“Submit team calibrations in Workday, remember our org will need to have ~20% in critical to retain and ~5% in needs improvement/not meeting expectations”
Anyone else bothered by the mandate to place 5% of people in not meeting expectations? Do they truly belong there, or are leaders trying to meet a quota?
This is just sh---y leadership… didn’t Chuck say we were restructuring to invest in high growth areas… Why not make the tough strategic decisions and remove parts of the Business that don't justify investing… then maybe idk, take care if those people with a larger payout.
Laying off 5% as a flatline is just lazy. Or maybe clean house up top..
Nope, not at Cisco.
Quit crying, do your job and a little more, then you shouldn't have any worries
Some teams, that have been stable for 5+ yrs have already weeded out the bottom 5%, or even the bottom 10%. Sure, there may be one or two people on the team that are not performing at the level of the top person, but their least performing person could be someone who's beating expectations and going above and beyond every day and is far better than 80% of other teams "meets expectations. Do we really want to get rid of them?
Let's say you do get rid of this person who does their job, and a little more, but it's not as much as the rest of the team, so they're the bottom 5%. Now you hire someone who doesn't work hard, doesn't do a little extra, and you have to get rid of them. And so on and so on. Now you have a sacrificial lamb to cut every LR, but once everyone knows "da new guy" is a sacrificial lamb, da new guy will figure it out and quit or just slack off and do nothing until the next LR and the team will be stuck carrying the workload that the original above average performer who had to be rated as bottom 5% was doing while da new guy doesn't do squat.
This is a stupid policy. I have no issues with ranking people because there will always be best, average, and least performing people, but only those who don't meet expectations should be ranked as needs improvement and marked for possible PIP or LR.
Then there's the teams, non-sales, where some people get to work on initiatives, special projects, new features, whatever, that get high visibility while others on the team handle cases, run-the-business, fix bugs, etc. and get very little visibility. When ranking time comes, those people who worked on the high-vis projects get the top rankings while the rest get lower rankings. But you get rid of the run-the-business folks, then you have to make your project people waste time getting replacement new hires up to speed or do the mundane work themselves and then they're not available for that high-vis work.
And, the reality is, that ranking are about visibility, internal politics, and costs. You can have a high performing person who goes way above and beyond, but if they have 10+ yrs of tenure, they're expensive compared to a new hire so they get cut to bring in someone with 5 less years of experience, who is younger, and hire them at a lower pay grade and save money. Or hire two people 2 pay grades lower to get twice the level of basic work done and hope you still have someone on the team with enough corporate history to know how things work, how systems/applications/tools were upgraded last time, and what all the dependencies are. So much stuff gets overlooked. Sure, the guy who set it up or ran the upgrade process may have documented it, but does everyone else know WHERE that documentation is? Did that person who wrote the documentation document everything or assume some key facts were just known by everyone on the team, and once they're gone and their backups have to do their work, will they remember that "obvious" thing that wasn't documented until after it bit them in the a-s?
We only have an interim leader in CS&A. Fully expect the cuts to be for everyone except for the CSS community. The rest of the teams are expendable per the latest strategy session. Hold on to your hats, this is going to be a wild ride!
Bottom line:
Keep 20%
Fire 5%
And the middle 75% for wiggle room, cut as needed.
Let the hunger games begin. Never sell yourself short!!
Rankings are 100% real.
It is used to create the lists for LR’s.
Folks, it is really that simple…you can work yourself up into a frothy frenzy all you want, but that is the cold hard truth.
I mean, this isn't anything new. Ranking has always happened, formally and informally at Cisco. Sure, maybe giving a number for the bottom is new but its always been understood be ready to make cuts at a moments notice.
Cisco is a toxic work place. There's nothing easy about any of this. If it bothers you and you only have less than 8 years under your belt, maybe consider other opportunities. Cisco is not worth the mind f-ck. If you're 10+ years, stay put. Play the game. It's lucrative to stay and get the pay out.
