Cisco is not backfilling, so I'm basically doing work for several people now. I am in a dilemma whether to stick around and just try to do what I can or to leave. Current staffing situation is not sustainable for a long period. How much longer will no backfilling be an issue here? When will Cisco finally start hiring replacements for those who leave?
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You need to take responsibility of your own time- don't wait for a manager to recognise your efforts. Tell them straight out your workload and at thre same look for opportunities to take afternoons and mornings off WHENEVER possible. Your time is your responsibility,. TAKE WHAT IS YOURS
I cannot believe you are doing work for several people?
Since I joined Cisco from another tech company (where I had been really busy like h*ll) a few years ago, I have not done anything much. As a matter of fact, I'm doing almost nothing every day, just watching streaming vid and TV. This is the first company I'm almost doing nothing but I get paid. It's a pretty easy company.
I sometimes wonder why the company hired a skilled experience professional person like me, but as long as they pay salaries to me, I'm alright.
I thought there's no one at Cisco who is busy. I think your case is exceptional.
The backfills will eventually happen. They will just be posted as India reqs. It's not uncommon that after a quarter passes post-LR, that replacement reqs turn up offshore. Not a popular thing to talk about, but this is where the replacement reqs get posted if you are not part of the leadership team in a BU and they need headcount but not cost.
Given that you're salaried, you're expected to work the hours required to perform the tasks assigned to you and your manager is expected to keep those assigned tasks at a level commensurate with a 40-hr work week. While you can be expected to work over 40 hrs, and not get overtime pay since we're exempt, you are not expected to do so week after week on a regular basis.
IF you consistently working longer than 40 hrs per week to meet the tasks assigned to you, you need to have that discussion w/ your manager. The question becomes, does his or her expectations of what can be done in 40 hours match reality. Either he or she doesn't understand the effort required by the tasks and is setting unrealistic expectations or your performance is not up to reasonable expectations. If others on your team can do those tasks in 40-hrs, and not just in a week's time because they worked 60-hrs, then you might not want to have that conversation. If you, and your teammates, routinely have to take 40+ hrs, then the manager needs to back off on the priorities and have you work on the highest priorities and communicate to his or her manager that x,y,z tasks will not get performed until additional resources are obtained.
My team is putting a lot of lower priority stuff on the back burner due to a lack of resources even though we have not had any attrition on our team. We just have a lot of new requests coming in on top of our current stuff and the priorities keep changing.
Any way, that's a long winded way of saying "act your wage" and do the work you are paid for and don't give away free labor just because you're salaried. If you're working extra hours this week, you should be finding time next week to take off to balance the work load.
I regularly have to work non-business hours to perform upgrades and/or deployments, do maintenance work, fix bugs, etc. and I will start work late the next day or take off early on Fri to balance my hrs to 45 or less.
The new CFO is not found of the old LR process. The new strategy seems is to shed headcount via attrition. Time will tell whether this is a smart strategy or not.
Have you tried Click 2 Backfill?