keep hearing people say that Cisco laid off the wrong people — hardworking engineers let go, key team members leaving on their own after layoffs. I’ve personally witnessed these cases too.
Yet despite the mass layoffs, no backfilling, and loss of experienced talent, the business seems to keep running as usual. Layoffs continue, but nothing appears to break.
It makes me wonder — did Cisco actually make the right decision from a business perspective? Or is there a hidden cost that just hasn’t shown up yet?
22 replies (most recent on top)
A small core of staff keep things running. If they are unlucky, they get a pay rise or a promo. If they are lucky, they get LR'ed with a fat payout, and hired next week by another former co-worker. If they are neither, they show up, cash another pay cheque, do 37.5 hours of busy work, and their 30 minutes a day of productive work to keep up appearances.
Bill Atkinson from Apple just passed and one of the quotes from Steve Jobs to him has been showing up in various articles about Bill's passing:
Think how fun it is to surf on the front edge of a wave, and how not-fun to dog paddle on the tail edge of the same wave.
Cisco may have hired some great surfers but management only allowed them to dog paddle.
Talk about 2000s to 2025 !!
Have a child with the patience of Job explain @k2+1jx36b056 to you. For the quality Cisco is shipping today most of you are severely overpaid, just as it's been for decades.
The only FAANG/MAMAA hires going to Cisco are the ones that get kicked for low performance or unfortunate enough to get caught in a large scale cull. Cisco is a stain on the CV for at least three of the big five where I've worked. All this company does is financial engineering and some overpaid id--ts ranting about AI fifty times in an earnings call or LinkedIn self-glorifying post.
The two biggest AI projects to come out of Cisco became competitors just like Zoom did for Webex. SSE and SecureConnect got clobbered by zscaler, and are just sinking cash. Arista and Palo Alto are eating your lunch in other sectors. All that's left is to continue the aimless outsourcing and bleed the company dry in executive and VP comp and buy back shares via layoffs every second quarter.
folks at cisco once upon a time would be upleveled in other companies - maybe two levels - now they are downgraded
the biggest losers will be mid-career middle managers...at Cisco they completely disassociate from technical issues, but in their next role they will be down-leveled to IC and have absolutely no chance of even getting past the interviews
I guess that is the price you pay for spending years doing nothing but attending meetings
90s …. Low level engineers made $10M. Of course, Cisco stock split multiple times in 90s.
After dot com crash, low level engineers, never made money like the 90s, John chambers used to openly say that Cisco pays 75% of market rate. They never paid top salary like many other top 10 companies in Bay Area.
All the Cisco stock options were useless for many years in early 2000s to 2012. It was stuck in $16-25
I don’t know if any low level engineer who made $10 million in Cisco stock LOL. May be less than 100K from 2000 to 2014. They started giving RSUs later because many left for other big FANG companies in 2010s.
Forget the 90s. Talk about 2000s to 2025 !!
Why does Cisco keep hiring VPs and up in the west? Is it because the ICs are being hired mostly in India?
and G2 keeps touting hiring all the laid off talent in other companies and claims Cisco is attracting talent from FAANG etc - folks at cisco once upon a time would be upleveled in other companies - maybe two levels - now they are downgraded whereas we are hiring laid off folks and up leveling by two and GeeeTu's narrative to the board - look we are hiring top talent! the jokes on us!
the year is 2025, what happened in the 90s is irrelevant, even if you are correct
If you ever learn English you'll understand what the word "never" means.
Why it's relevant today is fools keep saying pay equals performance and we have concrete proof that was not the case during the time when work at Cisco could attract real talent. Now Cisco is janitorial work and you don't give janitors $10M in stock.
On the flip side there are small companies in highly competitive markets taking on complex problems without Cisco's margins and therefore without the kind of money Cisco can throw around but people know they'll be doing world class work, delivering on time and budget release after release after release and they do attract real talent that knows the value those skills will bring to their career over time. Janitorial work doesn't build up because corrections are made early and often and Cisco level people are in the street in the first three months.
Speaking of in the street, ask yourselves why the top tech companies have average tenures in the 1-2 year range. Not everyone is making retirement level money so they know they'll be looking for another job in short order but they sign up anyway. Unlike Cisco these companies don't build up Engineer 4 titled people in their 60s.
Cisco's quality was trash in the 1990s as the stock was soaring to its peak and LOWER LEVEL engineers were taking home more than $10M in stock.
the year is 2025, what happened in the 90s is irrelevant, even if you are correct
cisco never paid market rate for the top talent, may be a few of them.
