Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

Accountability

Why do we have major accountability issues between teams from individual role to management role across the company? Talk to 10 people within your circle of influence and you will realize it. Is it surprising ? The situation extended at partner ecosystem level too if observation is correct.

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| 1671 views | | 11 replies (last March 4, 2025) | Reply
Post ID: @OP+1jn6zng41

11 replies (most recent on top)

Some Managers and Directors laid off 2024 year end are back in Cisco before the severance package ended. Look around in your group who are those thugs ?
If Cisco hires them again then why did they layoff in first place ? Cisco has double standards, nepotism and all network and connection based. There is no accountability

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Post ID: @rt+1jn6zng41
"project managers". Some might have been oddly kept (and then promoted)

Those are "Desperate Housewives" of other BU Directors/VPs, you can not touch them.

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Post ID: @qr+1jn6zng41

Does this include "project managers". Some might have been oddly kept (and then promoted) despite Cisco's ethics policies.

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Post ID: @mr+1jn6zng41

A well defined / operational company runs like a solid metal chain where each link has an important role and accountability. Yes each link has a team that also works as an internal chain where accountability and weakness are recognized and dealt with as needed. Cisco has no such structure, but does have major redundancy filled with incompetent employees.

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Post ID: @f7+1jn6zng41
look at the freak out when DOGE asks Federal employees for a five line summary of weekly accomplishments...

At most of the places I worked only people deeply involved in my projects would understand what they meant. If you're going to be fired by morans who keep firing critical personnel then beg them to come back are you really going to trust that your five lines, even if the exceed expectations by any reasonable metric, will be processed effectively by the likes of teenage dropouts lead by a dr-g addict?

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Post ID: @ec+1jn6zng41

this rot exists in every Western organization

look at the freak out when DOGE asks Federal employees for a five line summary of weekly accomplishments...people are spending hours losing their minds in protest of a perfectly reasonable request that would take them two minutes to fulfill

people are literally quitting rather than provide a five line summary! these people should be clearing minefields in Ukraine

meanwhile in China the entire country works 996...

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Post ID: @e2+1jn6zng41

What are the "metrics" for Sr Managers/ Directors / Sr Directors/ VP/ SVP/ Program manager/ Director of Program Managers/ Sr Director of Program Managers ? I have never seen them get LR'ed much.
All these highly compensated roles seem to be not worthy of shareholders money.

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Post ID: @e1+1jn6zng41

Lack of accountability is a global culture problem.

It's also the nature of large silo'd companies.

All anyone needs to do is ask, 'what can I do to improve this situation', and the answer is never 'nothing'.

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Post ID: @dg+1jn6zng41

In the words of every manager I worked for, "there is no metric [read: measured by dashboard] for working code." There wasn't even a metric for breaking branches for months at a time. There was no metric for cutting and pasting code, even when it wasn't from licensed sources, then forking it onto thousands of branches growing the bug count exponentially. There was no metric for marking static analysis warnings as not applicable when they represent real problems and once done they're grandfathered for eternity.

There was a metric that a code review was done but none for every comment being rejected because it asked for a white space change which would violate the coding standards. Cisco also had a metric for KLOCs in the 2000s, and since directors with no software experience bought the "we only hire the top 10%" Koolaid they beat managers because they couldn't understand that you could add features without removing other features with negative KLOCs which lead to massive amounts of dead code. There were also metrics for putting N bugs per week into terminal states where N was uniquely pulled from each director's backside which for those that know the old Dilbert cartoon know everyone went off to write themselves a minivan, eating the development budget alive without actually fixing the bugs.

No one bothered to learn Goodhart's Law. When you reward based on measures people work to the measurements, and if you measure the wrong things people will work to that and become counterproductive. Bad engineers become bad managers with no training who let the dashboards do their job who become bad directors who become bad vice presidents. This may be the most reliable process at Cisco.

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Post ID: @cf+1jn6zng41

No one cares on my team: too slow, blaming games, quiet quitting. I joined cisco 4 years ago.

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Post ID: @bc+1jn6zng41

Accountability needs to start from higher management before reaching individual contributor roles. Cisco does it other way.. so problems never gets fixed, allows the management fellow goes up the corporate ladder...

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Post ID: @a2+1jn6zng41

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