Mandatory pto aka forced vacation aka total compensation cut. It’s not a vacation if you can’t choose when to take it. If the PTO balance is such a liability - eliminate it (buy it out) and go to unlimited non accruable PTO and let direct management coordinate it’s use.
OP @1rap+1dRFV5AA. I think most people would agree?
"But, just remember that Chambers was a strong Republican conservative and everyone was hating on him the last 5+ yrs"
Whatever. I disliked that pr!ck Ch@mbers from the 90s on. He always gave me the creeps.
When I was at Cisco, I never minded the mandatory PTO during Xmas.....I thought it was pretty nice. Why? Because it forced "most" people (notice I say "most".....there were people who didn't get to take the time off due to critical functions, etc) to take a break. It was nice to see my email inbox go almost completely silent...even if just for a week.
I know this is going to show my age, but I miss the days when all the operators/service providers blocked off the entire month of December as a hands-off month (no installs, no upgrades, no patches) month. December/Xmas was wonderful back then.
This is a 3rd world india/chinese garbage company now. The only reason it's still here in the US is to fund lib causes. Soros like leadership and board packaged as a company called cisco.
Go troll somewhere else. The reason it's still here in the US is because it was founded here. Use your stock to vote Chuck out if you don't like his support of lib causes and wokeness. But, just remember that Chambers was a strong Republican conservative and everyone was hating on him the last 5+ yrs of his CEO tenure, so, which is it? Do you want a liberal CEO or a conservative one? Seems like you just can't be happy.
Yes, the influence has definitely shifted towards Indian with a lot of work going there, many directors, VP's and SVP's being in or from India.
This is a 3rd world india/chinese garbage company now. The only reason it's still here in the US is to fund lib causes. Soros like leadership and board packaged as a company called cisco.
The sad part is, teams where there is real work going on, the folks r just going to keep working inspite of the PTOs. For the higher ups , that don't know how product development works , you can't just switch off development for 2 weeks and then restart release cycles.. simply doesn't work that way. The competition will just continue to march ahead (pssst zoom?)
Also who the he-l needs a day for me, before an extended shutdown.. the whole purpose of day for me was to get a break from a hectic schedule and then jump into the grind !!
It’s not a vacation if you can’t choose when to take it.
It's not all that different than several companies that I worked for before remote work was possible that would close their offices in the winter if the roads were too icy to get to work safely.
They claimed they were shutting down the offices to keep workers safe and not make them come into work and they could either use their PTO or take an unpaid day because back then, you couldn't really work from home when the Internet was dialup modems and bulletin board systems (BBS's).
Given that we get 4 weeks PTO every year, asking us to take 1 week at year end isn't that big a deal. You still have 3 weeks to use any other time and many people take the end of Dec off anyway.
Personally, I like it because I usually wanted to take the last 2 weeks of Dec off anyway and when we weren't shut down, we had to rotate through the team who got to be off the days surrounding Christmas so that the same people didn't get stuck working every year instead of being with their families. I used to burn a week in the summer, a week at Thanksgiving and two weeks at Christmas. Sometimes I'd do Spring Break instead of Summer, and now it's Spring Break, Summer and Christmas instead of including Thanksgiving.
Initially, I thought it was better to just mandate x number of days off in a given quarter and let people decide when to use it, but when some teams work and they 'need' something from you and try to reach you while you're on vacation because they need it now, I like that everyone is off at the same time.
The first year they did this, back in '08 and gave us something like 30-45 days notice to use a week during Q4 (May-July) and people had already pre-paid for fall trips and their kids were in year-round schools and didn't have any weeks in the summer where all their kids were tracked out at the same time really caused a lot of people difficulties. Now we all know ahead of time that we're taking Christmas Eve to New Year's off every year, with the potential for a few extra days. Besides, we've received a lot more than 3 "Days for Me" this year that didn't use any PTO. I'd rather have a nice big contiguous block of days off for a real vacation than a bunch of 3-day weekends that I can't really make use of wasting my PTO.
Be thankful you have PTO. All the red-badges are being furloughed for 3 additional days with no pay. Just think how they feel about this.
Unethical sc-m
Mandatory vacation. Nice oxymoron. What if you don't take it?
What part of "mandatory" don't you understand? You don't have a choice, at least if you're in the US or Canada where the labor laws don't prevent companies from doing this.
You can work if you want to, but you won't get paid for it because you were told to take the day off.
Used to, they told everyone to enter their required PTO by a certain date, ran reports of who hadn't and told VP's who told Director's who told Managers who told employees to get it done or face disciplinary action. Wash, rinse and repeat for 2 or 3 deadlines.
Now they have the ability that they apparently didn't before to enter it for you, so now you don't show up on naughty reports. And you have to request cancellation, so managers will be looking at it and denying it if you try to delete the auto-requested time off.
It does appear that they auto inserted PTO requests for the original dates a while back, and new-hires that joined after that did not have the PTO requests submitted for them. Then this past week, the expanded dates were announced and another job was run to auto insert the new dates, but it apparently didn't include the original dates, so some new-hires only have the Jan 3-5 dates submitted for them. I've heard talk about some of them saying they're going to do nothing because they were told the dates would be auto submitted and hope that they fall through the cracks and only have to use 3 day's of PTO instead of 6 while taking the time off.
Our labor is not in high demand at Cisco. If Cisco and its customers needed our skills badly, they would be begging employees to come back from holidays and get back to work immediately.
Very few people are in roles where the customer needs you immediately, and if you're on the sales side, most of the customers are enjoying their time off too.
TAC and other support roles have some people who are exempt from this mandatory PTO for the dates everyone else is using, and have to take the same # of days off sometime within the same quarter, so it's pretty much the same financially as if they took it at year-end.
Plus, this is for US and Canada only. All other countries are "highly encouraged" to take the suggested # of days off during the same quarter, but their country laws prevent Cisco from mandating it. If Customer's need Cisco that badly, they'll end up dealing w/ someone in India.
A sad relality:
Our labor is not in high demand at Cisco. If Cisco and its customers needed our skills badly, they would be begging employees to come back from holidays and get back to work immediately. Instead Cisco is telling us to take time off. Not a good sign for sure.
Mandatory vacation. Nice oxymoron. What if you don't take it?
Cisco only cares about Wall Street. No longer the darling of the Street it continues to try to get back in favor. This is all bottom line stuff at the cost to employees. Phase two is the inevitable layoff. While it was once a great place to work, it has become only OK. Advise to management: F wall Street, get back to the focus on product and let the street be a third concern after employee satisfaction. Cut the RSU leadership to employee ratio to 20/80 instead of 90/10. Actually base performance on output.
At this point, even the wokesters should be angry at the ELT. They are losing everyone.
Enter it as ETO in Workday right before. That will override the PTO. And since ETO does not accrue and they cant call you out on it (you can claim nearly any emergency).
Regretfully, intending to stay for the long-term, and then LR'd, was not a popular resume item for me. Looking back, I should have been more aggressive in the employment market and stayed for five years instead of over fifteen. Yes Cisco allowed us to raise a family, which we are very thankful for, but I should have took more advantage of pursuing opportunities more aggressively at that five year mark.
Cisco is in cost cutting mode. This is managed decline.
They seem to be doing everything they can to drive off staff.
If it's not intentional, it would indicate a level of incompetence I've never witnessed before.