Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees • Hacker News Board

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#221

Post by geodel » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 2:53 PM UTC

SinomaSo wrote: post #205

Noseshine wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/direct…

I concur. I have seen at places where I work that even with complete hiring freeze there are open positions posted on job portal. And as you said at higher level it must be to glean information.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#222

Post by lil1729 » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 2:59 PM UTC

MichaelGG wrote: post #188

lil1729 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have looked at Android code. It is awful. Now, I don't form opinions about Google engineers based just on that code. I meant to say, generalizations don't always work well. They may have bad engineers. But they have great engineers too. Kent Dybvig and his team who wrote Chez Scheme works for Cisco. There are many others. Jonathan Rosenberg who wrote many Internet RFCs on fundamental protocols that run the Internet…

Not disagreeing that they have very talented people. But I would not point to the SIP RFCs as commendable work in any way. It's a mess.

I didn't say it is commendable work. SIP is what we have at the moment as a standard and is being used by a lot of products out there and it was written by a Cisco employee. That is all I said. I am not intimately familiar with SIP to comment on its pros and cons.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#223

Post by yusyusyus » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 3:04 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #86

mdani wrote: post #23

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The software will run on inexpensive dumb hardware from whitelabel manufacturers such as Quanta computers. The secret sauce in hardware that gave Cisco big margins is increasingly replaced by software that is good enough (e.g. You can use SDN controller and a cheap switch hardware to replace very expensive Cisco stuff). The trend in Enterprises and telcos is to use cloud (AWS, GCE, Azure,...) and open source (aka Fac…

White box switches are all great in the data center if we are talking about a shitload of layer 2 and TRILL, but somebody still has to manufacture the core routers capable of advanced IP layer 3 features at line rate 400-1000Gbps bus backplane per slot. You're not going to whitebox replace an ASR9010 with 3rd generation line cards.

My counterargument is that Tomahawk LC (the third generation LCs referenced by parent) are just NP5 and Mellanox just picked up EzChip. I imagine you'll see whitebox competitors targeting large swaths that use ASR9K for the datapath resources it provides (perhaps Mellanox will even build this box).

Others, such as in my particular space, were previously forced to ASR9K or similar for scale reasons (because scaling full tables is hard when you need capacity too), but Broadcom's Jericho chips hit the scale mark with added TCAM, kicking us from $200K-ish/PoP for barely meeting needs to $60K/PoP way over provisioned in the case of NCS5501 or Arista 7280R. Of course, there are caveats to how this works out, but good enough is good enough!

Customer mix is important for margins. SPs, for example, are notorious for getting bottom dollar deals for their scale and ability to play the other side. And sure, they need the feature set of ASR9K. But when the rest of the mix (higher margin) looks around, they see that the scale promises are unnecessary for their operations and move on to lower cost boxes.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#224

Post by function_seven » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 3:06 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #176

function_seven wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Thanks. I used the "for cause" a little sloppily. A sales person who misses quota will still be able to get unemployment benefits, while another salesperson who likes to walk around the office without pants will probably not.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#225

Post by function_seven » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 3:08 PM UTC

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #218

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 means that they don't want you doing your job. Laid off means that they don't want anyone doing your job.

Damn, that's concise and to the point. Thanks.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#226

Post by dmix » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 3:12 PM UTC

conqrr wrote: post #92

jdale27 wrote: post #79

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If you listen to tech CEOs, there's this huge "shortage of software engineers". There is no shortage of software engineers. What there is, in the eyes of those CEOs, is a shortage of H1-B visas -- i.e., cheap labor from abroad with low mobility. Of course, the alternative is to invest in training citizens and permanent residents, who will then go and get higher-paying jobs elsewhere. So the myth of the software engin…

Low mobility? Immigrants on H1-B can change employers.

I can assure you most H1-B employees would be scared to mess with a good thing. Unless they are well experienced with H1-B or their job offer is quality w/ promises of an immigration lawyer taking care of it.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

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Post by FajitaNachos » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 3:17 PM UTC

cisco_throwaway wrote: post #122

michaelvoz wrote: post #46

I live down the street from Cisco HQ. I share an apartment building with many of their engineers. Perhaps it is anecdotal, and my evidence comes purely from speaking with them (I have never seen their work), but they come across as absolutely terrible as software engineers. They seem like the kind of company destroying people that are the death knell of every software giant. They have no care for the product, good pr…

I heard from a colleague that John Chambers walked into one of the Cisco buildings and found that it was mostly empty due to people taking advantage of Cisco's lax policy on working from home. The buildings are now planning to get sold because they no longer need them. Either these employees that were assigned to work in those buildings are gonna get laid off with this 14K figure, or they're gonna be working from hom…

Depends on who you are. Some people say they are going to work from home and just use it as an excuse to do nothing. I'm incredibly more productive when I wfh. Not than I'm unproductive in an office environment, just more productive when I'm in my basement hacking away.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#228

Post by Fargren » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 3:25 PM UTC

72deluxe wrote: post #138

_pmf_ wrote: post #100

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> I have looked at Android code. You just have to look at the API. From little details (wifiInfo.getSSID() returning either the quoted SSID, an unquoted string of hex characters the SSID consists of, the special string " " or "0x") to the overall architecture (needlessly convoluted lifecycle, 2D rendering architecture from 2000s, the whole intra-app Intent bullshit that causes people to find alternative ways of commu…

Out of interest, what's wrong with Intents?? As alternatives, do people just end up dumping to an sqlite database and polling it in each Activity? Haha that'd be madness

For inter-app communication Intents are a pretty reasonable solution to a complex problem. But inside an app, I would just love to have constructor parameters for my activities. I make do with Intents, but I don't have type safety, I have to deal with partially constucted objects until I've read my Intent Parameters and any time I have to pass something that's not in the default types that a bundle can contain I have to build a Parcelable wrapper for it, or find some other convoluted solution. Overall I just feel like I'm working at the wrong level of abstraction.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#229

Post by googletazer » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 3:39 PM UTC

radiorental wrote: post #213

gaius wrote: post #186

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You mean stack ranking? LOL that doesn't work out how you want it to either...

No I don't mean that at all. I work at a place where we surgically remove deadwood, keep valuable people & tech. Those who have value feel valued. As an aside I was with 3Com when they tried to go toe to toe with Cisco. 3Com did very much the same thing.. one major event was even called 'Catapult', senior management's intent was to launch the company forward, workers looked on with incredulity as over half the workfo…

>I work at a place where we surgically remove deadwood, keep valuable people & tech. Those who have value feel valued.

I smell coolaid.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#230

Post by mathattack » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 3:49 PM UTC

mholmes680 wrote: post #212

mathattack wrote: post #208

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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 coop…

I agree, its like being stuck in purgatory. Although, I disagree somewhat with your last statement -- in my experience, all throttled layoffs have been a result of acquisition synergies. The current one around me is by a market leader with a great past and excellent vision of the future. From my experience there's an easy way out of this: take control of your own career. Ask yourself: are these the conditions I want…

Serial acquirers almost always are in throttled layoff mode. It's how they justify the acquisitions. Companies that have been passed by the market (think IBM) tend to cut gradually over time. Occasionally you have companies where both have happened. (Think your phone or cable company)