Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

Great advice. Got sick of it, moved on.

Got a 2X salary increase and more stock valuation than it took me 18 years to get there.

Almost at a point where I can retire.

F that place.

I was treated horribly when I was laid off! I can't even explain how bad it was without breaking down. Cisco is becoming a company of backstabbers, and even the good people still there remain silent and go along with it. They think it is OK as they give you some extra pay and mental health assistance. If they treated us like people, not a headcount with a $ sign, we wouldn't need mental health assistance.

Seriously?
I worked at several tech companies, but the fact is that Cisco is the worst, most toxic, the lowest company with full of stupid, unmotivated, childish employees with no skill, no experience outside the company. Since they have no brain to think, they just do what they are told to do by insanely long-tenured incompetent leaders and managers.
Cisco doesn't require any skill or experience.
Skilled, talented, competent people leave Cisco because it's just a waste of time.

Spoken like a true bootlicking powerpoint warrior.

Chambers had the ba--s to acknowledge that his boards and councils strategy had “confused customers, partners and employees”. I think CR’s ego rules out any such contrition. History in the making here and it’ll be studied in business courses in how not to fu-k up a once dominant and admired company by getting greedy and by personality cults akin to North Korea inside senior business leadership.

A new ELT board led by tech execs must be appointed. Cisco employees ourselves do not understand the business and its licensing so how can we expect customers to? A root and branch review of the entire business needs to take place in the same way Steve Jobs did when he returned to Apple. Some painful descisions need to be made. Cisco needs to focus on fewer things and do the things it does do brilliantly. It is a jack off all trades and master of none as things stand and the market and the street have noted this. In my view it should dump everything outside of core networking.

Wow, wow, wow...

Love reading these posts and so thankful was out-the-door now five years ago. I ran into my old boss, who stayed three years longer, but then also took the package. He is completely retired, in his mid-50s. I am working part-time in my late-50s. While reading these posts and am thankful, and sad to see the mud many folks are currently in. So; do they actually offer the early retirement and/or “big” LR package anymore? I was LR’d and it was literally like 10 months of pay. I could not believe how much it was---was very generous. Took that money and paid off all the debts, school college, mortgage; and then started over again at another company. The crazy part is that other company also did a bunch of business with Cisco; and they offered me 30% more than what I was making at Cisco! Very lucky. Stayed there a few years (it was 50/60 hour weeks), then left to scale back. Now working 30 hours a week at a place that pays ok (nothing great); but offers health insurance. The blessing is I was super stressed at Cisco—but now LOVE my job and my team. Plus it is 30 hours a week!
To those over there grinding it out @ Cisco—not sure what to tell you…sounds like (?) there are no guarantees to getting a mega-LR package; or early retirement anymore…if not—that is SAD. Great company at one time; now---well not sure what it is…a big money maker it sounds like; but the upper management is no longer so generous as the decade of 2000-2010. My VP gave me enough RSUs and options over the course of four years in that period to pay off two college tuitions for our kids—I earned it; but sounds like that is NO way in the picture for the current folks.
Hang in there—if you feel you are being taken advantage of---move on! Especially if you know how to truly work on networks!

You ask chuck or france to offer early retirement package since you don’t want the commentators here. That will prove how much you love where you work to chuck and France. Some of the commentators here will take that early retirement package then you will be promoted again.

Be professional and offer the early retirement package or else your post is ‘ worthless bllsht’ as you put it.

lol - you sound like a narc who works for HR or V2Mommy

It is hard to stay positive with leadership ineptitude, constant LR's, re-organizations. BE's with not enough resources, competing products, mixed messaging. The list goes on. Some of us love this company but are frustrated with the mismanagement by SLT/ELT. And the person who wrote this lacks clarity on the LR process and how people are chosen. I can tell you it is not by the value they bring, nor their previous contributions. The numbers are down because of the chaos. Because we have lost good people who were major contributors. In Sales and BEs. It is hard for a feature to progress or account opportunities close when you ax the SE, PM or engineer who was working on it.

They (and I) have to keep their skills current, but replacing an experienced worker who's seen common issues and learned how to trouble shoot them for 10-15 yrs and gotten good at it, replacing them with someone (or more than one) who has less than 5 yrs experience in that field and can't trouble shoot enterprise-wide issues just to save on salary is not the answer.

Cisco couldn't even operate their own internal networks well. The proactive solution would have been to write correct code and provide far better network management and monitoring features rather than having to create an entire third party industry to identify bugs and configuration problems. Cisco should not have needed to purchase a company like Splunk this late in the game.

LR people who don't deliver and keep the ones that do.

The fact that they've failed to do so for the nearly 23 years they've been laying off people says this isn't going to happen. This is in part because the first who should have been laid off are deciding who gets laid off.

...be the positive change you want to see.

