Cisco Will Lay Off More Than 4,000 In 5% Staff Cut (sfgate.com) 49
An anonymous reader quotes a report from SFGate: Cisco, the San Jose-based networking and telecommunications giant, is laying off 5% of its workforce. The company announced the cuts in a Wednesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, alongside its quarterly earnings report. Based on the company's reported head count, the layoffs will hit at least 4,000 workers. Cisco wrote in the filing that the cuts are aimed to "realign the organization and enable further investment in key priority areas."
Most of the cuts will go through this quarter, per the filing. Cisco estimated that severance payments and other termination benefits will cost the company $800 million. In a statement to SFGATE on Wednesday, Cisco spokesperson Robyn Blum cited "the cautious macro environment, our customers continuing to absorb high levels of product inventory, and ongoing weakness in the Service Provider market," as reasons for the layoff.
"The care of our people is a top priority, and we will provide impacted employees with career support and market-competitive severance packages," the statement continued.
Most of the cuts will go through this quarter, per the filing. Cisco estimated that severance payments and other termination benefits will cost the company $800 million. In a statement to SFGATE on Wednesday, Cisco spokesperson Robyn Blum cited "the cautious macro environment, our customers continuing to absorb high levels of product inventory, and ongoing weakness in the Service Provider market," as reasons for the layoff.
"The care of our people is a top priority, and we will provide impacted employees with career support and market-competitive severance packages," the statement continued.
But none in management of course... (Score:4, Insightful)
And of course it will all be in engineering and service, and not the managers who were responsible for steering the company into financial "hardship," which is really just not returning triple-digit profits like investors demand.
Cisco has beat EPS on at least its last four quarterly financial reports, ended 2023 with a 16% year over year increase in revenue and a net income of $4.7B.
But... not good enough... must lay off more middle class workers to make the investors richer.
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But... not good enough... must lay off more middle class workers to make the investors richer.
One of the curious things about the corporate stock system is that arguably only the people who buy stock at the IPO or future offerings are investors, since only they hand over money to the company to fund corporate investments. Everyone else is just a speculator in the stock market, a market that doesn't directly help the company receive any money for investments. That is, most stock owners are investors in the virtual stock and not in the company. There is a non-enforced traditional connection between
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"There is a non-enforced traditional connection between corporate performance and stock price, but otherwise, investing in corporate stock is similar to investing in bitcoin."
It can be the case where speculation is how you expect to make a profit, but there are also dividends to consider. They are usually more reliable than depending on capital gains. So if you choose wisely you can get an income stream like a bond and also have the opportunity for the price to rise as well.
We have passed Peak Digital. (Score:2)
I've been coding for 37 years and just last evening interviewed almost 3 hours for a job that would be the first IT-related job where I won't be installing or using an IDE.
Prepare for incoming is what I say. The world and world of IT is going to look quite different real soon.
Re: We have passed Peak Digital. (Score:2)
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Why do you need a fancy editor like vim?
$ cat > main.c /* stuff goes here */
^D
should be good enough for anyone.
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Does vim count as an ide?
It is mini-ide-me as opposed to emacs, a real ide.
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Also a terminal program, organizer, mail reader, calendar app, IRC client and probably sandwich toaster.
Re:We have passed Peak Digital. (Score:5, Insightful)
Relax. It's just the usual "the economy is in a downturn so we have to fire people to keep the shareholder value up" bull. Next year we'll see the companies come crashing down because the actual peak we have reached is the one for "doing more with less" and they realize that all you can do with less is less. Less performance, less revenue, less profit, less shareholder value.
The kids have to touch the stove again, that's all. Give it a year or two.
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It's been a while since we had a huge "just outsource everything to India" movement.
We need to do another one of those before jobs come back here.
They're not really touching the stove (Score:2)
Even if it's not your hand on the stove you probably know somebody's who's is. But we all stand around gormless watching, waiting for our turn and pretending it's not coming because we're all too special for the stove.
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Guess then we're done with them touching the stove, let's just shove them in and hope that whoever follows will be more intelligent.
Be honest already. (Score:3)
”..the cautious macro environment, our customers continuing to absorb high levels of product inventory, and ongoing weakness in the Service Provider market”
”The care of our people is a top priority, and we will provide impacted employees with..”
..bullshit excuses like ‘macro environments’ to pretend you care about your (ex) people, in order to protect public perception and therefore share price.
Wait don’t tell me..let me guess. Cisco will announce their AI “resource efficiency” program next week.
Re:Be honest already. (Score:5, Insightful)
Translating from the bullshit marketing-speak, this means "Laying off 4000 employees and destroying their lives means the CxO level people who are already stupidly overpaid all get bonuses and another gold toilet."
Re:Be honest already. (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh, getting canned sucks but if getting canned destroys your life then you're doing life wrong.
Um... it really doesn't take much (Score:3)
You can quickly end up having to take a shit job that doesn't pay enough to live, leaving you exhausted and with no time to dig yourself out. Before long your behind on rent/mortgage and facing homelessness. If you're a nerd there's a good chance your lack of social skills and probably useless family (nerds aren't born, they're m
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If you worked in tech for 20+ years and have no savings and can't figure out how to get a job that can support a reasonable lifestyle then you did life wrong.
The waitress at my local diner is in her late 50s, has a great attitude, never made tech money and is somehow not dying on the streets.
You're so dramatic.
