Cisco To Shut Down For 4 Days At Year End | Hacker News Reader

Cisco To Shut Down For 4 Days At Year End

gigaom.com

11 pointsksvs17 comments

Cisco has _always_ virtually shut down between Christmas and New Years IIRC. People always take time off during the holidays: it isn't worthwhile to keep the whole business running. It's always been their unofficial policy, if not official to do so.

IMHO this is a silly attempt to cause panic.

This is of a piece with the WebGuild's recent "Google layoffs may affect 10,000." Hyping negative news. Cisco had shutdowns over the holidays for years. The cost savings come from reducing deferred vacation pay (most people will take vacation days to avoid going without pay) and cutting expenses related to keeping buildings open. It also sends a message to employees to become more cost conscious.

There is very little information in this article. In fact, the headline pretty much sums it all up. A quote or two to put this in context would have been nice. The article implies the shutdown is a cost saving measure, but provides absolutely nothing to back this up. It doesn't even mention whether or not employees will be paid for the four days. For all we know, they could just be giving employees a little more time off to enjoy the holidays.

[EDIT] There's a better article on Reuters that least attributes the news to an email from a Cisco spokesperson.

http://us.rd.yahoo.com/finance/external/reuters/SIG=1165jh9e...

Raise your hands if you believe Cisco is closing to "give employees a little more time off to enjoy the holidays". Anyone?

You don't have to be a jerk about it. My point was that there was almost no substance to this article and nothing to back up its claims. It's simply bad journalism. That's a valid point no matter what the reason is for the shutdown. We should expect more from stories submitted here.

i have a "friend" who "works" there. this really is a cost saving effort.

I had my doubts after reading the gigaom article, but the Reuters article I found mentioned a statement from a Cisco person saying it is a cost saving measure.

I guess it's a safe assumption that employees will not be paid for these days. Can your "friend" share a little more information? So far, there seems to be very little information available.

If what you say is true, this measure doesn't seem to make any sense.

If their employees cost more than what they produce every day, doing nothing for 4 days is similar to closing your eyes and wishing the problem away.

If they're losing money every day, closing down for 4 days makes sense.

Yes, as much as closing down for the whole year.

While that's an oversimplification to be sure, what you just described is also known as "returning the money to the stockholders".

I think that's a little bit of an oversimplification. Their two basic options are a shutdown or layoffs. I'm guessing they are doing the shutdown and hopes that sales rebound and they can avoid a round of layoffs. There is a cost to laying off people as well.

I don't have a friend at cisco but I have friends in other large name companies and usually when they force shut down (esp. around the holidays) It comes out of the employees vacation days.

My friend works at Cisco and told me about this last week. They are indeed taking the days out of their employees' vacation days. If they don't have any vacation days, they will be on unpaid leave for the week.

This type of thing has also happened to other friends of mine. It's a cost-saving maneuver and also helps lower the companies' liabilities due to having so many vacation days on the books (since the company has to pay you money for each vacation day you have once you leave).

Thought you were supposed to be able to "borrow" from future PTO.

I can't find anywhere in the Reuters article where it explicitly says employees will not be paid. However, both articles say that this is a cost saving measure. I don't really see what is the big deal with the gigaom article.

Cisco is the closest thing technology has to an industrial company. At least a few regulars here have to have worked on Tasman before. It's not what you'd call an "agile" place.

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