Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

@6dym: it only shows that your Dir had prior experience in politics and he must have had other engineers put HR case on him.. He knew where he had been "caught" in earlier HR cases. So this time, he followed all the guidelines to trap employees in bogus HR case

Laying off thousands of employees each year and this year it seemed most employees laid off were all over the age of 50. Cisco s---s. I hope karma gets all you 'executive' Aholes real soon.

Report the lazy Sh!ts to your manager if your manager turns on you report them to HR. It worked for my team and now we are almost back on track. Do the right thing.

Didn't work out that well for me. My manager, who had just been promoted to Director, was giving me conflicting guidance. I made the comment that I didn't understand what he wanted of me because of the conflicting instructions and next thing I know, HR is calling me to have a meeting between the Director, myself and HR. HR documented our "discussion" on what the Director's expectations were for communications from me to the Director (himself) and told me what his expectations were of me--that I should be able to understand what he wanted or figure it out on my own without assistance because I was a grade 9. Two months later, I was part of the LR.

It didn't help that the Director and the HR rep who documented our "discussion" were buddy-buddy and their friendship went back nearly 10 yrs. HR is NOT your friend. They are there to protect the company from lawsuits, not make sure everyone plays fair.

Report the lazy Sh!ts to your manager if your manager turns on you report them to HR. It worked for my team and now we are almost back on track. Do the right thing.

@5czc: I dont think it works like that. You may not be aware of many things, that are working behind the scene. Since there is always a "monitoring eye" of the HR, unless they have dirt on you, it would be difficult for anyone in cisco, to come clean by ganging up on you.

In case you see someone come clean, then rest assured that, another guy has volunteered to take up the original-blame for ganging up on you and paid the price.

Everything that glitters is not gold.

Anonymous email!

If your manager and his/her manager are from the same village, it is risky to discuss your manager's poor performance. I did this. The entire tribe in the village turned on me and I had to leave Cisco. Being a member of the village is like being a "made man" in the Mafia. You just can't speak against them without putting yourself in peril.

The tribe considers relationships far more important than performance and results.

Send an anonymous email to their Sr. manager, director, or VP. If your manager can not get rid of the deadwood he/she should not be managing.

Out of curiosity. What would happen if you reported your deadwood manager?

That's right too scared to report these lazy Sh!tz to managers or manager's manager. If your manager does not want to do anything about it go over them and maybe you can kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

If you were once a hard worker and now you're so checked out and feel deprived why not just quit and move on with your life? That's right typical keyboard warriors the world is too hard for you and don't have the balls to call out the slackers aka lazy Sh!ts. That's the problem with this Cisco culture too many talkers not enough walkers!

Even in the agreement we had to sign to release Cisco of any liability in order to get the full severance package did not profile the ages of people impacted by the LR. To get this information, we had to sign the release first.

That doesn't sound right. I've been laid off from Cisco twice. I was over 40 both times. Both times, my "letter" telling me I was being terminated had an attachment with the list of people's ages by pay grade/job title. I'm really surprised that you had to sign something to get it. Both times it didn't make sense to sign the release early because you stopped being an employee immediately and basically gave away up to 30-days of PTO accrual, health benefits, & 401(k) matching.

I thought the first one was for everyone being impacted by the workforce reduction in '11, but it may have been just for my BU. It's been too long to remember. That one, in my BU, the people let go were all in the bottom 5%. Some people deserved to be there and others were there because managers were protecting those they liked or setting up those they didn't for the upcoming reduction. This time around, my BU was letting go of top performers who got the full year-end bonus, but were over 40 and were deemed "too expensive" and "least business impacting".

The second one attachment, for Aug '16, was limited to my BU. And, if you looked at it, it was very heavily biased by age. They let go one young millennial and kept the oldest person, but 90+% were 40+. I'd killed to see what the overall Cisco numbers were. I forget what post I put my BU's stats on. Everyone who came to the "training camps" that the career outsourcing agency provided were all over 40 or 45. Maybe it was that the younger generation thought they didn't need refreshers on how to write resumes, interview and/or use LinkedIn. But it was still very telling looking at the demographics of who was there and who wasn't.

"We are better when we stay EMPLOYED"

I'm sure some politically correct manager had to take it down, but I'd love to have seen it stay up longer. I'm surprised someone isn't defacing every poster with the same message.

Got hit in the September layoff in BXB. When the person from the Massachusetts Career Center came onsite at BXB to explain the Career Centers/claiming unemployment, etc. every Cisco person impacted appeared to be 50+ years of age (some possibly late 40's). Age was definitely a big factor in the layoffs. Even in the agreement we had to sign to release Cisco of any liability in order to get the full severance package did not profile the ages of people impacted by the LR. To get this information, we had to sign the release first. In summary, my feelings toward Cisco after 15+ years of service, hard work and long hours, F*ck you, Cisco!