Another reason if brain drain was cisco stock was low for almost two decades.
How many times does it have to be repeated on this site, including this thread?
Cisco's quality was trash in the 1990s as the stock was soaring to its peak and LOWER LEVEL engineers were taking home more than $10M in stock. If you think this is below market rate for such poor quality work you're on Elon Musk level dr-gs.
Consulting companies from Asia made in-roads into Cisco company and promised everything.
cisco never paid market rate for the top talent, may be a few of them.
Another reason if brain drain was cisco stock was low for almost two decades. Many left Cisco to other tech companies.
Most of the Bay Area companies are not to sustain high salaries. Hence the never ending cycle of layoffs and outsourcing!!
On the talent side, if you had real ability the sooner you are forced to go to a better company
this
all of the viable talent eventually gives up trying to make lemonade out of lemons at Cisco
what remains are the people who are either incapable of finding other opportunities, or people like me who are just exploiting the rot for their benefit before retiring
so what choice does Cisco have other than LRs? the downward spiral leaves the company with nothing but the dregs
Layoffs continue, but nothing appears to break.
It does, just in slow-motion so you don't register it.
Cisco may not be filing for bankruptcy but every day it underperforms relative to other tech companies. At one point a generation ago, Cisco was considered the world's leading tech company. Now I doubt it would land in anyone's top twenty. Yes there is still money being made, but the company slowly fades into mediocrity and then irrelevance...and drags you down with it.
quality of TAC engineers, software developers , etc are example of get what you pay for, some ELT outsourced it all to india, and its broken.
As a customer for more than 30 years, including the late 1990s where Cisco's stock compensation made lower level engineers worth over $10M each, long before there was a major presence in India, I can say it has always been broken. With that kind of money being spent largely in the US Cisco did not get what they paid for.
Things are definitely breaking over here, but it’s a ‘I need to get this product out the door’ issue which becomes ‘I need to fix hundreds of bugs’ which will be exasperated the more people get laid off.
CSCaa00000 to CSCab00000 is not "hundreds of bugs," it's 100,000 bugs. CSCaa00000 to CSCba00000 is 2,600,000 bugs. Cisco is up to what, CSCw? Then look at how much of the budget used to go to bug fixing versus the tiny bit left over for writing new bugs. It should be clear the problem isn't enough bodies to fix the bugs. It's getting functional bodies that create far fewer bugs. When you factor out all the code duplication from many implementations of the same broken code, then cutting and pasting that code, then forking it out on what were once many thousands of branches and I have little doubt with the right people Cisco could have done a far better job with no more than 10% of the engineering staff it's carried all these years had that 10% been competent.
At the end of the day Cisco's management has no idea how to do development so even if Cisco's worker bees were all Einsteins you'd get the same cr-p you've gotten for the past 40 years because they'd quickly decay just as everyone else has.
On the talent side, if you had real ability the sooner you are forced to go to a better company where you can use and grow your skills to advance your career and income the better off you'll be in the long run. Be glad for them. In a better economic environment envy and emulate them.
Of the rest, a few will wake up and really push to get into the game, and the rest will be forced to realize this isn't the career path for them. If you come to Cisco when you could have prevented whole classes of problems early in requirements and design but couldn't do that because you had to fix those and many other bugs should be cold about this. Bad managers and bad worker bees are hurting your career.
quality of TAC engineers, software developers , etc are example of get what you pay for, some ELT outsourced it all to india, and its broken. CAP is the only way to get stuff fixed if its even possible, account teams have to always apologize or give stuff away to keep customers. CX isnt much better , laid off good leaders let hang arounds throw stuff around with no clear direction of what to do , everyone is in CYA mode, just nodding and doing nothing cause they have no idea what they are supposed to be doing. V2momma started the train wreck and now its just pieces and and a mess to clean up. Very depressing times no matter stock price.
If you think the company is running at optimal speed you’re an easy person to fo ol and have no clue how bad it is. An overwhelmed and overworked staff ready to break into a million pieces. Unrealistic deadlines to the point that many are having health issues and dropping like flies. Many are being told to not make any plans for the fourth or July. But hey, management have to tell you that you should be grateful to have a job even though they are miserable and have to save their job to.
I am pretty sure the visa issue is considered when making the layoff list, especially the manager is or was suffering the visa issue before.
They layed off the people with citizenship or green card first.
Things are definitely breaking over here, but it’s a ‘I need to get this product out the door’ issue which becomes ‘I need to fix hundreds of bugs’ which will be exasperated the more people get laid off.
Recession is not here yet, wait.