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Cisco workforce reductions

blogs.cisco.com

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Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#271

Post by ethbr1 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #260
mplanchard wrote: post #241

I briefly worked for Cisco after an acquisition, and it was a great time: I would get my sprint’s worth of work done in two days, ask if I could do anything else and be told no, and then spend the rest of the two weeks doing whatever I wanted, which at the time was learning Rust. All that is to say, I would not be remotely surprised if Cisco has more employees than they strictly need. But, this email from the CEO is…

I love how “it was a great time” = “I worked two days a week” Any job that pays a full week and only requires two days of work is a “great time” tells you literally nothing about the actual job.

The way to read that is that parent was being paid 2.5x what their FTE hourly rate would be.

In which case, I'd say they struck a helluva bargain at salary negotiation. Kudos.

It's not like they didn't ask for more work to do.

Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#272

Post by xinayder »

davidcollantes wrote: post #240

> Today we announced our Q3 FY26 earnings with record revenue of $15.8 billion, up 12 percent year over year, and double-digit top and bottom-line growth. The ELT and I could not be prouder of the growth you have all delivered for Cisco. Great! A successful company, right? Ah, but then: > we are making changes today that will result in the reduction of our overall workforce in Q4 by fewer than 4,000 jobs, representin…

The same thing is happening at my company. We get meetings saying how the market and sales predictions are going well, we're doing so good... yet, budget within organizations inside the company keeps shrinking and we are having massive layoffs year after year.

When sales were bad we didn't have budget cuts. Now that we have stable profit margins, we are cutting costs.

Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#273

Post by weakfish »

simianwords wrote: post #244
hansmayer wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all evidence points to AI bringing at least 10-20% more productivity. No, actually all evidence points exactly to a ~20% slowdown> https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o... The "evidence" that you think about is probably that dopamine hit you felt when the shit-generator spat out a complete half-finished react app. But that's not evidence of increased productivity, unless we now measure produc…

Newer evidence from same group invalidates the outdated claim https://metr.org/blog/2026-05-11-ai-usage-survey/

No it doesn't - that data is self-reported, and the 2025 study explicitly compares _against_ self-reported data.

Granted, I agree models have improved since then, but still.

> Importantly, survey results are not necessarily grounded in reality. There are reasons to be skeptical of people’s responses to counterfactual questions such as about AI’s effect on productivity — for instance, our study in early 2025 found that people overestimated AI’s effect on their time spent on tasks by 40 percentage points on average.

- your linked study

Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#274

Post by greatgib »

mplanchard wrote: post #241

I briefly worked for Cisco after an acquisition, and it was a great time: I would get my sprint’s worth of work done in two days, ask if I could do anything else and be told no, and then spend the rest of the two weeks doing whatever I wanted, which at the time was learning Rust. All that is to say, I would not be remotely surprised if Cisco has more employees than they strictly need. But, this email from the CEO is…

Actually it is the current comic trend. The business is sound and we are doing great but we will reduce workforce for pleasure.

I think that in most places the business is going bad in fact, but if you were to believe their words it will show a very despicable spirit of the current decade where the goal is to enjoy maximum profit without any care at all to do any good.

Before a boss might enjoy to have a sound business to be able to preserve the work/income of his employees.

Now they would not care to fuck employees first but also customers after if that provide with a second yacht for holidays.

Just see Elon Musk as the godfather of this discipline...

Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#275

Post by darkwater »

dial9-1 wrote: post #242
darkwater wrote: post #165

Here we have a PR statement of a company announcing at the same time record revenues AND cutting 4000 jobs and the longest thread is complaining about Indian workers instead of bitching about the dystopian reality we live in where Cisco's behavior is accepted and acceptable. Also, H1B are issued and requested by the company. Blame the system, not the immigrants .

those 4000 laid off people will be replaced with 6000 H1B's. also why can't we hold both of them accountable?

Exploiting the visa system (especially if using some loophole) is still totally 100% on the company and not on the immigrant workers.

Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#276

Post by devsda »

senordevnyc wrote: post #250
fc417fc802 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that legal? I thought the entire point of delayed vesting was to disincentivize jumping ship. If they're the ones throwing you overboard clawing back RSUs seems like a roundabout form of wage theft.

I always viewed them as future comp that was locked at a certain rate (in terms of number of shares per quarter). I got four years of unvested stock on day 1 when I joined a tech company, why on earth would I think I'm entitled to all that if I leave before it's vested?

I know cisco doesn't do yearly vesting but at the companies that follow yearly vesting, losing job a week or a month or even 6 months before next vesting date is absolutely wage theft unless they do a full or pro-rated vesting of shares in the upcoming tranche.

Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#277

Post by poncho_romero »

danw1979 wrote: post #128
banach wrote: post #37

This is why corporations need to be owned and operated by the employees.

For the last 15 years I’ve been telling anyone who would listen about my idea for a John Lewis (British retail chain) model IT consultancy- employee owned, everyone is motivated, high quality, etc. Except last month I met someone who worked there and got TUPE (involuntary contractual transfer of employment) to Wipro (Indian outsourcerer) a few years ago. So even though this corporation is owned by the employees, and…

I don't know anything about John Lewis, but Les-Tilleuls (https://les-tilleuls.coop/en/the-co-op) sounds exactly like what you're talking about. Completely employee owned IT shop full of talented contributers. I'm not sure about their consulting work, but they're behind a ton of innovative open source projects in the PHP sphere.

Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#278

Post by peyton »

darkwater wrote: post #275
dial9-1 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

those 4000 laid off people will be replaced with 6000 H1B's. also why can't we hold both of them accountable?

Exploiting the visa system (especially if using some loophole) is still totally 100% on the company and not on the immigrant workers.

What immigrant workers? H-1B is a non-immigrant visa. Immigrants get screwed too.

Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#279

Post by mgh2 »

mplanchard wrote: post #241

I briefly worked for Cisco after an acquisition, and it was a great time: I would get my sprint’s worth of work done in two days, ask if I could do anything else and be told no, and then spend the rest of the two weeks doing whatever I wanted, which at the time was learning Rust. All that is to say, I would not be remotely surprised if Cisco has more employees than they strictly need. But, this email from the CEO is…

Their stock went up w/ Nvidia: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48075500

Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#280

Post by [deleted] »

dcrazy wrote: post #49
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #3

The casualness of mentioning record revenues in the same PR statement as laying off 4,000 people is fucked up on a new level. It used to be you were supposed to at least pretend you were forced into a layoff. But now it's like "Hey guys! It's time for our regularly scheduled layoff to juice profits! I got an extra $5M bonus for this!"

What’s really weird to me is they clearly wanted to convey to the Street that these layoffs were _not_ motivated by any of their financial results with the phrasing “fewer than 4,000”. But they conspicuously didn’t provide any other reason. No divisions closing down, no realignment of capital. I wonder if someone in the C-suite simply decided that they had some rough percentage of underperformers on the payroll, but…

[deleted]
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