Cisco Systems: possible large jobs cut in 2009
According to CNNMoney: “The global economic downturn will continue to hammer computer networking giant Cisco Systems Inc., chief executive John Chambers said Wednesday.
In its current quarter, Cisco expects to see revenue decline between 15% and 20%, he said in a conference call with analysts.”
“We are not going to consider (layoffs) at this time,” chief executive John Chambers said. But he added, that if Cisco was forced to cut jobs, it would likely be a large cut of about 10% of its workforce.
- Cisco employed 67,318 workers worldwide at the end of the second quarter.
[...] Update (02-04-2009): Cisco Systems: Possible large (up to 10 percent) jobs cut in 2009 [...]
GOOD! Let some of those arrogant blue-badge assholes share in the misery.
We can’t have the shareholders losing any more money. Cisco is a shithole.
Red Badge,
You have some major issues. It’s people like you that make captive employees say “no way” when asked by mgmt if a contractor should be brought on board. In over 25 yrs in the industry, I have yet to come across a contractor that was worth the money they cost and the hassle they bring. Captive employees pay a high price for the (relative) security they obtain. If you’re so bitter, why not become a full-timer? I’ll tell you why.
1) You might have to actually work a full day
2) You might have to actually be accountable for where you are and what you’re doing during the day
3) You might have to actually be a team player and live by the same rules that full-timers live by
You’re boo-hooing falls on very deaf ears. Wishing layoffs on people that have sacrificed and dedicated themselves to an employer is sick. No one told you to be a contractor. The contractors I know fully realize that they can be let go at any time. If that’s not your cup of tea, become a full-timer somewhere. You couldn’t cut it at Cisco, so certainly try somewhere else. Up until this downturn, there were plenty of full-time gigs. Get over yourself, grow-up, and shut up. How old are you anyway? You’re either too old and screwed up your career and now are whining about it. Or, you’re a pissant that has no clue how the real world works. Like I said, you have issues.
#2: I am with you! Cisco needs to cut lots of dead wood. Lots of managers and managers of the managers - hey are all useless.
#2 and #4 are probably the same person. #3: don’t descend to their level by gracing them with an answer.
Cisco has a lot of managers and many of the managers manage only couple people. Time to clean house.
Obviously, they have no need to file for any employees in the 2010 quota (April 1, 2009 filing).
Cisco is complacent.
Competitors are catching up .
To be nimble , Cisco needs to jettison dead woods.
You will be surprised that in fact Cisco is having many dead woods.
Of course , including Chamber
cisco q2 profit 1.9B and 29.5B cash but still want to layoff 2000 employees.
Cisco Q2 profit 1.9B and 29.9B cash but still want to layoff 2000 employees.
should a person join as contractor Red badge if offered, in such scenario -2009 ?
>> should a person join as contractor Red badge if offered, in such scenario -2009 ?
I think it really depends on what style of work suites you. In the current scenario, my feeling is to stick with the style you are more comfortable with and are good at. With lot of people in the market, chances to get a new job (if you get laid off) would be better for you if you know exactly what your pluses are. Of course this doesn’t apply to people who are unfortunately not competent enough; such people would be at maximum risk be it full time or contracting. If you feel you fall under this category, better start preparing yourself and improving your skills…
In a nutshell, if you are good, you shouldn’t have to worry, no matter if you are a contractor or a full time employee…
#6 those are not managers, they are damagers to company
#13: their managers do think otherwise. Cisco will sink if it not cut all this useless mid-to-low-management junk.
the word is 3rd quarter 2009
#15: Do you know where? Any rumors about layoffs at Cisco in San Jose?
John Chambers said during the earnings call that another 1500-2000 would be let go. They probably wont say anymore about it. Those 2000 will likely be let go in phases and not in any particular quarter. It’s assumed it’s more contractors being let go. If you’re on an H1B visa and work for Cisco, you better start making plans to move home. Cisco wont have any problems replacing the H1Bs with naturalized citizens.
as an ex-employee for 13 years in engineering at that place I (blue badge) I can only affirm as to how useless management is. They are the worst example of how a successful company should be run. I left Cisco more than a year ago, joined a competitor and well happy about the decission,
Useless managers exist in every company large and small. Sounds like a few people have some sour grapes regarding their employment at Cisco. Try to be happy wherever you end up.
Cisco has lot of central teams which are not productive. Cleaning could refhresh enviroment
My VP is very aware of issues with management in her organization and is willing to step up to the plate to do what needs to be done to rectify the situation. She really listens to her staff and skips on a consistent basis. I applaud her for this.
I think red badges tend to harbor resentment and it’s not fair to think that just because you got screwed over that the company as a whole is bad. It’s a great company and I am proud to say I work here.
Blue badge~
Major, I agreed with you. Cisco central group is not productive. They let the guy from operation to run the Central technology group.
