It feels like we’ve been hit over and over again for the past several years, and it's not just us, it's been tough on the entire tech industry. That made it even harder for those who were laid off to find new jobs. Is there any sign that things might start to calm down at least a little in 2025?
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Cisco has been doing annual (and sometimes bi-annual) layoffs since the early 2000s. It's the one thing Cisco has become an expert at. Cisco has the art of the LR down to a science.
Cut 1 expensive person or cut 2 less expensive people, but now the team has to pick up twice as much work as cutting just 1 person. Do the math.
What math? All long before most of the layoffs, Cisco couldn't make any of their own products work in house from routing to switching to wifi to phones to video conferencing to instant message to security to... The move from SAN to NAS causing build times to triple wasn't approved by a junior person. IBM made portables with fatal flaws so they failed quickly and often and yet Cisco kept no spares on site. The time an average engineer to get a replacement cost enough in lost time to buy two new portables which was also not a business decision made by a junior person.
Cisco has far too many "senior" people in many different areas of the business who don't have even the most basic skills to perform either senior or junior tasks, and because the company is so flush with cash it has no incentive to change. As I've pointed out many times, go to a company on a tight budget that consistently executes and you'll find many of their junior people who have had to take on many different roles will destroy most of Cisco's senior people.
Cost is not the only component in LR. If your FLM wants to protect you they will. I’ve seen jokers being promoted, given recognition for just warming up their seats . End of the day depends on how they rank you in LR list.
FLM's don't have a lot of say in the final decisions. It's easier for them to protect seat warmers because they're not usually that high up or expensive. At the end of the quarter and end of the year, it's the Directors, VP's and SVP's who have to justify their annual budgets and that means cutting expensive employees to have more less expensive people under the assumption that more (junior) people can do the same or more work than fewer (experienced) people. And for day-to-day stuff like internal support cases where people are asking for lost access to be restored, some ACL request being submitted, adding/modifying/deleting a DNS entry, etc. where there's no trouble shooting involved and you do that type of task 20 times a day, then sure, more people can do more. But when it's figuring out why something isn't working (other than our laptops), someone w/ some experience has to dig into the problems and solve them. For the laptops, the standard answer is "make sure you have all your data backed, up, wipe your system and re-install the OS, re-install your apps, and then restore your data" and let them know if that solved the problem or not.
End of the day, it's the financial spreadsheet that makes the determination. Cut 1 expensive person or cut 2 less expensive people, but now the team has to pick up twice as much work as cutting just 1 person. Do the math.
Cost is not the only component in LR. If your FLM wants to protect you they will. I’ve seen jokers being promoted, given recognition for just warming up their seats . End of the day depends on how they rank you in LR list.
LRs will never stop as long Robbins remains in place. Neither he nor the ELT has a clue how to grow marketshare so they resort to cost cutting to please Wall Street, one quarter at a time.
2025 focus will be more of pushing retirement via a more respectful means. So those that will be pushed, prepare yourself by repeating 25 times each morning “Welcome to Walmart”
In my scenario, it could be my age. I am late in career; so age could be a big component. I have already been fortunate to use other connections to get other jobs post LR, but those poker hands get worn out with time. Now at approaching Social Security age, let's be honest, not much of a market for someone who was around working on this stuff during the last century.
Enjoy your youth. It goes by quickly.
Layoffs are not going to stop at Cisco. It's kinda officially built into the system now with the bi-annual performance talks.
We've had bi-annual performance talks for ever. It's nothing new. Once Cisco did away with the "grades" associated with the performance reviews (X, E+, E, E- and N), the LR's have nothing to do with performance and have everything to do with COST.
How expensive are you compared to the rest of your team? How expensive is your team compared to other departments? There is no weighing of value add, just cost. Get rid of the old SME who's making bank and make the next 1-2 people junior to that SME su-k it up and figure it out.
anyone has any luck finding a job in IT field getting similar pay? I doubt it.. I see many are switching careers, IT is brutal outside..
Layoffs are not going to stop at Cisco. It's kinda officially built into the system now with the bi-annual performance talks.
This is CISCO. The pressure to reduce expense/run-rate for almost any groups (maybe not for Exec Leadership or some of those CTO group) is always going to be there. I think at this point, folks are accepting the facts that there will be small one throughout the year due to budget pressure.
Now, Is CISCO going to have another big announcement of LRs across boards before end of FY25? Most of people are pretty sure about there will be one for entering FY26 as some groups will be for sure got big budget cut.
The popular rumors are: (1) Smaller event at Feb 2025 (CISCO will categorize as part of the Nov 2024 event). (2) Pending on Q2 FY25 results, there could be a bigger "follow up" budget reduction in 2HFY25 so this is unknown... We will know that around April/May
Yes definitely, because unfortunately Cisco has made no meaningful changes vis-à-vis the previous years of restructuring:
(https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/restructure = to change the makeup, organization, or pattern of ... ).
Cisco is rarely mentioned as a leader in emerging technologies, innovation or thought leadership.
Unless and until the leadership, culture and involvement in politics changes you can expect a slow, unfortunate marginalization with Cisco at the peripheral edges
I disagree w/ @gda+1w4tpOJS. They’re right about saving money, reducing debt, etc., but my experience post-LR is very different. I’m certainly not a walk-on-water type, but I am good at what I do.
I’ve worked for a company that closed shop in one state & moved to another & I took the lay-off rather than move. This was in the dotcom bubble burst economy so finding a job was hard, but I still found one w/ a raise.
I’ve worked at a start-up doing QA, but Development could never get a working product ready & the co went out of business.
Another co decided to close their satellite office where I worked & I was laid off again.
Then there was the Cisco LR. After every closure, lay-off, limited restructuring, or reduction, I’ve been able to find a job w/ at least a small 3-5% pay increase. Even in the ‘98-‘00, ‘08, ‘16, & ‘20 economies, I’ve found work. Granted, tech jobs are hard to find now so it may take awhile & may not be huge raises, but it’s not all gloom & doom.
I’m just worried what the proposed tariffs will do to the economy & jobs over the next couple of yrs.
it's Cisco, you really think there won't be another LR?
My advice is to save as much as you can, and pay off as much debt as you can, because the realistic probability of finding another job paying over $100,000 a year after layoff is very low.
One of the luckiest things I did was really think through the above, years ago, before my LR, and made spending and saving adjustments.
I still work post LR, but was lucky with the planning to be able to scale back and take less demanding and lower paying jobs.
I am a skilled and educated person, but can definitely tell you, once you are out with LR, unless you are a walk-on-water truly gifted technology worker, no one really out there looking to bring you on board for high wages.
It is the way of the new world order. The best part of leaving has been the friendships I have built with other young co-workers now, who are just as hard working as I, but never had the experience and luck of landing a high paying job. There are millions of people like this in our world economy, and many are very p!ssed and resentful of being taken advantage of and worked like dogs. Many people working multiple jobs to get by.
My vote from my experience, this is the new world. So position yourself financially to be able to get by without most of your current pay. Once you are told to go, most will not be so fortunate.
Cisco legacy and saga continues through LR… AI and Quantum is only hope forward.
A bit of googling shows the most expensive medical care in the world is 17.6% of the US GDP and advertising and ad funded businesses are between 18.5% and 19.4% of US GDP. Why pay employees when customers will donate their very existence for free?
We can expect another LR in February.
And lose it’s reputation as the LR king?
For Cisco, I doubt it. For tech in general, kind of depends on where the economy goes from here.