I know nobody is safe, but I'm more interested in figuring out who's got the best chance of being git first and hardest.
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That part is not correct. When you get LR'd at Cisco, you are done.....period.
No absolutely true. For any individual contributor, yes. But I was under a Sr. Mgr who got promoted to Dir about 6 months before he was LR'd. They made him stay 3 or 4 months past everyone else's termination date so that they could find a replacement manager to replace the person who was moving up to his role as Director.
I heard, but I'm not sure about the truth of the matter, that he made an agreement with his VP to get LR'd just after getting promoted to Dir, and possibly even the promotion itself, to stay past the severance date to allow them to find replacements to have a smooth transition of responsibilities. I think there's some truth to it because what's the point of laying off a director and then immediately hiring a new director? That's a definite grounds for an age discrimination termination law suite because what director is under 40 and if it's a layoff or limited restructuring, then that role was deemed unnecessary and therefor no replacement is required. They just gamed the system to give him a bigger severance and let him go while promoting someone to be the "real" director 6 months after they would have promoted him in the first place. Win/Win for both the outgoing and incoming directors.
Remain at Grade 9 or 10 and you’ll be fine.
No one is safe - unless you're in the ELT.
The stockholders own the board who own the ELT and if things really turn downwards I don't think they'll be as tolerant of the current ELT as they were with Chambers who oversaw a 90% drop in the stock price and left with a stock price less than a third of its peak 15 years earlier.
No one is safe - unless you're in the ELT. I know people from all ages ranging from those fresh out of college to those not so far away from retirement being hit by LRs.
Security
"they will lay you off but mandate you stay at the company for a significant amount of time to perform the hand off or you get nothing"
That part is not correct. When you get LR'd at Cisco, you are done.....period. You can stop work immediately. Sure, your manager will probably ask you to do a polite handover of work to someone else.......but at the end of the day, you don't have to (but it's kinda stupid to burn bridges....so go ahead and help out).
IoT SJC, or what's left of it
"If you're male && over 40 && white && straight, you're most likely to be LR'ed than anybody else. You can't change your age and race, but can "play games" with your gender and orientation by pretending to be a girl and/or a h0m0. Chuckie is ok with that even though he is a son of a preacher."
I was laid off years ago at Cisco and I am a female over 40 and born abroad. What the heck are you whining about? And by the way, the guy making the decisions on the layoffs is a white male over 40, straight and born in the US. As are most of the CEOs. Boo-hoo.
Anyone who makes the magic number of salary to hit budget requirements the BU needs to hit. LRs are simply a numbers game. That’s it. Its nothing personal, not your gender, age, hair color, position, years of service, RSUs or grade. All you are is a number that’s like a puzzle piece in budget cuts. That’s why no one is safe. You can’t run and hide. Period.
So here’s what you do….just save up your f-you money to ease the anxiety of bi-annual LRs and ride as long as you can. The payout is reasonable. They have this down to a science.
Long before there was enough foreign employment for people to start blaming "tribes" it was all about political power within a company (I'm talking well beyond Cisco.) If you had power you could protect your people and absorb the best remains of other teams. Guess who trained the next generation to be what they are then handed them all the power?
You're safer if you have a leadership team (at least VP on down) in power, you work at a flagship site, your product is critical, and you are seen as a top performer.
If you are at a dying site but critical to handing off a program you're doubly scr3w3d because they will lay you off but mandate you stay at the company for a significant amount of time to perform the hand off or you get nothing, unlike your average peers who get a full package regardless. At dying sites usually whole programs move to a flagship site if they aren't cancelled so for those people anything personal about them is meaningless.
If you're male && over 40 && white && straight, you're most likely to be LR'ed than anybody else. You can't change your age and race, but can "play games" with your gender and orientation by pretending to be a girl and/or a h0m0. Chuckie is ok with that even though he is a son of a preacher.
Collab, AppD, IT, Cx.
All orgs at Cisco have constant layoffs, you need strategic relationships to survive. Or have a low enough salary in your area to not be worth the hassle.
Do you not see a current path to retirement? Can you not afford a downpayment on a house? You'll most likely be safe from layoffs.
If you are a Sr Manager or Director, have >10 years with Cisco, or have a large number of RSUs, and a VP isn't looking for (part of a "tribe"), you are at high risk! In other words, it is all about the financial numbers and who you know. We're a very old-school company when it gets down to it.
Any US BU.
*hit, not git