Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

It’s funny I can’t imagine Chuck going to another company. But they’re not going to keep him for another twenty years I guess.

Such a long long long tenure I cannot believe. How could anyone in the right mind stay at the same company for more than 20 years? It means those people have no motivation.

Other people would think of you that whatever you do is already so outdated and useless in the job market.

That should depend. If all you do is look at a resume and say "Oops, they've been there for 20 yrs, they're obsolete." you're doing yourself and your company a disservice. It's all about career progression.

Look at Chuck Robbins. You can say he's a great CEO or a terrible CEO because that's your opinion. But being a CEO & having executive leadership experience is hardly outdated and useless in the job market. He's going to leave Cisco someday and become the CEO at some other large company and he's making millions more $'s than you are. I'd say he's a damn good CEO because he sold someone a bill of goods on his skills and got the job and he'll move to the next company who will think he's what they need. Doesn't matter if he ran Cisco into the grave under his tenure, he'll spin it such that he continues to make the big bucks. Every CEO, even the one's voted out, find some company desperate enough to hire them.

I've seen some good managers who started in TAC and then moved to other roles & then became managers, and then manager's managers. Managing skills don't get out of date. If you hire good people, you listen to their inputs on technical issues and make decisions. You don't have to have the technical skills to know if they're right or wrong any more, just enough technical skills to follow why they say one decision is better than the other.

Look at the military. Company grade officers are the one's with technical skills. Then they promote to field grade officers and stop worrying about staying technical and become more managerial. Then they make it to flag rank, where everything is political and no longer managerial.

Unless someone stays in individual contributor roles for 20 yrs, then yes, they're obsolete OR just absolutely hate managing. And may be obsolete.

Pretty common to dislike your first job out of college.

Only if the company you work for is completely incompetent. Almost every PhD we hired quit in 6-12 months as the “work” was clearly career death.

Frankly, your generation lacks a solid work ethic which makes gratitude for steady employment very scarce.

As an old person I can say I worked with many people at Cisco who would trumpet their great work ethic but 70 hours a week of breaking code requiring many times as much money to be spent trying to fix the resulting damage isn’t a win and most don’t have enough working IQ points to understand this. Expecting gratitude from people who are fixing the cr-p the old people broke when there are plenty of good jobs elsewhere where you can create new value and new skills further speaks to the incompetence at Cisco.

Applicants take note.

Pretty common to dislike your first job out of college. Different structure, demands, expectations. Even working remotely you probably have standards you didn’t need to meet until now. Frankly, your generation lacks a solid work ethic which makes gratitude for steady employment very scarce. A lot of people early in their careers seem to expect coddling and extra attention and praise; even for doing the bare minimum. Some would say move on to a new company or role within Cisco but I recommend sticking it out for at least 2 years so you don’t look like a flake

"its backstabbing and finger pointing, slow to no product delivery , terrible delivery engineers and scared Sales managers, not the Cisco I used to love"

its been like this since 2008

I dread getting up every day , its backstabbing and finger pointing, slow to no product delivery , terrible delivery engineers and scared Sales managers, not the Cisco I used to love , hope someone will hire me and save my soul.

"I've worked for Cisco for 23 years, most of which I have loved. "

Such a long long long tenure I cannot believe. How could anyone in the right mind stay at the same company for more than 20 years? It means those people have no motivation.

Other people would think of you that whatever you do is already so outdated and useless in the job market.

I've worked for Cisco for 23 years, most of which I have loved. But I've hated my job for the past year. It largely depends on the team you're in and your management. As a recent grad and early in career, my suggestion is to pursue the training you want (I don't think Cisco will deny you that but you have to take the initiative), get some experience under your belt and then find something/somewhere else that will make you happy. Life is too short to be unhappy and hate your job. Your youth is an asset and an advantage in the tech job market, whereas for us boomers our age range is not welcomed, and that's why we stay at Cisco.

As the American comedian George Carlin said, “there is a support group for that and it’s called the bar on Friday night.”

On the software side (not at all unique to Cisco) Scrum is leaving people with little more that high school homework sized tasks which have been predigested for them. It’s getting significantly harder to get in at the beginning if a truly new product and drive many generations of development which is where both higher level systems skills and business skills are acquired and applied, and because of this few companies manage the early phases of projects within larger programs to allow the larger development to proceed at a constant pace, which was supposed to be a goal of Agile.

Even at the best jobs there is a significant amount of unpleasantness that needs to occur to accomplish anything really amazing, and if the world just made everyone happy nothing amazing would ever occur.

If one hates their job, it probably means that it isn't the right job for them. You just haven't found your niche yet. Some people like Cisco's slovenly culture of not really giving a damn - because it gives them the lee-way to not put in much effort themselves. Some like the lots of vacation and good benefits. Many are just still working on their preferred way out.

But it sounds like you'd like to build something, be something, make something fun with people who care. If that is the case - I highly recommend the startup culture. If you want Beer drinking on Fridays, Nerf wars after the big product release, Friends building something cool - you probably want a job with about 5 - 150 employees.

