Most seem to be in their late 40s and over. Does this mean there are grounds for age discrimination?
21 replies (most recent on top)
42
Here's the issues - too many remote workers, over paying for acquisitions, over paying incompetent and inexperienced young workers, overpaying and incompetent ELT, too many managers that only want to manage up, terrible sales and theater leaders, and a terrible off shoring strategy. In other words - this place is hugely broken and across every level.
They want the young (under 40), under experienced...
40 at Cisco for far too many is making the same mistakes for 18 years. That's nothing like "experience."
,,,write software code with bugs and test only very high level and release code with bugs.
I worked with a lot of the over 40 set at Cisco who didn't test anything. Few ever questioned management when they said "just check it in" and branches were broken for months at a time. As a customer the software hasn't been stable for 30 years, and for the past 20 years I've been getting systems where whole subsystems don't come up. Pretend all you want that your generation got things right at Cisco, but the reality is they did not.
How about we start with how many black people go to college as required by job description ? Should we change job requirements just for black people or others to accommodate them and not require skill set for the job ? I won't want to run my business like that
@eih+1uyPkf8X : Even more noticeable is the lack of black people
Black or white or Brown, they need to have the skills and work, right?
What are you trying to say "Lack of Black people"? How many Blacks
have you seen who have the skillsets? Other races have not been handed
the job on a platter, they interviewed and passed the interview. Its NOT
BLM every time.
Im 62 and was not impacted.
Why did they suggest printing the separation agreement for those “40 and older”
This is not just Cisco, actually IBM, HP, Dell, Motorola, Lucent, Xerox, Sun Micro, Microsoft, Oracle all did this and have been sued frequently, this culture of tech industry, if you are over 40, your value is down, everybody know this.
The average US worker age is 39 so makes sense.
As an over 40 white guy (that was not impacted) I always assumed it was because we tend to be very expensive, not because we’re over 40 per se. I guess the logic is they can have two younger engineers for my salary.
Never mind how many you could have instead of one unnecessary executive but what do I know.. that must be that “big picture” they keep telling me I don’t understand.
If you are laid off and over 40, you get a list with the ages and positions of those impacted and those not impacted on your bigger team.
When I was laid off, the numbers were evenly split between over and under 40 so there is no case for discrimination. Legal reviews the list to ensure this.
The voluntary packages like in 2020 do tend to skew the number leaving to be older.
Also, younger workers are more likely to find an internal job so ultimately more older workers leave the company.
FYI. From my experience, Cisco is actually underrepresented in old white guys. The biggest group of engineers is probably white guys over 40 and Cisco only has a handful. Even more noticeable is the lack of black people.
The reason for this "Cisco has a long history of cutting older employees, especially white men," is because Cisco has always hired mostly white men, who stuck around without improving their skillsets. By your very same standards Cisco has discriminated against nonwhite men and women by mostly hiring white guys. when the available work force is in fact more diverse than that.
You are not entitled to stay at Cisco because you're an old white guy. If you didn't update your skillsets don't complain when younger people with the skills the company needs come in. And they may be young, women, and brown too, your ego must be suffering at the thought.
Cisco has a long history of cutting older employees, especially white men, and it usually comes with an incredibly flimsy excuse.
31
Oh the irony of the old person complaining of age discrimination who is themselves discriminating against younger employees with generalizations like these:
" are constantly on tik-tok, only contribute during a meeting when called upon, write software code with bugs and test only very high level and release code with bugs. That's the kind of people companies want to hire these days"
Plenty of young people, brown people, and women were let go. Some of these sour old white guys are really playing the ageism card and race card. Entitlement is a powerful dr-g. Btw I'm older myself.
Corporate greed is the root of these LRs, don't lose sight of that.
...write software code with bugs and test only very high level and release code with bugs. That's the kind of people companies want to hire these days.
That's all Cisco had for more than the past 30 years which is why they moved from buggy development to acquisitions. As a shiny white straight old dude I'd get rid of most of software engineering and all of software management if it were possible then hire real talent to knock down the technical debt and refactor everything down to a single small code base. The problem: no one with talent wants to be a janitor, and Cisco is paying far too much for many old janitors who know nothing about maintenance of cleaning which has been the job for decades.
"Am in my30’s and impacted"
I'm sorry that Cisco used you and a few others in your age range to pretend they don't engage in widespread age discrimination. You were a sacrificial lamb to the amoral psychopathic legal team and ELT.
It is all based on favoritism, other than your work you need work hard to maintain good connection with decision maker. At least stay low not let decision maker not like you. This person can make you jobless be careful.
Am in my30’s and impacted
all the experienced people in the industry, you would think they would notice how much business loss over the years with this practice..
Most companies layoff those in their mid-40's and above. They want the young (under 40), under experienced, high salary earners, who like to work remotely or hybrid (else they protest), are constantly on tik-tok, only contribute during a meeting when called upon, write software code with bugs and test only very high level and release code with bugs. That's the kind of people companies want to hire these days.