Cisco To Slash Up To 6,000 Jobs -- 8% of Its Workforce -- In "Reorganization" 207
alphadogg (971356) writes Cisco Systems will cut as many as 6,000 jobs over the next 12 months, saying it needs to shift resources to growing businesses such as cloud, software and security. The move will be a reorganization rather than a net reduction, the company said. It needs to cut jobs because the product categories where it sees the strongest growth, such as security, require special skills, so it needs to make room for workers in those areas, it said. 'If we don't have the courage to change, if we don't lead the change, we will be left behind,' Chairman and CEO John Chambers said on a conference call.
While Buying Back $1.5 Billion In Stock (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/... [zerohedge.com]
Re:While Buying Back $1.5 Billion In Stock (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/... [zerohedge.com]
One cannot blame Cisco since, like any company, it will operate at the margin of the law irrespective of the consequences to the national economy. A country's economy is an national strategic asset not a free-for-all playground. Hell, this concept is not anathema to reasonable interpretations of capitalism. A balance must exist between allowing companies to flourish without falling in cannibalism (stakeholder capitalism vs shareholder capitalism kinda thing.)
That balance is lost in this country. Or perhaps it never had it but it was never a problem until globalization and other factors kicked in.
Regardless, this is another reason to tax capital gains the same (or as close) as income. This buy-back (on top of the layoffs) is pretty much a swap from income gains to capital gains which are taxed more favorably.
Or better yet, this is another reason to revamp our entire tax system : close all loopholes (including offshoring ones), lower tax brackets (both capital and income) while broadening the tax base and/or implement a value-added tax, eliminate double taxation, don't penalize companies from moving capital and operations abroad, BUT instead create incentives for *all* companies (national and foreign) to invest locally.
This Cisco thing is just a symptom of a greater malady.
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"broadening the tax base" is code for tax those poor people more.
Re:While Buying Back $1.5 Billion In Stock (Score:5, Insightful)
... so is the value-added tax or sales tax, which hits poor and middle class disproportionately to the percent of income taxed.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Everything hits poor people harder (Score:5, Insightful)
Poor people also pay a disproportionate part of their income on food, clothing, energy, housing and transportation. Should all of those things be cheaper for poor people as well?
Should I have done an income analysis on my neighborhood and if I found that I was on the low-end of the income spectrum, should I have demanded a lower price on my house simply because I make less than my neighbors?
I understand charity for the poor, but demanding that poor people pay less for everything simply because they are poor defeats the point of a market economy. If you are going to do that, why not go all the way to a state planned economy?
I'll tell you why.
Because a pure 100% ideological solution to anything is a recipe for failure.
Sometimes a capitalistic approach works. Sometimes a socialistic approach works. Sometimes some other approach entirely works.
If you can achieve a good blend, where you take advantages of systems at their strong points and use some better approach at their weak points, you'll be better off than you will if you live in a binary all-or-nothing world. Where you may get the best of an ideology, but you'll pay for it by getting the worst as well.
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I wish I had mod points.
Re:Everything hits poor people harder (Score:5, Insightful)
Communism is a great idea as long as every actor is altruistic and interested in the welfare of the society above themselves. Because of that base assumption about human behavior it's a terrible system.
Libertarianism is a great idea as long as every actor is altruistic and interested in the welfare of the society above themselves.
Laissez-fair capitalism is a great idea as long as every actor is altruistic and interested in the welfare of the society above themselves.
Etc...
All these "improvements" on the system we have only work if you assume people aren't self-interested greedy pricks that will screw over their own mothers for $5. As soon as you insert the real world into these system it collapses from the sociopaths gaming the system for themselves. As you said you need checks and balances, capitalism with regulation to prevent the abuse of the system that is common appears to be the most functional system, that is as long as you don't get people that are so stupid they think the regulation is the problem.
Re:Everything hits poor people harder (Score:4, Interesting)
Or you make "I shot the bastard because he was a greedy prick who would screw his mother for $5" an acceptable excuse to tell the judge and jury.
