Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

I just received an offer from Cisco and reading this thread just scared the he-l out of me...

If it's any consolation worker bees and management at many big companies will make the same snap judgements, and as we're seeing the capital market wants the big players to jettison large groups of employees at the first sign of trouble so you run the risk of being tossed and shunned by many companies.

The big question (for you to answer to yourself, not us) is "what am I going to be doing at Cisco if I accept the offer and of my likely options is that the best way to advance through the next phase of my career so I'm prepared for the phases to come after that next phase?" Every large company I interviewed with gave me the "data sheet" view of new programs needing leadership to get off the ground when they also needed funding that would never materialize and once you're in the door you're stuck with trying to fix decades of legacy mistakes. Do what due diligence you can before accepting any offer from anyone.

You'll still take the offer but will regret it later.

Having Cisco on your resume is bad news.

I just received an offer from Cisco and reading this thread just scared the he-l out of me...

"But yah, that's business man."

But I see Cisco spreading their "we care" garbage all over the media?

You should see their cr-p on LinkedIn. I laugh every time I see it.

Background - I got rebalanced in late Jan, just took the early exit. I will say, along the lines of the person who mentioned Raytheon -- this is my first LR -- but the package is pretty generous, IMO. Not only was I paid salary + commission until my exit date, but I got several months of base, commission, months of COBRA, and extra kickers for leaving early.

But yes, as mentioned - the process of leaving and being abandoned (let's call it what it is) is brutal. Even the separation agreement mentions something to the effect of a paraphrase: "Thanks, but your services are no longer needed. Take a hike". It's a bit sobering when you realize you mean absolutely nothing to the company that you bled and sweat for. But yah, that's business man.

remaining Googl employees doing the right thing of demanding, protesting vs Mgmnt. Cisco no spine. All got shut silent of fear and intimidation.

Anyone who thinks that the "friends" they have at Cisco cares about them , get LR then you are a zombie no one will talk to or gives any care regarding. Its a party while you are in the main club (even better if you are in the VIP rooms) but once you get LR , you are standing outside in the cold with the other commoners. Thank god you arent some sad UK SE who hates his brownie comrades , Tut tut! Show up , do some stuff to seem busy, shut up and hope they pick your buddy , not you.

And Cisco isn't targeting the bottom 5% that it needs to get rid of.

In software that number is >50%. There is a reason most of the development dollars are wasted on bug fixing. A hint most of you won’t figure out: it isn’t the deadwood writing those bugs.

Thats so weird.. usually corporations care so deeply about people, how can this be!?!?!?

@2ekw+1lIoPRMC, go eat some cheese to go with your whine.

Sure, being LR'd sucks. And Cisco isn't targeting the bottom 5% that it needs to get rid of. But the "expensive" employees they're targeting have skills or they wouldn't be paid what they're paid, so they can land other opportunities IF they haven't been at Cisco for so long that they don't know how to interview like people who switch jobs every 2-4 yrs.

At least Cisco gives a good severance package. I'd gotten shafted by Raytheon Systems after they bought out the company I worked for when they decided to take the processes to a more tax friendly state and re-hire new workers there and only transfer managers and key people instead of the workers who actually did the work that made our site the acquired company's "center of excellence". We received months of notice, but only 2 weeks pay plus 1 week for each year of service w/ the old company if we stayed until our "product/process" was transferred to the new site and we'd trained our replacement who they were paying to come to our old site to learn "on the job" how to do the work. Most people just said F---- it and quit. It's easy to give up 4-6 weeks severance in order to sc--w over the company letting you go when you have months to find a new job. Cisco's packages are down right nice. Sort of like getting anesthetised before getting stabbed in the back. It doesn't hurt as badly.

People in Cisco need to speak up like the employees in Google are doing now. Chuck gets annoyed in the chat during check-ins because he doesn't want to hear it, but he needs to know he's living his executive dream instead of caring for his employees !

Stock price is going up, executive privilege is going up (look at their worldwide travel photo ops & stories), and morale is going down. Kramer needs to say the long range forecast is very concerning for Cisco!

Almost 1,400 employees at Google parent Alphabet Inc. have signed a petition calling for better treatment of staff during the layoff process, after the company announced it was cutting 12,000 jobs.

