Update us with LR info
33 replies (most recent on top)
CVG should be shutdown immediately they are not making money and their software has never worked. Even their new stuff just stinks, please terminate this BU. 17 years here and CVG is the worst managed BU in the company.
Correct. They are not making money which is why they were LR'd. But the skills those people now have are critical and portable to other areas in Cisco. Doesn't matter. Nuke 'em.
Good news for them is that those skills also are in need on the outside.
What a cluster fudge c!sc0 has become.
All CVG ? This is like what they did to CIS. All good people , some hired from outside Cisco and others good Cisco engineers who were able to adapt to cloud/sw. But if you look carefully both CVG and CIS are not making much money at all. Cisco is way behind in cloud . I think it's all down to poor planning and vision from the upper management.
Is the company leaving the hardware business?
That was the impression I got, or at least that hardware was becoming much less important.
From Cisco's press release:
Restructuring Plan
Today's market requires Cisco and our customers to be decisive, move with greater speed and drive more innovation than we've seen in our history. Today, we announced a restructuring enabling us to optimize our cost base in lower growth areas of our portfolio and further invest in key priority areas such as security, IoT, collaboration, next generation data center and cloud. We expect to reinvest substantially all of the cost savings from these actions back into these businesses and will continue to aggressively invest to focus on our areas of future growth. The restructuring will eliminate up to 5,500 positions, representing approximately 7 percent of our global workforce, and we will take action under this plan beginning in the first quarter of fiscal 2017.
Chuck lies. He said "...and further invest in key priority areas such as ... and cloud.", yet CISCO just cut people from the cloud team. How is that investing in key priority areas?
He also said "...restructuring enabling us to optimize our cost base in lower growth areas of our portfolio and further invest in key priority areas...". Cutting jobs, in other words, is now something of a product strategy, rather than a rare occurrence.
Even though Cisco has had annual lay-offs every year since 2011 large enough to be covered by the WARN act except Chuck's first year as CEO, & still managed to have multiple lay-offs in 2015 even if they didn't trigger an announcement, Chuck told a reporter a couple of days after the Q1 LR was announced “I would like to see that be the exception.” in response to the reporter's comment that annual lay-offs seem to be a way of life now.
Is the company leaving the hardware business?
This is nothing just the beginning next quarter even more cuts entire BUs will be eliminated to be a "leaner" company.
They say it is all about getting the "right skills." WTF? Laying off everyone in CVG? Those ARE the skills you want. It is just pure laziness on managements' part to not redeploy those folks. What a horrible waste of talent, and a great way to demoralize everyone. The easy way out is to look at your spreadsheets and do the cuts all for the here and now, with no planning for the future at all. There's no look at skills. No look to the future at all.
Ex-CVG as of today.
Thanks to everybody providing updates here. The hush-hush philosophy inside the walls of Cisco has to be experienced to be believed. Complete Ostrich syndrome, just keep your head in the sand and pretend everything is fine until you think it's all over!
Which cloud group cvg/cis ?
Me too Security Business Group
@1fke, SJ
I got axed... In the cloud group. Horrible day!
Security under John Stewart and Acquisition Integrations teams both got hit. Heard that acquisition pipeline is looking really lean.
Bad sign..
Cloud team got hit.
@1ear - What site was your friend at? What BU where they in?
How many people in RTP engineering were impacted today? I know the whole vMS team in RTP was notified today.
@1SJF where are you located? Q1 guys at our site in UK only just left so maybe things are delayed in Europe again. Hope I get lucky this time 😉
Reading my email and got 1/1 meeting with my lovable huggable manager!
Cuts are happening today (right now). I was impacted in the last round, but just got a call from a friend who got hit today (and as expected, the friend is senior level, very very good at their job, but also older).
US is starting this morning, right?
to be laid off in order to secure central funding that would be critical for the Advanced Services team to move forward. They are laying off their way to prosperity. Not a winning system at all.
