Old friends and colleagues going back years act like I never existed.
When they face their own layoff (and they will if they stay at Cisco), I won't be there for them.
What a lousy corporate culture.
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It's sad to see the responses like "I'm only here to make money". That's what's wrong with today's work culture. You spend a huge amount of your life working, so it's only natural to form friendships at work. Most of my longtime friends are from work (but not Cisco....prior to my Cisco career).
I have one Cisco friend that routinely checks on me (and I do the same to him). The rest of my "so called" friends at Cisco never bother to check on me, even though I worked with them for a long time. Cisco's layoff culture creates a "CYA" mentality, which means once you get the LR "stamp" on your head, most folks just give you lip service and nothing else. Sad. Myself...I make an effort to help any of my former coworkers in their job search.....recommendations, contacts, resume reviews, etc.
Why do you think they ship the survivors to Cisco IMPACT right after the layoff ?
To get them drunk, happy, revectored ... and help you forget who's gone ...
who are you?
It may be the most disappointing part of the process; people I’ve worked with closely, that I throughly were my friends (at least “work friends”) suddenly treat me like whatever I did to get laid off is contagious. I’ve always thought it took a low-level form of courage to simply say, “hey, sorry to see you go, wish you all the best”. It’s not that difficult yet I’ve learned most people are gutless
maybe you just choose the wrong people to go along before?
I have come across coworkers who were helpful by referring me to other companies. Our VP had a final get together after our group got affected and he was also helpful by letting us know about job opportunities at other companies.
Not everyone is friendly during a layoff. It all depends upon their personality and compassion.
Nepotism and unfair reviews are present in every company.
Yes it is good to be cordial and professional, but work requirements and role responsibilities can change easily, so someone you once worked with and had good rapport; may someday have to change their demeanor towards you, for example if there is a restructuring or downsizing.
Why would a restructuring or downsizing require someone to have to change their demeanor towards you? If you're being cordial and professional, then that attitude should not change. And being sympathetic, even if it's only superficially, doesn't hurt you and makes people feel better.
Karma is a b1tch, and if you ghost people when they're facing a lay-off, odds are you'll receive the same treatment when it's your turn. And, in a role like a project manager, where companies only need a handful of them to work with dozens of developers, it's very likely that you'll end up working at another company down the line where either you join where someone you worked with before is already there, or someone you worked with will interview and join after you're there. And, as a recent post mentioned, depending on how you treated people, they can either recommend you or they can campaign against you, or you them.
Close knit teams that will pick up slack for you when you have family emergencies, socialize occasionally outside of work (hopefully on the company's dime), etc. are much more fun to work on than teams that wouldn't care or notice if you suddenly dropped dead unless it meant that they had to pick up your workload.
Work is not about making friends. Working relationships ideally can be friendly, but never expect the outcome to result in friendship long term. The people you work with now, will for the most part have no bearing on your career path overall years from now. Yes it is good to be cordial and professional, but work requirements and role responsibilities can change easily, so someone you once worked with and had good rapport; may someday have to change their demeanor towards you, for example if there is a restructuring or downsizing.
yes, the culture is "corporate" (and it sucks) and I see a bunch of lies everywhere, including coworkers, management, low motivation and etc.
Just for the context - I'm kinda new to Cisco under 3 years. All these layoffs are also taking motivation down to work here.
In this industry I only care about making money, not friends