Cisco HR, a.k.a., People & Communities, (all regions in US, Asia, EMEA) does anything unethical, unreasonable, even Illegal to get rid of talented, skilled employees just because HR thinks they are "unfit" for the Cisco culture. Obviously, the company is least diverse and most discriminatory against the recent corporate trends worldwide.
The HR team is the one that needs to leave!
Senior engineers report directly to a director.
This is why your Principal Engineers can't even plagiarize together a coherent white paper. Cisco is the Dilbert Principle in action.
Cisco is an American company need to behave like an entity from United States.
Why do you think Cisco does layoffs as often as quarterly since 2001?
Spot the tech writer…
What’s rubbish? A British? Canadian? Alter ego?
Cisco is an American company need to behave like an entity from United States
What’s rubbish? A British? Canadian? Alter ego?
Cisco is an American company need to behave like an entity from United States.
Lots of rubbish in this thread. My boss is a director and I’m an IC. Senior engineers report directly to a director. Distinguished even to a VP.
Get this through your head once and for all ok, your manager and ONLY your manager will always be the one who decide to put you on the layoff list.
I know that to be false, since I know who did the list. And it was way above manager level. Maybe they talk to managers, but they don’t own the lists.
@5fab+1qkX00Zz, sure, Directors are managers too, but all they manage are budgets, products, and and a couple of lower level managers who manage all the people. They are not "people" managers, otherwise they'd still have the title "Manager".
But next time you see your Director, call him or her a manager instead of Director and see where that gets you numb nuts.
How nice, your boss must be a loser, letting Indian tribes taking over. When your boss is incompetent you deserve the discrimination from Indian tribes
Indian tribes will eat up all kaka or problems and asks god please give them more kaka.
This is Fran's world/culture/company - we're all just trying to survive as Caucasian people in a company that openly discriminates against us
If one were just getting into the 2024 industry and are a skilled software developer, why would that person want to then choose to work on old Cisco products, which are increasingly irrelevant in the industry in general in comparison to new products?
Look at what is going on in the market in Frontend, API, or Cloud: If younger skilled people want to develop in the future of software; it is certainly not on products that have been around for now going on three decades.
Or they can choose to wallow at Cisco, and work on releases for old products, getting older; while the rest of the developing industry passes them by.
Sinking Ship.
The day they get rid of 95% of bangalore will be a good start.
Cisco's software quality has been garbage since long before the big build out in India. In a better world Cisco would replace anyone involved in building 40 years of technical debt but no one with actual talent would commit career su----e to join Cisco and do that kind of fixing instead of exciting new development with a real chance of professional and corporate growth.
PMOs in Mexico can't speak english properly yet they have biggest spiritually words on their PPT created for customers. how fake it could be. LMAO.
layoff 99% PMO from Mexico is a good start.
PMO in Mexico is there to making power points look pretty. No one cares about a power point, it is a waste of time.
The day they get rid of 95% of bangalore will be a good start. Worst decision to even think they have any ability to communicate and consult at a level customers expect for several hundred an hour. The PMO in Mx is even worse. Really, what mo--ns thought this up? mm and most of the elt are nothing more than DEI and checkbox hires. How about running a business, not a PAC or a place to try to shove deviancy down peoples throats on company calls....
The Cisco HR in US, UK, Ireland, Japan, Singapore are there to remove you, fire you, not to listen to you, not to help you. They do anything. Whatever it takes.
@5fab+1qkX00Zz Most directors have zero or very few reports. They manage up, not down.
to the guy that going on about directors. Hey numb nuts, directors are managers too.
Reading these replies make me have a bad flashback to my time in the Cisco Matrix.
Here is your 2024 challenge:
Posting as someone out there struggling in the Cisco stew just like I was five years ago. I was forced out, and did the above through the following three years.
Now I can truly say in mid 50s I am truly free of the work political baloney.
Yes I still work.
Yes I deal with political work fools who are somehow in positions of appointed power who cannot fight their own way out of a paper bag.
Yes I have told them (professionally) to go pound sand when they want to dump their general crud on me.
Yes, I have readily walked from jobs because I did not like the baloney.
Yes, I have my freedom, work hard, but no longer put up with stuff I really do not want to.
Life is short.
Live it.
Glad the LR finally taught me that.
but I have seen many violations of the ethics code by every ethnic group that made up my management chains.
But my comment was about the original comment about Indian managers being the one's who lay you off. If it's company wide, then why call out the Indian managers? And your reply didn't come close to addressing my question about whether or not Indian Directors, VP's, or SVP's are better because ONLY INDIAN mangers are the ones who lay you off, according to @3bpf+1qkX00Zz.
I hear about, or read many posts on this site, that complain about Indian tribalism, but I've been lucky so far in that I've never had an Indian in my management chain so I haven't seen it first hand. I can say, that one of my prior teams had a manager leave as part of an LR before the pandemic office shutdown and their team moved laterally to another manager who reported to the same Director. 9-12 months later, they all moved laterally again to a different manager, this time an Indian, and now only 3 people from that team are still with Cisco. 2 of them have moved out from under that manager, but still report to the same Director. I have no idea if my previous teammates quit for better opportunities, got LR'd the Indian manager, or transferred out of the BU and then left Cisco for whatever reason, but I can no longer find 9 other teammates in the directory any longer. Interestingly enough, there are 2 Indian managers in the US who report to the same non-Indian American Director who reports to another non-Indian American VP, so it makes it a little harder for those Indian managers to play tribal preference games, or at least I think it does.
@1ofc+1qkX00Zz Agree 100%. I am not a female but totally see your point from my experience too. I felt I was being bullied by a “manager” in the same theatre as you ( UKI) . Eventually HR came onto the scene and a “consultant “ called me who just tried to make me feel guilty about the case - I’ll never forget the bullying. The HR consultant also made it clear in the meeting invite email that I cannot have a lawyer present in the call. Total hogwash. Cisco HR are the worst unethical professionals I have ever encountered
Did their ethics suddenly change after being promoted?
