Please share your experiences. Just wanna prepare in case I get LR'ed by the next looming LR.
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Won't pretend that it is not a blow at first even if you're expecting it. That first Monday at home is strange. However after looking for a job for less than a month I was picking between offers, all of which paid more than Cisco.
me too :)
It feels great ! Very good severance package and a new exciting job at a higher salary within a couple of month. Now my goal is to get hired again by Cisco, get fired and cash out again.
Was at NDS/Cisco for almost 13 years and when the email for my chat came around I think I was mentally prepped. I enjoyed the company, benefits, work and people, but took the opportunity to examine what I may want to do. I was lucky and found another job quickly with a higher remuneration but it was and still is a massive learning curve. Like all things I miss a lot at Cisco and others things are much better where I am now. Just remember that there is light at the end of the tunnel and take the redundancy as an opportunity if you can.
Ruined me and my family
Go look at the number of shares the people making the LR decisions have, and it will become evident that the LR'd individual is simply an extra vacation trip or luxury car lease; from the executive perpective.
https://economicsandmoney.com/2018/02/08/cisco-systems-inc-csco-insider-tan-irving-bought-23530-shares-of-stock/
"At first you feel sh---y that they chose you, but then you realize the leftovers are either excellent butt kissers or cheap labor. "
I suspect your manager and manager's manager sat down and looked at the team and thought who could we afford to be without. They then picked on the least effective member based on cost and ability. They then looked at team fit and thought this bloke fits the criteria, plus he seems to be up his own a*rse and wouldnt be missed in the team and picked you.
At first you feel sh---y that they chose you, but then you realize the leftovers are either excellent butt kissers or cheap labor. You interview for a bit and realize that there are a lot of sh---y companies out there. Then you get a couple of offers from some for which you'd really like to work. And you make 30% more (and even get a raise) and work with smart colleagues. Then you wonder why you just didn't leave sooner.
It was like the part in "The Shawshank Redemption" where he gets out of the sewer pipe
Perish the thought , you would mix with people outside your function. Cisco management is based on keeping you in your silo so you become heavily dependent on your management for everything.why do you think you don’t actually work with the people who sit next to you . You just report to the same person
"So I turned it into a positive. Essentially, I did the minimum, enjoying the flexibility and never agreeing to go to any event/meeting/offsite/abroad anything if it was the remotest bit inconvenient. "
And you wonder why you were binned? Nasty Cisco took away your badminton!!
What a sad sad person. Bet you are not missed one iota.
So - wait - what you’re saying is you should just give in to company stupidity and take it ? Accept the money and remain unhappy ?
Wow - just wow - passion is so easy to be strangled out of you by bad management - and thats what this is. Good managers encourage passion and motivate - bad managers demotivate and it ends destroying companies and livelihoods.
Bless your heart. You 'did the minimum" and then surprise surprise you got layed off. I bet your colleagues were glad. Sounds like they had to do more as you did less.
I was let go after 20+ years. 17ish at NDS then 4 at Cisco.
I knew for at least a year or two that I was vulnerable having seen so, so many rounds of layoffs around me.
So I turned it into a positive. Essentially, I did the minimum, enjoying the flexibility and never agreeing to go to any event/meeting/offsite/abroad anything if it was the remotest bit inconvenient. My attitude became "...so what they might sack me at any time...". I had zero feelings for Cisco despite (and perhaps this is the odd bit) them paying me quite well. Certainly I was doing considerably better financially with Cisco than NDS/NewsCorp. But money isn't everything- quality of life at work is pretty important too.
Quality of life at NDS/NewsCorp was definitely much better. Its hard to quantify what working in a "family" means. Certainly it isn't about senior managers using the phrase "family" all the time - that is something you feel and I felt it there. I suspect not firing people on a regular basis helps but there were little things too. Under NDS we had a sports and social club. It had a tiny budget but many employees felt its loss in many ways. For me it was the halting of weekly badminton which was the only thing I enjoyed that helped my fitness - it cost almost nothing but the lack of company sponsorship had the affect of less and less people attending until it stopped.
Anyway back on topic, when the news came I was actually shocked despite wanting it for so long and despite not needing another job.
As someone else said, the main issue longer term is missing the guys you used to work with although in my case most of them got sacked or left at one point or another over the last couple of years.
@Ru0DBSQ-5eks, well said! I am with you. I was let go in 2009. It was my stupidity to work hard there. I remember that in one week I resolved three critical customer issues (CAP) in the financial industry for the sh*tty product quality. For that week, I was rewarded $50 for what I did. However, one must realize that Cisco is not the same company once we joined. Performance is no longer a key factor for your success. With the level of business corruption within Cisco, I know that Cisco can continue as usual based on the effort of many former employees but not its current employees. If you are still with Cisco, don't you feel sad?
Every post echoes only one thing: you learn to put the "job" in its place in your life. The "job" no longer is your life, it is a paycheck.
I have to agree with it. LR does a reality check for us. It is the best thing that can happen. We get stronger and learn to view life with more meaning and stop to smell the roses.
We know, that we will be alright and we have our loved ones with us . We will find something to provide the paycheck, but our life is with our loved ones, not inside the cisco building !!
@Ru0DBSQ-3ags - I found it the opposite; since the layoffs had nothing to do with performance, I know that it was not a reflection on my work.
@Ru0DBSQ-3ags +1 a million times over!!!
This is the best thing that can happen to you! It was certainly the case for me.
