@az+1jrwythfa, this sort of reminds me of the story:
A senior executive visiting from AT&T headquarters was being given a tour of Bell Labs. He saw a man in ratty clothes lounging around seemingly doing nothing. He asked his guide, “Shouldn't we do something about that guy?” The guide replied, “You leave him alone. He’s inventing the future.”
@km+1jrwythfa, and this is why I hid my directory photo. I'm hoping that the powers-that-be realize it was a stupid idea and they relent. Like you, and I can't tell people's pictures apart other than blonde vs. dark vs. bald.
Initials was better. The personalized photos were even better.
...we all know it was a rebound from Chambers era.
If Chambers dropped the ball and it was handed to Chuck a year or two later it would be one thing, but Chambers failed for 14 years before he was moved on, and Chuck did find a way to charge far more for broken software and services trying to make it marginally useful to the point where 50% of Cisco's revenue is just recurring payments.
We've asked many times here over many years, "what can Cisco legitimately do given its technical debt and lack of skills to generate significant growth" and the answer was always COMPLETE SILENCE. Even if there was someone who could have done a much better job than Chuck, which I doubt, why would they sacrifice their career when they can build something great from scratch without 40 years of technical debt pulling them down?
If you are laid off it might be a blessing in disguise.
At any time including 2008 when people I knew who couldn't get laid off still quit to take better jobs I'd agree with you, but we're in a new era of stupid where rules based on precedent no longer apply. You crash the market to buy out its value for pennies on the dollar, but when you get rid of the FDIC you want to do the same for all the assets associated with the banking system. The irony is the FDIC was created in the first Great Depression to prevent this kind of thing.
Need authentication to enter a meeting like Zoom, passwords, pins should work. Gosh I remember during the pandemic nobody knew about Webex and Zoom was eating Cisco's lunch. Now everyone uses Zoom and Teams as it is available with Office 360, so what is the point of Webex.
I might be negative about Cisco, but this is what failed leadership is about. Please don't mentioned that Chuck increased the value of the stock, we all know it was a rebound from Chambers era. If you are laid off it might be a blessing in disguise.
I was thinking of alternatives to this. One would be initials of a person's like Chuck it would be CR
you mean exactly how it used to be before someone decided to do this in the first place?
i used to be able to very easily tell who was who in a webex room. now i'm faced with a sea of either
so....thanks, i guess
Many employees, as few noted, are actually not working and may delegate someone else, family, kid or others to show up on Webex just to show their presence. Most may not be doing this but few bad apple rot the whole basket.
With the mobile app, how hard is it to join a meeting anywhere and remain muted? But if you're joining meetings for "visibility", then having someone else attend for you and not interact in the meeting at all is not a good strategy for "visibility".
On the other hand, there are a lot of meetings that are general info that I'll join just to get emailed the recording link so that I can skim through it later at 1.5x speed. I don't need to participate in the "Green team" info sessions.
@e7+1jrwythfa, you make zero sense! How many webex meetings are you asked to turn on your video?
There is a bigger concerns that haven’t been stated.
Many employees, as few noted, are actually not working and may delegate someone else, family, kid or others to show up on Webex just to show their presence. Most may not be doing this but few bad apple rot the whole basket.
A live feed and a professional mug shot is the next work culture.
There must be some software engineers on here. Where is the photo for webex stored. It must be local in some folder on the laptop somehwere. seems just dropping any image there would fix the issue.
I am very mixed about this. On one hand, yes lets put up appropriate photos to each profile, but a complete sync of our workers profile is a no no here. However, I am really scared whats next in the future. I can see 10 years from now do what airports do where I go into a specific room scan iris or have door with facial recognition.
What is the reasoning for this change?
There seems to be a growing and disturbing trend within Cisco—a kind of soft dictatorship—where employees are being pressured to show their faces during Webex calls or participate in team events where photos are taken and shared without their consent. These photos often end up on Facebook or LinkedIn, again, without employee approval.
Just because a few people enjoy sharing their lives on Instagram doesn’t mean this should become a requirement for everyone.
Every cybersecurity expert will tell you: if you value your privacy, don’t share your personal data. And yes—photos are personal data. It’s incredibly ironic that a company that forces us to complete security training every six months doesn’t seem to apply the same principles when it comes to our privacy.
Let’s be clear: facial recognition technology is advancing fast. Databases exist that store billions of faces scraped from the internet. With just a camera and a bit of AI scripting, it’s possible to identify people walking down the street. The risk is real.
What Cisco is doing may very well be illegal. The company likely relies on a climate of fear—fueled by past layoffs—to ensure no one speaks up.
Here’s what you can do:
Document everything.
Submit formal complaints to your ER department and your regional leadership.
In Europe, invoke the GDPR and your local privacy laws. These laws explicitly state that photos can only be used for security purposes (e.g., badges to access buildings). They cannot be shared on internal platforms (Webex, SharePoint, QBRs, Workday, etc.) without explicit consent.
If you're being pressured or harassed in meetings, you are legally allowed to record these interactions in many jurisdictions, especially if it's for evidence.
Connect with others—like a union would—to monitor how this issue evolves.
Reach out to your local data protection authorities or labor inspection services.
In serious cases, you can even contact law enforcement if you believe that the unauthorized use of your image poses a risk to your safety.
We all have a right to protect our personal data. Let’s not be passive when those rights are being violated.
