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Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

reuters.com

201–210 of 294 posts

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#201
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But 8y ago WCF was marketed by Microsoft as the future of web services. It was clear to me from the outset that it was a mightmare to configure and unecessary complex. Now I think it is the generally accepted view. But if we have to wait 8 years for each new technology...

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#202
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They keep it in an offshore tax haven, often.

So I own stock in most large companies through index funds. I want to someday retire and the government won't/ can't provide for me to life up to my standards. No offshore tax haven here.

Unfortunately, your case is not the majority. I believe free market would work if it was the case, but it is an utopia, like communism.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#205

Interesting. I live in the south bay right next to the Cisco campus, and the amount of new employees they are hiring is staggering. I wonder how many of the 14,000 are being rehired as a contractor or something?

Oh my god you are probably right, at least according to their jobs website [0]. There are plenty of jobs posted, I looked at a few job categories and there are pages over pages of openings in their database. Not 14,000 though, it seems like maybe 3,000 at most. Still a lot for a company with such a headline. [0] https://jobs.cisco.com/

Some companies tend to post jobs they don't have, to be able to show that they are productive and investing in resources. The reality is they just want to show competition/shareholders that they are hiring a lot of people and investing in new markets. Most of those jobs will be re-posted again and again as they are never filled. Some other nasty companies put jobs online as a trap to interview competition exec/directors and know more about their strategy, then they never hire them. Welcome to the world of greed.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#206
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting fired and getting laid off are very different things!

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.

The practical difference is the ability to collect unemployment benefits. If you're fired you may not be able to collect benefits depending on the situation and state where you live.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#207

Is this from government pressure? Probably some underground stuff going on...

I don't follow. What government pressures companies to lay people off?

There are many government pressures that cause this unpleasant business to happen; it could have been a ridiculous fine for having to many employees or a bad percentage of a certain kind of person or some other fine.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#208

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…

I've been through throttled layoffs in the past. They're much much worse.

1) You're always looking over your shoulder, and can't think about long term projects or work.

2) The first people out (frequently the weakest performers) are able to find jobs the easiest, but by the time the better employees are also let go, the market demand has been filled.

3) It encourages and environment of non-cooperation. Employees cooperate more when they think they'll see each other again. If it's "there's 3 of us here today, and probably only 2 in a few months" then there are multiple incentives to not compete.

Better to get it over with all at once wherever possible. Companies that need multiple rounds are usually either mis-run or in markets deteriorating extremely rapidly.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#210

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.

Context matters, though.

Being one of 14,000 employees let go because they chose to eliminate that entire half of the company doesn't necessarily mean anything. Being one of four engineers chosen to be let go from a team of 20 can say something about your skill level.

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