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Because a pure 100% ideological solution to anything is a recipe for failure. Sometimes a capitalistic approach works. Sometimes a socialistic approach works. Sometimes some other approach entirely works.
Your "pragmatic" ideology is still an "ideological solution". You think that you can take two extremes and always find some superior "moderate" compromise between the two.
Two wolves and a sheep vote on dinner - the two wolves want to eat the sheep, the sheep doesn't want to be eaten - your pragmatic solution is for the wolves to eat half the sheep - or maybe just two legs today, and the rest tomorrow. You haven't found a real compromise, you've given the wolves everything they want under the lie that
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The "two wolves and a sheep" argument is a favorite among people of a certain ideology.
But we're not talking wolves and sheep here, or the poor people at the top wouldn't be wailing about the theiving masses and the masses wouldn't have ever have done things like the French Revolution when they got fed up with the people at the top. Or would be doing them every day instead of as a last resort. Everybody at this table has more wolf than sheep at some point.
As for the "Standing on Principles" thing, that's ma
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You are completely misunderstanding the difference between the taxes, which are decided on by the society and prices, which are decided by the market.
Capitalism has nothing to do with the actual percentages of different taxes that we vote into laws. The poor and middle class are hit by taxes the most proportionately to their means. We cannot expect one group of people to pay 50% of their income in various taxes and fees and another group to pay 15% or less. Our tax system is completely broken and that has v
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It is always some asshole who does not even remotely comprehend the state of the poor in US that spouts this type of nonsense.
Providing shelter, food, education and healthcare to everyone is in the best interest of the society and leads to economic and social stability. There are many countries that do that mainly in Scandinavia and they are on top by almost any index measurable. On the other hand, try to visit Detroit for a great example of downward spiral of destruction.
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Poor people also pay a disproportionate part of their income on food, clothing, energy, housing and transportation. Should all of those things be cheaper for poor people as well?
Why not? We already removed the sales tax on food, why not a similar thing for other necessities? I suppose it would be harder to distinguish where necessity stops and luxury starts.
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Social Security should be capped. Anyone making more than the cutoff will almost certainly have their own retirement savings plan. Social Security isn't worth anything to them. If you want to have more money when you retire, start saving and investing. It's not Bill Gate's job to pay for your retirement for you.
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The rich have robust retirement savings accounts AND pull social security once they've turned 65. [dailyfinance.com]
It most definitely is worth something to them, otherwise the cap would not exist.
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I would rather plan for my retirement entirely on my own and not have those funds stolen from my paycheck. I live in a free country, so that option is not available to me. So yes, despite the fact that I will have my own money when I retire, I will still take social security. Why wouldn't I? I was forced to pay into it, you're darn right I'd fight to get back as much as possible. The real question is why are we not allowed to take ownership of our own future? I don't want your retirement plan. I don'
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That's because you've exceeded the maximum benefit you're going to get for that income. It would be 'illogical' to tax you for benefits you have no chance of getting.
Assuming that the 'rich' (heh, as if $117K in NY or SF makes one rich) cannot be taxed too much in your world; would it not be more logical to simply raise the income tax, which is arbitrary; rather than Social Security, which is ostensibly tied to benefits?
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... so is the value-added tax or sales tax, which hits poor and middle class disproportionately to the percent of income taxed.
No, it isn't, if you don't tax necessities like food, and tax obvious luxuries like yachts more in proportion.
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Has that ever happened? You are living in a dream world.
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Yes, the rich should be paying more back into the economy (through taxes or spending) instead of hoarding wealth, and the H-1Bs and other outsourcing of costs has to be curtailed.
