Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

See plenty leave and come back as contractors on vastly higher salaries. I left and came back several times for more money but that was in the days before Cisco became a nobody in IT and no longer values staff. I'd never go back again. Who wants to work hard just to be LR'ed to make share price rise a bit.
The company is a dead duck. My advice is that you learn what you can and make decision to find somewhere who is on the up or even better settle for less salary at somewhere that values you and is doing something for society. Much more rewarding and better for your health.

I left during Covid and went to zoom. 3 years later zoom let me go and I went back to Cisco for $20k more total on target and $50k worth of stock. I’m in the same exact role but on a different team. Leave but don’t burn bridges. Pun intended

U LRd and come back you have to give back severance partially right? So have to wait a year. Better to go somewhere else .

When you have SLT cursing at employees that are already working overtime and have for years, because of understaffing due to constant layoffs., well it is finally time for a revolution. Let DoGE take a wrecking ball to everyone director and above.

We only need a dozen SLT. Not thousands.

I was LR'd after 16yrs & severance for those yrs (was at 278% to plan at the time - yes, achievement means nothing - just a popularity contest) and was asked back and took early retirement 2yrs later and package was based on 18yrs of service :) heard they closed that loophole unfortunately. It was a lot fun when we were #1 or #2 in most every market & execs wanted to know the bad to fix it - felt it change to politics (top/dow & inter BU) being more important than the customer - so sad.

It’s called boomeranging. When you leave a company and come back later with a higher salary and/or a more senior job.

Do you go shopping in your recycling bin?

Cisco has brought in PhDs straight out of school with skills that are useful to the company, but not to the groups that need those skills. They get endless bug fixing tasks and after some number of months wake up and move on.

At other companies people who want to grow new skills that can't be acquired and leave on good terms may come back when the company realizes a need for those skills that the previous employee acquired elsewhere and it's worth bringing them back for both the new skills and the knowledge of the company, its teams and its products.

That Cisco can't manage new skills from new hires or people who have gone away and return says it's not a choice of one or the other but simply staying away from Cisco.

Does a company benefit more from bringing in new people than retaining the same people?

Do you go shopping in your recycling bin?

Cisco has no talent pipelines. Everywhere in my group its greybeards. What do you do when they are gone? The absence of talented junior folks is crazy.

The greybeards with twenty years of experience are really just doing work a junior employee is more than capable of doing for half the cost.

How do you grow as an org with recycled talent?

This isn't just a Cisco problem, all across tech there is a bias to bring in senior people to do intermediate grade work because no company wants to commit to training new folks in a talent pipeline.

Does a company benefit more from bringing in new people than retaining the same people?

20k in the same grade means you are either middle or lower end of the grade level and they are hiring for a more senior level in same grade

Cisco gets hundreds of applications for every posting. There is no guarantee that you’d be the most qualified applicant.

Also remember that geographic region impacts salary. A person working in NYC or SJC will be paid more than a person in RTP for the same job.

yup. I was LRed. Took a GAP year and returned with a raise + sign on RSU. I know quite a few people did the same.

I give what I’m compensated for and so should all of you. I’ll have no regrets when I leave this place.

Not everyone at Cisco is lazy. There are some very hard working teams.

I'm neither down voting nor flaming you, but having worked on a lot of high end programs where even local "first shift" teams had 24 hour coverage resulting in a lot of unpaid overtime but the quality of the work was objectively abysmal. The worst part about it is most engineers and managers don't have enough knowledge of experience to know that or why it is, and despite the cognitive dissonance few care to change that.

"They leave, fail, and return to their comfortable hammock"

Bro, what does this say about you? They fail because Cisco is a race to the bottom. You staying means you'll fail too. You have to be political, abusive and mean to get promoted, that doesn't fit well on the outside.

Do you even listen to yourself? If you're successful at Cisco it means you have a character flaw. Now go sit down.

Yes, I've left (involuntarily) and returned twice.

Cisco actually has a weirdly high number of "boomerang employees".
They leave, fail, and return to their comfortable hammock where little is required of them.

I agree with the first statement, but disagree w/ the second one. I'm sure I'll get flamed for my response and downvoted, but do or say what you will. Not everyone at Cisco is lazy. There are some very hard working teams.

I was LR'd the first time by a manager who was "empire building" and ended up replacing 80-85 percent of the team he took over when the previous manager left for a better opportunity. This team had no turnover and only growth for 7 yrs under the prev manager and inside of 3 yrs, the new manager had managed to gut the team.

I left for a great contractor job that paid overtime! I was offered an opportunity to convert to an employee for them, at a much lower rate than my contractor rate, plus I'd lose all the overtime pay, so I declined and had to leave. I'd hardly say I failed and certainly a lot was expected of me to be paid for 50-60 hrs of work per week.

When I returned, I was on a different team, doing the same work as before, but since I was supporting a legacy tool that Cisco was FINALLY getting rid of, and I had been given the responsibility of an even more obsolete legacy tool to manage, my role was not considered necessary and I was again LR'd, this time due to "cost".

I got another job where I worked hard, but the company had no documentation of how they did things, they "flew by the seat of their pants" and were constantly having production issues because they couldn't repeat a deployment process the same way twice. I didn't like the headaches caused by working w/ a bunch of iD10ts who couldn't document or create consistent processes, so I left and came back to Cisco a third time.

Now I'm on a team doing similar work, but in a much more expanded role and I'm doing well. At this point, I don't want to leave in order to come back as I'll be too old to return a 4th time. When I'm LR'd the 3rd time, that will be it for me.

But, yes, I did come back every time with a raise. Not a $20K raise, but I've never received a $20K raise when switching jobs.

Yes, was LRd September 2019 & re-hired in December 2019 w/ higher wage.

the exact position(under same DIR) with $20k more? mostly your job is on next chopping block to replace it with their friends/family member.

Never come?

People who leave never come

Cisco actually has a weirdly high number of "boomerang employees".

They leave, fail, and return to their comfortable hammock where little is required of them.

Any sane company should have the following two policies:

• no boomerangs. you leave, good luck

• at the ten year tenure mark, the BOD must meet in person to extend employment on a case-by-case basis (in other words, at ten years, most employees should move on)...this is to prevent rotten barnacles that cling to the hull

If you leave, what's your guarantee they hire you back? They'll replace you with a lower wage, college new hire or H1B.

People who leave never come back because the grass is greener outside of he-l.

those opening are reserved for tr@be...