I want to be the one who gets laid-(off), but I'm a young female coder and I don't earn much :( It would be so nice if they could make the decision for me and give me some money for the road. It is a toxic place. It's my first job after university and I've already seen 4 rounds of lay-offs. Next time, I'm choosing a much smaller company. I'll start applying for other jobs, but I don't feel experienced enough. What do I do now?
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If you really want to get laid off, post some toxic comments on your socials like that SE was doing. Never seen anyone act that d-mb.
Fresh graduates will end up in bug fixing and supporting customers.
It's that way through and including Technical Leader 49. Principal Software Engineers can't even do that much so they plagiarize together self contradictory white papers.
It's easy to say "build skills and a professional network" but what skills do you build and how do you sell them? 40 years ago universities had far more diverse resources and you could take graduate courses in enough technologies that you could walk in to most shops and know what's going on, and with a broad experience actual get into a leadership role very quickly.
The number of technologies have exploded so you can't get a meaningful handle on every major technology in school, and with an $80 Raspberry Pi having 1,000 times the compute power of mainframes from 40 years ago everyone has access from the bare hardware up to seemingly endless languages, applications, services, etc... so anyone can experiment with most anything other than scaling.
I don't care what area you specialize in, I'd be curious how younger people have found ways to successfully distinguish themselves, either by going general or specialized?
It does not matter small or big. All depends upon the group you join and culture.
90-95% of startups shut down after few years. You can learn a lot at bigger companies with lot of money and cash. You can work in different groups at bigger company. You need to reach out and moving internally is easy.
Small companies can run out of cash…. This is not a problem at bigger tech companies. Big companies try different technologies and newer products…. Sometimes they work and other times they fail.
Try to join splunk if you are in data and cloud. Try firmware groups in cisco. Reach out !!
I would recommend looking for a startup or looking for companies on places like Indeed / Linked-in where you can see each company size before applying.
Start-ups are a blast - beer / pizza fridays, living by the seat of your pants, getting equity (stocks) in the company as part of your compensation and the opportunity to strike it rich if the start-up goes well, and nerf g-n fights in the office.
I worked for a start-up for a bit, and it was the most fun I'd had in product managment. Highly recommend.
This is expected for Reaganomics and pure core capitalism. Working hard is not mean that you will be rich. And being rich is not mean one worked hard for it.
I have seen more toxic places when compared to Cisco. This is my experience.
Master leetcode and join Meta.
Fair warning , you will have zero work life balance, but you will learn and earn a lot.
How to prep for next job in such a toxic environment?
DO NOT leave without another job in hand, market is bit tough at this time. Spend enough time upscaling your knowledge and experience. I agree with other comment on taking trainings.
Do they lay off new university hires?
Cisco is a capitalist company. No innovation, only buying innovation and maintaining. Not anymore for fresh graduates. Fresh graduates will end up in bug fixing and supporting customers. If someone wants to work in some innovation, cisco is not a place. All these year to year investments speeches got into acquisitions not investing on R&D and people. Choice is yours how you to shape up your career.
Order tech books and take internal training in your area or language. Cisco is a great place to take training and learn at work.
Use connections and pick an area that you are good at.
Prepare for interviews …. Don’t show up without preparation on tricky soft skills interview and tech interview questions.