Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

Everyone is still on the chopping block and no one is safe even if it’s only 1 or 20000 to be affected.

It's not bipolar, it's a matter of degree. For easy numbers let's say Cisco has 80000 employees. It's a difference of 1/80000 versus 1/4 and for the given round where either 79999 or 60000 are safe for that round, which means there is different for 19999 employees.

It's not just that lifetime employment was replaced with layoffs before many of you were born, but the latter is a polite replacement for what was once known as firing with no package, and all of it was driven by things like:

• People perform poorly. It could be the people here phoning it in and expecting big money, it could be transferring to a group which is simply a very poor match, or it could be many other things. If the person has talent they really can be better off somewhere else.
• Too many stop improving their skills early in their careers, and this applies from those in the trades to careers requiring graduate degrees like doctors and lawyers.
• If I have a choice of paying 3X for a 60 year old to make the same mistakes they were making 35 years prior or pay a 25 year old 1X with 35 more years of technical advancements and best practices I'm not going to pay far more for less.
• There is value in a certain amount of churn where you bring in new talent at all levels with complimentary experiences to up everyone's game which is why the absolute top tech companies have an average tenure of only 2-3 years.
• Read "Bu11sh1t Jobs" by David Graeber for how companies gladly pay people to do nothing of value who really shouldn't be there.

Your career is also a matter of degree, and too many of you expect someone else to be 100% responsible for it. Employers, other employees, customers in customer facing positions and often indirectly investors have some say in your career but you can control the rest if you put in the effort.

We have it bad, but there’s a cold comfort in knowing it could be several degrees worse.

During St-lin’s Great Purge, Party elites lived in fear of a certain elevator in their own apartment buildings—reserved for NKVD agents. If it moved at night, someone would be gone by morning.

At least Cisco hasn’t sent that elevator back down.
Yet.
Unlike Intel.

How is this helpful for Cisco employees? Everyone is still on the chopping block and no one is safe even if it’s only 1 or 20000 to be affected.