I can't believe how the Cisco culture treats people like dirt once they are laid off. I'm very hurt! I realized it before, but now I see it first hand.
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@cuev+1nHSC1k0, yup. I have very few shirts from companies that I won't wear. I had previously worked for a consulting company that made us where their company branded golf/polo shirts to work at the client site every day. I had 15-20 shirts from them. I kept 3 or 4 of the nicer ones to wear whenever and used the others for painting or other tasks.
While I'll never be caught in public wearing the "Thanks John/Rock on Chuck" t-shirt, it's a comfy/soft t-shirt that makes great sleep wear. I have a ton of Cisco t-shirts I like. I also loved the Cisco magnets that were provided w/ the some hardware to "mount" the hub or router under a metal shelf. Those things are super useful for keeping glass jars under a metal shelf in my garage with the metal canning lids.
I think I still have my original Cisco PCMCIA slot wireless card. Makes a great conversation piece. My kids or their friends used to be blown away by the fact that you had to put that huge thing into a slot on a laptop to use the Internet.
I also have some Cisco "challenge coins" for special recognition. Doesn't matter that Cisco made the recognition. Just being able to talk about receiving challenge coins for recognition of significant accomplishments in military & civilian service makes for good interview comments when you can describe what you accomplished and why it was significant and how it relates to what you bring to the new employer.
Not everything is total cr-p. But, yes, the many consecutive years of the harvest fund raiser mugs that went from nice glass mugs to plastic mugs to cr-ppy plastic cups is a good indication of how things have slowly gone down hill. I had left them all at my desk because I didn't want or have room for them at home, and no one at some other future company would care that you had 10+ yrs of mugs, but they were a great conversation piece when new people stopped by your desk. I took them all home once I got the stuff back from the thief. Then they ended up in my trash.
Those stupid glass "ba--s" that were 5-yr anniversary markers were total cr-p. I kept mine for a while and then someone wanted to buy any to complete his set. I think I got $50 for the 2 ba--s I had.
You actually kept your "swag"?
From the tall thin water bottle with the giant attached cover that always fell over to the 10th anniversary chips and salsa bowl which said you couldn't put salsa in it because it ate through the poorly chosen metal those gifts truly captured the essence of Cisco!
They also showed up as taxable income.
You actually kept your "swag"? Lol.....I slowly and methodically burned, destroyed, or tossed in the trash everything I ever got at Cisco (including a couple of nice jackets I really liked). It was like the scene from Office Space, where the guys demolished a printer outside.....it was very healing :) Then I sold ALL my Cisco stock. Every last bit.
I'm not the OP, but I can share my experience w/ being LR'd and treated poorly.
When the boss first informed me at 8:30 AM, I was asked to immediately depart the building and that I "should come back during non-business hours" to clear out my desk.
I was still an employee officially for 30-someodd days, so I was in no rush to clean out my desk. I took home my valuable personal items later that night, but I left reference books, swag, etc. for a later date when I could find boxes to pack everything into.
When I came into the office the following weekend to clear out the rest of my personal stuff, someone had already moved into my window cube and all my stuff was gone. Not just boxed up and put somewhere, but put in the trash gone! You can bet I had words with the manager and the person who moved into my cubical. According to HR, I had until the end of my employment to clear out my desk. It was amazing how much of my "Cisco" swag had ended up at this person's home until my employment status ended and then magically reappeared at their desk a few weeks later after they'd claimed they'd put it in the trash.
While most people at work are not your "friends", but are only "associates", you could tell who were better than others by whether or not they offered to put recommendations on your LinkedIn profile, offered to stay in touch and/or sent you information they heard about opportunities, etc. or if they simply ghosted you.
I was lucky to have someone who was closer to a friend than an associate send me pictures of my old desk once the new occupant decided to bring my old swag back to their desk. The way they and the manager reacted when I showed up with HR threatening a police report for theft was the highlight of my LR. I gladly took all my old Cisco swag home just to keep that a$$hole from keeping it. If they'd simply asked me for it, or waited a bit, I'd have given most of it to them or put it in the copier/break room for anyone to have and enjoy.
I'm very hurt! I realized it before, but now I see it first hand.
The real question is, when you realized it before, were you part of the problem and hurt others like you've now been hurt? Somehow, if you're only posting about it now that you've been hurt, I doubt you were treating those LR'd before you any better than you were treated once you were LR'd.
Also curious, can you give specifics? Like I get that the notice su-ks but did they sp-t in your face and knock your things on the floor or what?
I’m still not hearing anything that supports the claim that you were treated like dirt.
I'm sorry...what is your point about "a marketing lady" joining ELT? A CMO is always part of the ELT. Is the emphasis in your comment on "lady"?
Cisco is a true example of burtel corporate culture coated with sweet marketing noise. now you know why CR promoted a marketing lady into ELT. Cisco = A Marketing company with its own product portoflio. thats it. No more engineering company. Engineering group in Cisco is to fix bugs and maintain the features. they cannot spend time and energy in innovation. in fact, Innovation, out of thinking, asking deep technical questions all become rare incidences in Cisco. We hardly participate in IEFT RFC any more - once almost every RFC has Cisco representation. Now a days hardly you will see anyone representation from Cisco in RFC, IEFT, IEEE papers etc. under CR engineering team become a maintaince team. What a shame.
You can’t believe it? Are you new to cisco?
Tomorrow was best place to work.
Please elaborate.