I'm working in a UK site, and, for better or for worse, I avoided the chop this time. I feel it is only a matter of time though and the overwhelming majority of my colleagues feel the same. It has devastated morale in the office seeing highly competent colleagues being shown the door and left us thinking when will our number be up. The only reason people are showing loyalty to Cisco is because they don't want to give up their chance of leaving with a golden handshake. NO other reason as far as I can see and that's a pretty sad state of affairs. What's it like in your office post LR?
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Same here in RTP. A lot of people work from home but the place is like a morgue. They have decimated morale.
It's the same here in France. Annual LR's and Managers then trying to gee up the troops again telling teams the company will be stronger position and also hand out some paltry promotions and focals to try and distract people as to what just happened. You can only pull that off so often. People are not stupid and even managers are not believing their own bullcrap at this point I think.
We long some very talented individuals during this LR cycle and that has left the place in a state of shock. Suddely dawning on those of us left that we are just a number. Cisco Family? People deal? You gotta be kidding me!
@JUT - The package was not 3 months plus 1 week for each 10 years. It was 3 months + 1 week for each year 10 - 19 + 2 weeks per year for 20 years and above. So if you worked there 20 years, you get 3 months + 9 x 1 week + 1 x 2 weeks. I know because I was impacted in September. Plus you get a grossed up lump sum payment for 4 months of Cobra (if there for more than 10 years or 2 months of Cobra for less than 10 years). However, it seems most people got stiffed on their year end bonus. I know I did. I got around 1/3 of what I would normally have gotten. Some people got much less than that I hear and some people got nothing.
Was told out straight my redundancy was not performance based. Director was given a budget saving target to meet so looked across his reports and presumably selected who he thought was too expensive and who he could replace for far less cost. It would be dumb to believe your position was being made redundant, as per legal definition. It's not. It's just being replaced with a far cheaper option of a recent graduate or offshore. The years of knowledge and experience will be lost and count for nothing and thats what happens when you have bottom-line driven sales guy in the driving seat. Like some big football clubs in England, Cisco will attempt to buy and acquire it's way out of trouble and paper over the gaping cracks in its internal structures. Good luck to them. Karma, indeed.
LR at the higher grade. Same position within the group at the lower grade. Yup. Many of these instances.
I was laid off in September...just learned that they are replacing my position. Really stinks since I worked at Cisco over 18 years with outstanding reviews. I even received a great yearly bonus this last time. Clearly, my layoff was NOT performance based. Cisco as a company and management as individuals have no loyalty to their employees. I agree with the previous poster who said that the severance package was terrible. It was particularly bad if you had worked at Cisco over ten years. Karma is coming!
Yep. Higher grade level folks that got let go are being replaced by new hires at lower grade levels. See it firsthand in my group. Sickening.
Morale is very low. And when people learned that the layoff 'package' was 3 months + 1 week for every 10 years. Not a company i want to be associated with.
Plus...they have done many LRs saying they are 'eliminating' the role, but now are rehiring for that exact role.
again. i'm not proud to work here any more.
My team in RTP is not sunshine & rainbows. The "on-call" rotation now comes around faster and the new contractors haven't come up to speed yet so they're doing their jobs, the jobs of the LR'd folks, and helping the new contractors become productive and they're on-call more often. Burn out is rapidly approaching. The job market in RTP is great if you're a developer/software engineer, but not so good if you're in IT.
SJC here. My co-workers don't care that layoffs happened. I'm the only one who was freaking out.
Same in US, east coast. SJCers seem a bit happier since they are in the valley and have easy opportunity. Not like that everywhere.
Management is blind to the morale issue and won't talk about it. They look at us as if we should all have sunshine and rainbows coming out of our rear ends because after all, we work for the best company in the world.