Last working day if you are LR'd on dec 2nd?

Can you choose your last working day if you are notified about the LR ? or is it mandatory to work till jan 4th?

11 replies (most recent on top)

Once you sign the paperwork and turn in your badge, yes.

hmm, actually, you shall leave on the last day as possible not early,,due to you actually acural your PTO( make extra pto due to your stay at Cisco is longer..

no one tell you this and yet I found this out by looking at how it can actually work..

you need to leave at last day and not early.. and actually, you are earning extra PTOs until last day..

makes sense?

So, if you’re laid off tomorrow your last day is January 4. That’s right after the mandatory US/Canada shut down, so you have to use your own PTO during the shut down? I know management is pushing to get everyone to enter their PTO ahead of time. Guess then they don’t have to pay out when you leave? Another way Cisco finds to scr*w us. Nice.

You had the option to take the early exit and keep your accrued PTO by leaving back in late Oct or in Nov. They didn't screw you. At least as far as PTO goes.

When I was LR'd back in '16, and others I've know since, if you had planned PTO scheduled between the time you were notified of being LR'd and your last day as an employee, that PTO was cancelled and you were paid for those accrued hours. In my case, I had a week scheduled and approved for the week leading into Labor day weekend. I was told on the first Thurs of Aug that I was being impacted and that my last day would be the second Fri of Sept (basically 30 days later). My PTO was cancelled and I left the building after being informed I was gone. Came in that night to clean out my desk and didn't do any work other than prepare a brief summary for my manager on what my work was, what active directory groups and mailers I owned were, copied any files/data/documentation from my laptop to a shared folder and told him that whomever took over my work would find any thing they needed that wasn't already on the team wiki spaces in the shared folder.

A co-worker who was also impacted at the same time WAS ON PTO when he was informed. His manager cancelled his PTO request immediately after telling him he was impacted, so he not only didn't have to use the balance of his scheduled vacation, but didn't have to use the week he had already used by being out of town at the time. Was that a one-off case due to a nice manager, or was it policy, I don't know.

It's too early to tell if Cisco is going to force the people impacted tomorrow to take the year-end shutdown as PTO, or will cancel all scheduled PTO between Dec 2 and Jan 4 and calculate how much PTO they currently have and will accrue between Dec 2 and their end date and pay that amount out like they've done in years past.

But, if I was the one being impacted on Dec 2, I'd not submit my PTO request for the year end. And if I'd already submitted it, I'd cancel it and let HR complain to my manager, director, VP that I don't have it on the books as requested. I'd bet they ignore it and don't make a big deal out of it. I mean, what can they do, fire you? They've already done that.

Any chance Cisco will be laying off additional people tomorrow, ones who were not notified as being “at risk”?

I wouldn't be surprised, but the PR from impacting people you didn't warn when you warned hundreds or thousands back in Oct would be pretty bad and be something they'd want to avoid.

I'm more curious as to how many were notified back in Oct and didn't take the optional choice or leave of absence option and didn't find a new role by Dec 2 manage to survive based on the numbers of people who voluntarily left, took an LOA, or actually managed to find new roles.

I doubt the number of people who found new positions was more than 1% of those notified as being at risk and probably less than 100 overall. I doubt the number of people who were notified back in Oct as being at risk and stayed, but did not find new roles and survive tomorrow's announcement will be more than 1% or more than 50 people, if any.

So, if you’re laid off tomorrow your last day is January 4. That’s right after the mandatory US/Canada shut down, so you have to use your own PTO during the shut down? I know management is pushing to get everyone to enter their PTO ahead of time. Guess then they don’t have to pay out when you leave? Another way Cisco finds to scr*w us. Nice.

Any chance Cisco will be laying off additional people tomorrow, ones who were not notified as being “at risk”?

I had the same question, do we have to remain at the company until the "on the books until" date? Can we choose our exit date and still get the severance?

Read your paperwork carefully. Unless things have radically changed since I was l LR'd, the paperwork said that you were being paid X $'s 'in lieu of notice' and Y $'s in severance IF you agreed not to sue Cisco. In every LR (in the US) between '11 and the early LR in '20, you were given 30 days notice and 30 days pay in lieu of notice. You are an employee for the first 30 day and can look for an internal opportunity if you choose to, but you don't have to work other than doing any knowledge transfer / work hand-off. Once you sign the paperwork agreeing to the severance package, your employment ends immediately and it's recommended that you wait until your last day (or the day immediately after, I forget). But the paperwork clearly tells you when to sign and what the implications of signing early are.

In this case, WHY would you sign early and get your severance package at the end of 2020 on top of a year's pay and increase your tax bracket?

So the package will be paid out in 2021 (good for income tax) or in 2020 (very bad)?

It's paid 7 days after you sign the severance package agreement, which should be when your employment ends. This is slated for Jan 4th unless you sign early.

The way it usually works is once you are notified that you have been LR'd, you don't have to work anymore and have 30 days to find other internal opportunities (hahaha). Don't leave early....you get paid for that 30 days, even if you have no intention to look for internal opportunities.

No point in looking for internal opportunities now. You should have been looking back in Oct when you were told you were at risk. I'll echo the comment of "don't leave early". You don't have to work those 30 days other than to perform a "knowledge" transfer and workload hand off before you go. Depending on your manager, it may be nothing, minimal, or a lot, but given that you were notified back in Oct that you were at risk, any knowledge transfer should have happened by now or your manager is an id–t.

Don't waste your time applying internally.

It's a shame that has to even be mentioned to anyone. Take your money & run. If you don't care about the constant threat of LR, look for opportunities later. I guarantee recruitment firms will be contacting you about roles you are a perfect fit for at Cisco in the coming months. Probably even as a backfill for your old role in 3 months. I was contacted by multiple vendors looking to backfill my role in only 45 days after I was gone. Wait out the 6 months or more, go back and convert again and take a second or even third severance package.

Most of the internal opportunities have a hiring freeze. People able to find jobs internally were personal friends with a Sr. Director or VP in a different Organization.