I am from people & community and doing this out of good faith.
It's well known that Cisco has to get rid of thousands of employees in Jan 2024 because they missed analyst expectations.
What's unethical is they're forcing employees on PIP. Why?
Because they would pay less severance and save lots of $!
So? Document what you do and discuss with your lawyer constructive dismissal case so that you are ready when your manager discuss your performance.
20 replies (most recent on top)
A Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) is also known as managing someone out. This is used to give a low performer a chance to improve over time or be faced with being involuntary terminated. It is not a trivial process and required extensive coaching and documentation by management.
A LR is legally eliminating a job role. The difference is the person (PIP) against the role. It would literally be an unmanageable burden and unnecessary to use the PIP process when an LR applies broadly to the company by eliminating the role without the administrative overhead.
Anyone got assigned 1:1 meetings this week? Just wondering when is the layoff or pip happening?
PIPs can happen anytime. A performance review can happen anytime. I managed a guy who was clearly resting and vesting. At the start Cisco offered a 3 month severance package + PTO banked (nothing extra for time of service or accelerated stock vesting) to leave on his own. If the low performer didn’t take it, the manager and employee put together the 90 day goal plan. If the employee doesn’t hit the goals, they are exited from the business with nothing. A HR person works very closely with the manager every step of the way to ensure Cisco is protected. This was 6 years ago in a non sales position….not sure it’s the same anymore. Right now, managers use LRs to get low performers out, there has been talk for a long time of holding managers accountable to manage low performers out. Sounds like that time is coming.
The phat severance packages will come to end eventually.
Thank you very much for sharing this inside information! God bless you!
In Sales, Talent Assessments are due for all employees in January. I don't know how these differ from the annual performance reviews the company stopped doing years ago.
There has been a leadership top down push to “own your career” with a focus on specific IDP goals.
I don't recall the names of the many times this was tried but the end result on the software side was you'd write your goals based on the projects you were supposed to work on and at the end of the year had to explain how those projects never got started because everyone was reassigned for the entire year because another group "just needed help getting over the hump" and tried to make the bug fixes you made in code you didn't write look important. Management with a clue would have fired the people who spent months writing code so bad that it took other groups (plural) years to fix. Cisco has burned a lot of talent to the ground.
There has been a leadership top down push to “own your career” with a focus on specific IDP goals. Purely speculation - but could these IDP goals will be used as a precursor to PIP people?
Indeed, they are using these goals to eventually PIP people and reduce cost with minimal severance pay
Nearly all US employees are employed at-will. Cisco can terminate these employees at any time for any reason. The company does not need to PIP them or offer any severance package. The severance package is convenient for the company because it satisfies WARN notification requirements and reduces likelihood of litigation with impacted employees.
What do you mean by “forcing PIPs”?
There has been a leadership top down push to “own your career” with a focus on specific IDP goals. Purely speculation - but could these IDP goals will be used as a precursor to PIP people?
If they PIP'd everyone, it would be scorched Earth. A lot of ex Cisco will end up at customers - recommending competitors. At least a decent severance buys goodwill. I know several people LR'd with severance, and they don't have any beef with Cisco in their travels.
why cisco will force PIP on employees? Cisco is broke has no money to pay severance package.
I've only seen one employee PIPd at Cisco.
Just place an employee on projects without funding in the future. The employee is oblivious to what is going on, and they are LRd without documentation or conflict.
I am from people & community and doing this out of good faith. ... What's unethical is they're forcing employees on PIP. Why? Because they would pay less severance and save lots of $!
Where is the evidence that they are forcing employees on PIP? You have to do a lot more work to document the performance for a year before letting someone go via a PIP. First you have to give them a bad review, which only comes at mid year or end of year. Then after no improvement by the next review, you can start the PIP and you have to start documenting their new goals, have weekly 1:1's to discuss whether or not they're achieving said goals and how they can improve their performance, etc. The goals have to be realistic, achievable, and within their job description. That's a lot of managerial overhead, legal risk, and cost of keeping the employees around until you can PIP them compared to simply LR'ing them and giving them a severance package that keeps them from taking legal actions against Cisco.
Pip is is performance improvement plan and in reality it's a way to fire low performer employees, not to improve their performance. It's sad and ugly that Cisco use PIP instead of lay off!
Cisco doesn't use PIPs instead of lay offs. They may still use the PIP process, but it takes a really bad employee for them to do so. The LR process is much more streamlined and easier, not to mention quicker to get rid of an employee.
I recall two people that were placed on PIP back in 2010. They went from great performance reviews for year-end in the middle of 2009, then received a mediocre mid-year review in Jan 2010. At the year-end review in July 2010, they were formally placed on PIP. The manager had a hard time finding realistic, achievable goals within their job description, yet were harder and harder so that he could document the failures. Then in the spring of 2011, the first early retirement was announced, and based on the numbers of people taking it, Cisco would announce the number of people who would be let go in the following "workforce reduction" or WFR. This was the precursor to what are now called Limited Restructuring measures or LR's. Once the WFR was announced, suddenly the manager of these two people quit coming up with stupid goals that were further and further out of their job descriptions and started canceling their weekly 1:1's because he was late getting back from lunch or had a sudden meeting or some other BS excuse. It was no surprise to anyone when the notifications went out for the impacted WFR employees that both of them were on it. The only surprise was that it didn't leak that they were on the list as the manager was working with various admins on how to revoke their accesses the morning of their being informed of their termination without them knowing about it.
@ulk+1qgxyVoR, I don't know how a manager asked for it, but he did. S/he was moved from being a people manager to managing contracts/projects and then LR'd a year later. It was no surprise that s/he was LR'd at the next LR. The rumor around the office was that they wanted to keep her/him around for a little while to ensure that everything was moved over to the other manager who absorbed her/his responsibilities before being LR'd.
How do you ask for a layoff at Cisco if you’re needing it for various personal reasons?
Many of us have tried, and to date I've never met anyone who has succeeded. Good luck!
How do you ask for a layoff at Cisco if you’re needing it for various personal reasons?
@vqd+1qgxyVoR
Why do you think employees on H1B will not be laid off?
ELT needs PIP for 2024
Layoffs happening every week inside Cisco, get used to it.
If you’re brown or don’t speak English well, or on H1B, you have a better chance not getting layoff at Cisco.
If you’re a light skinned and lives within continental United States you’ll be the primary target for LR.
Pip is is performance improvement plan and in reality it's a way to fire low performer employees, not to improve their performance. It's sad and ugly that Cisco use PIP instead of lay off!