It’s sad to see how negative some people are here…I’m not sure how some of you even have the motivation to wake up every morning. Yes, Cisco like many large tech companies today has it’s problems - favoritism, politics, poor ELT members, hemmorging pre-sales engineering talent, poor software quality, politicizing instead of innovating, etc. But it’s highly dependent on teams (I’ve been on absolutely phenomenal teams, and my team now is good but not great). At the end of the day any job is 90% what you make of it, and if you’re in sales there’s few companies outside of Cisco that give you the opportunity to earn a (very) high income, build knowledge, relationships and a brand for yourself. It’s clear that Cisco has a number of underperforming BU’s and overlapping roles and this restructuring gives us an opportunity to put investment where it’s needed. Unless you’re just a constant pessimist or not confident in your abilities, you would agree this is a good thing for Cisco long term. We’ve always been fiscally responsible and not doing this would be very unresponsible considering the macro-economic environment. And in typical Cisco fashion the company is being transparent and empathetic through the whole process. Hopefully this restructuring puts us on better footing for the future and hopefully we see one or two ELT members go with it.
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At the end of the day any job is 90% what you make of it…
At Cisco when your manager says everyone has to fix bugs forever and they don’t want you doing anything else you can’t make anything of it. It’s why 100% of the PhDs my teams hired were gone in well under a year, and rightly so.
Hopefully this restructuring puts us on better footing for the future and hopefully we see > one or two ELT members go with it.
Not to discourage you, like all the other restructures happened in recent years, this one will have no effects in moving to the right directions. History will repeat itself.
We’ve always been fiscally responsible and not doing this would be very unresponsible considering the macro-economic environment.
OP, how fiscally responsible was it to buy Flip and then just shut it down instead of selling it off? That was a $590M acquisition that just got flushed down the toilet. What about Scientific Atlanta? Bought it for $6.9B and sold it for $600M! That's really fiscally responsible. Just a $6.3B loss.
If we're so fiscally responsible, why can't we make Webex more competitive w/ Zoom? Internal users have been asking for the same UI changes to make it more user-friendly for yrs and they're ignored, and we hardly advertise Webex such that Zoom is synonymous with video conferencing, it's become the Xerox of copiers. To Google something is to search for it. To Xerox something, is to make a copy of it. Kleenex means tissue paper. Photoshop means to modify a photo. What has Cisco done or made that has become synonymous with our products?
Many of our LR's in the past have been "across the board" cost-cutting exercises instead of fiscally responsible "limited restructuring". Even when we acquire companies and their technologies, our LR's to bring the head count back down don't target the duplicated jobs. They target older, more expensive workers and just a few younger workers to offset the numbers just enough to avoid lawsuits. I've noticed that Cisco only provides impacted workers over the age of 40 the "Appendix A" that lists the ages and pay grades of workers in their BU and not across the entire company. They can hide the real number of older workers let go by splitting them up by BU so it doesn't look like that many in total. Change my mind. This is either the first or second time Cisco has ever let people go based on not needing their roles instead of cutting costs.
Named one "High performance BU" please...
OP is a HR mole. Up yours!
Imagine working for a company like Cisco which is fantastic to work for relative to others in the market and hating it so bad. Do you really think the grass is greener anywhere else? Go to Juniper or Arista and see how it is. Go to Palo Alto and work in that culture. Go to AWS and get worked to the bone for a lower salary. I understand the frusturation with the ELT and potential to lose your livelihood but the anger truly is misdirected. In fact, what did YOU ever do to try and improve the situation other than complain on thelayoff? Likely nothing I’m sure. Try and be even the slightest bit grateful you had the opportunity to work for a good company and will always be highly marketable to other companies simply because you worked here.
Post from TheLayoff.com
Ah, yes. Misspelling one word by mistake in a post I typed up in a minute must mean I’m uneducated and what’s wrong with Cisco at the core. Is that really all you could come up with? You’re embarassing and proving my point.
"unresponsible"
OP, you personify what is wrong with Cisco at the core. Lack of educated people. No such word in English as "unresponsible". That should be "irresponsible". Learn some English. My mother tongue is not English but, I took some courses. Do that. Put in the effort. Then come here and try to lecture us folks - some of whom are about to lose their livelihood - about Cisco's business policy with a patronizing tone as if we already were not aware of the company koolaid on layoffs.
This is not a nursery. Go teach someone else.
"opportunity to put investment where it’s needed"
Riiiiight. Let's give more money to failed EVPs incapable of generating growth in hot markets such as ecurity and collab. Or top up Liz' piggy bank so she can acquire even more useless startups we end up doing nothing with.
Soilent Green
OP, after reading your post it is clear that you are the kind of man who would not leave your wife even after finding out the paternity test shows your youngest son is actually not yours.
You present all these situations as if this is Cisco's first LR. That's so sweet. Never change.
We are busy watching the 2022 world cup mate!