Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

...is there an ER at the end of this year?

Asked and answered a bazillion times.

Heck no. If you are considering or have accepted a new role don’t say anything to anyone and wait until the LR hits. If your not a name on the list, put in your two weeks notice. Make them hurt for what they do to us.

We are humans, they are the headless beast that manipulates us like we are a one or zero.

I'm wondering, if after this "LR", with all the latest changes, is there an ER at the end of this year? With forcing PTO in July, changes in the latest RSU vesting, it sure feels like they're looking to get rid of more of the "older" employees. Good for those ready, that's for sure.

Cisco needs to use more metrics than just how expensive an employee is before deciding to cut them and hire someone cheaper.

Cisco needs to use effective metrics. Since you mentioned backed systems I'm guessing you have something to do with IT, and they were as messed up as software development. The metric for MTTR was held at a few minutes by closing cases as soon as they came in. Followup was pointless. Sometimes asking to fix a minor problem on Cisco gear (so you're not drawing on decades of experience with some rare tool chain) still wasn't done more than a year after the first case was filed.

When the Sun workstations went away and we were dependent on portable computers, when we needed a replacement we had to wait a week for a replacement because the $1000 spare came out of the IT budget and the $5000 for the lost engineering week came out of someone else's budget. When they moved from SAN to NAS causing the multi-hour build time to triple IT got a pat on the head for saving a small amount of money and engineering took a beating. Since no one in either the IT or software management chains knew what the acronym ROI meant nothing got fixed.

I would stipulate that getting rid of perfectly good employees who've been at Cisco for years and know how to get things done, what teams to contact for whatever issue comes along, knows what backend systems do tasks that just seem to magically get done, etc. are not good targets for an LR just because they are expensive and you can hire 2 younger people for less than 1/3rd more money because it will take those 2 people forever to get up to the same speed that the older person was & gain all the institutional knowledge.

Nothing should be done by magic, and one of all the basics of communication not practiced at a company whose business is communication is writing. If things are documented well it may still take time to replace people but far less than it currently does. Having two cheap people also doubles the bus factor.

I've asked here many times without response, how many would be willing to take a salary equivalent to a kid three years out of school for the rest of their career to do work at that level? Cisco has Engineer 4s in their 60s which is the equivalent to Senior Engineer at many other companies, and aggressive kids can legitimately get that title at an aggressive company in three years, and they'll ultimately keep moving up the chain leaving far older and often better paid people behind.

It's time Cisco adds a "what is the legal purpose of a publicly traded company" question to its interview list because the correct answer is to work exclusively in the interest of the shareholders, not be your doting grandma. It's far past time to start adulting.

Is it in the interest of the shareholders to run the company into the ground? No. Taking short-term measures that are long-term detriments is not in the best interest of the shareholders.

For example, in an effort to cut employee costs, a financial company I worked for in the early '00's decided to "offshore" development work overseas. They kept the QA work in-house, so they had people opening bugs and changes requests that were sent offshore, and then the offshore team would have questions about the requirements and send questions back, then the US team would update the requests to clarify them and then the offshore would finally get started on the work 48-72 hrs after the request was created. They'd do the work for a couple of days, send it back, and the QA team would review and/or test it and then have to send it back because it was not correct, or caused additional issues. Then they'd back-and-forth the details again before it would get worked on again, then tested again, and if lucky, would be correct.

The time spent waiting on the "other" team to come to work to read messages and reply before work could be done resulted in a minimum of 48 hrs of delay if the change request was perfectly worded and caused no questions, the work was performed 100% correctly, and it passed the QA tests. Every time a question had to make the round trip, it caused a 24 hr delay in delivery.

The costs to productivity, and delays getting changes to the customers while their competitors were quicker to deliver cost them 3x-4x the labor cost savings. Losing customers to their competitors who delivered faster was even more expensive.

