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Cisco workforce reductions

blogs.cisco.com

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Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#261

Post by roxolotl »

alistairSH wrote: post #259
roxolotl wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should we be ok with this? Just because something is the norm doesn’t mean it should be nor does it mean it’s moral.

Does making separate statements suddenly make it moral or humane? How long between the statements should the CEO wait? I agree, we've built an extremely inhumane economy in the US. And it feels like it's gotten worse since I entered the workforce in 1999. But calling out CEOs isn't going to change it - the only thing that will help is the force of law - higher taxes on executives and profits and stronger worker prote…

Sure but you know what doesn’t help, defending CEOs. Calling out CEOs expands the number of people who realize this is immoral and who find statements like this repulsive. The more people that find this announcement repulsive the more likely we’ll get actual political change.

As for the CEO the only moral response is to quit and force someone else to write this statement.

Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#262

Post by redwood »

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…

I look at it a bit differently. I bet Cisco's overall employment will only rise over time maybe even this year but certainly in the years to come. But the point is they do need to rebalance the kind of focus area they have. In other words someone who's great at one part of the technology stack might not be who they need for a different part and the priorities change over time. The reality is Cisco does a huge amount of large acquisitions and this brings more and more people with specialized talent all the time and you can't just do that forever without removing focus elsewhere.

Also if compensation has come down over the last couple of years sometimes you have to do this instead of lowering salary because for whatever reason our industry doesn't ever lower salary.

I do personally believe it would be wonderful if companies invested more in helping people retool and move to new parts of the stack and where compensation becomes non-competitive it should be okay to at least give an employee an option of a lower salary to stay.

Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#263

Post by senordevnyc »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #257
senordevnyc wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If you see it as dangling future compensation in front of you then you wouldn't, obviously. But then why is it structured in that manner? What's the purpose? If you view it as a signing bonus it makes perfect sense. They want to get you in the door but also don't want you to take advantage of them by quitting immediately. In that case you wouldn't be entitled to it if you left voluntarily or were fired for cause but…

It’s structured that way to disincentivize leaving voluntarily, which I think is fine. What’s the problem with that? And why would that imply that if I’m laid off, I’m still entitled to that future compensation?

Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#264

Post by passive »

throwaway7783 wrote: post #77
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…

We use GitLab. They are no way in an incredible position to moonshot anything. They are yet another git provider with a management plane around it.

I've built a developer platform around GitLab, and it's got some nice stuff, but it's not revolutionary.

But that's not all that relevant to the opportunity in front of them.

The opportunity, generally, exists because of their place in an industry that most folk believe will be very different a decade from now.

That belief is going to lead a lot of CTOs to try new things. When a company tries something new, it almost always picks a new vendor to work with, rather than adding complexity or risk to an existing vendor engagement.

Yes, there are other alternatives, but they are less well known, require self hosting, and/or are secondary products of companies with very broad focus.

Atlassian might be another, given how much of the rest of the software development cycle they have their hooks in, but many tech leaders have unresolved JIRA trauma. :)

Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#265

Post by OutOfHere »

Scroll_Swe wrote: post #172
sometimes_all wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way to paint with a really broad brush...

I use my real life experience to form my opinions, yes.

There is some bias in some teams, but it's not universal, and such a bias for one's ethnicity really exists in teams of all ethnicities. You just see it more because there are plenty of xxxx in IT.

Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#266

Post by suddenlybananas »

darksim905 wrote: post #105
penguin_booze wrote: post #94

In the past week, we've had: * Build for the future (Cloudflare) * Our path forward (Cisco) What else did we miss?

On and off for the past year or so, the commercials from TD Bank have been * More Human as they've slowly laid off people due to the AML fines they've been dealing with in the U.S. and replacing folks with either AI, more Indian/Canadian/Ireland talent.

You can't really complain that the Toronto Dominion Bank is hiring Canadians.

Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#268

Post by coldpie »

alistairSH wrote: post #259
roxolotl wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should we be ok with this? Just because something is the norm doesn’t mean it should be nor does it mean it’s moral.

Does making separate statements suddenly make it moral or humane? How long between the statements should the CEO wait? I agree, we've built an extremely inhumane economy in the US. And it feels like it's gotten worse since I entered the workforce in 1999. But calling out CEOs isn't going to change it - the only thing that will help is the force of law - higher taxes on executives and profits and stronger worker prote…

> But calling out CEOs isn't going to change it - the only thing that will help is the force of law - higher taxes on executives and profits and stronger worker protections might make a dent.

The CEOs are the ones who are preventing those policies from being put in place.

Re: Cisco workforce reductions

#270

Post by allarm »

layoric wrote: post #207
allarm wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Fogejo offers CI/CD out of the box, for starters.

It absolutely does and a very good effort of compatibility with GitHub actions. It’s not perfect but migrating is far less of a pain than I experienced moving to others

Okay, missed that!
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