Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

Productivity

No matter how you measure productivity at Cisco, this recent layoff fiasco is going to hurt (and lead to more layoffs)

Cisco's fiscal year 2025 Q1 started August 1. On August 14 they announced layoffs on their FY24 Q4 earnings call and proceeded to do the unthinkable. They delayed notification to the LR'd employees until September 16th, a full month.

In the intervening weeks they sent 20,000 sales people to Las Vegas for their SKO. It was an unmitigated disaster. Employees were scared, miserable, confused and sad.

Yesterday, they fulfilled their promise of cutting. It will take a month to absorb and manage the losses. That brings us to October 15, one week before the end of Q1

Q1 is over, folks and because of the incompetence of the ELT, the numbers are going to be terrible.

Q2 has both Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks and ends January 25th or so.

None of the AI products are ready and they won't be until mid 2025. Customers have been neglected while Cisco collectively waited for the axe to fall.

February 2025 layoffs will dwarf these.

just a complete disaster of their own making

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| 1431 views | | 7 replies (last September 18, 2024) | Reply
Post ID: @OP+1uybtmNa

7 replies (most recent on top)

I really feel for the teams that are strapped with deadlines during all of this cr-p too. Sure makes everything unnecessarily chaotic when leadership that you have never even seen in person or knows I exist decides to fire me.

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Post ID: @1yvw+1uybtmNa
No matter how you measure productivity at Cisco, this recent layoff fiasco is going to hurt (and lead to more layoffs)

You mean like every layoff in the past 23 years at Cisco?

February 2025 layoffs will dwarf these.

Live out the fantasies of all the false prophets here before you and say "at least 10,000-20,000 layoffs!"

JC was great guy and he lived and let other live on Cisco but this ELT want to live by themselves not others

The guy who switched Cisco from a development company to an acquisition company when acquisitions were easy to integrate and never built a development organization for when acquisitions required far more development to integrate? The guy who tanked the stock from $82 to below $25 for most of 15 years? They guy who did layoffs often every quarter since 2001? The guy who brought in rank-n-yank? The guy who failed to meet his metrics yet gave himself a bonus anyway while making us burn an extra vacation day because he "believes in accountability?" That guy? PT Barnum was right.

At least Chuck doubled that $25 stock value in a few years before hitting the next ceiling.

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Post ID: @1zcd+1uybtmNa

This LR and the two before it (February 2024 and October 2023) have resulted in the lowest morale I have seen in my 22 years at Cisco, by a long shot!

It’s not the LRs that are causing the low morale, it is the abject failure of the ELT in executing even the simplest of tasks.

They blew it on cloud, the blew it on SDN, they blew it on AI and now they blew their shareholder’s fortune on a $28 billion dollar legacy networking company.

They cut their support staff (TAC) to the bone and are dealing with horrific spaghetti code in all of their tangled platforms. They buy a company and repeatedly fail to incorporate the codebase, the employees or the competitive advantage into big Cisco.

Splunk will be another failed acquisition but this time the $28 billion spend happened literally right before a major recession.

They could have paid $8b for Splunk if they just waited a few months.

“The layoffs will continue until sales improve” is an absolute joke

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Post ID: @1sbw+1uybtmNa
no one I know has worked at all since the end of FY24. Ive never seen it this bad

Yeah, I’ve been here two decades, and I agree.

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Post ID: @ckb+1uybtmNa

To the poster that put in 2 weeks - good on you! It's really outrageous that the 1st level RMs are pounding on teams to get numbers up just because they have skip levels that need to look prettier. All about self preservation and managing up in this joint...

Feel sorry for customers that are dealing with this nonsense (in)directly.

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Post ID: @pzr+1uybtmNa

JC was great guy and he lived and let other live on Cisco but this ELT want to live by themselves not others

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Post ID: @lld+1uybtmNa

I wholeheartedly agree with this. What's funny is RMs are still beating on their teams that "the numbers arent where they need to be". Well, no Sh*T! Another microcosmic example of leadership blaming their shortcomings on individual contributor sellers.

I put in my 2 weeks today and I was NOT impacted by the layoff. I am sick of working for an employer that clearly does not care about me or my colleagues. Fran can scream from the rooftops about how much Cisco cares about employees but when push comes to shove, you better believe we are getting SHOVED right out.

I fear for our shareholders when Cisco has to do a Q1 earnings call because no one I know has worked at all since the end of FY24. Ive never seen it this bad and Ive been at cisco for almost a decade. Good riddance!

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Post ID: @fgk+1uybtmNa

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