My 2 cents. With the "people deal" or as I call it the "people squeal" Cisco has severed the link between employees and their managers. There is no longer a yearly appraisal where goals are worked towards , attained, not attained or partially attained in order to arrive at some kind of agreed on ranking for ones yearly performance . This then formed the basis of the next years plans eg training required, new goals , areas of weakness to address etc etc. It was a grown up system which cleared the air and steadied morale. This is now all gone , I assume because it created a paper trail of actual achievements which could theoretically be used legally at some future layoff tribunal. Now you ( and your manager ) are like terrorists in the Afghan foothills just waiting for that drone strike to take you out. The "drone pilot" is some mid ranking bean counter / manager with a spreadsheet and a macro - probably working from home in Las Vegas - the first part of which ranks by age and cost. They don't know you , you don't know them but hey ho you gotta go. This is the death of any social contract between workers and employers and as I have seen destroys morale and in doing so the sparks of innovation that all companies need to grow, Drone strikes kill morale !!
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@7ipw: Newsflash....you and you're work are a commodity item to the company. It goes to the lowest bidder. Period.
This is the new reality. If you are in a profession where you can be outsourced, don't expect security. Sorry. Man. It sux but it is the workplace most of us operate in. Change jobs, companies or both.
Fire you and replace by contractors. My group just hire 8 (8!!) eng contractors. Contractors can be let go without fuss. Contractors take learned skill with them to new job. Contractors have no vested interest in doing correct long term thing. Just do bare minimum to finish contracts then move on.
The original post is exactly correct. This is the primary reason I chose to leave after "surviving" the round in August. When I got a call from management upon resigning, one thing they said was "but we were about to give you a raise". I think that's been verified by others since. But that only made me think that I would've been an even juicier target going forward.
Morale? What morale? I didn't think there was any of the stuff left in Cisco after the fantastic work from the ELT to beat it out of the place? Maybe I'm wrong.
To keep motivation, sarary raise after layoff.
This acceralete next layoff. That's nonsense.
It was good year 1 but since then it's been a pain to go. Most people I know try to find a reason not to go.
What is the morale at the yearly Vegas Sales spectacular like? I'd imagine they have a different outlook then most of the IT and Operations folks who appear to be the majority here. Or are are they as pessimistic as us?
Yes, it amazes me that Cisco is so disingenuous that the lr of high performing long term employees who built the company isn't enough so let's go and lie and play troll on a blog that attempts to speak the truth. It is to late Cisco. College campuses know your reputation, people in the industry now know your reputation. It used to be that it was a goal of startups to be acquired by Cisco now more and more they shun Cisco. Startups insist on very specific terms and over valuations such as appdynamics
And when Cisco HR posts here as they frequently do, they accuse all folks of being trolls. That fixes a lot.
The bean counters love to shed the more expensive employees, so be careful when you ask for that raise as the closer to the top the closer to being a "cost cutting measure" you'll become.
Vegas?
the beatings will continue until morale improves ...