software is eating the world in one regard.
but industries like Cisco and Intel are very cyclical.
Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees
191–200 of 294 posts
Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees
#192Let'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…
Not that it necessarily hurts your point, but your numbers are likely way off. The article doesn't say where the layoffs are coming from other than moving from hardware to software. I expect this means that they're firing some designers and largely manufacturing people, meaning the community most hit would be in Asia more than likely. Salaries there are a lot lower, so it wouldn't be as much of a gain for Cisco (though still the same kind of effect for the community effected). They also are probably shuttering some production facilities, which could save them a ton in capital costs, but again, could have a strong negative impact on the communities those buildings are in, depending on if someone else snaps them up.
Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees
#193I was just yesterday called to schedule an interview... >.>
dodged a bullet
Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees
#194Let'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.
I imagine the logic is fairly simple: Same business, same products, less overhead. This should drive up profits in the short term, and if operations continue as they were previously, in the long term too. They also get to use terms like 'lean' and 'streamlined' in their investor reports. Stock bump.
Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a difference between not knowing the latest and greatest, and not keeping yourself updated with the evolution of your tool of choice. Most people will do the former after a while. It's too much time spend with too little gain. The latter however is not acceptable. I want my developers to know about the latest version of .net, and if they're not using linq they're doing it wrong.
But if they are not using WCF they are doing it right! Not all evolutions of the tool should be followed blindly.
I never stated all evolution should be followed blindly. But once the evolution becomes established as best practice, there is very few reasons to not do it.
Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees
#196Earlier 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…
I work with a guy like this. His knowledge base is vast (we're electrical engineers and he's a master of both hardware and software). He's also a shambling zombie from a lifetime of hacking through the night. I'm not exaggerating. He mostly just shuffles through his days, trying to get anything done, but he's just too fried. He rarely sleeps. I've never seen him eat. He won't take vacation days. He seems to have decided a long time ago to just drive himself insane. Honestly, I think if he weren't one of the guys the company can't afford to lose because he knows things about our products no one else in the building does, they'd probably let him go.
Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees
#197Earlier 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.
I imagine the logic is fairly simple: Same business, same products, less overhead. This should drive up profits in the short term, and if operations continue as they were previously, in the long term too. They also get to use terms like 'lean' and 'streamlined' in their investor reports. Stock bump.
To be fair, most businesses in history eventually regress to market-matching through zero-sum tactics like this.
Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I wish companies, if possible, throttled layoffs a bit more instead of large chunks like this, When you amputate a limb, you want to do it as quickly as possible.
> When you amputate a limb, you want to do it as quickly as possible. When you throw the bathwater out, make sure you aren't loosing valuable resources. the best case scenario is to be really smart and constantly drain the bathwater such that the baby doesn't even notice the level dropping. Keeping the baby focused on the new shiny thing helps.
Bathwater doesn't have morale. I worked at a semiconductor company while in school and for a bit after graduating. It's a volatile industry and layoffs are frequent. Every time anything happened, people were just concerned about layoffs. On every project, people's concern was usually protecting themselves so they wouldn't get laid off. None of them were really happy in their jobs, but they all had golden handcuffs (I'm in a small state with little high-paying tech work). I can assure you that the effects of roughly annual layoffs (similar to the throttling you describe) is one where people can never get comfortable again, and what should be a rare, isolated event, becomes the status quo. A bad status quo.
Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees
#199This is Cisco admitting defeat to commodity manufacturers. I wonder if there is a massive skilled worker crunch on the other side of the world from which the commodity manufacturers operate (despite the huge population).
Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees
#200> ...as the company transition from its hardware roots into a software-centric organization. With all these companies exiting the hardware space, who is going to be doing the hardware? Will hardware remain a niche department within these software based companies? Are off-the-shelf systems-on-a-chip now powerful enough that there is now no need for hardware, beyond a generic universal SoC based device? Is it going to…
I expect eventually margins on hardware will come up and new players will enter. Maybe not, but the siren song of software's high margins and flexibility is only going to last so long. Innovation in hardware is going to slow down a lot, and software people are going to have to start worrying about efficiency again, and will no longer be as able to shrug optimization off onto Moore's Law or abstract away the hardware altogether. Some people will come in with new hardware, offering to alleviate those pains, and we'll have a healthy hardware market again.
Or I'm totally wrong :)