Cisco just whacked the entire software engineering and qa departments at their Burlington, MA location. 38 people gone. Other “restructuring” done in Portsmouth, NH and Boxborough, MA. Having worked with the Burlington group, we are far from dead wood. The dead wood made the decision to cut the office. I believe the Peter Principle has been achieved.
Perhaps they should look in to Chambers 71 million dollar salary??
Any one hears about Cisco layoff today? I heard Cisco let go another 250 people today, San Jose area.
What is the US government doing? That’s a laugh. The same thing they did to prevent a preventable meltdown of the global economy, the same thing they did to catch Madoff before people really got hurt … that is very little.
Here’s what we should do. Ban H1-bs for ordinary workers. Yes, java programmers/c programmer are ordinary. You can train a monkey to become a mediocre java programmer. Trust me, cisco is filled with these (and some actually want to be promoted). H1’s should truly be reserved for special skill sets that are hard to train. Also, no body shop should ever be able to able to apply for a H1-b; this is probably the greatest area of abuse for the H1-b program.
This will increase the demand for engineer and universities will respond. Yes, companies claim they will start hiring offshore. I have two issues with this 1) They already are doing that and 2) go ahead; the more you hire off shore the more demand will increase overseas, thus driving up demand and costs.
Its official… cisco is cutting contractors and the ones that stay are getting pay cuts. I got mine yesterday 10%.
WebGirl, I know that we are in tough financial times but that is despicable! Cisco needs to analyze carefully what all their employees are up to… time and motion studies… bring them back to working in the office, not “working” from their (vacation) homes. They’d quickly realize that some are not working to full capacity and could adjust their working hours accordingly.Imagine.. FTE would even have to submit PTO requests if they don’t come into the office!! wow.. the savings that could be made!!!! P.S. WebGirl don’t forget to start taking it easy for 10% of your day!
To add to webgirl’s posting, weird thing is that Cisco is now starting to ask headhunters for find contractors again for specialized roles such as project managers.
I agree H1-B laws should be strict. Just knowing Java should not be the criteria. We should bring really skilled workers.
The wave of Cisco employees who got notice in Feb get officially booted today. It looks like Cisco is shooting for Chambers’ overall target of 2000 layoffs in groups of 250 or so, presumably to avoid negative press and not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Good luck on the latter…politics reigns supreme throughout Cisco’s caste society, and executive leadership is spotty…at best.
There is already word that Cisco is going to layoff another 1250 people to complete the 2000 count that Chambers mentioned earlier this year.
So for all the people blogging, but don’t work for Cisco, let me fill you in on how things are now within the company (my technology group at least).
1) Cisco is continuing to do limited reorgs (aka - read layoffs)
2) Doing these small limited reorgs prevent the company from having to make a big public announcement and comply with WARN (http://employeeissues.com/layoff.htm)
3) Management is disconnected from the individual workers
4) Though we have a number of people still working very hard to make the company successful, we have a sizable amount of employees who are just milking the system
5) Let me provide you examples of the behavior of employees in my Technology Group at Cisco
a. In the product marketing group, 25% of employees stroll in at 10am and leave by 5pm
b. On top of this, these employees regularly take 2-3 hour lunches
c. Employees sign onto Sametime (internal Instant Messaging tool) and stay logged on to make it appear that they are working to their managers
d. Some employees also claim to head to another building for work and then take off to go shopping (Valley Fair is the closest)
All this may seem far fetched, but they are facts I have personally witnessed. We have employees openly socializing and communicating about coming in late and leaving early, while taking extended lunches. It is truly sad when you lose good teammates while these unprofessional people continue to stay employed (either through the buddy buddy system or because their manager/management team is very disconnected and doesn’t even realize the situation at hand).
You are 100% spot on!
Point 5 : I have observed the same. Better still, some don’t even attend the office and still get paid!
Presently, within Cisco, many of the employees have heard of the limited reorg (layoffs) coming already. In SBTG, one of the DE managers (formerly a TME) has already started sharing with others the names of employees on the list. Truly sad that this person is allowed to be a manager when his unprofessional behavior affects the lives of other employees. Some of those who have heard they might be affected are considering getting legal advice. All I can tell you is that moral is at a low point right now and unprofessional employees like that don’t help the situation any.
I agree about the management not realizing the log in are a scam and also i observed many workers have another scam with all the new access information they retrieve for data to there phones and act like there working in cisco phone numbers shows up when they call home , and say there working late and actually having ball on ciscos dime!
Also; alot of women and men actually work home from each others house when there spouses are working a real job , im sure there really getting alot of work done as a team player for our company to grow and stop wasting money ,work from home and save money on gas and get overpaid from my group very disappointed ,I have the option to stay home but i like to observe what direction this company is going for the future and hope to actually see my management do something. Knock these losers down a few pay cuts and stop the long lunches so we could all see great bonuses again.
Any hear anything on when the next phase of layoffs will hit?
next quarter.