Has anyone noticed new poster campaign for connected teams ? There is a blue poster saying "We are better when we stay connected".

In RTP10 building 10/2 , someone stick a paper replacing "connected" with that reads "We are better when we stay EMPLOYED". Needless to say it was taken down quickly. Building 10 is where doomed cisco cloud and NFV teams were.

Nuff peeps have checked out bro/sis

Would you differentiate between so called "lazy sh!ts" and all the people who would have been hard, committed workers but have just "checked out" ?

Lazy Sh !t is 100% correct f'ing it up for everyone else.

It has been my experience that the lazy sh!ts aren't the ones leaving. Cisco is hemorrhaging the hard working, best and brightest while increasing lazy sh!Ts at all levels. It is only gets worse from here. Cisco is stuck in an endless negative feedback, deteriorating, environment.

What are we doing here? Watching you drag your lazy a$$ in at noon.

I'll take young millennials over some lazy sh !ts that been here for more than 10 years. Some of these lazy as $es are way too comfortable taking up space and are just sitting around doing nothing. Let's be honest some of these guys and ladies in their 30s and 40s are just here waiting for their early retirement package. I have news for you that ship has sailed and the severance packages are getting smaller and smaller. Do us all a favor and be honest with yourself and just quit you really don't want to be here and time is the most precious commodity and you are just wasting it. 2017 should be the year of reflection for all of us. If your heart is not in it what are you doing here?

Was hired by Cisco directly from a university. The first month we were told about the greatness that is/was Cisco and that we should be so excited that we landed such a great job and that we were 'valuable assets' to Cisco. Myself and my team drank this coolaid up...for the first few weeks anyway. In our 3rd/4th week at Cisco the ELT announced a LR and we were told we were to new to be impacted. Well, a few weeks later one of our colleagues was let go in the LR and the dream job was no longer. The rest of the training program was filled with ppl looking over their back and doing whatever it took to look better than the next person. The program itself was well structured and taught me quite a bit. However, our view of the company was tainted and got worse once we started looking up the history of annual layoffs. Cisco preaches and shows the world it's fantastic 'culture and attitude' but once you've spent a month or two inside the company, it's clear to see that your clock is ticking and you (or anyone around you) could be let go in the blink of an eye. The whole process was very damaging to my confidence in Cisco and the tech industry as a whole. Would not recommend this company to any recent grad or someone early in career. You will become a cynical 'old man/woman' in a matter of months. Sad

Couple comments.

1) this is the GVSO team. They are young. Because it's the first entry point into Cisco sales. But they aren't all that young. There are certainly people over 25 in both of those videos

2) GVSO isn't really that technical of an organization. If you're a technical person at Cisco you're in the wrong field to make money...go to sales, or go to another company. This has been true for 15 years...nothing has changed!

3)The pay scale for the graduate hires at Cisco has barely increased in the past 10 years and cost of living around the world has skyrocketed. So all you 40 somethings saying that the millennials have it good, please realize that they can barely afford to pay their living expenses and most certainly can't afford to think about buying a home or having kids. Life is hard for them too.

I am another under 30 millennial who got LRed after about a year.

Now at a company I rejected in favour of Cisco the first time around, and loving it. Great to work somewhere with actual job security and management who seem to know what they're doing.

@KSN75QI-3osu Making fun of the Millennials is a bit of a blood sport - I don't mean much by it. Actually, we're all a bit jealous of your approach. Unfortunately, my generation was impregnated with the WASP work ethic and the loyalty which seems only one-way these days. The newer generations seem to have it figured out better than we did. We're too stupid to right our own canoes even though we know we are being exploited. Work-life balance? Yeah, right.

Three year veteran from college hire? I ran into one of our engineering groups about a year ago and asked where everybody was? They said all of that year's college hires were gone - A.L.L. O.F. T.H.E.M,

Thanks for the kind words @3xve, 2rjr & @2rjrI hope you find a much better place to work for than Cisco. I watched the video you guys posted and this hasn't been anything like what I experienced at Cisco. My experience there is best described as intense and micromanaged due to incompetent management. I put a lot of hard work in the company and started to rise quickly, but despite promises of promotions they never came and eventually I was shown the door. Cisco was behind the market competition in my area's specialization and they still are. I doubt they can seriously compete with the current Amazon's of the world in this space. I'll go off to do better things than Cisco! Wish everyone the absolute best.

I was one of the under-30s Millennials that got LR'd. ... Was too busy doing work and studying to not become stale. Guess I should have acted more my age :-).

Yep. If you do real work, you get rewarded for it. You either get a pink slip or you get to pickup the work from all the other people who got pink slips. And the dead wood sticks around.