Cisco is a giant biohazard with psychopaths at the top running the show, Don't let it get to you. Prioritize you. Take care of you and plan your next step. It will all work out fine.
It's been like that since day dot. 5% must be rated below expectations at a director level. No exceptions. Hard horse trading between managers until the numbets match. Just live with that.
Every manager (and the team) knows, if they had to rehire their existing team MINUS 1 person, who that 1 person is. Start there. Do it twice a year.
Not a mandate but they sure did get uppity about having more than 20% like you can really mark 3.5 people critical to retain. They have asked why there were not people meeting expectations - like you probably SHOULD have someone there. The message wasn't "you will have someone there". My issue us that if you have someone that is on the fringe and will get a PIP or coaching next that they expect them on the "not meeting requirements" today. Why would you force a fail rating when you want to try everything else first? May as well put someone on a plan when you hire them then. What this says is be prepared for binary decision making on everything, no desire to have any decent human management or compassion in there, nor context. The human network company is not going to be remotely close to human anything in the next 2 years. People will truly be numbers here - added, subtracted, and multiplied at will.
Time to cut the fat.
I wasn't asked to fill in anything in Workday. Is this for managers only?
No, you need to rate yourself for needs improvement / not meeting expectations / meeting expectations. Check one more time.
Not true. We went through the calibration exercise across my VP’s space this week and our number was closer to 1%. Each had a good staff level discussion to assure alignment with the assessment.
Cisco does not layoff bottom 5%. Cisco lays of top performers who tell the truth and telling the truth is a threat to the existence of the incompetent leaders and directors who know nothing but politics. It is very sad how Cisco does not recognize talent. Only recognizes politics.
So will those 5% will be put in PIP
Every level will be affected this time. It will be a blood bath from what I am hearing.
There's always a bottom 5-10% regardless of anything. Otherwise, there would be no reason for merit considerations or anything. Flat pay rate for everyone, same raises, etc. You could have a team of PEs and one is going to be at the bottom 10% even though compared to a GR8 they are crushing it. It's not as easy making these calls as the whiners think, Quit crying, do your job and a little more, then you shouldn't have any worries and this site goes away.
Means we can cut 80% .
Bring on the layoffs!
Wrong information there is no mandate.
Some insights here on need to define ~5% that need improvement but has anyone thought through how a Manager will evaluate and assess in a remote work situations? Assessment is extremely subjective based on number of factors including personal biases. Race plays a big factor too.
Easy way to clean is just fire multiple layers of Managers, Directors and VPs. There is absolutely no reason to have redundancy in ranks with ZERO customer interactions.
I wasn't asked to fill in anything in Workday. Is this for managers only?
Arrogant entitled stage hogs will continue thriving at CSCO.
Wonder how many VPs will be marked yes for NI?
Hard to Justify PA/PE/SIA
Jack Welch's bell curve strategy (his was 20-70-10) only works when you have a long tenured workforce. https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/jack-welch-create-candor-workplace
Ranking is all a popularity contest and makes no sense when the "rankers" have no tenure or experience in the same industry.
How many time will Cisco replace leadership with all noobs and then re-use old strategies that don't make sense? Would be fun to track the cycles of how many times each strategy comes in and out of vogue.
Employee Ratings (with the associate brackets/grades of "Expectations") are based upon the Bell curve where each end of the curve ("Far Exceeds" as the best and "Does Not Meet" whatever the worst) is usually 2-5%
That is the general guideline not the absolute but that's why convos and transparency with your Manager peers and the overall Group Manager/Leader (whatever their title is) to discuss are critical to the "grading" or rating process
I do think 2-5% of any given team at any juncture could be rated as "Needs Improvement" - I was a senior level leader for 8 years
This is just getting started at Cisco and is moving along side with USA elections. The heat is only going to increase and people movement will accelerate. That is the price you pay working at Cisco people!
I’ve heard of some really good people who have been placed in the not meeting expectations.