Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

@1lwf+17f1kNou, I think your story is extraordinary. I would never have though that "PIPd" person could ever get back. But more importantly I admire you for not letting it crush you. I don't know if I'd ever be able to return to the company after PIP. That would have profoundly devastating effect on me.

It really depends on the circumstances. I'll never be re-hired into the original BU where I was put on a PIP. But the PIP was because of a disagreement with the guy above my manager. When my original manager quit, everyone rolled up to his manager until his replacement could be hired. This higher level manager had just been promoted to Director and he screwed me over on my first performance report. When I responded to an email from him pointing out some discrepancies in the directions he was giving me and saying I didn't understand what he wanted, suddenly he and I were having a meeting with HR, where HR was protecting the new director and treating me like the bad guy. Then the new replacement manager is hired and I'm suddenly on a PIP.

It was personal politics on the part of two sh–ty people, not the company as a whole. The only reason I came back was because a manager that I'd worked with and was familiar with my work knew the PIP was BS and "political", not performance. He was a highly regarded manager by his team, his peers, and management. When he passed away while still working at Cisco, people flew in from SJC just to attend his funeral, he was so well regarded. I loved my time on his team my second time around. The second LR was just budget related because I supported a legacy product and was making above the median pay for my pay grade. I also supported other products, including the two newest replacements, but I was the SME for the old legacy one that was going away.

This most recent time, I'm on a great team. I was hired because someone from my second team pushed for me to be hired over another candidate. Whether or not they'll convert me to employee or not is yet to be determined, but since I like the team, I'm happy. If it wasn't a great team, I wouldn't have stayed this long.

There are pockets of good people within Cisco. I've been lucky in that 2 out of 3 teams were awesome.

OP here. Thank you all again for your answers. I believe I'm getting a much better picture about dynamics around IPF.

@1lwf+17f1kNou, I think your story is extraordinary. I would never have though that "PIPd" person could ever get back. But more importantly I admire you for not letting it crush you. I don't know if I'd ever be able to return to the company after PIP. That would have profoundly devastating effect on me.

My BU, or better say the part of it I'm in, is currently in expansion, because of the perceived business opportunities due to COVID. Obviously, at one point, there won't be a need for all those people that have been hired recently + people from recent acquisitions, so it is just a matter of time when there will be LR.

Time to leave...

IPF has little to do with LR; otherwise it opens the company to lawsuits. Never heard of anyone being later off because of low IPF. You could get PIP’ed and shown the door.

Yes, my BU was in a planning process for almost 2 months to try and align every activity into a “project” with set deliverables and a timeline. That’s what they’ll use to decide LR. Which has me somewhat worried, because I just talk to customers all the time, design new networks based on their requirements and help them get our kit through certification tests and get it stable after deployment.
You know, the stuff that makes the money. But the criteria for LR will be based on some non-revenue earning boondoggle from some forgettable manager, that’s been sold to the VP as a “must have”.
My “business as usual” will be sold to the VP as “we can get somebody in India to do that”.
Am I in danger? I don’t know to be honest. As male, old, white and high-ish grade I’m certainly a prime target. It will cause them pain to replace me, but never say never.

I setup the layoff meetings for a VP. Each employee within an org is aligned to specific projects. Anyone not "aligned" to a project is eliminated. IPF/Performance was never discussed... purely relationship based conversations.

Brown-nosing > Performance

I can't speak to IPF, but I can speak to PIP.

I had a manager come in shortly after I'd been hired to replace the manager who'd converted me from contractor to employee after 2 1/2 years. The new manager put me in the bottom 10% under the old performance ratings. I don't recall getting an IPF because being in the bottom 10% automatically made me ineligible for the bonus my first year as an employee.

When the mid-year evaluation came along, I was put on a PIP and suddenly I had to try to "achieve its usually close-to-non-achievable-or-purposely-vague goals". Within 3 months, Cisco announced that they were going to offer the early retirement plan of '11 and then the large LR a month later. Suddenly, my PIP's goals became pretty much "just keep doing your job" and the weekly 1-on-1 meetings became pro-forma "Hi, what did you do this past week? Ok, see you next week."

I pretty much knew I was going to be let go, and I was. But, a manager whose team I'd worked closely with knew I was being railroaded, and his first opportunity to expand his team resulted in a call asking me if I wanted to come back. There, the team was a long running stable team that had been together for years with very little turnover, so management pretty much evenly split the bonus budget equally across all of us, with the exception of a slightly higher bonus for someone if they had worked some large, complicated project and performed well.

During my second time around, if I looked in HRMS, it showed my last performance review as being on a PIP since they'd moved onto the new People Deal, so I was forever stuck with a sh–ty performance review visible to the management chain. I received 100% of my bonus all 3 years on that team, including the year I was LR'd for the second time. So, having an average? 1.0 IPF every year didn't keep me from being LR'd.

But, I'd say that having a below 1.0 IPF doesn't preclude you being rehired because many managers will rotate a lower IPF around the team to provide a higher IPF to a team member to fund their higher bonus. You just don't want to have that below 1.0 IPF multiple years in a row. I think having a PIP in your employee HR record is much worse than a below 1.0 IPF, yet I managed to get rehired.

And I'm back a third time at Cisco, but not yet as an employee this time. My most recent team has been very stable and has only grown by 1 person in the last 3 years, and converted 2 people plus the new addition to employee in that same 3 years. Whether my 2nd LR will preclude me converting a third time is yet to be determined, but at the rate they're paying me (25% better than my last employee wages), I'm not in a rush to convert. If I suddenly get let go, I may miss not getting that severance package, but 25% extra pay going into savings for the past 3 years has funded my personal severance package.

I am pretty sure the low IPF is the major factor of LR targets for the same grade level in same BU.

Low IPF is a clear indicator of incompetent in the current job, if not an extremely bad relationship with manager. Managers focus on getting their project done on time, as well as quickly solving customer issues. they always want to keep the top performers in their team.

OP here. Thank you all for replies so far. I know that PIP is different thing and is really just a formality to get you out.
But I wasn't sure about IPF. I got really low IPF (0.7). That's much lower than 0.9m like @knq+17f1kNou. It looks like I won't be impacted by this round of layoffs now in October, but I'm very much afraid of what will come February.
I know I should start looking for a job immediately, but there aren't many employers in this area, and with COVID on top of it + holidays, I'm worried if I'll be able to land a job by that time.
I posted this question because I wanted to see if I'm exaggerating the danger and can calm down a bit - or should I actually treat this is as if fire broke out.

PIP is a different story. The chances of surviving it are low. Usually you're better off investing your time searching for another job in the 3-6 months period rather than trying to do your best to achieve its usually close-to-non-achievable-or-purposely-vague goals.

Putting people on IPF is creating legal documentation. It's not necessarily related to your performance. It's happened to top performers to get them on the layoff list. Like when they hire a few young people to layoff with the bulk of older workers to protect against age discrimination lawsuits. Yes your gone. Lawyers create documentation before hand to hide the crime.

Yes.
I got a 0.9 IPF just a month before major layoffs. I survived.
That was 6 years ago and I'm still here at Cisco.

I knew of one person placed on a Performance Improvement Plan and fired.