Why so many Indians? All on H1 and why we are not training our people.
All Indians are in greencard drama.They are in trouble because CISCO willnot file anymore greencard.They will keep mouth shut and work.H1 is for 6 year if greecard not done bye bye.
If you worked for Cisco as an FTE (Blue badge) and your manager did not like you for some reason, such as you failed to take the workload of 2 to 3 people continuously or had family issues and objected to work in the weekends, or late in the night or asked for PTO you have earned, or if you became sick because of overwork related stress, you may get some or all of the following:
1. Threat of termination
2. Harassment and abusive behavior from your manager
3. Negative ePM rating
4. No pay raise for years
5. Letter of Concern (LOC)
6. Personal Improvement Plan (PIP)
7. Termination (forced to leave)
Your PIP may look like this:
A. You need to improve your negotiation skills, such as getting budget approved when your group has NO budget, is cutting back on cost and has no money left for projects. Even if your manager has told you not to ask for money, you somehow have to get the money (rob or steal or get it from your bank account?)
B. You need to manage more projects when there are no resources or budget available. They have no money left to hire resources and are laying off contractors.
C. You need to improve on resource management with no resources available. If you ask for resources for your project, you will be considered as a non-performer. If the key resources are utilized in other projects and not available, somehow you need to complete the highly visible project ontime and within the budget with no budget!
D. You need to improve on project management skills. If you expect escalation to management on a project because of lack of resources, missing deadlines and notify the manager early on, you will be considered a non performer
E. You need to improve on coaching others when no one reports to you
F. You need to improve risk management even after you have raised some of the risks early on and provided mitigation plan with need for adequate budget, skilled resources and follow up. In fact, you will be considered a risk by raising a risk to the management.
G. You need to improve relationship with an abusive ex-manager who has harassed you in the past with threat of negative ePM rating, is very difficult to work with, been disciplined and warned by the Director and HR Dept. for his abusive and disrespectful behavior
I worked for Cisco for over 3 years, starting as a contractor to replace 2 FTEs and after about 3 months, was offered an FTE position within the host group with the promise that another FTE would be hired to backfill my previous position. Unfortunately, nobody was hired and I ended up with the workload of 3 people. When the workload was too overwhelming and I requested the manager to hire another person or reduce my workload to manageable level, I was harassed and threatened with negative ePM rating and termination.
My manager became abusive with very rough behavior, fault finding attitude and made my life miserable. While I saw many other FTEs coming late to work and leaving early, I was coming on time regularly and doing my job diligently without taking leave of absence. Ultimately, I was placed on PIP for no obvious reason, and had to leave Cisco after one of the managers (a friend of the abusive manager) became a Director.
Will you consider Cisco as a great place to work? This may or may not happen to you. May be, I should have stayed as a red badge. Sometimes layoffs are not as they seem to be. Even if you are hghly productive and a good hard working person, you may be a candidate for layoff for no fault of yours. I will leave it up to you to decide!
Cisco Co supports no family values in the workplace and the workers are overpaid to do nothing but sit home or play golf all day, they waste more time and money with meetings to plan teamwork parties , the dont need to lay off workers they need to be accounted for there actual time worked and a pay cut ,I myself worked @ cisco systems in B ma and it was a joke, the workers have a chip on there shoulder and all have martial problems because they cheat on there spouses when they do actually show up for work, they spend more time complaining about there personal life at work then actual working and i left the company to enjoy work again , after work i enjoy my Family and my Wife and dont miss the cry babies that i used to work with. Wake up cisco your dead wood knows how to cover there time they know all the loop holes. U lost a great worker who actually wants to work and enjoy family life then hang out with cisco deadbeats, good luck next quarter lol
SABA, I share your points, I also worked in a hostile, lazy and unprofessional environment. My boss used intimidation and cursing to “motivate” people to do more with less. The Indians are happy there though. JC seems to like that attitude and morale in the company as long as the stock is up and he is making millions a year until he dies or is fired too, together with his Indians and lazy overpaid peers…
YOU should be laid off for having no understanding of the English language.
Comment #14506] Anonymous says:
September 10, 2009 at 7:52 am
Cisco Co supports no family values in the workplace and the workers are overpaid to do nothing but sit home or play golf all day, they waste more time and money with meetings to plan teamwork parties , the dont need to lay off workers they need to be accounted for there actual time worked and a pay cut ,I myself worked @ cisco systems in B ma and it was a joke, the workers have a chip on there shoulder and all have martial problems because they cheat on there spouses when they do actually show up for work, they spend more time complaining about there personal life at work then actual working and i left the company to enjoy work again , after work i enjoy my Family and my Wife and dont miss the cry babies that i used to work with. Wake up cisco your dead wood knows how to cover there time they know all the loop holes. U lost a great worker who actually wants to work and enjoy family life then hang out with cisco deadbeats, good luck next quarter lol
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