Corporate is for people who want to come in, do a job, and leave and not think about it or care about it. For people who have outside concerns they care about more and just want a paycheck.

And as far as your watercooler chats - it's not you. It's just that most folks at Cisco want as few meetings as possible to get the job done. The business sells buggy w4ips (basically, we sell horse-drawn carriage speed-up devices).

We are a hardware routing and switching company in the age of wifi routing and switching. We missed the boat on most of the big tech movements, and many folks around think we are in managed decline. We've had layoffs every year for about a decade. The people left at Cisco are riding the down-ward wave and relaxing until the company either croaks or finds a new direction to take.

It isn't normal to hate your job. This culture is especially toxic. The ELT are completely out of touch and haven't talked to the "pleebs" in years. The ESG garbage is absolutely ridiculous and counterproductive (we are already diverse and caring, having 5 meetings on it a week is just a waste of time). The tools and software we use are outdated and dysfunctional and make our work more difficult, rather than streamline it. Our data is mostly made-up garbage. And it just isn't a fun place to work.

If you want fun, productive, or carefree - Cisco just isn't the place.

You've gotten some experience under your belt - go use it to go somewhere fun, everyone deserves to enjoy what they do :-)

you are way too young to be complaining about work at such a young age with very little work experience time wise. You will be complaining your entire work career.

imo, it appears that recent college grads got treated extremely well compared to the hard working older engineers. It is unusual that you found this site, and unhappy, while the team is decent from your description, and no mentioned of your manager.

There were multiple interns who took different jobs after interning at cisco. You can consider your first year at cisco as an intern year and move on if you are still unhappy.

Even if you stay at cisco, they will still treat you well and willing to throw away the old engineers, who had spent hard working hours, health, and family lives to build CSCO to its fame, to keep you if the quarterly numbers don't make the investors happy. That is the current norm.

About training, have you asked your manager directly about some classes or conferences that you 'd like to attend? There are also online classes such as O'reilly's classes available, you can ask your manager if you can just block out your schedule for training during those classes.

The problem is that how many companies esp big ones are not like Cisco? Even FB, GG, do you really think they are better? Cisco still has some current workers and veterans who will answer this question sincerely, this is really hard to get already.

The biggest problem with this environment is that your skills are atrophying at an alarming rate. I would encourage taking some classes outside of Cisco. It can be CISSP, AWS, Azure, or ITIL, etc.. Anything to hang your hat on during an interview. Recently, I interviewed a bunch of older Cisco people and it was alarming how little knowledge they had and how badly they performed during the interviews.

You gotta bounce around every few years or else you’ll go crazy. Don’t get caught in a “this is the rest of my life mentality.” You take a position, learn some things, meet some people, do a few interesting projects and then leave on good terms. Maybe this approach has less of the veneer of security, but it’s a lot more fun.

Go to FB, GOOG, SNAP, NTFX and you'll be in the company of fellow younglings. Cisco is for boomers.

As a fellow college hire, the most fascinating thing is to look at the divorce rate. Most Directors and above are divorced and clearly not family-oriented. The levels at Cisco that pay enough to own a home in the Bay Area and potentially retire also have the highest divorce rates. It's a morally corrupt culture.

If you want fulfillment in your job then what you need to do is start your own company and become a household name like Jobs, Musk, or Bezos. Otherwise you are a wageslave like everybody else. Strap yourself in and enjoy the ride!

Nobody cares about "career growth" or "personal fulfillment", these are all just buzzwords that marks get hoodwinked by to distract from the ugly truth: everybody is just here for money and ego. My advice is to ditch the ego, focus on the money, and have an exit plan ASAP.

You said you are a recent college grad, here's a fun exercise for you. Really pay attention to your older coworkers, especially their eyes. Look at how empty and broken down some of them are. Then realize that these people have been institutionalized for so long that the human zoo is the only life they know. If you were to release them back out into the wild they wouldn't even know what to do with themselves.

Then ask yourself if that is the future you want...

I feel the same way about working at Cisco. I’ve had so many different managers over the past couple of years, and I’m at the point where I just don’t enjoy it anymore. Team is really nice but my god it’s exhausting doing everything over video calls. I keep getting told I’m doing great and part of a critical project, but we aren’t realistically staffed to make a dent in much of anything. So I guess it’s partly my fault though since I should have found a better job sooner, but hindsight is 20/20.

Unfortunately this is the culture. You describe it well. It’s not going to change. Cisco is on a long decline trajectory and lack of revenue growth and attrition creates internal stress on the various BUs. In such environments there is no room for real personal relationships etc.

You are on your own here. If you leave no one cares. If you are laid off no one cares and you are forgotten the second you are out the door. If you stay you get a paycheck and no personal or career development. Still Cisco pay is ok and the work hours does not need to be crazy. So those are relatively positive aspects to keep in mind.

If you talk to your colleagues “off record” and they open up you will find that many feel the way you do. But they don’t have the guts to leave.