This Merit is terrible for everyone (except ELT ofcourse). I'm rying to give a “critical to retain” a small % increase and it dropped my budget next to nothing for the others.
Sorry guys but it's going to be a lot of disappointment, you're getting near to nothing in this reward cycle, dont get angry at us (your managers), Cisco ELT is sc--wing you.
Mind you, ELT compensation and stock price is/was at an all time high...
Layoffs are likely.
Cisco "leadership" rarely leads, they wait for air cover from their peers. This is why they have been late on every market transition over the past 15 years.
cisco is All mouth and no trousers
think about it.
cloud? missed it
SDN? missed it then fumbled it
security? Cisco bought some of the best sec tech and still lost. firewalls still su-k ar-e
web conferencing? Covid hit and Cisco had every chance to become the leader but zoom ate their lunch! now Microsoft Teams is the standard.
Webex? It is a complicated, buggy POS that everyone hates. it is hard to install, the licensing is frustrating and complicated.
now...AI
ooh boy!
vaporware, defections, AI defence? Hype-shield? AI canvas?
how does one even begin?
too little, too late, too expensive and too bloated.
Question for you cisco people. besides the stuff you have given away to prime the market, has anyone bought an actual AI product from you? be honest now...
I can hear my manager now… “trust me bro, next cycle I’ll promote you. No budget this time. Oh can you take on this extra responsibility?”
Cisco stock and performance highest its been in a long time and all the employees get shafted. While C level gets the goods
I always laugh when I hear middle management at Cisco refering to themselves as leaders. The ability to cut and paste someone elses email does not necessarily make you a "leader".
@fw innovate? Innovate what? Most at Cisco just sit around all day and if they are actually working all they do is point fingers.
@gc truth hurts
@gb - pick a fight somewhere else loser. this is an anon forum. go pound sand my guy.
@g8 none of you is going anywhere. If you could have your would have. face it - your no skills is now showing. you wont get job interviews and even if you do competing with 500 other applicants, good luck even getting your cisco resume noticed
If this is how it’s gonna go down, I could see a lot of folks trying to find the exits. When will our leadership know about the budgets? (Or lack thereof)
We were told by our senior director that we were not allowed to enter any merit increases nor stock allocation for our staff and that he would 'take care of it'. Uh huh.
This year’s Cisco focal budget for merit is one of the worst in recent memory.
Employees have been waiting a full year for focal, so splitting the pool into two cycles doesn’t make sense as a retention strategy. The budget is so thin that if a manager gives even one promotion, 3–4 others on the team will miss out on any merit increase due to MRR rules.
That means leaders are forced into a lose-lose: either keep a few “critical” people happy and demotivate everyone else, or spread raises so thin no one feels recognized. Either way, morale takes the hit.
The bigger issue is pay falling behind. Over the last four years, Cisco hasn’t kept up with inflation, and employee purchasing power is down ~25%. Meanwhile, Cisco already underpays compared to other AI/innovation competitors, which makes retaining talent even harder.
Merit should be a basic hygiene factor, but this budget feels like a slap in the face to employees being asked to move faster, take risks, and innovate. Hard to build a bold culture when people feel underpaid and undervalued.
Yeah I think it's 50% now and 50% in 6 months. Glad leadership is moving the goalposts yet again.
100% of employees are considered for Nov '25 based on our performance from FY25, then 50% in March '26, 50% in Nov '26 and so on?
No, 50% now and 50% in March.
@OP so we just did FY25 talent assessments etc, which (I thought) were relevant to merits in Nov 25
is this change in place right now? as in "50% of employees who have just done their FY25 talent assessment will NOT be considered for anything based off that until next March"?
or is this a change that only takes effect based on the next FY, i.e. 100% of employees are considered for Nov '25 based on our performance from FY25, then 50% in March '26, 50% in Nov '26 and so on?
The budget for merit and promotions will be set now, but will spend half of it now and half in Q3. It’s clearly a money-saving exercise (I.e. sc--wing us) and Chuck said so on the leaders call—they want the money to “invest in AI”.
Hi Dear Leader, you should take and pocket that raise for yourself..you will probably need it. Also, would you be open to some proposition say after work in a Hilton Garden Inn. I reallllllyyyyy want to earn my merit increase and bonus this year head master. I want to be punished for my push ahead this FY26. Pleeeeeeeeease let me show how badly I want it master!
The culture since I started has shifted so much in recent years; it's a bit unrecognizable. Optimism is slowly disappearing, and it's becoming apparent that it's now a "with us or get out" movement, but regardless of that, or even being a high achiever, every quarter is like the Hunger Games. How does someone even navigate that sort of environment, much less grow?
There is no doubt that this is a money saving operation. So half the people get any kind of merit / promotion and then the business also can't back out in 6 months either. Probability of that happening seem high with the current leadership. "oh sorry you were ready for a raise / promotion.... seems that Chuck and R2G2 aren't doing it this time around". LOL
@aa not in disguise. They were pretty explicit about it.
@aa Yeah this is very confusing and seems intentionally misleading. The rewards site does not clarify at all.
Please be a high performer, we will not reward you anymore, but if you do performe, we will let you go anyway, So, do your neeeedful, plan accordingly, increase the priority, escalate.
@OP you are a very weak leader.
So now I am going to get half an year worth of hikes, but what happens to my first half year of work. And I lose out on the half an year worth or hike because the other half comes in may?
This sounds like a money saving scam in disguise.
That's fine. I was almost motivated to do a little work once or twice last week. This brought me well away from that dangerous point.
I'll take my missing compensation in wasted resources and subtlety flawed output that will need rework months from now.
I am 100% confident that all this + the no mention of LR in today's cisco beat, means that layoffs will be more frequent now & a constant reality in cisco, to a point where it will be understood & not a topic of discussion for the leadership.
The timing of this really makes the November layoff rumor seem more likely.
Thanks for sharing. They really talked around this during the Beat today.
Bonus (IPF) similar to previous years. Merit fairly bad - I guess half of previous years. The merit budget is split across 2 cycles.
Merit is bad. Very bad. With 1 promotion on team, I have to give 0% to rest.
was anyone expecting anything different ? @OP will it cover inflation ?
@OP Thank you for sharing. Any info you could share if we should expect more layoffs around Nov?