I've never talked with management about their ethics but I have seen many violations of the ethics code by every ethnic group that made up my management chains. It's the corporation, not any subset of cultures that provide low risks for high rewards. While the dashboards aren't unethical they are poorly designed, inciting formally unethical as well as simple bad behavior among the worker bees. For corresponding layoffs this is like shooting fish in a barrel filled to the brim with nothing but fish.
Let me say up front this isn't proof of a company wide problem, but I believe it is enough of an issue to justify objective research to see if it is a company wide problem. After reading one of a seemingly endless stream of news articles about how racist Cisco was because it had too many white people in the US I looked up the people under my director in the US and white people made up about 3%, and the quality of his team's deliverables was below average. The obvious limitation on "objective research" is Cisco has no understanding of nor ability to collect meaningful metrics so if it is a company wide problem it becomes yet another low risk for high reward.
... Get this through your head once and for all ok, your manager and ONLY your manager will always be the one who decide to put you on the layoff list. Don't listen to anything your manager says regardless of how nice or sincere they might seem to be. This is especially true for the Indian managers as they're the one who lay you off.
Directors also make that decision, or overrule manager's decisions. In most cases, managers are asked to rank their employees by who they can afford to least lose to most lose, while HR ranks the employees by "cost", i.e. salary. Then the cost vs. benefits discussion happens.
Finance puts the pressure on the Directors or higher to cut X% or $Y out of their budgets, and managers have to look at the cost ranking & decide between letting two cheaper people go vs. one more expensive person based on needs. Directors may decide to cut projects, and manager's who're more savvy in office politics will see what's coming and shift people into (or out of) those projects getting cut so that they can cut (or keep) the people they want (or like).
This is especially true for the Indian managers as they're the one who lay you off.
If you want to play that racial card and place special blame on Indian managers, why do you not think that Indian Directors, VP's, or even SVP's don't play the same games with getting out people that aren't part of their empire-building and protect those that are? Indian leaders above the manager level were managers before promoting. Did their ethics suddenly change after being promoted? Wake up and smell the coffee. They only get more involved in that process.
let me guess, you were told that the decision came from HR that you got laid off? New flash, it has nothing to do with HR and your manager is just lying. Get this through your head once and for all ok, your manager and ONLY your manager will always be the one who decide to put you on the layoff list. Don't listen to anything your manager says regardless of how nice or sincere they might seem to be. This is especially true for the Indian managers as they're the one who lay you off.
Our manger was new to Cisco, few months. All the decision to layoff was taken by director and other managers in the team.
Senior HR guide new managers to document everything before layoff.
Cisco needs workers union like European countries to stop the abuse of US employees and outsourcing jobs in hundreds.
Your manager puts you on the list, not HR. HR supports the manager and handles the script. As simple as that.
HR and lawyers guide managers and directors in conducting layoffs.
Managers and directors pick employees and put them in layoff list. Lawyers guide them to put different age group in the layoff list along with experienced senior HR. They all work hand in hand.
A lot of them don’t deserve to be in LR list. Politics and tribalism has final say. Many times employees are assigned to projects and features which do not match their skill set. Not enough time given to master the new technologies.
Consider, for 2024, with starting to live day-to-day as if you already were LR'd.
I suspected I was on LR list about six months after a group reorg; mainly due to being shut out of larger planning meetings, and little communication with my new post-reorg manager.
I made big life changes, many personal. I started running daily, started getting up at 5am to exercise. On financial side, I paid off all debts and stopped spending money on stuff we didn't need.
That was a good four month window of living in a very minimalist mindset, and luckily my family agreed it was the thing to do. Luckily we over communicate on big life issues.
Well I was right and was LR'd. That was now five years ago. Since then, I have scaled back my salary (purposefully) to one-third of Cisco's level. Since we paid off all debt, there is no need to live high off the hog. Most of the extra Cisco cash was spent on non-essentials anyway.
I look back at how I was then, versus how I am now, and there is no amount of money that would make me go back.
It was financially rewarding, but was also a mindless political gameshow of irritating actors living in some type of Powerpoint driven alternative reality.
Glad to be one of the ones asked to leave. Life is indeed a journey. Live it truly, take a chance; do not spend 2024 in a cocoon of work-from-home Webex meetings tuning version 4 of next week's management powerpoint preso deck. Only so many good years to enjoy.
HR in the UKI org is a Rottweiler for the SSED and the VP. I am assuming that they are the same Cisco wide. Heaven help you if you go to them with any grievances against management such as harassment. I speak from experience of a female. The HR jump on you trying to bully you out. Their job is to protect the company from lawsuits and not protect the employees. Know this, accept that fact and you will be in a better mental state. Then you can make a decision whether this company is worth your time and peace of mind. All this noise about diversity is BS. The management protect each other no matter what and yes “diversity “ as an hype label. And as employees we do not have the means to fight the platoon of lawyers that Cisco has.
When Cisco was growing, HR was actually a proactive business partner with managers. They strived to build strong teams and enable teamwork within the organization they were supporting.
Once the growth stopped, HR became solely responsible for the multiple layoffs each year within the company. The real question is why anyone would want to have that kind of a job.
It's part of the (ruthless) program...
https://www.highereducationinquirer.org/2023/12/ai-robot-capitalists-will-destroy-human.html
I'm curious what percentage of people screaming this for years realize that what they're really saying is the only reason they're still at Cisco is because they are not talented or skilled. The fact that you think it's HR that actually makes the decisions supports the fact that you are clueless.
HR does nothing without a legal review. They sit right next to each other.