However, when the poor stop getting earned income credits totaling in the several thousands every year (which goes up with the number of children claimed as dependents), while they don't pay a penny in income tax because they're unemployed for whatever reason, then you'll have a solid argument. Until then, too many of the "poor" ar
Re:While Buying Back $1.5 Billion In Stock (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh yea - keep on blaming the poor for being poor! Have you ever lived paycheck-to-paycheck? If not then count your lucky-ducky stars because you are in the minority [cnn.com] of Americans (assuming that you live in the US).
when the poor stop getting earned income credits totaling in the several thousands every year
You're thinking about this in the wrong way. Social safety nets are not about altruism, or even making it easy for the poor to get subsidies (it's not). When poor people lose their jobs, they lose their homes and end up on the streets. When large swaths of the population are homeless, you end up with filthy slums [wikipedia.org] where basic necessities are rare and diseases flourish. Walls, police and even social ostracism may be able to keep undesirable people out of your pristine life, but they won't prevent diseases from spreading from poor communities to the rich who've managed to deny them even a damn toilet to shit in.
Keeping the poor from becoming that poor is a necessity for any civilization. Subsidies for the poor do far more for the common good than tax breaks for the rich.
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You're thinking about this in the wrong way. Social safety nets are not about altruism, or even making it easy for the poor to get subsidies (it's not). When poor people lose their jobs, they lose their homes and end up on the streets. When large swaths of the population are homeless, you end up with filthy slums where basic necessities are rare and diseases flourish. Walls, police and even social ostracism may be able to keep undesirable people out of your pristine life, but they won't prevent diseases from spreading from poor communities to the rich who've managed to deny them even a damn toilet to shit in.
So welfare is not charity, but a bribe for the poor to stay out of your own life. It is a payment for services rendered - the service of not pillaging and looting your property.
This mentality breeds resentment and ill will. "Rich guy gave me this money because he's afraid of me. I deserve this money because I did not harm him. If he don't pay up, then I can harm him to get what's due to me." Pray that you don't taste the backlash.
Keeping the poor from becoming that poor is a necessity for any civilization.
Civilization is not built by rich people giving hand-outs to poor peop
Re:While Buying Back $1.5 Billion In Stock (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the rich should be paying more back into the economy (through taxes or spending) instead of hoarding wealth, and the H-1Bs and other outsourcing of costs has to be curtailed.
However, when the poor stop getting earned income credits totaling in the several thousands every year (which goes up with the number of children claimed as dependents), while they don't pay a penny in income tax because they're unemployed for whatever reason, then you'll have a solid argument. Until then, too many of the "poor" are getting a free ride on the backs of bad government policy - and they have no skin in the game. Maybe they need to get rid of their iPhones, stop buying $250 Nikes, and cut their cable to pay some taxes back into the system that's paying for those luxuries.
This is a very emotionally appealing "solution". But notice that these "freeloading poor" are contributing to the economy by buying iPhones, $250 Nikes, and cable. Keeping money in circulation and creating jobs.
On the other hand, how many iPhones, numerically speaking, are 1% of the population going to be buying? How many pairs of Nikes? Probably more that any single poor person, but there are so many poor people. Companies like Cartier may be able to prosper serving only the wealthy, but Apple didn't get to be the behemoth it is by selling solely to the well-to-do, even at Apple's notoriously high prices.
We more or less respect the "idle rich" whose money comes not from working, but from investments, whether direct or inherited.
Maybe we can spare a little love for the "idle poor" as well.
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This is a very emotionally appealing "solution". But notice that these "freeloading poor" are contributing to the economy by buying iPhones, $250 Nikes, and cable. Keeping money in circulation and creating jobs.
Broken window fallacy. They didn't earn the money to buy those iPhones, $250 Nikes, or cable.
That money was taken from someone who worked for it, who knew the value of their time and the value of money, and instead given to someone who thinks, "Free stuff!"
The economic contribution of what the original owners would have done with that money is invisible, because it is a lost opportunity that didn't happen - yet it's still a loss. Much like an apple tree cut down before it bears fruit is a loss of fut
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Why does someone gaming the system and getting a fancy phone, or a new wardrobe etc draw substantially more ire from those with right/libertarian leanings, than something like the f-35 program?