I'm sorry to hear you got let go. You were, unfortunately, one of the token young people let go to enable the bean counters to say that the LR was not age biased. But if you look at the numbers in my BU, it was very biased.

One of the nice things though, Cisco doesn't / didn't make much of a distinction between new and old-timers with the severance. Everyone under 10 yrs got the same LR package offer whether you had 3-months on the job or 9 yrs. At least this time, they started making a little distinction between those with 10+ yrs by giving an extra week's severance for each yr above 10 and 2 week's above 20. I'm guessing that's because they got rid of MANY more older folks this year and wanted to cut down on the number of people not signing the agreement and trying to take Cisco to court.

Those of us who worked remotely would put in hours beyond those who worked on site.

Not everyone who worked on site was all play and no work. I worked in a building that had not yet been renovated to have the fun "game" rooms that someone in HR decided to call "Creativity rooms". I don't recall seeing or hearing about many social hour events. Must be an HQ thing.

Why is there a resentment toward the millennials? The vast majority of millennials at Cisco did not receive other job offers, we are not necessarily recruiting the best and brightest anymore. These kids are just trying to pay off their student loans.

The Cisco University program is merely used as a method for managers to boost their ego & headcount. Most ambitious university hires leave within 3 years due to below market compensation and a complete lack of work.

If you see a university hire with more than 3 years at Cisco it's a red flag

Just saw the other video and got sick to my stomach. If only reality were shown.

I thought it was the college interns, not the new college hires. They always make the interns make videos to post on social media to make Cisco look good so that fresh college grads (or soon to be grads) chose to interview with Cisco.

Here's another video that will show you just how fake Cisco is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFmA3SnFguo

In either case, let's see how things are going in a year or two once these newbies can't keep things running now that most of the old-timers are gone.

I know for a fact that there are back-end processes that "just work" until someone replaces the server they run on but change the host name, or they don't restore the cron jobs that were running them on the new server and suddenly all the metrics and reporting stop working. Now that half the old wiki sites have been upgraded/migrated to new systems, all the old documentation that said what server ran what jobs to create what reports will be extremely hard to find, only to find that something didn't get transferred from the old host to the new host, and no one backed up the cron tabs that ran the jobs. But us old-timers knew what hosts were important and why and ensured that the jobs/data got transferred and didn't necessarily need to find the documentation.

Cisco has earned whatever troubles come it's way by cutting all the old-timers to save a few $.

Dear Millenial who got LR'd - I'm sorry this happened to you so early in your career. However, you got a severance and are ripe for another role. It is much easier for you find another job than people like me who are 40+. I was LR'd in Feb as a remote worker. Anytime I came to HQ all I saw was 'social hour' happening (including sponsored parties with DJs and alcohol) with everyone (regardless of age) participating. Those of us who worked remotely would put in hours beyond those who worked on site.

We have a guy who doesn't do jack sh !t or for that matter hasn't done jack sh !t. Don't know why he is still here.

I was one of the under-30s Millennials that got LR'd. I never played foosball or went to their numerous social outings. Was too busy doing work and studying to not become stale. Guess I should have acted more my age :-).

I sometimes work in another facility that very high pressure with customer events (technical, not exec). You see all the 35-40+ Year old people working all night, in on weekends (I was there to see it) and yet not one young 'en in sight. They are using the pool table and fussbal from 10-4 though. As I got a coffee with one of the senior guys sweating on trying to show a piece of our stuff that was chock full of bugs (really, it was disgusting) and as we walked past 10-15 young people playing games, he just rolled his eyes and said "they're always here - Millenials" :-)

@1noq: actually you are wrong. They are believing the hype that they are so good, that they got hired to "replace" the 40+. They actually show it in their attitude towards those who got LR'd and who are 40+. So some anger is justified.

I hear you. My point is you can't blame them for this sh1t show. They are youngsters, first jobs out of college. They had no idea they were being brought in to replace us.

Redirect your anger and frustration at the right people

1znv, what slack needs to be cut? I don't see any comments directed at them as individuals. This last layoff Cisco has stolen from the 40+ crowd that built this company thru many years of service. Most of those people have always kept all their skills in demand. Hr and finance chose people based solely on their short term future cost. It was profiling for greed and It is unethical. It should be called out when ever the opportunity comes up. (Queue the 1diot that keeps posting the Chinese sr direct Qualcomm post....)

The reason why Service Provider revenue dropped and the product quality is sh*t.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HgK6MOyx5A

That is a room full of new college hires, all on boarded within the last 6 mos., all in IT. Probably having a pre shutdown holiday party.

They have yet to be jaded by the overall Cisco, LR nonsense. Cut them some slack.