Cisco employees should do the same and go for 10x the signatures. Cisco employees know what Cisco did was wrong, and nobody will stand up and say so, that is so far.

Who is up to the challenge? Create a public space in Webex with a "card" to sign. Fran and Chuck need to hear what they have done to folks is just wrong! People in security were let go and that is where we want people. People lost building access. Older and more Sr people got hit hard! No early retirement was offered. HR couldn't get their act together to "transition" people fast enough, etc...

LR'd now five years ago and couldn't honestly be happier.

Was probably one of the best things in my worklife to happen to me. Seriously.

Do not waste your prime years at Cisco. The industry is going through amazing changes now, and if you love working on technology, hands on, you are missing out.

Cisco took the joy out of the TAC lifestyle; used to be a great culture of people who loved to work on the technology. Plus some great camradery. Then turned into a numbers culture, then the good old (dare I say it) boys club. Well now maybe it's the good old "people" club (awareness hat on).

Bottom line is it looks like a joke now to those out here on the outside. If you are going to wallow away your prime years in the swill, good luck.

Someone up there was honestly looking out for me when I got the LR. Woud never, ever, ever go back.

To all staying, you know how this ends; and it's not good. A bunch of enlightened "leaders" taking your options, and continuing the "causes" culture; while you get older and eventually get picked off.

Do you want this to be your legacy? FTFO!

Oh and while I got canned, my ex-manager got a bigger team and likely a raise. He's completely oblivious to the fact that everyone dislikes him, while he tries his best to ride the "I'm your manager and also your friend" line. I'll enjoy a case of schadenfreude when he gets LR'd in short time.

I submitted my early exit form this morning. It's true - before getting LRd, I was of similar mindset that those poor fools must have slacked off, pi$$ed someone off, gotten lazy, etc. However, I was a performer, my AM's always hit stretch, hit SPIFFS, etc. In fact, I was getting attaboys just the week before. It wasn't until I had to walk in the LR shoes did I realize how it's not based on merit, performance or sales -- I just happened to not be the flavor of the week.

As for work relationships, I was amazed at how quickly I was "abandoned" by people that I considered to be very close work colleagues. A few people (mainly two) have made it a point to keep in touch regularly, offer assistance in job hunting, etc. But it certainly is a case of here today, gone tomorrow. Best thing I did was join a teams room with people in the same round of LR's, so we could communicate and commiserate.

The separation process is as impersonal as you can get. No 1:1 communication from anybody, fully automated forms, cutoff from almost every app, etc. I couldn't even migrate cell phone plans without WTO assistance, as VPN access was cutoff. It's a very isolating experience.

Are some people at Cisco lazy? Absolutely. Same at every other company on the planet. For the most part, the people I met in my 10 years at Cisco were welcoming, willing to help and were fairly skilled in their job role. Is Cisco is rough and choppy waters? Does the future seem a bit uncertain? Are the sales folks headed into rougher seas? Yes, Yes and Yes. Don't listen to the trolls here that want to tag everyone from Cisco with the "loser and toxic" labels.

If you're newly laid off, hang in there friend. Better times are ahead.

I think you meant "19" j/k

I had access to everything until I left for the most part. I did have to turn in my AMEX.

I got the same "slacker" vibe from co-workers after LR. People I had worked with for a long time acted like they were ashamed to know me. Or maybe they felt sorry for me. Dunno. I am a strong person and did not shy away from these people and pretty much told them that if I can get LR'd (100% top Core or higher for the entire time I was there and nowhere near bottom 5%) then they can as well. They eventually got it too.

I was never friends with anyone there except for a handful of people. I did not go to work to make friends. Not that I wasn't kind and nice to people. I just did not want to hang out with most of them. I am just not socially awkward like 90%+ that were there.

Getting LR'd was one of the greatest things that ever happened to me. Decided to retire since I was set after 16+ years there. Mid-40s when it happened. NO REGRETS. Cisco is a business and that is how it goes.

The real Csco went to sunset 12 years ago, layoffs after layoffs after that. I got laidoff in 2016 and boy I was lucky, big change in work culture and environment.

The tribal toxic work culture at Csco, the obvious diversity issue esp in Engineering is a dead end. No future with these. Just leave if you can.