I wonder what has more of an effect on the economy, lots of people cheating the system for small handouts (IE, the money is spent on useless consumer goods) OR a few large firms (raytheon, boeing, et al) bilking billions of dollars on useless weapons systems that may or may not ever be delivered, let alone needed.
In o
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when the poor stop getting earned income credits totaling in the several thousands every year
I get your drift, but the Earned Income Tax Credit [wikipedia.org] program is a poor example of something to pick on. EITC is one of the very few financial aid programs out there that both Republicans and Democrats like because they agree it's effective. The short version is that the EITC rewards you for going out and getting a job, which is where the "earned income" in the name comes from. It was created to combat the paradox that getting a low-wage job can disqualify you from getting certain types of welfare, resulting i
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Better still, let's not tax income or property. Since all money in the economy is eventually spent, let's simply tax consumption and fund our society that way. Everyone consumes - those that consume less will pay less tax.
That might increase the cost of some goods or services beyond the benefit provided by the removal of income tax though. Let's say you're earning 300 euros a week, and being taxed 50 of those. You're fifty euros better off, but the overall doubling or tripling of sales taxes (whatever the different in income tax versus sales tax revenues are) has likely increased your expenditure far more than that. It disproportionately targets the poor while providing huge benefits to the likes of landowners who are rentin
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a flat tax is naturally progressive
This is flat out error and wrong. All taxes are regressive, even the ones that "target" the rich. Remember the "Luxury Tax" during the Clinton era? It was short lived because it didn't collect any revenue and cost thousands of jobs or regular people as the rich suddenly stopped buying Luxury Items (boats, planes, limos etc). It didn't hurt the rich, it hurt the people who made stuff for the rich.
It was so bad, so quickly that it was repealed in very short order. You don't hear about it, because it doesn't f
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You have failed to realize the shrinking Middle Class is caused by government strangling the economy with taxes, fees, regulations and laws. You speak of "robust middle class" when there is less of it everyday. Taxes are regressive, and if you look at the combined taxes people pay (hidden sales, excise, non-hidden sales, income, fees, duties and property taxes ...) you realize that we all are serfs to government. Tell me, when was government ever satisfied with the taxes it collected?
Re:He's also advocating for tax hikes for the rich (Score:5, Insightful)
Taxes should be flat across the spectrum. You shouldn't get a break because you are extremely rich or poor. Besides, a flat tax is naturally progressive. If you make more, you pay more.
A flat tax is only "progressive" if you abuse the word to mean something else and completely ignore how everyone else is using the word progressive.
Here's a letter from the 3rd President of the USA to the 5th President.
Thomas Jefferson to James Madison [uchicago.edu]
28 Oct. 1785
Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on.
That's the author of the Declaration of Independence writing to the "Father of the Constitution" and author of the Bill of Rights.
Better still, let's not tax income or property. Since all money in the economy is eventually spent, let's simply tax consumption and fund our society that way. Everyone consumes - those that consume less will pay less tax.
How did this get modded up.
Everyone has a basic level of consumption: food, water shelter, clothing, transportation.
For the poorest, this basic level of consumption makes up most of their spending.
It's the difference between a 10% tax on 90% of your income or 1% of your income.
That's not progressive, that's not better, that's not fairer.
And the founding fathers thought it was dumb.
Re:He's also advocating for tax hikes for the rich (Score:5, Insightful)
Taxes should be flat across the spectrum. You shouldn't get a break because you are extremely rich or poor. Besides, a flat tax is naturally progressive. If you make more, you pay more.
I used to think that too, but it is simply a fact that it is easier to make money when you have more money -- you are proposing a feedback loop that would promote the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. At the very least you have to deduct the cost of necessities. Compare this to a business -- imagine what would happen if you taxed businesses based on revenue, rather than profit. Yet, people see no problem proposing the same for individuals.