I would stipulate that getting rid of perfectly good employees who've been at Cisco for years and know how to get things done, what teams to contact for whatever issue comes along, knows what backend systems do tasks that just seem to magically get done, etc. are not good targets for an LR just because they are expensive and you can hire 2 younger people for less than 1/3rd more money because it will take those 2 people forever to get up to the same speed that the older person was & gain all the institutional knowledge.

I'm not saying every old guy should be kept, but there are people who should be kept that are being cut solely on their cost to the company. Likewise, there's a lot of young people who can't cut it either who need to be cut. And many younger people come in, pick up a skill and bail, or find out that they don't like how Cisco operates or don't want to work on a legacy product and bail. Meaning that they have to be replaced again, and the loss of productivity while Cisco looks for their replacement, that replacement gets up to speed, etc. all could have been avoided by keeping the people who've been around for a long time and wouldn't have left if they weren't let go.

If cutting employee costs were the magic bullet to make the shareholders rich, then employers wouldn't be paying more than minimum wage for all jobs. Cisco needs to use more metrics than just how expensive an employee is before deciding to cut them and hire someone cheaper.

In the words of Pinhead the cenobite: " No tears..It's a waste of good suffering!"

Many levels of management, HR and legal are involved to insure Cisco isn't letting go of people they want to keep, and weepy managers who can't do the job go on the list as well. It would be stupid to pay to get rid of bodies that will go away for free.

As an (originally) acquisition and now fully Cisco employee who has survived multiple rounds of LR, this has not been my experience. Our first round of LR at our subsidiary was done wi--y-nilly, perhaps there was VP-level involvement but nothing at director or below (so nobody with actual direct knowledge of who had which skills that we needed to keep). We lost ~30% that round. Entire teams were decimated including many critical roles, including critical roles that were subject matter experts in the ongoing business process and system integration into Cisco proper. SO MUCH momentum was lost for our BU's efforts to fully onboard into Cisco. It was universally regarded as having been poorly done.

Other LRs directors were told to rank lists and provide candidates. So it goes both ways I think. Cisco are entirely capable of aiming a fully loaded automatic we-pon directly at their foot and emptying the magazine when it comes to laying off the wrong people. Other times they're more deliberate.

You volunteer by simply telling your manager that if you are chosen, you will be fine and the manager need not feel like your causing a terrible life event.

Many levels of management, HR and legal are involved to insure Cisco isn't letting go of people they want to keep, and weepy managers who can't do the job go on the list as well. It would be stupid to pay to get rid of bodies that will go away for free.

It's time Cisco adds a "what is the legal purpose of a publicly traded company" question to its interview list because the correct answer is to work exclusively in the interest of the shareholders, not be your doting grandma. It's far past time to start adulting.

"customers keep taking longer and longer to deploy all our great products we sold them in past" is a bull-sh^t execuse on Cisco is degrading. What about telling the truth: customers are looking and buying somewhere else instead of buying into Cisco.

You volunteer by simply telling your manager that if you are chosen, you will be fine and the manager need not feel like your causing a terrible life event. Long time Cisco here who had to LR many - if we need you due to specialized expertise then no you will not be LR'd regardless of saying this. If there is a strong team - it actually is a relief knowing I am not hurting someone by selecting their name. While many on this board think management is evil - it really hurts people to think the employees are going to experience a terrible situation - but its just the directionless leadership means we have to keep downsizing as customers keep taking longer and longer to deploy all our great products we sold them in past.....

I and many others have tried over the years at Cisco and I've known many at other companies who have tried the same, and none of us were successful.

It turns out companies generally try not to pay extra to get rid of people they actually want to keep, and they also budget a certain amount of attrition in the mix knowing that some are on their way out regardless of getting a package.

It must have a funny result.

Noble thought
Hope you are doing it
Let’s start with you and we will follow you

OP, hopefully you're on the list.

A "limited restructuring" is the reduction of unnecessary roles. Taking volunteers may eliminate necessary roles which is counter productive.

I just hope that they also target people who lack the skills to do the role that they are in, and the ability to communicate clearly and understand what you are being told is key to all roles, so you clearly lack those skills.

You can’t volunteer.

What is included in the package this round?

How do we volunteer?