Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

What type of 401k match do contractors receive?

Varies by company from nothing to 4%.

What type of HSA contribution?

Again, varies by company. I currently get $1K per year. $500 in Jan and $500 in July.

What is the career trajectory of a contractor?

What's the career trajectory of an employee at Cisco? Being LR'd is a good guess IMHO.

• No RSU -- Granted. But not everyone at Cisco gets RSU's, so what's your point?
• No ESPP -- Granted. But you have to make enough $'s to be able to contribute to ESPP to buy those shares. I do miss getting ESPP and I wish I'd have bought a lot more back between '08 and '11 when I was getting them for ~$13/share.
• No Bonus -- Bonuses aren't guaranteed at Cisco. I recall 2 yrs where Cisco didn't give them out. And I'm making 25% more as a contractor AT Cisco than I did when I was an employee, so that's a guaranteed 25% bonus.
• Worse Health Insurance -- Health Insurance sux in America. As a Vet, I have VA care so it doesn't matter what my vendor provides other than to reimburse the VA. Doesn't cost me sh-t.
• No HSA Contribution -- I get $1K / yr HSA contribution. Cisco keeps lowering their contribution, so there's that.
• No Maternity or Paternity -- Who cares, I've had all the kids I'm going to have 20 yrs ago.
• No Severance -- There's lots of companies who only give 2 weeks, so consider yourself lucky that Cisco provides such a generous package.
• No PTO -- You can negotiate PTO into your compensation package. I chose not to because of how much they want to deduct from your hourly pay to fund it, but if you do the math ahead of time, you can increase your billing rate to get what you want working 50 weeks and spread that across 52 weeks to fund your own PTO. I did that based on 49 weeks and 3 weeks time off. I usually use one week in the summer and 2 weeks at the end of the year, so Cisco's year-end shutdown means I don't have to "ask" for my time off.

Sure, I'd rather be an employee, but contracting isn't all bad. I don't have to play politics and deal with the "People Deal". And, unlike you, I get a pay raise EVERY TIME I change jobs, even when I come back to Cisco for 18 months at a time. When's the last time you got a real raise?

Stupid is as stupid does. I heard our CFO state very clearly this week that contractors cost more than blue badges. I presume they use that model for flexibility, which allows them “to more easily align their resources with the business cycle” without having to go through gut-wrenching periodic purges via an LR process.

Exactly. Short-term costs are acceptable for long term goals, which is keeping head count down.

Contractors do not cost Cisco more or corporations wouldn't be transitioning to that employment model.

Stupid is as stupid does. I heard our CFO state very clearly this week that contractors cost more than blue badges. I presume they use that model for flexibility, which allows them “to more easily align their resources with the business cycle” without having to go through gut-wrenching periodic purges via an LR process. .

sour grapes who got LR'ed 3 yrs or more ago are still flockin to this site to complain about how it was unfair for them to be booted out. just move on, cisco is not the only employer, facebook/google/amazon/microsoft/apple are all hiring big time. ohh, but you have outdated and unwanted skills cuz you "slept" too much on the job at cisco and now you are redundant. maybe try walmart or target or costco.

Contractors do not cost Cisco more or corporations wouldn't be transitioning to that employment model.

What type of 401k match do contractors receive? What type of HSA contribution? What is the career trajectory of a contractor?

• No RSU
• No ESPP
• No Bonus
• Worse Health Insurance
• No HSA Contribution
• No Maternity or Paternity
• No Severance
• No PTO

What type of maternity and paternity benefits do contractors receive? I hear procreation is kinda important.

It's not a benefit that I'd need at this point in my life, so it doesn't matter that I don't get it. I had all my kids while I was on active duty military service. My health care was free. Back then, you paid "per diem" for meals while your spouse was in the hospital, so it cost me $24 to have a kid (2 days in the hospital). Luckily we had no complications and didn't have a c-section, or it would have been more days at $12/day.

Maternity & paternity leave wasn't a thing back 25 yrs ago. It's been too long I don't recall what mother's in the military got for leave as my wife was a civilian.

"We just don't get ESPP, RSU or severance"

That's kinda a huge deal. RSU, ESPP, and 401k matches are a HUGE part of employee compensation packages. Cisco executives have earned their salary if they are able to convince people contracting pays more.

