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Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

reuters.com

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Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#171

Post by forgetsusername »

drawkbox wrote: post #72

Let's just say the average salary is 70k which is very conservative. That is 14k * 70k annually lost from the local community, a grand total of 980M or let's just say 1 billion annually. Looking for another job when there are massive cuts like this also degrades the salary they accept on their next job because of the competition. I wish companies, if possible, throttled layoffs a bit more instead of large chunks like…

>We rarely look at the amount of money lost in communities

One person's income is another person's expense. Which communities do you speak of?

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#172

Post by forgetsusername »

meira wrote: post #137
TekMol wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can money really "get lost"? I would think a dollar that otherwise would have been paid via salary to one of these 14k now goes some other way. Somebody else gets it. Somebody else can spend it.

It goes to the stock owners pockets, not lost.

And they keep that money in their pocket, do they?

On a personal level, this sucks for those Cisco employees. But it's weird that the land of disruption advocates "wasting" money on unneeded labour. There isn't much sympathy for the taxi drivers Uber is harming.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#173

Post by jomamaxx »

shangaslammi wrote: post #101
drawkbox wrote: post #72

Let's just say the average salary is 70k which is very conservative. That is 14k * 70k annually lost from the local community, a grand total of 980M or let's just say 1 billion annually. Looking for another job when there are massive cuts like this also degrades the salary they accept on their next job because of the competition. I wish companies, if possible, throttled layoffs a bit more instead of large chunks like…

It's kind of strange that massive layoffs like these result in a stock uptick. At least for me it's a sign that the company is probably unhealthy and that its value is going to go down in the future.

"It's kind of strange that massive layoffs like these result in a stock uptick"

It means that the company has realized it's in a head-wind, and is cutting costs in order to deal with it. Layoffs are usually coincident with a re-structuring.

Ergo - layoffs mean 'the company is adjusting to new market realities' - which is what investors want to hear.

Layoffs usually happen after the 'crappy state' of a company has been priced into the stock ... so there's usually only upside.

Also - all things considered, a layoff simply means less cost and likely an uptick in profitability, which in a spreadsheet analysis gives a higher valuation.

Cisco is doing a major layoff because they have a new CEO who wants to wipe the board clean and start his term fresh. This is very cynical ... but often true.

Finally - some companies do layoffs long before they are truly necessary. It's 'house cleaning' for them. Cisco does this. Because Cisco is an otherwise strong company, a layoff is good.

This is not like a 'Yahoo layoff' wherein it's just sending people off a sinking ship. So - an otherwise 'strong' company doing kind of a 'ruthless' layoff is usually seen as a good thing in investors eyes.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#174

Post by jomamaxx »

Altay- wrote: post #125
shangaslammi wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of strange that massive layoffs like these result in a stock uptick. At least for me it's a sign that the company is probably unhealthy and that its value is going to go down in the future.

It mostly just confirms my belief that fully half of all white-collar workers in the developed world are adding zero value. They hustle for their first few years, then coast as old products sell themselves to old customers they already established relationships with in their younger years... I can't fault them for not giving their all every day... I know for a fact I would instantly put in the minimal amount of work…

"It mostly just confirms my belief that fully half of all white-collar workers in the developed world are adding zero value. They hustle for their first few years, then coast as old products sell themselves to old customers they already established relationships with in their younger years..."

This is not necessarily true.

It's more like - as you add people to the pile, you get diminishing marginal returns on value-added for each person yo add.

Trust me - older products that are hardened, and sold through established channels - those are where the juicy profits come from! Nobody wants to mess with that!

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#175

Post by majewsky »

bogomipz wrote: post #145
hueving wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better that then yet more money funneling into the pockets of the big cloud companies.

Its not about money funneling into the pockets of the big cloud providers, its about engineering hours being better spent. Openstack is bit of a mess.

Absolutely. I'm still waiting for any two things in OpenStack to be consistent with each other.

Related: My compilation of OpenStack rage tweets. https://twitter.com/search?q=@stefanmajewsky%20#openstack&sr...

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#176

Post by sokoloff »

function_seven wrote: post #120
fgonzag wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I missing something? They are the exact same thing. The company decides to terminate your employment contract, as opposed to you making the decision.

"Fired" is used to refer to termination for cause. As in, you're being let go because you screwed up. Being laid off is termination without cause. You're just being let go as part of a workforce reduction.

"For cause" usually means something much worse than "poor performance". That term is generally harassment, fraud/embezzling, other illegal acts, gross insubordination, etc.

Being fired because you are performing poorly in your job is, crazily enough, not "fired for cause" but simply "fired".

Being fired "for cause" usually makes one ineligible for unemployment income.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#177

Post by bluedino »

cm2187 wrote: post #93
lazaroclapp wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite so clear. This is a layoff of 14,000 hardware or low-level networking systems engineers [1], not 14,000 front-end developers, it is not so obvious to me that the current Silicon Valley market is ready to absorb them so easily. Interesting to think those were the kind of jobs, and CISCO the kind of company, that once gave Silicon Valley its name. Makes you wonder how the market for software engineers, even a…

I agree but they have a guaranteed job if they retrain. These are relatively smart and educated people. Retraining shouldn't be the end of the world. In my profession (banking), staff levels have been going pretty much consistently down since the financial crisis, as banks shrink or retreat from certain activities. But these are mostly bright, educated, business savvy people, who end up doing something else. For many…

True, but most companies are going to look at them as no better than recent grads if they need to retrain.

Imagine what a guy makes that's been at Cisco for 15 years? Now imagine what you can pay a recent graduate or H1B.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#178

Post by bluedino »

72deluxe wrote: post #134
lazaroclapp wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite so clear. This is a layoff of 14,000 hardware or low-level networking systems engineers [1], not 14,000 front-end developers, it is not so obvious to me that the current Silicon Valley market is ready to absorb them so easily. Interesting to think those were the kind of jobs, and CISCO the kind of company, that once gave Silicon Valley its name. Makes you wonder how the market for software engineers, even a…

I always wonder what happens to those software engineers, the "hack through the night" sort of guys. They must eventually burn out, or get replaced by the younger developers who are onto the next "hack through the night" project. There must reach a stage in development where you're considered "too old" (sadly) or haven't kept up with the latest and greatest in trends. What do you do then?? Project manage? Do all deve…

>> There must reach a stage in development where you're considered "too old" (sadly) or haven't kept up with the latest and greatest in trends.

Just imagine how much knowledge and experience these guys have and is effectively being lost by them being out of the workforce.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#179

Post by melling »

pjc50 wrote: post #159
melling wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then short the stock. Long-term put options. What could go wrong?

You're probably being sarcastic, but we just had the other day the problem with shorting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12294193

Investors short all the time. Your comment seems to be irrelevant to the discussion.

How about this famous short? Soros made a billion dollars.

https://priceonomics.com/the-trade-of-the-century-when-georg...

Did you see/read "The Big Short?"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Short_(film)

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#180

Post by cm2187 »

bluedino wrote: post #177
cm2187 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree but they have a guaranteed job if they retrain. These are relatively smart and educated people. Retraining shouldn't be the end of the world. In my profession (banking), staff levels have been going pretty much consistently down since the financial crisis, as banks shrink or retreat from certain activities. But these are mostly bright, educated, business savvy people, who end up doing something else. For many…

True, but most companies are going to look at them as no better than recent grads if they need to retrain. Imagine what a guy makes that's been at Cisco for 15 years? Now imagine what you can pay a recent graduate or H1B.

They can retrain as big data specialists! No long term experts out there. A graduate with 1y experience is a veteran.
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