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Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

reuters.com

251–260 of 294 posts

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#251
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all new deployments must be on Openstack you have my sympathies

I tried to use OpenStack 4 years in our new PaaS product. I ended up pulling it and using the regular, well baked tools built into our managed hardware. I see much hasn't changed in those intervening years.

>I see much hasn't changed in those intervening years.

Source?

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A much smaller company could definitely create these very high end switches and routers, with a business and support model unlike that of Cisco.

And they won't be trusted or used by large carriers for serious POPs for many years. New manufacturers have tried to show up on the market and sell routers that are designed to be highly redundant and offer a full suite of layer 3 feature set to handle full global v6/v6 routing tables. They've either failed or been acquired. Major ISP backbones are very risk averse, when you're trying to run a six nines availability…

> They've either failed or been acquired.

That is certainly not the end of such endeavours. Cisco can't buy ALL of them forever.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#253
post #226
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, several of my friends are "stuck" working for big companies that people on HN wouldn't want to work for until they get their green cards.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What languages did they work in?

The vast majority were Java developers. I always felt bad about it as I never passed a single one of them during my time working there and interviewing them. They were in such a shitty position but at the same time I only ever had one of them actually able to talk through how to code something (and even that person said they only "know how to do a for loop in theory" which I don't understand but I digress). I'm fine…

Wow, that sounds terrible...

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#256
post #232

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 understand this isn't a good situation for the community, but what about the other side? That $980m isn't just disappearing into thin air. CSCO will use it to refocus their efforts into more valuable services, which by itself will entail some level of hiring & investment, and if successful, they'll hire & invest more. If you think this is an optimistic perspective, consider the alternative...CSCO continues employin…

Will they? Or will they use to just do more buybacks? I'm not sure I trust any company to refocus after layoffs when they practically just announced a huge temporary gift to shareholders.

http://www.recode.net/2016/2/10/11587764/cisco-soars-on-15-b...

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#257
post #232

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 understand this isn't a good situation for the community, but what about the other side? That $980m isn't just disappearing into thin air. CSCO will use it to refocus their efforts into more valuable services, which by itself will entail some level of hiring & investment, and if successful, they'll hire & invest more. If you think this is an optimistic perspective, consider the alternative...CSCO continues employin…

It's unlikely they're going to hire on anywhere near the same number they layoff. Laying off a large swath of employees, only to have to go through a major hiring cycle is extremely inefficient. Finding the right employees is time consuming and expensive.

It seems more likely they'll keep the savings as a quick fix to make them look better to investors. As noted in the article, these rumors are coming out close to announcing their fourth-quarter results.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dam straight, nothing wrong with coolaid if it's good for you. Mid sized company(~3K), 30 years old, well above market pay, stellar benefits, 10-30% bonuses and a very family friendly culture. I don't blame them if they want to keep what works, people are smart enough to smell bs coolaid.

There's never 'layoffs' and never ever entire groups let go. Just regular PIPs for people who you think... 'no great loss'

I'll admit, doesn't scale to cisco though.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bad comparison. Taxi drivers losing business to Uber can easily go to work for Uber themselves (in fact, many of them have done exactly that). Someone being laid off by a company like Cisco can't just go work for the competition that easily; it wasn't a simple situation of a better competitor coming along that caused these Cisco employees to lose their jobs. If anything, it's because the work was outsourced offshore,…

>Bad comparison. Taxi drivers losing business to Uber can easily go to work for Uber themselves.

The lower barrier to entry of Uber means that there are more people competing for those taxi jobs, like people who can do it part-time. How many taxi-drivers did you know pre-Uber? I knew zero. Now I know multiple people who are, basically, taxi-drivers. (I'm making no claim as to whether this development is good or bad, it just is).

So yeah, they can "easily go work for Uber" as a contractor for less money. I imagine that the Cisco workers could do the same if they wanted to be contractors for less money.

Re: Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees

#260
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They keep it in an offshore tax haven, often.

>They keep it in an offshore tax haven, often.

I guess that depends on what you consider often. Because the money outside of tax-havens "doing work"in the economy is vastly greater than money hidden in tax-havens.

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