Cisco is certainly not a company for those who cannot bear the pressure of never being able to relax knowing that cuts are a constant threat here. Is there any other tech company with a higher layoff frequency than Cisco? I doubt it.
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I’ve heard stories of lenovo and ibm layoffs. Worse than here, but Cisco is quickly catching up. Cisco is headed to the same toxic environment, lay-off and outsourcing they’ve been doing. Word of mouth and bad press goes a long way.
IBM lays off all the time. And if you think Cisco is bad, they do their layoffs stealthily and carefully avoid Warm requirements. There is no advance notice to employees unless a manager breaches protocol.
They are the worst.
People are constantly nervous is not because of the cuts but the toxic environment and culture...
Why would a toxic env & culture make you nervous? It seems like to me, it would make you want to leave, not be worried about being forced to leave.
How do you ever receive stock grants? At least in the Bay Area without stock awards... good luck affording a home or supporting a family. The merry-go-round is a life of debt and struggling to retire if you don't already own a house in the Bay Area.
I received some stock options before the '08 and '11 WFR, but they were upside down when the layoffs occurred so I couldn't buy them. Why buy $20-30 shares when they're trading at $10-15? Aside from those, I've never been given RSU's.
Yes, I've missed out on the glory days of the Cisco stock bo-m.
But, why live and work in the Bay Area for Cisco? The only people I've ever dealt with that were in SJC were C-suite execs, SVPs, VPs and possibly a few Directors. And by dealt with, I mean read their mass emails sent to the masses, watched their All-Hands on Cisco-TV, or had to come into the RTP campus whenever one of them travelled to RTP to broadcast the all-hands from RTP instead of SJC for some special event.
I've never been to CA, much less lived there.
Lenovo has just as many layoffs, especially if you're a contractor on some teams. Just read the comments on their section of this website.
Big Blue aka IBM does more frequent layoffs than Cisco.
People are constantly nervous is not because of the cuts but the toxic environment and culture...
"I don't know why people find it stressful. 2008, 2011, 2016 & 2020. That's 2 yrs of Cisco pay as severance and I rarely spend more than 45 days w/o a contract gig between Cisco roles."
How do you ever receive stock grants? At least in the Bay Area without stock awards... good luck affording a home or supporting a family. The merry-go-round is a life of debt and struggling to retire if you don't already own a house in the Bay Area.
I've been at Cisco as a contractor and employee since 2006.
I ride the merry-go-round and spend a year as a contractor, convert to an employee, spend 1-3 yrs as an employee before getting LR'd. Bank the severance pay, do a 6-mo gig as a contractor somewhere until I find a new contract role at Cisco, usually doing the same thing I did before, spend a year as a contractor and convert to an employee for another 2-4 yrs and get the LR check that I put in the bank and do it all over again.
I don't know why people find it stressful. 2008, 2011, 2016 & 2020. That's 2 yrs of Cisco pay as severance and I rarely spend more than 45 days w/o a contract gig between Cisco roles. I'll keep riding the merry-go-round. I'm usually tired of the Cisco employee cr-p of V2MOM's and talent reviews by the time they LR me anyway, then I can enjoy 18-mo of no performance reviews life as a contractor before dealing w/ office politics again.
Gotta be #1 at something.
I was there for the first ever layoff in 2001. I was part of an acquisition so we weren't touched, mostly Service Provider people because of the dotcom bubble. It was pretty tense in the office for sure.
Nope. I was at Amazon, prior to moving to Cisco UK. I have less work but Amazon does not do as frequent layoffs as Cisco. No other company I know does.
Amazon