Excellence is irrelevant. Loyalty is irrelevant.
In the end, you’re not spared or damned by the quality of your work; you’re erased because a number had to go down on a spreadsheet.
Getting cut isn’t failure, it’s statistical noise. Like a wreck on the highway, survival at Cisco has nothing to do with skill; just chance, and sooner or later, chance runs out.
We are all grunts fighting for a couple of grains of rice to keep working.... Pitiful how this company has become
You know how that rabbit feels
Going under your speeding wheels
OP's generalization is overly broad. Obviously, LRs are executed with varying degrees of impact and skill awareness. Some ppl to it well, and others not as well. Cisco is no different than any other company.
No one has ever been LR'd and thought, "yeah, that was the right call."
@af you don't think about the place? You're here...posting on their layoffs page....just sayin'
People are inherently tribal. the Cisco tribe is not different
Cisco is a corporation made up of capitalists who care only about their self interest.
The "ELT" or "Leaders" are not loyal. for proof, check out their linkedin.
one day they are demanding unfailing loyalty to Cisco, the next day they take a golden exit package and are running a cisco competitor.
Chambers runs Nile
Arista is run by Jayshree Ullal, a former Cisco Executive.
the list is long
Loyalty is only to themselves.
Cisco is not a family - Parents don't fire and ghost their children
Loyalty comes from the concept of feudal law. A Vassals allegiance to their Lord.
The ELT refers to themselves as "your leader" which should tell you everything you need to know. Loyalty is a one way street.
you are loyal to them, they could care less about you and probably don't even know who you are.
Excellence is a meaningless word. it is an abstract ideal without any shared meaning.
break it down. Excellent at what specifically? how do you measure "excellence"?
Cisco is a corporation that has passed it's prime and is on the slow descent into mediocrity with IBM, Intel, Wang, Honeywell, etc.
Same here. Just a bit longer time for me, but same results and same reason stopping back by. Have many good friends still there. Most candidly do not like working there whatsoever. Really sad, because long ago; Cisco was honestly the best place to work for.
The last two years I spent at Cisco was psychological warfare. I knew my number was coming up soon in most likehood, two good promotions, then a move to a new management chain. I tried everything I could to fit into the new management organization's work culture; but it was truly the complete opposite of what old Cisco in the 2000s was.
Fast forward my LR, it was the best thing mentally I could have asked for. I should have maybe left earlier, but indeed Cisco did pay the bills quite well. I earned every penny.
If you are really at the end of your rope and truly struggling to get up every day, go get help; talk to a counselor, and figure out your plan. Once away from the crud, life is truly much better.
I really do not see how the upper, upper executives live with their lies. Hope they are proud of their accomplishments, and the narcissitic behavior that causes thousands of hard working people to live their lives in a daily mess of wondering when their time will be, and regardless of the quality of work they do, they could be next to go any day.
I spent 14 years at Cisco, laid off at the end. It's been 8 years since leaving. I don't even think of the place any more, except when I get a LinkedIn update from someone I connected to in that time (which made me think of this site again--it became a sounding board after Brad Reese closed his blog). I have three contacts I stay in touch who worked there--and we knew each other prior to joining Cisco.
It paid the bills and floated my boat at the time. I no longer matter to Cisco and Cisco certainly no longer matters to me.
Loyalty to a corporation is an outdated concept and you will not matter to any of them in the long term. The only loyalty required is to yourself, your family, your ethics and your standards. Everything else is transactional. Move on and move up.
So true.
Most of my (long) career, I really wanted to
work at Cisco and I ultimately got my wish.
I was amazed, and really excited about how much there was to learn and experience, and to share that exuberance with customers.
I excelled and won recognition awards, etc.
But, when I was LRed, I was devastated, disappointed and - yeah -angry.
Angry because the reality of the OP words above:
My career aspirations did not matter.
My pride in working at Cisco did not matter.
My former relationships at Cisco did not matter.
I simply no longer mattered to Cisco.