Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

Why do you care? Fill the forms honestly!
If someone has an issue with what you wrote, it's their problem! They won't fire you, and if so, their lost your gain....

The recent CX surveys attach your id to your response. If you check the source of the survey, your ID is in a hidden field. I was told it was to ensure there was one response per person. It in borderline unethical

I set up surveys a few years back. The policies were very strict — all surveys were required to be anonymous. The process to NOT have them anonymous was very cumbersome. The surveys were required to say they are anonymous.
Well, at some point they changed this. The surveys now say they they are NOT anonymous, but “we won’t share your responses except in aggregated form”. I’ve still written fairly robust responses and not heard any blowback. But I no longer trust that under some (undefined) circumstances, they will break that anonymity. I also assume that if one challenges some aspect of woke, then as every day goes past, there in an increasing probability you will be doxxed and canceled. So be very careful if you challenge the theology.
This is like the PCs themselves. IT introduced Code42 with the public position that it was required to do backups. And then, they changed the logon screen to indicate they were going to monitor everything “for policy compliance”.
Well, it turns out that Code42 is used for other goals such as scanning your disk for protecting IP and other “compliance reasons”. So, it keeps track of all your file movements and has the ability to index your content for remote searches of your laptop data. It’s not clear this feature is being used, but even if it’s not, don’t presume they will tell us if the policy changes.
Worryingly, a bunch of companies (including cloud services like Dropbox) have signed into an “initiative” from SPLC and the ADL to build a database of “hateful content” that the co-signers will use to scan for. I expect Code42 will also sign up at some point if they haven’t already. The definition of “hate” is staggeringly broad, including anything that causes offense to anybody in a protected class. So be careful of that saved podcast or news article.
Basically, zero trust is your friend.

Surveys asking for your opinion and feedback on working conditions, diversity, and checking on how "happy" you are, are simply diversions so that most don't truly realize the upper tiers get a much bigger level of financial rewards.

Why doesn't the company release statistics on average stock option and bonus payments, per year and per grade; then release a survey asking everyone how to they feel about their option and bonus payment levels versus executive levels?

Naw, that would be too much reality for the average salaries workers to absorb.

Surveys are distractions, enabling your good hard work rewards to go into an executive's pocket; so that you can feel like you are part of the team.

Guess what, you are, until they don't need you, you make "too much", or have been here "too long".

Ask the people who got fired for saying "all lives matter" about anonymous input. Play woke or get broke. Or, find another company to work for.

Not sure whether surveys are anonymous or not, but my point is whatsoever we write, culture, organization, politics, people, managers, level of employees skills/experience, and type of people HR/hiring managers hire, will NEVER ever change.

So simply put, whatsoever we write, it's just waste of time.

Zero trust is your friend.

To the OP, the surveys are not truly anonymous. Period. My management will say that there wasn't enough participation from their team on surveys and that X number out of Y team members responded, or that only 20% responded. How do they know those numbers if they're not anonymous? They only aggregate the data to make the responses anonymous so that managers can't take retribution against specific employees, but if any responses are bad enough, it might get flagged for an HR review and whatever consequences HR decides upon.

To arn+1ggKwdye:

I have also heard from some folks who work in Cisco IT that Cisco has one of the largest Splunk instances in existence because they document every keystroke on all their corporate-issued PCs. So, in theory, Cisco could find out who wrote this reply, or any reply on this board, if you posted it from a Cisco-issued PC.

Yes, our Splunk investment is huge, but Splunk doesn't record keystrokes. It indexes logs that are forwarded to the Indexer. The Splunk Forwarder isn't installed on PCs or Macs. IT does capture some logs forwarded from laptops as part of their "health check", but it's not keystroke logging. People who email internal announcements verbatim to news sites tend to get caught. Another thing logged is attaching removable media and copying files to it. Most of the PC/Mac monitoring is about catching people copying Intellectual Property/Source Code and copying it to removable media, or copying stuff they shouldn't need to their laptop where it's backed up to a home NAS.

If Cisco really gave a cr-p what people posted here from their work laptops, there'd have been a lot of people let go between mid-2020 to late-2021 based on the hate I see here.

If they're not taking actions against those to make a$$ho-e comments in the Cisco Check-In's with their name attached to it, do you really think they're going to do something to people posting anonymously on here?

I have been told by Cisco leaders before that no survey at Cisco is anonymous. I believe it too. Think about it. What if somebody says something threatening in the survey? They have to have a back-door way of finding out who wrote it.

I have also heard from some folks who work in Cisco IT that Cisco has one of the largest Splunk instances in existence because they document every keystroke on all their corporate-issued PCs. So, in theory, Cisco could find out who wrote this reply, or any reply on this board, if you posted it from a Cisco-issued PC.

I always write exactly what I think in those surveys. Nothing ever happend, either good or bad. I am more concerned about the time I am spending on "internal trainings" on processes and all-hands. Every Management level seems to hold an all-hands meeting every couple of weeks. With me beeing not high in the food chain , there are a lot of meetings...