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A flat tax is not progressive. A flat tax is flat, i.e., a linear equation:
A progressive tax is where the rate increases with income, a quadratic equation:
and
so
(give or t
Re:He's also advocating for tax hikes for the rich (Score:5, Insightful)
Every [wikipedia.org] definition [investopedia.com] I've [merriam-webster.com] seen [princeton.edu] disagrees [reference.com] with [indiatimes.com] you [investinganswers.com].
Your flat tax is actually defined as "proportional," not "progressive."
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What makes you think they don't have "skin in the game"? A huge number of people below the poverty line have jobs, which means they pay payroll taxes.
Re:While Buying Back $1.5 Billion In Stock (Score:5, Interesting)
One cannot blame Cisco since, like any company, it will operate at the margin of the law irrespective of the consequences to the national economy.
To be fair, the country screwed them. The NSA's spying has cost Cisco a lot of money. I expect they will try to move more jobs and manufacturing overseas soon.
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Uhh... it was the criminal Showden who screwed them if that's the route [r] you're gonna take
Yes, because the criminal is the one who points out that a crime has occurred and most definitely not the one that did it. Let me guess, you also propose jailing anyone who calls the police to report a crime.
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Another fine example of "All taxes are regressive".
The people who can least afford taxes, are hit the hardest, while the people who can afford spending money to save even more will. Even when targeting "the rich", it never works out the way people expect.
TAXES are regressive, all of them. Until the left realizes this, we're stuck being turned into serfs unto our government masters.
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TAXES are regressive, all of them. Until the left realizes this, we're stuck being turned into serfs unto our government masters.
How do you propose paying for wealth-transfer programs without taxes? It is impossible to use programs like basic income and so on without taxation - the entire premise behind these programs is that it is impossible for some people to earn enough money to survive, and thus somebody else has to earn money on their behalf and then care for them.
The fact that in the US only a small percentage of taxpayers pay such a large share of the total tax base demonstrates that taxes aren't inherently regressive, especi
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Because being a serf to someone is our only option, right?
I guess Liberty doesn't mean shit to people anymore.
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Like I said [slashdot.org], companies are borrowing in the USA from money supply inflated by the Fed using their foreign reserves that companies earned and are holding abroad as collateral in order to consolidate ownership and try and beat inflation. The money is borrowed at very low rate of interest due to money not coming from any savings but being brought into existance with Jannet Yellen's magic touch. This is absolutely rational behavior, since the Fed wants to inflate asset bubbles and provides existing large comp
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Re:While Buying Back $1.5 Billion In Stock (Score:4, Informative)
Cisco isn't perfect, but I wouldn't be surprised to see their stock remain strong. IPv6 rollouts, security issues, and future IPv6 items [1] will ensure that existing customers will be buying new equipment.
Cisco also benefits from the fact that fiber channel is getting tossed for FCoE. With FCoE or iSCSI, it just takes one fabric to handle both storage and networking, while FC requires a separate switching network to handle zoning and I/O. With 40gigE around the corner, fiber channel is going to be left in the dust until faster HBAs come in 2016.
Would I consider Cisco stock a "buy"? I'm not going to give investment advice, but I wouldn't consider their stock tanking anytime soon. They are the biggest player in a core industry that isn't going away anytime soon.
[1]: IPv6, while getting deployed, still has yet to go through the real-world torture testing the IPv4 stack went through back in the late 1990s with land, teardrop, ping of death, smurf, and other packet based attacks which would drop machines.
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One doesn't really have anything to do with the other.
Those 6,000 jobs aren't in the company's future plans. It would suck to be one of the employees being terminated, but there's no more reason for them to be on the payroll than for Cisco to go out and hire 6,000 buggy whip makers.
As far as buying back the stock, that's a separate decision that probably makes a sense for the company's future. I don't know or care since I don't pay any attention to Cisco.
A complaint (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A complaint (Score:4, Informative)
The move is shortsighted because it costs money to hire someone and the new person must then learn the culture, infrastructure, and the business.
No they'll just hire some idiot Indian slave labor and offshore them. Cisco's been at this for over 10 years.
