Stop drinking the cool-aid. There IS a company-level conspiracy. Cisco USED to let go of the bottom 5%. Normally, that's a good thing. Get rid of those that don't perform. Stinks when you're on a great team and even above average performance and being relevant and impactful doesn't keep you out of the bottom 5%. A good manager rotates the bottom 5% around to keep everyone if they're truly above average or lets go the one who isn't at least average. Bad managers play politics/good-ole-boy network and force unpopular people even if they perform well into the bottom 5% to get rid of them. But, for the most part, it's fair and a good way to keep the company moving forward. NOW, Cisco is letting go employees based on their age using the excuse that they're too expensive.
Well, guess what? At some point in everyone's life, you get older, you gain a lot of experience and you move up in pay. If every company says "it's just business" and fires older workers and won't hire older workers because they're too expensive, they'll just end up on Social Security, unemployment and possibly welfare. Then the taxpayers will have to take care of them and to pay for that, taxes will go up increasing costs and lowering profits and causing companies to cut even more older workers. Then the older workers won't be able to do anything but serve fries at McDonalds and McD's won't have to hire unreliable teenagers who then won't be able to get jobs.
I was let go. I was relevant. I was impactful. But I still got let go. And as someone else said, it hurts when the CEO says he wants everyone to RETIRE from Cisco and then you get booted out the door. Cut costs by doing away with manager off-site events. Cut costs by doing away with the "Fun Fund" quarterly events and don't do lay-offs and you won't have to bribe people to get their morale up. Have some of those VERY EXPENSIVE executives take pay cuts and save jobs.
Does Cisco "owe" me anything? Only respect. Am I entitled to my job? No. But Cisco is going downhill fast by taking the short-term profit solution by getting rid of experience people and bringing in 2 or 3 replacements at half the cost. Same cost to the company, but they don't get twice the work done because it takes a while for the new people to get up to speed, they have less experience and have to learn stuff about Cisco's environment. There are so many custom processes and tools in use at Cisco, that at least in Engineering and Support, you can't expect someone who knows how to do the equivalent job outside of Cisco to be able to come into Cisco and follow the Cisco processes immediately.
The amount of corporate knowledge about processes that walked out the door with me is irreplaceable in the short-term. There are back-end processes that run on servers and are almost forgotten about because they "just work". In a year or two, when it's time to replace that server with a new one, if someone doesn't know about all the jobs that run on it, when it suddenly get replaced, or maybe moved to a new network, and those backend jobs that just worked suddenly stop working, how is that new person going to know what broke, where to look for that job, and how to fix it? But I'd have known to make sure that my jobs/processes got migrated as part of the server replacement. And before someone says, "Well, if you'd have documented it, the new guy would have known to make sure it got migrated." I can tell you it was documented. Question is, did the documentation get migrated to the newest/current system? How many links and search results still point to IWE?!? Or the ciscowiki? I had a hard time making sure all my documentation got migrated between systems when I was there. I know the new guy won't know which version of documentation is current when he finds 3 copies between the various collaboration tools.
But, hey, it is what it is. I'm gone, I'm making more money, and I'm just a resource to be used or abused and paid for my time. At least the constant threat of a sudden termination is gone.
This is a repost from @NlNFYNV
The poster referred to:
There is no company-level conspiracy or hidden agenda when these things happen -- just business. Though I would be lying if i didn't admit to seeing some level unfairness in pockets -- but life is not guaranteed to be fair. Nevertheless, If it's not for you, then there are socialist counties you can move to -- or there's always academia :) But take personal accountability for your career and stay relevant and impactful -- wherever that may be.
BUT I stand by my original statement. Have been through multiple companies in similar situations and the fact remains that you alone are responsible for your career. This LR stinks on a personal level, as it has countless times before -- at Cisco and at company __. But it is what it is. You have a choice. And we are not entitled to anything.