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Cisco workforce reductions

blogs.cisco.com

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Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#111

Post by [deleted] »

spike021 wrote: post #82
siren2026 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cisco especially is absolutely full of H1Bs. As someone that has worked for them a decade ago, some of their division are >90% Indian. Those are all good engineers and not dunking on them at all but it should be unacceptable to bring over competing workers on a visa while also laying off so many people.

we were acquired and part of our org moved into cisco HQ. the entire floor were Indian other than our org, and over time our org was filled out with incoming transfers and new hires. i'll never forget some irony in that one of the engineering leaders brought us together for a mini townhall once and praised our "diversity" but by then the percentage of people in the room were basically the same as you described, inclu…

[deleted]

Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#112

Post by sensanaty »

simianwords wrote: post #72
passive wrote: post #46

My extremely cynical, but not yet proven wrong view: Tech, more or less, has a group of investors centered around Silicon Valley. Not the only ones, but especially now, the most active. Generally, these folk have a lot of exposure to AI, and probably mostly believe the hype around it. Which means they believe companies using AI should produce better results, which in the current market means short-term cash. So if a…

[flagged]

Can you link to any actual evidence about this 10-20% productivity increase? And I don't mean anecdata like "I'm totally like 8200% more productive!1" that the AI bros love to spew.

From what I'm seeing at the Co I work for with ~1300 devs, productivity is more or less the same as it has always been. Projects aren't being done noticeably faster, there's no less bugs than before (if anything things are more unstable), the backlog remains endless. And we do all the crap that the AI hype tells us to do, we've got harnesses, complex agentic setups etc.

Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#113

Post by dgellow »

simianwords wrote: post #72
passive wrote: post #46

My extremely cynical, but not yet proven wrong view: Tech, more or less, has a group of investors centered around Silicon Valley. Not the only ones, but especially now, the most active. Generally, these folk have a lot of exposure to AI, and probably mostly believe the hype around it. Which means they believe companies using AI should produce better results, which in the current market means short-term cash. So if a…

[flagged]

Does that productivity increase translate into monetary gains for the company that are greater than the token+compute+other new inteoduced expenses? For smaller companies I can believe it, but massive orgs like Cisco I’m really not so sure. You can be extremely productive and not actually contribute to the company cash flow

Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#114

Post by fc417fc802 »

ribosometronome wrote: post #102
siren2026 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cisco especially is absolutely full of H1Bs. As someone that has worked for them a decade ago, some of their division are >90% Indian. Those are all good engineers and not dunking on them at all but it should be unacceptable to bring over competing workers on a visa while also laying off so many people.

If a company is set on hiring foreign workers who will work for less than Americans and we don't let them bring them over here, won't they just offshore instead? I don't ask this to be contrarian but more to wonder how to combat it.

By penalizing offshoring. I don't say this as a particularly nationalistic person either. All companies in all countries should be heavily incentivized to hire local labor and sell to the local market. Globalization is extremely beneficial of course but the various side effects need to be managed.

Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#115

Post by rayiner »

siren2026 wrote: post #61
declan_roberts wrote: post #38

This type of thing should come along with a reduction of allowed H-1bs.

Cisco especially is absolutely full of H1Bs. As someone that has worked for them a decade ago, some of their division are >90% Indian. Those are all good engineers and not dunking on them at all but it should be unacceptable to bring over competing workers on a visa while also laying off so many people.

Do you think there was ethnic favoritism going on?

Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#116

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

ribosometronome wrote: post #102
siren2026 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cisco especially is absolutely full of H1Bs. As someone that has worked for them a decade ago, some of their division are >90% Indian. Those are all good engineers and not dunking on them at all but it should be unacceptable to bring over competing workers on a visa while also laying off so many people.

If a company is set on hiring foreign workers who will work for less than Americans and we don't let them bring them over here, won't they just offshore instead? I don't ask this to be contrarian but more to wonder how to combat it.

An offshored worker is already much cheaper than an H1B worker, I would expect any easy substitutions along those lines to already be performed. Probably some effect on the margins, but I would doubt it outweighs the primary effect.

(Of course, it would be a problem if you think H1Bs are for hiring people who cannot be found domestically, but it does not seem like many people think that these days.)

Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#117

Post by lain98 »

Whenever a company does layoffs willy nilly frequently I stop trusting them with my career. The AI excuses are lazy.

I was laid off last year by one of the big tech companies, and they called me again for a rehire but I just dont trust them anymore even if they pay more. The layoff completely disrupted my life and I developed health issues because of the stress. Not worth the mental hassle.

I have seen a few workplaces which are more deliberate in their hiring and are not on 24x7x365 hire and fire mode unlike many of the big names. I would rather work in such a place rather than have 10 varieties of coffee and condiments in the pantry.

Frankly i'm pissed off.

Sorry for the people who pinned their hopes on cisco and were laid off yesterday. It's not easy.

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