Re:A complaint (Score:5, Informative)
ob disc: I work at cisco.
cisco has extremes in terms of talent. some really bad idiots work here (and many products show ugly warts and horrible design, including poor docs) and yet there are some really amazingly smart people here, too.
hiring has clearly been 'hire the cheapest foreign workers we can find'. you can walk the hallways and not hear any english (I'm talking about san jose buildings, here). for an 'american' company, its shameful. clearly, they don't hire the best and brightest, overall; they follow the silly valley standard of cheap h1b's for the most part.
tech support (internal) is the worst I've ever seen. wait times on phones for int support is 15 minutes, min; and you get someone who has such a thick accent, you can't understand them. they can't do much, they waste a lot of time asking dumb questions and it takes forever to get anything done.
cisco should strip more than 10% of its workforce, but I know the reality: they'll strip the higher waged folks and keep the crappy folks around since its cheaper for them and that's mostly what matters, these days.
cisco is also planning on ripping out all the cubicles and going 'open office'. chambers is convinced its 'better' (its not, but its cheaper and they refuse to admit what the real motivation is). everyone I talked to is in fear of this open-office conversion and many will work from home to avoid the noise and distraction, or they'll just give up and quit, which I also heard is part of the unspoken plan.
I recently saw this kind of thing in the router production source code (paraphrased, just to show the concept):
function_a() ...)
{
FILE f=open(...);
read(f,
do_stuff();
return;
}
not kidding. opened a file inside a routine, did some i/o and then returned. doh! no need to close the file handle? really?? must be a java guy who didn't know how C really works. and yet, this was in production code and no one seemed to have done a code review or even a smoke test! unbelievable!!
like I said, we have really smart people here and some really lame idiots that, somehow, got hired here and are farking up the production code, designs and even the docs. we are just too large and have hired cut-rate 'programmers'. unfortunately, those are the ones that will likely stay and the higher cost, more experienced folks will be told go leave.
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Does your department get dinged for using the caps key too many times?
Re: A complaint (Score:2)
I don't work in IT, but poor documentation does seem to be the standard for all of the hardware and software we purchase. The only exceptions are Stanford Research Systems (created by PhDs well versed in publishing methods) and MBE Komponenton (German precision).
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A java guy who doesn't explicitly close a file isn't much better than a C guy. I knew someone like that, and he left resources hanging loose right and left. And occasionally lost data, since it didn't flush to disk until the file was closed. And maybe not then, if the close was done by the garbage collector.
But Cisco was at the forefront of the cheap offshoring boom. They outsourced support ages ago, then their outsourcers offshored it. Connoiseurs of Cisco support knew which country was going to provide th
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If they hire new people back from the same general neighborhoods and they make the same money, then the CEO will have done the right thing. Besides - the bottom 8% of any workforce usually has some serious dead wood in it.
If they don't fill those slots back up to increase quarterly earnings, go overseas to essentially hire the same people back at a fraction of the cost, or say a WORD to Congress about how there's a "major talent shortage" in the USA and call for more H1-Bs, someone needs to go punch that gu
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By laying off 6,000 people, they are showing cowardice and a lack of confidence in their existing workforce. They would sooner send 6,000 people to the unemployment line then work work with a known, reliable quantity.
If you have a hardware design (say, cooling) engineer and whole world moves to the new fancy software networking (say, you need a COBOL programmer), it might not quite work to shift existing person to a completely new area of knowledge.
Part of adapting to new conditions is changing what has to be delivered to customers, instead of trying to keep selling them a hammer just because you have a hammer.
As for "replace people with cheaper people", that's the way capitalism seems to work. This is not even enforced
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I had a friend who was a lawyer working at Cisco, him and the other lawyers had essentially no work to do and spent their time playing card games. After half a year they lost their jobs. Good. That is how the system is supposed to work. Eventually my friend found a job where he did use his skills, training. It wouldn't have made sense for Cisco to teach him how to install routers, and he wouldn't have been interested in that anyway. He didn't get a job with Cisco expecting lifetime employment.