I was thinking of alternatives to this. One would be initials of a person's like Chuck it would be CR. The default, but there is name discrimination. Another is having the option of putting the Cisco logo for emails, webex etc. Create a seperare DNS MX exchange domain for customer facing jobs so that they can't see your name and gets forward to you based on ticket number. These are starter ideas. I welcome peoples thoughts on alternatives.
I think this is a great first step. I don't understand the issue with neutral.
Says the person who doesn't have to deal with discrimination. Photos show your age. Your color. Your gender. Your weight. People form opinions about people based on their appearance and not on their work. If you saw my profile picture, you'd think I was an old dinosaur who needed to retire instead of someone who can still do the job. While AI and other new advancements are challenging me to keep up, I still can. But with all the years on the job, I've learned how to trouble shoot issues and I can prioritize certain areas to look at first whereas some younger generation person would be saying "gee, I don't know, I've never seen anything like that before. What does Google say?" Instead, I've seen most of the issues. I know how things work at Cisco. I have points of contacts on many teams. Some upgrade happened, a host was replaced, or something like that and suddenly things don't work. The new people don't know about things get done at Cisco and they just look at the new host, compare it to the old host that may or may not be able to be brought back online, and they say but the configuration is the same and the hostname is the same, so why doesn't it work? Maybe because it has a new IP address and there is/was a firewall that allowed the old host to talk to it's dependencies or hosts that depend upon it, but now with a new IP address, that firewall is blocking that access. But all the new people can say is "I don't know why it's not working anymore." But that firewall could have been at the host level, the instance environment level, the data center level, or something that InfoSec required or that the upstream/downstream clients put in to control access. Where do you look first? How do you test it? We're a networking company, but many employees don't deal with networking and get surprised at all the work that goes into standing up a new application, getting it to talk to other applications, and then making it redundant and highly available.
I'm guessing sales people have the opposite issue. If they look too young, people think they're right out of school and don't know anything and don't know how "the real corporate world works".
Why can't we take the photos out of the equation?
@b0+1jrwythfa, see the post from @ct+1jrwythfa. It's hardly a win.
A simple policy of "Keep your profile pictures professional. Use the same criteria as directory photos, college logos or sports teams, professional organizations, or scenic pictures. Cartoons or offensive photos will be removed."
I'm sure some lawyer can phrase that all nice and legal to make it enforceable.
@az+1jrwythfa, professional decorum does matter in business. But my personal appearance is very different than professional decorum. Age discrimination is a real thing, so having a "neutral professional headshot" is not "professional decorum", but a target or excuse for discrimination. I can be very professional and have "decorum" while having a profile picture of my University alma mater mascot or University logo. Besides, the majority of the company is not customer facing, so why the need for neutral professional headshots when only other Cisco employees will see my profile picture? How I communicate in a meeting, via a chat message, or via e-mail is professional decorum, not my profile picture.
Sure, some people put cartoon pictures up, or pictures of their pets, landscape views, or some actor from "The Office". Sure, some of them are less professional than others, but if you're not customer facing, who cares? The ELT could have set some boundaries for what was acceptable instead of taking the easy way out and just forcing the directory profile pictures. But if they wanted to ensure "professional decorum", why don't they force employees to update their profile pictures every 5 yrs? Having a 20+ yr employee still using their onboarding photo from 20+ yrs ago hardly shows who someone is.
Omg you pu----s will bi--h about anything
Should fix some issues, like that time one person said some racist thing on the chat during a Cisco beat meeting during the pandemic and everyone was amused by the brazen backlash of DEI by that one individual.
I think this is a great first step. I don't understand the issue with neutral.
For me this is a rare Cisco W. Neutral professional head shots what is needed.
About time.
How we show up in front of our customers is important.
Professional decorum matters in business.
“Cisco is clearly conflicted on these type of issues because on one hand, they promote social justice warriors while on the other are realizing that showing one's political beliefs are offputting to those who don't agree with them”
Exactly this. I think they have just totally lost control and they have slowly been making folks feel increasingly unheard. It’s sad though the only thing the ELT is capable of is blanket rules like we are all children.
I cant wait to hear management twisting themselves into pretezels on how this is some great business decision that will make our teams stronger like they do about RTO.
Cisco wouldnt know a good business decision if it bit them in the a-s. Im sure after a few months of tariffs causing costs to be up or the loss off fed contracts due to their DEI worshiping it will be a LR in the fall to pump the stock price up a dollar.
Just because one fool decided to use a pic of elon musk doesn't mean we should all be forced to sync the pics
What "personal ideology" is offending people?? Did somebody have a M-A-G-A avatar?
Im sure that person would have been fired immediately for their disturbing divisive ideology.
Maybe if some people realized they shouldn't put an image of their PERSONAL ideology in their webex photos we would all still be free to have reasonable personalized photos on the platform.
Cisco is clearly conflicted on these type of issues because on one hand, they promote social justice warriors while on the other are realizing that showing one's political beliefs are offputting to those who don't agree with them.
I can guarantee the conversation circles back-and-forth between defining what was inappropriate and what could've been considered, picking on certain interest groups versus a blanket corporate policy.
But instead of drawing lines and causing even more divisiveness, HR took the position of falling back to the policy for corporate ID photos.
Next step : mandatory Rave Party after working hours
Probably more was spent in people hours deciding whether or not to do it, than was spent figuring out how to do it. Scripting and automation made it a relatively quick process, other than writing the scripts.
Pointless change led by DEI VP