Dear Chuck and Senior Leadership Executives, might as well from Directors and up, or perhaps the entire company.
Are we a Cisco family? Are we together for better or worse? Are we committed to 1 common Cisco's future?
As leader of a company - since employees are also key stakeholders- you are obligated to take care of us. If you decide to lay people off, then waive your right on getting the annual bonus. You shatter many people and families. The bonus has blood on it. Turn it down...Perhaps HR should put on Cisco policy, so the Execs would come up with better strategy to retool, retrain its people if the excuse is that people do not have the right skill sets.
New college kids do not have the skills when they got hired by Cisco, we send them to all kinds of trainings, xxx-athon, conference while the old people stick around and do work, keeps the lights on for those "legacy" products and systems. 1-2 years later they are equipped with the right technologies, the right experience... Let's do a quick switch for just 6 months, have the millenniums run the business, and the old and so-called deadwood work on proof of concept of new technologies and actually work on the new technologies and see how things go...