Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

There are many things that you could do to be AI ready yet you sit around with your thumb up your as$. You are the guy that will be first on the list. Happy sailing.

You are not the only one, OP. And there is a new term for that: boreout. It is like burnout, the symptoms are same, but the cause is not. Burnout is caused by too much work, while boreout is caused by meaningless, boring stuff.

I used to be very passionate about my work and profession. Now, I have trouble making myself doing anything - because it is not what it used to be. The things I'm supposed to work on don't require any particular skill, mostly very boring stuff. And to make it worst it usually requires finding people that can give me information that is crucial to accomplish the task.

It su-ks.

I bet you are a ton of fun to hang out with.
Loo-zer!

for anyone who approaches a corporation on "moral" terms...well, this is why you are poor, and always will be, and deserve to be

I retired two decades early due to an intense work ethic so when I left companies like Cisco I still had the skills and drive to do well at the next company. Once that edge dulls it's extremely difficult to sharpen again despite the self delusion so many have after years of doing useless busywork. I've seen what happens when they hit a competent company and they don't last long.

Hang around with happy people instead.
Like sadness, happiness is contagious.

Desk workers making 200k a year to do almost nothing every day say they are "bored" and opt to cheat tech companies out of money

amusing that you use the word "cheat" like there is some moral component to it

for anyone who approaches a corporation on "moral" terms...well, this is why you are poor, and always will be, and deserve to be

let me ELI5 for you - your relationship with your employer is adversarial

Desk workers making 200k a year to do almost nothing every day say they are "bored" and opt to cheat tech companies out of money by lying and going shopping while pretending to work

I'm not OP, but I put in a lot of overtime doing the busywork demanded of me by my managers at large companies but in every case the company lied and did a bait and switch during the hiring process promising work on an up and coming project which always stalled into non-existence as everyone got put on trying to fix the disasters that were the previous versions of those projects. There was MASSIVE boredom.

The funny thing is doing the stupid little low level tasks management at companies like Cisco gave me led to bonuses, raises, promotions and a lot of stock because I was still outperforming most of my "peers." I would and should have been fired if I did that level of work at a competent company but the competent companies found ways to maximally utilize my existing skills and grow new ones.

There are times where managers decide when and who to give work to.

There are times when the employee decides to own their career and move on to better opportunities. Cisco has been flailing for 24 years since their first layoff so the "it's just getting bad" claims of so many here don't ring true.

What I hated most while working there:

Getting automatically assigned the workload of solid engineers who were LRed — while the truly useless folks stayed untouched.

Being turned into a guinea pig for clunky, half-functional monitoring tools dreamed up by some director’s vanity project — wasting time, breaking things, and solving nothing.

Sitting through a painful dinner event with a toxic senior manager, forced to endure his BS monologue all night — while this engineer who leave early ended up getting laid off later.

Whether you like your job or not largely depends on the type of job you're doing and the people you work with. I like both, but what aggravates me most is the amount of red tape involved in getting anything done and the snail's pace it takes to get those things done.

@b5+1jvkdfq8s

It is not an excuse. There are times where managers decide when and who to give work to.

Today on "Why are White Collar Jobs Becoming Obsolete"

Desk workers making 200k a year to do almost nothing every day say they are "bored" and opt to cheat tech companies out of money by lying and going shopping while pretending to work

You are the architect of your reality.

Bored? It's on you.

Happy? It's on you.

Make choices that get you the outcome you want.

I totally feel the same way here lately. It’s just the culmination of lots of things at the company that is kinda snowballing at the same time. I don’t think I’ve ever been this disengaged before, but I normally like the work. But for me it’s:

1. “AI” everywhere at all costs has really taken over. Albeit without any changes in budget, hiring, upwards momentum or anything.

2. Senior management seemingly existing in a different parallel dimension. They airdrop in every once in a while and do a depressing job at rallying any kind of excitement from ICs.

3. Some teams are doing RTO and the guidance is confusing and nonsensical at this stage. This just leads to more stress and uncertainty.

4. Despite earnings and everything, I’m sure everyone is gonna get terrible raises.

if you WFH, don't watch the clock crawl...do things you actually need to do, just do them on company time!

I always do these chores on company time now:

• housecleaning
• groceries
• exercise
• recreational time with the wife
• side projects/learning (but stuff I want to learn, not Cisco)

the way I look at it, I'd be doing all of these anyway, why not get paid to while I can?

If the company didn’t constantly go through these pointless LRs, I could actually be a happy employee. I used to enjoy working on weekends just for fun when I was younger. Now, even when I get an idea for something, I stop myself—what’s the point? It feels like no matter what I do, it won’t be appreciated. In the end, it always seems to lead to an LR anyway.