Wow, reading comprehension failure. I mentioned we get 401(k). And, yes, RSU & ESPP are big parts of total compensation. But here's the biggest failure on your part.

Cisco executives have earned their salary if they are able to convince people contracting pays more.

I never said I was paid more or that contractors make more. I said contractors cost Cisco more because the vendors take a huge cut of the bill rate that Cisco pays and contractors make good enough bank or they wouldn't work as a contractor. No one does a job that pays half what their peers pay.

Pay attention.

What type of maternity and paternity benefits do contractors receive? I hear procreation is kinda important.

"We just don't get ESPP, RSU or severance"

That's kinda a huge deal. RSU, ESPP, and 401k matches are a HUGE part of employee compensation packages. Cisco executives have earned their salary if they are able to convince people contracting pays more.

I've got a bridge to sell you if you believe contractors are more expensive than full-time employees to Cisco. Contractors are SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than full-time employees.
Health Insurance, ESPP, RSU, PTO, Severance...

Contractors have health insurance, PTO, 401(k). We just don't get ESPP, RSU or severance. And, all the benefits they pass on to us is built into the billing rate they bill Cisco. Oh, don't forget their 30-50% cut of your pay.

For round numbers, let's say your vendor pays you $100K/yr. They're billing Cisco $200K/hr. Of that $200K, they're paying you $100K, keeping $50-70K and using the remaining $30-50K to provide your PTO, insurance, pay your FICA & social security taxes, etc. If Cisco cut out the middle man (my vendor), they'd pay me less in wages, cost less in FICA and social security taxes, and not have to waste $30-50K in paying the middle man. Cheaper. Oh, wait, they'd end up paying me $40-50K in severance when they LR me, so they have to keep me at least a year before they start saving any money, but they don't LR most people with only 1 year of service.

No wonder Cisco is failing. They can't do simple MATH. The only advantage of having contractors is that you can let them go at any time w/o paying severance, so you can scale up/down your workforce quickly and easily. But not cheaper. If you want cheaper, send the work offshore. But then you deal w/ slower turn around / delivery of work products due to the time zone differences and communication lags.

Its the most lifeless thankless company i have ever been. You are one of those enjoying a nice ride. We cannot assume if you are competent or not but you are barking up the wrong tree here.

We have seen what you haven't (yet) or is part of the gangster managers bullying employees they don't like so they quit.

True. Too many folks are lured by greener grass on the other side. If your boss on the other side is incompetent, that green grass will quickly turn to a muddy field. And in my experience, the higher up the food chain you go the more incompetent people you meet (that's Peter's principle in action). I have seen pretty lousy Cisco directors and VPs leave for companies like VMware, SAP, Google, AWS or Facebook. I once reported to a Sr Director I just couldn't stand. Pure yes man, zero bias for action, never willing to challenge questionable decisions taken by his leadership. Just a lame follower with no corporate courage or vision. A couple of months after the VP he was brown-nosing left, he got ejected from Cisco much to my relief. We operate in a small world. Those shabby directors and VPs are likely to pop up again in your way right when you're busy climbing that greener corporate ladder.

I didn't realize corporate executives were known for being honest.

Most ethical professions:

1. CFO at Corporation
2. Nurse
3. Teacher

Contractors are SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than full-time employees.

You might think so, but our CFO says the opposite.

I've got a bridge to sell you if you believe contractors are more expensive than full-time employees to Cisco. Contractors are SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than full-time employees.

Health Insurance, ESPP, RSU, PTO, Severance...

I'm happy at Cisco and have been for many years. Is it perfect? No. But I can tell you from experience the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence.

Ditto. Between my first & second Cisco rides, I had a fulltime remote gig with a company that worked me to death. I was working, and being paid hourly, for anywhere from 45-65 hrs per week. Then they wanted to convert me to an employee where I'd be expected to keep working the same hours, but not be paid for the overtime hours and would also get a base pay cut "because of total compensation package value". While I liked this job, I didn't like the hours. I'd spend 5-6 hrs in meetings and then try to cram a day's worth of work into 2-3 hrs and end up having to bill overtime because the deadlines were too short to attend meetings and do work.