Many who have been laid off in the past have been brought back as contractors.
I don't think the manager taking a day off will save him from the axe. :-)
But maybe his taking a day off is a good thing for your team. If he's not there, he can't do 1:1's with you to give you the boot.
When several members of my team got invites an hour before the earnings call for "a quick chat" with no details scheduled for the morning after, we knew who was getting impacted.
Forget about social responsibility. When a company terminates an employee (of any age) and then replaces that employee with a contractor at a lower wage, then it's purely about cutting costs and the bottom line. Doesn't matter if that contractor is less skilled, will have to ramp up on Cisco processes and environment, etc causing work delays, increase in cases and cases being opened longer, more time spent my employees mentoring the new guy and getting less work done, it's all about the money. Not to knock the new guy, they may be very talented. But a new person can't replace the years of learning how to get things done at Cisco and knowing who can help with what that comes with time and experience at Cisco, not without putting in their own years.
The politicians are all saying that they need to raise the retirement age to save Social Security because with better health care, people are living longer. Great. Now employers have to go along with that philosophy and stop letting people over 40 or 50 go and actually hire people over 50. Companies don't want to pay for your experience yet expect you to work for what you made 10 yrs ago because someone 10 yrs younger will work for that. Seems like the only people getting richer are the "leaders" and executives who get golden parachutes and not the middle class.
The bubble is bursting it's not just Cisco everyone is preparing for it. More layoffs to will follow after tomorrow sooner than later.
If it is a dream world then the expectations of leaders making millions of dollars at Cisco is not high enough, and that ladies and gentlemen is the problem. Again Cisco is a positive cash flow company. Folks like Fran and mark are enabling lr's thru the worthless people deal and are just as culpable in the lack of social responsibility around this issue as chuck. Did and does cisco have to evolve to stay cash flow positive - absolutely yes! However Cisco does lr's instead of doing simple things like encouraging teams like AS and TAC with reqs in both ic roles and leadership roles to take high performers from within other orgs of Cisco rather than hire from the outside as they often do today. That is just stractching the surface of what could be done, but it is more work and has a longer term view of people development and investment. It is what should be expected from Cisco leadership if there is to be a social conscience.
@K9ue3qO-1kux: Which group?
SJC is also cutting just got word of a whole group getting wiped out.
Bravo! But the ELT member's ears are plugged. They don't care. They live in another world, so dream on.
The social responsibility point that was made is long over due. Thank you for making it. It is fantastic that Cisco is seeking social responsibility in things like equal pay and high levels of matching donations. However those things become hollow when on the back side cisco is letting people go that have faithly provided their services for many years and are high performers keeping there skills up to date. This is especially bad from a social responsibility when the company remains cash flow positive and the execs are making more than prior years. Often the lr targets seem to be people in there 40's who are in the high expense portion of their lives with bills to pay for kids. However, It is more work for leaders to take a look at talent and directly reapply them where they can grow in a new position but it is the right social thing to do. What ever happened to growth opportunities and cross organizational opportunities? Instead Cisco lets people go and for the most part they have to interview for open requisitions under duress.. Unfortunately in many cases people making hiring decisions at Cisco are not doing so based solely on talent and recent high performance anymore. Chuck the method you are following to meet company goals is just plain wrong...full stop. There are much better and more social ways to accomplish the same financial goals against especially as a positive cash flow company. This method is just plain weak leadership.
Any unscheduled 1:1 is not good. Cisco needs to stop the LRs.....there are other ways to solve the problems. We don't need more people on the open job market. Cisco, show some social responsibility.
Sorry, if your manager schedules an unplanned 1:1 tomorrow, then you're probably toast.
I got 1/1 with my manager's manager tomorrow? Does that mean I'm safe? I doubt it...
My manager decided to take the day off tomorrow last minute we all know something is up. RTP
Layoff notices going out Wednesday, Nov. 2.