Since there is no performance rating, you don't get good closure during Cisco LRs. I still have a hard time accepting that tons of less performing (and equal or higher paid) people are still at Cisco.
+1 Post ID: @Ru0DBSQ-1zzt
It wasn't a club I wanted to join.
I think it depends a lot on whether you knew it was coming before the LR discussion, and whether you were giving everything to your job in the mistaken belief that it was helping your career and would prevent you ever being selected. The LR came out of the blue for me. I thought I was doing fine in a role where I wouldn't be vulnerable. I also hadn't changed jobs for more than 10 years, so felt my skills had become too specific to the company products and processes to find another job easily. All good lessons for the future, but really hard at the time, and I went through a very anxious period that I wouldn't wish on anyone who wasn't my worst enemy. As someone else mentioned, the network of friends who have previously left Cisco can really help enormously. It is also a great relief to have the burden of an overwhelming workload taken away and to escape from the toxic atmosphere in a department judged unsuccessful by the Cisco machine.
I had sometimes thought in dark moments during overworking efforts that being employed by Cisco was going to kill me. I am pleased to have survived, and I am now much happier in a good job with a sane employer and lots of job satisfaction.
Got cut in an LR in 2014.
It was pretty crap for a couple of days but I got on with finding a new role and was lucky to sort something fairly quickly. It s---ed at the time but worked out well in the end!
I figured I was going to get hit and so I was already out interviewing. Got a new job pretty quickly. The only thing I miss about working at Cisco is the people I no longer see everyday. My gym buddies and other people I became work friends with over the 18 years I was there. The job market is good right now so if you do get whacked, the timing is right.
I got laid off in Aug 2016, and echo the feelings of feeling bad, but only a little. I was fortunate to have trusted friends who I had reached out to share the news and they themselves had gone through similar situations before. Their advice was very helpful. Even though the advice seemed hollow at first, and difficult to implement, once you start taking the steps, you will start to feel refreshed. I, for one, started by filling out all the paperwork required by the EDD, and then took some time off for myself rediscovering some of my old hobbies, and meeting old friends that were neglected due to the "hectic" lifestyle we push ourselves into while at Cisco.
I came back in January 2017, started looking for a job, and joined a company MUCH closer to home. As one of the previous contributor mentioned, it is now a job rather than being emotionally attached and invested in a company. Our loyalties are now to ourselves, not to the company at all anymore.
If i happen to go through another layoff, the motto will be "BRING IT ON".
If you indeed have put in 100% of yourself, put projects and after-hours conference calls before family, and tried to do best for the company; it can be one of the most emotional events of your life.
I think I could have handled it much better if there was an annual review cycle, and my documented performance was part of the equation resulting in the reason I was chosen.
Just a sad reality that a company making so much money doesn't have a review cycle.
My recommendation would be to not give all of your work performance capacity, because if you give 100%, and are LR'd, you'll be left wondering what you did wrong.
If on the other hand, you can stomach the work, and don't truly care if you are let go, ride out your chosen mediocre job as long as you can; and enjoy your life outside of work.
When I got hit, I got about 3 days advance notice. My boss found out he was going to be hit, and that people on my team were being hit and that I wasn't doing the notifications, so that meant I was being hit. He called me to tell me the "good news".
There was a little bit of shock at first. I knew it was a possibility and that eventually it would happen, but that didn't mean I was prepared for it to happen then.
Once the reality set in, I started to come to terms with it and realized that I was actually relieved. I had made it through every lay-off the company had ever done and finally got hit after being there for more than 20 years. It was almost like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders.
Not to say that it was all roses from there. Finding a new job when you are on the wrong side of 40 with a lot of years as a manager, even when you have in demand skills, is not the easiest thing if you are not in a high demand area of the country. During the job search there were bouts of anger, frustration, depression. However, talking to colleagues that were still at Cisco and realizing I was off of that treadmill of "will I get hit this time?". I did pursue a few jobs that would have me go back, but I was looking at them differently. I looked at them as the "job that gets me a paycheck while I look for my next job".
Really? First you feel like crap and then, about a week later, you feel like you've been released from prison. All the BS projects you thought were important are but a distant memory. You immediately realize that Cisco is, indeed, a networking company because with each round of layoffs, your own personal network grows exponentially. You reach out to the loads of people before you who have been laid off (oh yeah, you stop with the bullsh!t euphemisms and stop using soft language like LR - limited restructuring). You take a breath, get all your forms and paperwork in order, get your financial situation in order (if you already haven't had a finger on this pulse), and then you begin to breathe. Some people panic and jump into the next job immediately and others take their time to pick and chose; or even change career path altogether. Nevertheless, it is invigorating and refreshing..... the terms (financial and otherwise) are also rather generous so you feel pretty good.
However, you do feel like absolute garbage when you think of your former colleagues who still work at Cisco and who go day to day wondering if they're going to be axed next while trying to do their work and the work of 2-3 colleagues who were axed. You feel sorry for them and notice them with deeper wrinkles and graying hair while you feel 10-15 years younger.
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when is the upcoming layoff ?
I got laid off 2 yrs back in Aug 2016....How it feels ? well u feel bad..ur life comes to a halt..frequent almost daily fights with your wise....u stop loosing self confidence....u stop heading out or meeting people/ socializing....whenever u see people laughing u feel they are laughing at you...but u have to be strong and believe in urself...
You feel like sh--. You gave so much of your life-time ... and out of the blue you get a letter stating "your services are not required anymore". You look around and see a lot of other engineers whose services are still required. Constantly, you ask yourself "why me!"?