And I'm proud I finally reached that stage. Cisco is not worth one iota of my dedication, and even less of my anxiety and stress. Coming home and not allowing work to spill over into every facet of your life is pure bliss.
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We can all thank phonies like Fran, Liz and Chuck for continuously destroying morale with incessant LRs.
Cisco's first layoff was 25 years ago taking out 27% (48,000 employees and contractors to 35,000.) During the remaining 14 years under Chambers we had rank-n-yank firing the least politically connected 5%, wage freezes, dry promotions, quarterly layoffs, and the removal of a bunch of perks. He grew one bad routing and switching operating system to four which were all disasters and the stock flapped around 25. He also led the effort to make Cisco an acquisition company with no software development skills.
Too many here believed Cisco was the best company to work for until they "just announced their first layoff ever today." The only good old days were in the 1990s when the stock grew so fast people considered the salary the bonus. The software quality and the resulting work still su-ked.
My enthusiasm is gone, completely gone. It’s just a paycheck. I’ll smile, I’ll say all the right things, but it’s just to keep the entry on the ledger each month. My focus and joy are elsewhere
Ive quiet quit 2 years ago. Now i do the absolute bare minimum, maybe work 3 hours a day if not 4. Take a 3 hour nap for lunch or go travel with my cursor scrolling once in a while. There is ZERO motivation to go above and beyond. When I see people in the office that do so, they are rewarded with more work, more hours in the office, more stress, anxiety, but never more pay, no promotions. Endless cycle of chasing a carrot on the stick for nothing that has any monetary value. Add on top of that, the layoffs. The best most hardworking talent getting let go after sacrifising 4-5-6-10 years of their lives working extra hard for a soulless corporation... only to be in the same position that they would be if they did the bare minimum at the end of it all.
A recent boomerang commented directly to me last week "this isn't the cisco I used to know!". We can all thank phonies like Fran, Liz and Chuck for continuously destroying morale with incessant LRs. Meanwhile, utterly useless EVPs such as Martinez received obscene upfront bonuses.
Why would anyone be at Cisco unless they just wanted to clock in and out?
I would love to work hard and make Cisco great again...
Integrating modern technologies through acquisition isn't simply a function of working hard. You now need development skills and what Cisco as a "software company" has are mediocre bug fixers left behind as the good people from previous acquisitions moved on, sometimes well before their stock fully vested to avoid rotting on the vine.
I would love to work hard and make Cisco great again, but I have no idea what my job is anymore , seems to change almost daily, senior leadership is throwing stuff to see what sticks, constant training that teaches us nothing helpful for our job but is tracked like its the crown jewels. All temps are fired, so anyone left is supposed to do their job, and guess what, Customers will start asking , why am I paying this for overworked , disconnected engineers who seems to be miserable and dont have any direction. But our VPs can buy beach houses and new cars while we stroke out from stress.
You set an excellent example for your family. Well done.
@OP Cisco has become 3rd world VP/SrDIRs/DIRs hiring their kind (you know what i mean) with carefully manipulated hiring skills... Process is flawed with, if you have 20 year olds birth right citizen applying or naturalized citizen of 2x something applying...
how many of your kids of 20 something with no real jobs?? doing only fans and yt channels?? is that what you want for your kids?? please grow up .. you can do better.
if you do not have 20 something year olds at home as dependents.. you are lucky to get thru. your life, esp in bay area with cost of living and other things(like h1b preferences). let me know when you retire ... genuinely want to know how you did it.
I was like that for my final five years at Cisco and did the minimum possible and volunteered for nothing until I retired early last March. Go the extra mile? You gotta be kidding! I had my enthusiasm beaten out of me by constant threat of LR and zero career progression and being surrounded by PPT BS sycophants who got promoted. Fu-k that.
Good for you, @ OP. In the long run, corporations and their billionaire owners are getting richer while employees continue to face hardships and get poorer. So, kudos to you for seeing through it. Your only loyalty should be to your family and close friends.