The recent unveiling of the bonus remix pretty clearly lays out the people strategy. Trust senior tech talent (G89/90), trust more junior staff up to G11 and encourage G12 to take a hike. It kind of makes sense because G12 is a pivotal grade. It's reasonably hard to obtain, and it significantly harder to grow past it. This means there are literally thousands of employees who've been stuck at G12 for years and years, many with no hope of ever going beyond. If you've been a G12 for over 5 years, it's over for you. You won't make it past that and you're now stagnating, providing questionable RoI. Younger talent brings new skills and attitudes and more hope rests on their shoulders. The strategy is clear to me: Cisco wants to put its fat underbelly on a natural attrition diet.
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... Also, the older people make too much money. Unfortunately, they must leave to make way for younger green shoots
So why is social media full of young people saying they don't make enough money, can't afford to buy a home, etc.? Obviously they don't make enough money, so when you pay them enough, they suddenly make as much as the old people, but don't have the experience to make it worth the pay.
But Cisco doesn't want expensive. They want to provide bouncy castles in the lobby and free snacks. It's cheaper in the short run. Bean counters don't care about long term.
And the bean counters are what's ki----g this company. That, and kicking out people who have all the "tribal knowledge" or corp history of how all the legacy apps & processes work. And kept local copies of documents because of all the wiki transitions that caused info to get lost or become very hard to find when needed.
re. Post ID: @1pjm+1gRf43JQ
"funding radical groups" LMAO. Are you another butthurt MAGA?
The rest of your post was on target though
We just hired a IC director. About half my age.
There is some truth in the OP but it’s been like that for a long time. A G12 individual contributor has a permanent target on their back. I do know people that have decided to go back to the, relative, obscurity of G11.
Personally, I was a G12 IC for about five years, in a technical sales role. It was made crystal clear to me that a G13 Directorship was never going to happen for an IC. (Something that Gary Moore instituted, remember him?). Consequence, I left Cisco to join a competitor as a Director. But, guess what? In that competitor being a Director is just like being G12 at Cisco, there is no scope for career progression. The upside is that I’m earning considerably more in overall comp than I ever did at Cisco and I’m working for a company that has a clear future. At least until I reach my chosen retirement point.
The old grade 12s are dinasours who failed to make promotion. This reality. You may have hard works but are ild do cannot make work like younger. Also, the older people make too much money. Unfortunately, they must leave to make way for younger green shoots
Post from TheLayoff.com What a complete tool you are! Lol… I left the rag tag Cisco 4 weeks ago for a competitor that respects my knowledge and experience. We get Sh::t done and don’t need safe spaces. Can’t wait to compete against you as Cisco has no clue what they’re doing. No Cloud solution like competitors Amazon, Google, or Microsoft. No real future or direction other than to keep selling hardware boxes. Chuck is the worst CEO possible and look who he hired to help lead Cisco direction, Gerri and company. Lol. All some woke id--ts making millions in compensation while reducing the overall OTE for the workforce. They are more worried about how to shuffle the numbers around a few more years by funding radical groups and trying to show Cisco is the best place to work so they can keep their paychecks for a couple more years. Cisco is going to crash in the next 3-5 years as they can’t move the numbers around much longer. Look at the stock and watch it fall once they miss earnings. Cisco is in trouble on the Collaboration front front, Security, and even taking a hit in core switching and routing. They have lost respect from customers and customers are not going to pay the premium price anymore. Best you can do is hope they offer another early retirement and move to a Partner that can sell competitive products. If not true then go out all your money in Cisco stock and see what happens? If you won’t invest in your own company then that should tell you there’s a problem? All the senior, smart, respected, and talented people are leaving. Sad but at least Chuck and his team will make the big bucks for a few more years and then fade away to be forgotten leaving all the hard working people at Cisco scrambling to stay afloat. The ship is sinking…
The stated goal was once an average age of an engineer to be 25. Four year degrees in the US are typically attained around 22 so really senior people would number on the order of epsilon.
As for “experience” the first college course on the theory of computation at the freshman or sophomore level covered the Pigeonhole Principle in the first few classes and yet I couldn’t get Principal Software Engineers (yes, plural and across multiple unrelated projects) to understand you can’t fit 100,000 pounds of waste in a five pound bag at the same time. If only this was the greatest fail or that failures by leadership costing the company tens of millions of dollars at a time weren’t common you might have a case.
While it’s easy to say “fire most of the senior technical and managerial staff” you won’t be able to hire real talent that will waste their lives maintaining tens of millions of lines of legacy code. Even the few with some form of a clue never heard of refactoring, instead cutting and pasting hundreds of complete files at a time as a matter of course. The appeasement of grandfathering decades of static analysis warnings contributes to “own the box” security holes for 15 years at a time. The whole culture from top to bottom is broken and the metrics reward its perpetuation so either make peace with this or move on.
We may be expensive, but we get up and work everyday, don't expect a big office, a bouncy castle on lobby and free snacks.
But Cisco doesn't want expensive. They want to provide bouncy castles in the lobby and free snacks. It's cheaper in the short run. Bean counters don't care about long term.
That's trivializing things a bit don't ya think?? I'm 45+ (in my 50s even), left in 2020 and I knew how to do sh-t there that nobody else did and they still don'!. I'm doing really well now, can't say the same for the place I left behind. 15 yo car my a-s... LOL
"Money talks, bs walks. All of the G12 that I know are 45+, some are in their mid-50s. Too expensive to maintain just like it is to maintain a 15yr old car. So Cisco prefers to get a new car every 5-7yrs instead of keeping the same car for 20yrs. Makes sense?"
To the person who made the ageism comment on G12 being 45 + to mid 50s. We are the ones with the knowledge and work ethic.
We may be expensive, but we get up and work everyday, don't expect a big office, a bouncy castle on lobby and free snacks.
Our population is aging..if you lose us, company will be in trouble.
What change have they done in bonus remix for G12?
People turning down 12? Bu-----t.
Bonus from 15 to 25%? Much more regular on RSUs?
Nobody is going to pass that up.
I know of people turning down 12’s and also going for jobs that are a grade drop! Past 10 years being a grade 10-12 is actually a curse in Cisco. I don’t know of any other company that actually make career progression such a toxic thing!
Money talks, bs walks. All of the G12 that I know are 45+, some are in their mid-50s. Too expensive to maintain just like it is to maintain a 15yr old car. So Cisco prefers to get a new car every 5-7yrs instead of keeping the same car for 20yrs. Makes sense?
The bottom line is they decided not to pay, so look elsewhere.
Then why punish Grade 12s ? Why not recognize the tenure it takes to make 12? Is that not as meaningful as a 11? Total bs.
You really weren’t listening, we’re you?