Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

I was told that Talent Space couldn’t be shared with me, and the contents are never sent to you to confirm that you agree with what was written. They can write anything they want and you can’t see it. How is this ethical?

That's a great question. I recall, way back when Cisco was doing annual performance reviews where you had to write something up, send it to your manager, then s/he would agree or disagree, write some comments of their own, and then you had the opportunity to agree or disagree w/ their comments.

I'd been a contractor for several yrs, and finally got converted to an employee. My first mid-year review was great and then my manager quit. My year-end review came from my manager's manager because a new manager had not yet been found and I went from being great, which is why I was hired and matched my mid-year review to being in the bottom 10% "because I didn't manage projects to the manager's manager's expectations." I'm not a freaking project manager and didn't manage any projects, so yeah, I didn't mange them. But the projects I did work on were finished on-time, on- or under-budget, with no issues. The PM who was ranked in the top 10%? His project was behind schedule, cost double the planned budget, and had major issues. Maybe that's what I did wrong: I didn't fail. No, wait, it wasn't success or failure, it was the fact that the PM played golf w/ the rater and I didn't.

It didn't go over very well when I put my response on the evaluation that I was not told I was not managing projects to his expectations, especially since I didn't manage any projects at all and I ended up on a PIP the next year once a manager was found. Then the 2011 WFR came along and my PIP ended and I was let go via the WFR since that was easier than manufacturing goals that were achievable & realistic that were challenging enough for me to fail at. Luckily that management chain is now gone and I was brought back where I've been on a great team. If I wasn't getting above average IPFs and getting recognized, I'd wonder what's being written in my Talent Space comments.

After more than 20 years using Cisco products, I am now moving to Fortinet.

Cisco has become worse than useless.

Team Space can be used against you in your yearly reviews, so be careful how you word things. What is more disturbing is that you can’t see what managers write in talent space about you - ever. I was told that Talent Space couldn’t be shared with me, and the contents are never sent to you to confirm that you agree with what was written. They can write anything they want and you can’t see it. How is this ethical?

Without Directors you'd never have true leadership demanding you document every bug you would have created and how much time it would take to fix each one if you didn't know what the problem was or how to solve it so that would define the amount of time to work out what the actual problem was and how to solve it before you started coding.

Of course if you are a Principal Software Engineer you don't know what "what" and "how" are so you check in what you think is "code" which isn't even close to syntactically correct and has no actual semantics and therefore doesn't actually do anything so managers can beat the lower level people charged with fixing that code for the fact that the branch will remain broken for the next few months. If only this was unique to Cisco...

Teamspace is a tool for management to profile and manipulate you—why the heck would you feed it the data it needs to do that? I’ve never logged into it.

In our org, it’s compulsory for management, but not for the workers (think about that for a second).

How does it manipulate you? You're the one putting the data in. I can see you don't have a frigging clue given that you've "never logged into it."

Other than the questions about what you loved and loathed each week, which I leave empty, and say that I've had weekly contact w/ my manager, which I have, all I do is list what I'm working on each week.

Then, when the inevitable email comes from my manager once a quarter to send him what we've accomplished that quarter so s/he can roll it up to his/her manger and so on, I can look back in Teamspace and see what I've done that's worth mentioning.

because no other company makes you fill out regular status reports to your manager. get a freakn life people.

Yeah, we do, using another tool besides Teamspace. Teamspace is a tool for management to profile and manipulate you—why the heck would you feed it the data it needs to do that? I’ve never logged into it.
In our org, it’s compulsory for management, but not for the workers (think about that for a second).

Told by managers to tick “has your manager checked in with you this week”, even if you haven’t spoken to them for weeks.

Why are you going weeks w/o talking to your manager? My team has a weekly team call, as well as biweekly 1:1’s, so there’s no way we should not be checking the box.

Doesn’t make Teamspace worth the time to check-in each week, but it keeps the ELT happy.

@2ttn Is your 15 minutes day spend filling out Teamspace?

Lucky in with teamspace, no one my whole team use teamspace and my manager is okay with it. what you to write everyweek and who has time to read and discuss. not a partical tool at all. May be good for Universites and PhD students i doubt it make any sense for corporates.

oh boo freakin hoo. yeah because no other company makes you fill out regular status reports to your manager. get a freakn life people.

I thought Teamspace was mandatory. Those that don't participate aren't in trouble with management (i.e. insubordination).

I can’t wait until executive level people start spying everyone’s jira boards. 😆

I can’t remember the last time I even looked at team space.

Scrum is an abbreviation. Original syntax:

Scrum: just add an "ot" before the "u".

Waste of time.

Cisco will keep going for a few years yet because so many customers don’t really know anything else. But many customers are tiring of increasing nickel and diming, poor quality solutions for which top dollar is charged and complexity. Only so long this can carry on and urgent reform is needed. Please Cisco leaders, don’t think like makers of Titanic, thinking you are invincible and can never sink. You can.

Unfortunately I think it can sustain quite a while before it all implodes. I left Cisco because I did not see any improvements nor signs of things getting better. In my role I was always told that improvements was around the corner. I stopped believing that. I also briefly had a management position and what I saw there was enough to get the h*ll out. I’m glad I did because it’s so frustrating to stay in the toxic environment over several years. It’s just virtue signaling, mandatory meetings and bs discussions for management reporting. The amount of ppt warriors and middle managers are staggering. Its a swamp and any decent person recognizes that fairly quickly. Politics and career first— customers last. The whole foundation is rotten to the core.

Told by managers to tick “has your manager checked in with you this week”, even if you haven’t spoken to them for weeks.
You could untick and submit, but would obviously upset your manager and have consequences.

Team space is the worst. You can tell it’s just a checkbox for managers too.