It's scary seeing all of these lay-offs happening. I'd hate to be looking for a software engineering job right now.
There is no shortage of software engineers. What there is, in the eyes of those CEOs, is a shortage of H1-B visas -- i.e., cheap labor from abroad with low mobility. Of course, the alternative is to invest in training citizens and permanent residents, who will then go and get higher-paying jobs elsewhere. So the myth of the software engineer shortage lives on...
Why? These Cisco lay-offs are hardware engineering related and the other ones are not nearly as big and are pretty typical (unfortunately). Software engineering is not only in HUGE demand but it's growing incredibly quickly. I have no idea how the hardware engineering space is behaving but software is off the charts.
Cisco is hiring software engineers. Look at their acquisitions in the last couple of years and they are software companies. They have a big focus on big data for security analytics.