Sucks to
Thanks Edward. (Score:2, Insightful)
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So that is Snowden's fault? That is the equivalent of a rapist blaming someone who reports a rape for his ruined reputation.
Re:Thanks Edward. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is shooting the messenger.
If that messenger didn't tell us, some other messenger would have sooner or later. It was inevitable.
People only keep secrets (like global warming) when they feel it is their patriotic duty to do so for love of country. When they see widespread abuse, contrary to the values of a democracy, little or no oversight, and their peers feel the same way, it is inevitable that somebody is going to blow the whistle about global warming. If it hadn't been Snowden, it would have been someone else, eventually. This was never going to stay secret forever.
Re:Thanks Edward. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to mention OpenSwitch, which Cisco hasn't exactly embraced: http://arstechnica.com/informa... [arstechnica.com] also: http://arstechnica.com/informa... [arstechnica.com]
The NSA screwed over Cisco in a big way (and other American companies, of course): http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... [arstechnica.com]
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cisco is betting on their onePK SDN strategy; not openflow or any other 'open' switch tech.
no one else has this level of advanced API support (yet). its proprietary but its very rich and capable. time will tell if it catches on or not; but it leaves things like openflow in the dust.
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Thank him for saving the rest of the world for buying inferior American-made spyware. This is like blaming a consumer organisation that points out serious flaws in a product.
Re:Thanks Edward. (Score:5, Insightful)
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If we had a million Snowdens, we'd be the only country anyone would buy security-related stuff from.
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just not too many of the models come with the brass balls.
I have a better idea (Score:4, Interesting)
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the nsa has nothing to do with this spying stuff. CALEA is at fault and that was put in place decades ago, and forces ALL us companies to install backdoors for, cough, 'law enforcement' use.
its not cisco and its not nsa. in this case, at least.
blame the law enforcement lobby. they keep complaining they don't have enough power or tools, and congress is always afraid to be called 'soft on crime'. that fully explains that.
Slashdotters, do not disappoint me! (Score:2)
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This has nothing to so with H1-Bs. It about having the courage to lay off your existing employees so you can hire new ones for your jobs that require 'special skills'. You know, special skills...
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You mean "special skills", nudge, nudge, wink, wink? 'Cause they told us that we're all interchangeable cogs and therefore don't deserve to be paid like we had really special skills. As in Upper Management. People who deserve to get paid more for their failures than us cogs get paid for working hard and then being laid off.
Courage... (Score:3)
If we don't have the courage to change
It can be debated as to whether this is a necessary thing or a prudent thing or whatever, but regardless of those debates, this s a pretty stupid thing to say. I don't think a CEO should ever characterize their decision to terminate other people's jobs as 'courageous'. There really isn't anything remotely courageous about any of the strategy he laid out. It's not even particularly bold or daring, it's basically the exact thing every executive of every tech company has been saying about their respective companies now.
Not having much of a horse in the race (not working for cisco or even a cisco client), I can't comment on whether it's the right choice or whatever, but it really rubbed me the wrong way to see him refer to layoffs as an act of courage.
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The funny thing in your story is that the word that makes it narrow down the most is the pronoun 'she'. I would guess you either work for HP or IBM. Massive stock buybacks and continual layoffs is the modus operandi of most of the companies, but female ceos are a little bit more rare. Of course they do and say the exact same things so they could all probably replace their CEOs with chatbots that just always says 'buyback some more stock and layoff more people' and no one would notice.
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but it really rubbed me the wrong way to see him refer to layoffs as an act of courage.
It really rubs me the wrong way when people refer to number of jobs as if it were a good thing. Just because some people benefit from low productivity, doesn't mean low productivity is a worthwhile goal. Even hiring foreigners would be an excellent thing for our country (a net export for us, since you only hire someone if what they produce is worth more than what they cost), if it weren't for our own high rate of unemployment.