When you understand Carlo Cipolla's Five Laws of Stupidity you'll understand why such change has failed for decades at plodding legacy companies like Cisco, HP or IBM. Even at the corporate level Cisco tried to implement change through ISO 9000 policies requiring code be compiled, run and tested before checkin and yet many checkins didn't compile which is why branches on multiple operating systems would only complete a nightly build 0-3 nights a month.

Either take pride in the company you work for - otherwise kindly seek life elsewhere!

If you've seen the output of static analysis and the percentage of the development budget bound for customer found defects and bug fixing over the years and you think that's worthy of pride you belong at plodding legacy companies.

At least for software if you want to build skills that will carry you through an entire career you really need to be elsewhere. You're welcome to tell people to destroy their career and we're welcome to help people improve their careers. Read through older threads on this site and you'll see many people happy to have moved on even though it was a stressful experience, and a few people pining to return to Cisco as they didn't have any responsibilities when they worked at Cisco.

Never been so happy as when Cisco LR’d me this past summer, and took no time at all to find an even larger company with a much healthier culture. I’ve worked for more than one large, big brand companies, and the only one as cut throat and toxic as Cisco was also struggling with losing customers and market share. It’s not about complaining. It’s about being in a company that sees employee complaints as problem behavior, rather than opportunities for improvement. Bad leadership and bad culture ultimately leads to bad results.

It looks like Fran's HR team is trying to get ahead of the huge amount of attrition they need within the existing employee base to make the Splunk acquisition work.

It's obviously much cheaper to have people leave on their own than to pay them to leave. Plus, no one in the leadership team actually wants to hear the opinions of the rank and file so getting the outspoken to leave makes their life so much easier.

If you don’t like this company, leave and move on. For those of us that care about this company - we don’t want you here.

I sort of agree w/ this statement. I like Cisco, but I don't like the stance the ELT is taking on many issues that have nothing to do with business. Or the increase in LR's and how they're communicated and implemented over the past 5 yrs compared to how it was done under Chamber's tenure.

Worried about possibly being laid off? - Then put in the effort to become valuable to this organization.

I'm not worried about being laid off. Never have been. BUT, Cisco has laid me off twice. And I've been asked to come back by a manager who worked w/ me or worked with someone who worked with me twice. I wouldn't have been asked to come back if I wasn't valuable to the organization yet somehow I got LR'd twice.

If you are unhappy, quit and move on. Otherwise step up, quit complaining and be the positive change you want to see.

Sometimes you have to complain about issues or they get ignored. But I agree, be the positive change you want to see.

It’s time to get real… Either take pride in the company you work for - otherwise kindly seek life elsewhere!

I take pride in Cisco, but I still don't like the way LR's are handled by getting rid of older or "expensive" employees and hiring younger and/or less experienced workers to help the "bottom line" since many less experienced workers can't provide the same quality of work and experience. I'm not saying all older workers are worth keeping. They (and I) have to keep their skills current, but replacing an experienced worker who's seen common issues and learned how to trouble shoot them for 10-15 yrs and gotten good at it, replacing them with someone (or more than one) who has less than 5 yrs experience in that field and can't trouble shoot enterprise-wide issues just to save on salary is not the answer. LR people who don't deliver and keep the ones that do.

Just my 2c.

Rarely visit? Ha ha…nice try. No doubt you’re part of the team that monitors this page and pulls down unfriendly posts. The OP sounds like they’re being personally attacked. Drink more of the Cisco cool-aid. You’ll be laid off eventually. Cheers!

obviously nobody of value with any tenure wrote this POSt , any of us who have been here over 20 years know the real deal, some of the kiss ups have moved way up, most of the good talent has either been LR or left for more money, the rest of us love Cisco but hate the way its run and the backstabbing that occurs on most teams. Bad behavior is rewarded and anyone who stands for change is removed, play the game and hope stock gets back over 50 , oh yeah shut up and smile like the id--t they take you for.

we??? got a mouse in your pocket?

Guessing you are early in your career, or of a grouping that would not be in scope of being restructured. If you stay long enough, and keep on believing in the fictious vison, goals, and causes of the company, one day the LR number will be drawn, and it will be your turn. There is nothing quite like trying to plan for raising a family, say two or three children, and having no idea, each year: if you’ll be here the next with restructuring. It did not used to be like this whatsoever. Not sure how a person can plan to build a long-term future here; if you think that is possible, please elaborate as to how.

I think it is time to be real. Planning on leaving once I get a better job lined up. But to be honest I’m just absolutely tired of the backwards leadership. Just so many contradictory strategies and it just feels like a rudderless ship. I came on from an acquisition, and I just can’t take it anymore. So many things are just sliding downhill. And it’s not like you can just “keep your head down and work hard” to get promoted or rewarded. This last round of “rewards” was honestly insulting. Especially after everything that I delivered.

Truth! Well said.

shatup

Hard to take pride in a company where you are just a headcount.

Imagine believing layoffs are determined by how much value the person brings to the company. smh