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We were talking about older people like that waitress, but in tech, dumb ass.
Please tell us more how you are a complete loser who has done life wrong and now is doomed to one day eat spoiled dog food he found in a dumpster behind the supermarket.
Wah, wah, wah, the HS educated waitress had such a harder life than you!!!! Omg, Jfc, listen to yourself bitch and moan and cry and whine, fucking loser.
But me, who you stupidly say knows nothing about life owns 2 nice cars and a big house in a nice place, all paid
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Uh, getting canned sucks but if getting canned destroys your life then you're doing life wrong.
True, but that's how people have been trained. Get a massive house with a loan (OK, in itself not so bad), then get that car on a lease, you can't afford the car but you can afford the monthlies. Put all your expenses on a credit card, get those worthless airpoints that you wont be able to use. Make sure you use the store card to get store points (and give them all your juicy buying habits). Cant afford that holiday, just get a personal loan.
Don't worry that all your pay goes to paying off last month's e
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This is all true. Do you think these people are victims, though? Could they have done better? Could they have looked at their monthly costs and see them going up while their salary didn't? Watch themselves go into negative net worth but never change their habits?
I prefer to think it is their fault and assume they have agency because the other way essentially says people are mindless animals who lack any concept of self responsibility or ability to do extremely basic math like noticing their outgo is hig
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Uh, getting canned sucks but if getting canned destroys your life then you're doing life wrong.
True, but that's how people have been trained. Get a massive house with a loan (OK, in itself not so bad), then get that car on a lease, you can't afford the car but you can afford the monthlies. Put all your expenses on a credit card, get those worthless airpoints that you wont be able to use. Make sure you use the store card to get store points (and give them all your juicy buying habits). Cant afford that holiday, just get a personal loan.
When consumer spending amounts to a large portion of GDP, that's not just "training". It's now more a civic duty.
Wait until we start allowing our banks to give our new immigrants credit cards instead of handing them taxpayer cash. You know, so they can feel like a proper citizen.
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I read last week that NYC is going to do exactly that. IIRC, they're looking at a $1000 card that auto refills every month.
I can't remember where I saw that but if you care I can find the link if you aren't familiar with that story already.
Not just to protect share price (Score:3)
My kid is rocking a 4 year STEM degree and barely clocking in $3800/mo. Their rent is $2k a month. They bought a house for that just as prices were shooting up, but they're still paying $2k a month for a roof over their head. I periodically chip in money when they need it because by then time food, utilities, gas, car m
cisco has ceased to be considered (Score:3)
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A team that works for me was unpleasantly surprised when they found out that Cisco DNA requires [cisco.com] 256 GB of RAM and 32 virtual cores dedicated to the VM it lives in. For a straightforward network monitoring app. The mind boggles.
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Waste and inefficiency is in Cisco's DNA.
And the usual obvious solution is ignored (Score:2)
Just finally cut the dead weight at the top. It would really be that easy.
Anyone who has "visions" should be treated by a professional, not employed as if they have any value, shareholder or otherwise.
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Maybe that "solution" is ignored because it's not a real solution. Have you been an executive? Do you actually know what they do?
From the outside, it might seem like executives are useless. But if that were true, why aren't there successful large corporations that don't have them?
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Executives come in all shapes, sizes, flavors, and degrees of leanness.
There are certain breeds that are useless as leaders but all humans are useful as troll food.
There are large successful companies that are not run by the “wrong” kind of executive.
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Agreed. There are plenty of "bad" executives. But the existence of bad executives, does not negate the overall need for them.
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Well the worst executives make a good case that whatever they do can be divided up among their subordinates and a LLM. I had one executive that was so bad we often had to suffer under the weight of mistakes he’d made that were so bad they jeopardized our certification as an organization. We covered for him time and time again to save our own skins. He was rarely on campus and had only the faintest of idea what was happening with the department’s major projects.
He had replaced a guy who basica
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What you're describing is what' I'd call "inertia."
Any ship can keep going just fine without a captain, or a captain who is asleep at the wheel. It's when the ship enters an area that requires actual navigation, that the captain becomes critical.
Companies are like that too. Once they are moving forward, they can keep going just fine, sometimes for quite a while, without executives at the helm. But when issues start to escalate, things fall apart without good leadership.
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The captain at least knows his responsibilities but I could tell you some stories about incompetent captains as well. Good stories always involve nuclear reactors.
There is a leadership crisis in this country.
Someone told me layoffs are routine at Cisco (Score:3)
Someone told me this is routine for Cisco, that they've been laying off folks this time of year since 2008. I don't want to believe them, does anyone know if there's a table showing the number of layoffs per year?
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I was part of the 2020 cull, and although that was another big one (~5000), there is a routine. I don't have any numbers other than that.
Does not reflect the overall job market (Score:2)
In January, the US job market created 350K new new jobs, about double what is considered a "healthy" rate of job creation. https://www.commerce.gov/news/... [commerce.gov]. Unemployment is under 4%. The tech sector is weakening somewhat, but is still strong, coming off of a 2.2% unemployment rate in 2023.
The real story is that some tech companies over-hired in 2023, and now are having to make corrections.
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One company laying off 4,000 people is news.
One hundred companies hiring 50 people each is not news, despite the fact that the two combined represent a net increase in employment.
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You are so right.
Do the world a favor (Score:2)
Do the world a favor and lay off the remaining 95%.