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but it really rubbed me the wrong way to see him refer to layoffs as an act of courage.
Real courage would have been to retrain those fired workers for what they needed. But he much rather pull in H1B workers who really do not have the skills either, but are a whole lot cheaper.
This really does set off the BS flag.
Switch to Huawei (Score:2)
In another posting, Huawei announced it has open positions for thousands of experienced people. However, since lie detector tests are required to rout out foreighn spies, US candidates are mostly turned down.
we need 6000 more H1b's now must be able to work (Score:2)
we need 6000 more H1b's now must be able to work a min 0f 60 hours a week going up to 80 at times.
In related news... (Score:2)
New Cisco Certification (Score:3)
CCGC - Cisco Certified Got canned.
Are employment levels really that stellar? (Score:2)
I am in Denver, CO. I am not seeing great improvements in employment here, or anywhere.
Microsoft, and now Cisco, are announcing huge job cuts.
Pay for IT jobs, here in Denver, is way down. Typical pay for PC techs used to be over $20 an hour, now it's usually around $16, sometimes as low as $12. Pay for CISSP certified used to over $100K a year, now it's more like $70K a year.
My wife, and I, are both unemployed, which is very unusual for us. Our friends are unemployed as well. I have one friend who used make
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They're not. What's happening is that unemployment numbers are down for several reasons:
1. People who aren't looking for work actively aren't counted as unemployed. This accounts for a very large group of people.
2. People who are finding jobs are finding jobs that do not pay well (see: thousands of college graduates getting minimum-wage jobs out of college because nothing else is available).
3. Unemployment numbers do not count people who are underemployed, such as your friend who is working as a temp when h
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Exactly the unemployment numbers from the Department of Labor are not telling of the true picture.
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Go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and look at the criteria for the U6 unemployment rate. I think it will cover your criteria. he rate most reported in the news is the U3 and is easier to understand and considered a harder number as it is difficult to count people who have stopped looking or do not show up at job centers as they are working part-time or under-employed.
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I just came across this article. I wonder if there is anything to it?
> "Inflation-adjusted median income has dropped over the last five years, more people are leaving the workforce than joining it, the bulk of new job gains are part-time and millions are woefully under-employed."
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2314525-value-versus-momentum-what-should-you-buy-for-your-etf-portfolio
Shortage of tech workers :P (Score:2)
So I hear there is a shortage of tech workers.
Apparently, we need more education, more IT and engineering grads, more H1B Visa.
This makes total sense considering the massive layoffs we keep hearing about. It's all nicely packaged.
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Re: the change, will do us good! (Score:2)
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H1B's are less likely to be NSA spies anyway.
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H1B's are less likely to be NSA spies anyway.
Hey, H1B's like money too! How else are they going to earn as much as the people they displaced?
How much did move to cable/DSL cost Cisco? (Score:3)
Back ~15 years ago if you wanted Internet access in a business you pretty much had to get a T1 and almost always this connection was terminated with a Cisco router.
Nowadays nearly a lot of business Internet is delivered via DSL or Cable via Ethernet hand-off from some cheap device provided by the ISP. Even at places still using T1s its often a vendor-supplied Adtran.
Did this change cost Cisco much business, or did they just make it up and then some on larger routers at providers, large customers and places
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HP has made a business model around this with their Procurve networking equipment, offering for-life software updates and I think even in some cases advanced replacement of failed gear.
I've worked at a couple of places that were Cisco oriented that would buy two of everything instead of a support contract. It doesn't do anything for software updates, but their attitude was it was in some ways cheaper than SmartNet over time and for devices where they didn't use advanced functionality (like switches) their
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Procurve is getting killed by software development. They are behind their competitors, and getting left further behind each day.
If you can make do with the limited software features (and you avoid the rebranded 3com stuff) they are great switches.
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I agree. I think they had a good thing going for quite a long time and HP's management just failed to see the value of this division and its now dying on the vine.
Dell N series is better than Procurve now and that's sad.