Between my second and third Cisco rides, I had another fulltime gig with another company in the same town as the prior one. This was not a remote role even though I later found out that there were a few remote workers, including one who lived in Raleigh (RTP). There, we were required to track our time and "charge" our time to support tickets because all work was billed back to the customers as a "cost plus" contract. We had hours of meetings and even team meetings were expected to be billed to customers instead of "overhead" and we were expected to charge 35+ hours a week to customer work every week. In addition to the time management, I was micromanaged by my team's director and after a year I was told that I was not living up to my job title as a "Senior Lead" because I was spending too much time "on and off boarding" offshore contractors instead of doing my job. The problem was, my manager wasn't doing his job of managing my time, nor was he managing the person whose job it was to do the on and off boarding of contractors. His boss, the director, kept coming by this other employee's desk to have him on or off board one or more contractors "immediately", but he was never at his desk so she'd tell me to do it "right now". At first I tried to tell the Director that I'd have the other guy do it as soon as he got back from his smoke break, bathroom, whatever and she'd tell me it had to be done immediately and couldn't wait, so I'd drop what I was doing and do the work. After a while I stopped trying to avoid it and asked my manager to talk to the guy who always seemed to be missing first thing in the morning (to off board terminated offshore workers) and late afternoon/early evening (to on board offshore workers who were about to start their first day).

I asked the manager during my performance review why should I live up to my job title because the junior guy wasn't doing his job, he wasn't doing his job of managing because he was too busy doing DBA work because he'd been promoted from being the team's DBA to manager, and the Director was doing her job as a director because she was too busy micromanaging his team? I guess I know why they weren't interested in letting me work remote because then the Director wouldn't be able to stop by my desk and give me additional tasks.

This company didn't accrue PTO hours like Cisco does, they gave it to us up front and you lost all unused time at the end of the year or paid back the prorated portion you'd used if you quit before the end of the year, so you were basically earning it even though they wouldn't pay it out if you were terminated. So after the performance review, I waited my two weeks until mid Dec when I took my entire year's PTO off for the end of the year and gave my notice the day I returned after New Year's day so I'd get to enjoy my earned PTO. During that two weeks before my PTO started, I ran across an opportunity to come back to Cisco, so I used my PTO break to move my furnishings from my short term temporary apartment back to RTP.

This third time at Cisco, I'm still a contractor and my contract time now exceeds my employee time, but at least I don't have to deal with team space, one-on-one's, V2MOM's, etc and I'm making a ki----g because my vendor is paying me 25% more than I usually make as a contractor. Just today, in the Cisco Check-in, someone asked if there were any budget $'s to help convert contractors to blue badges and the answer was that there was no central funding for that, that the costs came out of the BU's budget AND that it was usually cheaper to convert contractors to employees rather than keep them as contractors. That last bit surprised me because I've thought that for years but I keep getting told that because the $'s come out of different accounting budgets that it was cheaper to have contractors. Anyway, sorry to digress and ramble on, but I've been happiest at Cisco.

During my first two roles, I was stuck supporting a legacy third-party product that is (was) in use at many companies, but as it was an expensive tool to maintain support, upgrades and licensing, it was starting to get phased out in favor of open source tools. Luckily I got my experience with the new tools while supporting the legacy tool which helped me get a role which got me cloud/AWS experience as well as more in-depth experience with the newer open source tools so now my skills are more current than if I'd been stuck with the legacy third party tool.

I'm happy at Cisco and have been for many years. Is it perfect? No. But I can tell you from experience the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence.

So many variables involved in what one may perceive as a good environment to work in. All previous posts have merit. For me, it was just the feeling of reaching a ceiling within the skills I was asked to use on a daily basis. All else was great but I needed to look out for my future and work with technology that was top of mind for most enterprise organizations.

I can see pros and cons working at Cisco. I accepted an offer somewhere else. However I have plans to go back. I miss certain things. Obviously it depends on who your boss is and also which division you are working on. If you are working on a commodity technology, it will not help.

People are disgruntled and they won’t see or hear anything but negativity. This is called layoff.com so I guess it speaks for itself….

From a legal perspective employment is a contract (people sometimes forget this) and once the services are not needed on either side the relationship may sour.

If we all stopped looking at work like a “relationship” and like a “contract” then I believe the blow will lessen if one doesn’t get the raise, bonus or RSU’s they expect.

I live my life like everything is a contract marriage, work, home ownership and it has made life more bearable because a contract works until it doesn’t :/

I think it really depends on who is the boss