, negatively impacting income. The switch to RSU awards greatly reduced who got the awards. Solid workers did not get them, just top technical employees
2) Obamacare declared our insurance cadillac plans so benefits were reduced to avoid cisco paying the tax
No more CSAT bonuses, No more CAP bonuses, capped comp plans for SEs and SAs, lower target comp for SEs and SAs as of 2019, no more merit increases, little to no equity share (RSU) dispersement. Certification incentives cut in half.
I left when I saw all of this stuff go bye bye.
Meant "8s and 9s" not "8s and 8s" for grade. Most of us were late 20s / early 30s at the time.
An example of the good-old-days:
In 2004 our VP gave -each- of us (grade 8s and 8s), on our small team of five; 5000 stock (this was before RSUs) options for working through a complex project. Yes we put in a bunch of crazy time on the project over six months, but he truly looked out for us (he did NOT have to do that) and it had major visibility up to JC.
Ten years later, he was riffed, then our Director the next year, then me.
Luckily over that ten year time on his watch I was issued enough RSUs to pretty much retire once LR'd at the 18 year mark (left as grade 10).
Miss that time. Earned every penny but feel fortunate. Did some good work.
VPs are now incentivized to replace full-time employees with contract workers. Taking Cisco off the hook for health insurance, retirement, pto, and unemployment benefits.
The future of employment at Cisco is temporary contract work.
What once was great insurance hit the skids with obamacare. Don't get me wrong, it was starting to go south prior to that. It just increased exponentially during those years. All of the other compensation really started going to the 13s and up. 12 management had the doors shut on them from a budgeting, compensation, and career path standpoint. First and second line managers have not had any say in much of what has happened there. They have no choice nor the ability to affect those decisions.
No more stock options, no more merit increases (except for boss's cronies), no more performance reviews, no more CAP awards, smaller bonuses, higher co-insurance for medical claims and higher co-pays for dr. visits and pr-scrip-ions.