"You guys are missing the problem, we dont want to work hard, just kiss up and play the game, get pay and benefits, understand that our leadership is doing the same and has no clue how to run the business. "

100%. That's why when you're an older employee (a description that equates to probably 50% of Cisco payroll), you can just cruise along waiting for early retirement and hopefully get a decent LR payoff. It doesn't really matter to many of us if we get LR'd, in fact, that is a desirable outcome for many. Just play the game, nod along and take the money, health, pensions and benefits.

you stayed too long. if you get rif'ed from cisco you are toxic to new companies. tech companies have learned to respect those who quit cisco, not the lazy ones who just hang out

You guys are missing the problem, we dont want to work hard, just kiss up and play the game, get pay and benefits, understand that our leadership is doing the same and has no clue how to run the business. If anyone is to blame its the software developers who write horrible code and interfaces that everyone thinks is hard to navigate and use well. We know its going to end badly but still ride the train with bon bons till it crashes, then whatever....

Even with being told the contrary, I think that 99% of people believe that people who are laid off were slackers and the company is just getting rid of "dead weight". It's not until it happens to them that they understand how it works. So s-b stories about getting laid off will never land with someone who has not been laid off themselves. They just look at it as "Boy, I'm glad I'm actually good at my job unlike all of those slackers that got laid off."

My advice to you is to only share your frustrations with people who have been laid off before and understand how it works. I have been laid off twice in my career, including most recently at Cisco. Both times, I ended up landing something way more lucrative and enjoyable.

So far, your example has not been my experience. I was laid off by a toxic manager yet my team, at least those from the original team still left from the prior manager, threw me a going-away party. My badge was good for the 30-ish days between the middle of the first week of Aug '11 to the Friday of the 2nd week of Sept '11. Did they cut off all my admin access and access to a lot of tools/servers, yes. But I could use the VPN to access my email, I could look at internal job postings, access HR/benefits/ESPP, and I could print resumes, etc.

Then after my six-month black list was up, a great manager from a team I had partnered with on projects with my old team contacted me and asked if I wanted to join his team. I did, and it was great until he left Cisco and after 4 yrs, I was let go again in '16. Again, my badge worked, I still had VPN access to email & the HR/benefits site. Like the first time, my admin access was revoked. They also threw me a going-away party. Actually, my current manager at the time took me to lunch on his Cisco AmEx card after giving me the bad news that morning. And he expensed lunch for me and the guy who had to take over my work so we could have a working lunch to do a knowledge transfer. I think we spent 30 min bookmarking several wiki sites where documentation was, copying scripts from my workspace to his, etc. and then had a 2-hr lunch on Cisco's dime.

I can't really say anything about getting kicked out of WebEx rooms because it wasn't a thing back in '16 or before, and I was glad they removed me from meeting invites because who want's meeting reminder's popping up on your phone that you can't/won't go to because you're on terminal leave for that last 30 days and not expected to work.

I think my teams treated me fairly well even if Cisco was pretty callous about it. Although, on my first team, one of the new guys who joined after the toxic manager took over didn't have the decency to wait out the full 30 days before I was completely terminated and moved into my old cube/desk and tossed out the stuff I had left behind after I left the first day. I'd come in the night after getting informed of my new status and cleaned out all my "personal" stuff, but I'd left behind a lot of Cisco swag that I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep or leave behind and he'd made that decision for me by tossing it all out by the next Monday. That was cold. And neither the manager or HR gave a sh-t about him throwing away my stuff because "it appeared that I'd abandoned it" even though I still had 3 weeks left to clean out my desk.

I will say, that this toxic manager treated one guy on our team that left for a competitor as a security risk. He had us disabling his admin accounts, checking root cron jobs, etc. for any ticking time bo--s that he might have left behind to delete stuff once his accounts were terminated and taking manual backups immediately to compare to data from several weeks ago to see if any "jobs" had been modified maliciously.

This is why most people don’t like making friends at work. It’s so fake and phony. How do you go from being work friends and then someone gets laid off and they are dead to you?

Nothing to see here just more puppeteer cr-p.

I’m not excusing it but it’s because it’s awkward. And we all know we could be next.

not as bad as google or others who cut your access in middle of the night including your cell phone, every day we wake up with a job at cisco is like waking up alive, you get one more , tomorrow , who knows. But not very motivating, many have gone insane working 80 hour weeks just to be laid off for no reason , we all just look the other way when it happens and glad its not us.