Cisco slashes thousands of workers as it announces yearly profit of $10.3B
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So they want to put their money into hardware and compute, not talent? Their layoffs in the last year will be nearly 10% of total headcount.
AI doesn't have enough runway at this point to have a lot of seasoned people available in the marketplace. Re-training tech workers has to be a cost effective alternative to lay-offs and severance packages, etc. Can anyone besides Wall Street generate a narrative that incurs a "try harder" penalty against companies who go this route?
I'm interviewing right now with FAANG level companies. The process is so slow (5-8 interviews over 3-4 months) and burdensome (even on the company side of things), at some point retaining people who made it through this process would seem to be a reasonable T&E objective. Companies are also generally terrible at on-boarding and training -- tenure is usually a good value to have in an employee (they know the company, products, culture, teams, processes, etc).
(Yes, I know.. they may want to lay-off those they deem poor performers..)
One of the ex-CEOs of Medtronic use to sit with the engineers during lunch to understand what was really going on in the company as he found his underlings continually hid problems from him. I wish more CEOs understood the wisdom of that but they’re too busy playing as feudal lords.
> ..but they’re too busy playing as feudal lords.
Yeah, and agreed. Very familiar with that experience and losing out by trying to do (or even _say_) better things.
The vast majority of C-Suite and upper management DOES NOT CARE about employees, customers, engineering, impact of cruel org policies or long term issues from short term decisions.
They are there to exploit the lives of people working under them in the org chart forced upon people.
This is why I always tell engineers to not give two fucks beyond 9-5 or fixing structural issues. The C-Suite getting paid millions doesn't care. Why should you?
Addressing structural issues in my organization directly affects how much my job does or doesn’t suck. If I turn a blind eye to every gripe I have in a job, I feel like I can’t complain about how much of a drag it is to work there, because _I haven’t even tried to fix it_. Furthermore, it feels like a disservice to others if I don’t speak up — if I don’t say something because I think my manager/director/CTO is apathetic, I’m indirectly making my coworkers’ experiences worse as well.
You don't turn a blind eye to it. You report the structural issue to management and let them do their actual job of fixing it. They won't be able to fix it unless they know about it. They also won't appreciate your effort unless they internalize how painful said issue is.
Something needs to happen to protect workers at some point. MBAs are going to keep doing everything they can to optimize earnings, and firing 5k is a great way to instantly boost earnings. Everything is just optimized around raising the stock price. Our whole economy is like a shitty team where some manager has decided everything must revolve around a dumb goal that doesn’t actually serve users.
Most of these layoffs are the balancing force for massive headcount increases during covid. Headcount that isn't necessary outside of that unusual time.
Current economy isn't amazing, and companies are preparing for slower times.
You are mistaken if you think the point of a company is to serve users unless it is user owned.
I dont think that is a current or near term problem. Unemployment is low and there is a still a huge demand for human labor. I just got a quote of 60k for someone to landscape my residential back yard. I spoke with several trades people from drywall to catering to photography that charge $250-500 per hour.
"Figure out out to create value" has always been true and it is essential not to forget this. I think the idea that people dont need to provide value is far more scary and dangerous for the future.
Yes, we can also be thoughtful about if we can help people transition jobs and skills as a society, but that I dont think there is anything special about the current moment.
Stockholders: How do we make it $11.3B in profits?
Company: Layoffs!!
Human Labor is no longer a "key growth opportunity" it's looking like?
Sucks to be one of those laid off though.
I'd also add it's not clear to me that labor reduction must lead to better productivity - can't you have a situation where labor reduction (and or wage suppression) actually reduce downstream demand / productivity?
Yes, of course we have to handle the distribution of the stuff, but that's really a separate problem.
Human labor is the primary pillar of society and has been for all of human history. Services cannot be utilized without capital, capital cannot be acquired without labor. Remove labor and all of it falls apart, which is somehow acceptable to classes whose resources provide escape and comfort when "society" collapses.
Society isn't just a bunch of people going to a football game, it's the totality of human interaction centered around their commercial interactions.
Elysium is not a society anyone with less than billions of dollars should be advocating for.
An "easy" solution is to do a layoff, then open roles elsewhere, allowing for selection.
It's commonly practiced across the large companies in the industry.
(Not speaking for my employer)
> Cisco slashes thousands of workers as it announces yearly profit of $10.3B
What does profit have to do with lay offs? Cisco has no obligation to continue employing workers it does not have a need for, and/or projects no need for in the near future. What is this, the federal government???
Ya, it sucks being laid off. But that's part of the "game" of being an employee. You're paid to do a certain job, and if that job doesn't need to be done anymore, well, you're out of a job.
Cisco had 84,000 employees before layoffs, and will still have more than 70,000 after this round is complete. That's still a massive payroll...
Some people seem to be employment-entitled.
I got laid off a few times, it's not a big deal. It just business doesn't want my skills at the price they are paying.
It's a big deal for a lot of people. And someday it may be a big deal for you.
> It just business doesn't want my skills at the price they are paying.
If you expand this theory of economics, why shouldn't the market of labor punish an employer for undesirable properties as an employer?
Employing ~10,000 people that Cisco didn't need to employ and pay relatively high wages to?
Or for cutting employees Cisco no longer has a need for?
Should Cisco be forced to carry dead weight until it's no longer profitable, only then being allowed to cut employees? How does that serve the other ~70,000+ that are still employed at Cisco and would likely prefer to see Cisco smartly allocate it's resources?
Should we craft a system in-which companies are afraid to hire because they'll be forced to keep those employees on payroll forever? How does that foster a healthy environment that produces competitive products and services?
People complain about "leetcode" exercises and hiring processes as it is... can you imagine what companies would put applicants through if hiring was a lifetime commitment?
For-profit companies are not charities. You are not entitled to a job at one of these companies. Yes, it does suck being laid off, but it's not the end of the world. If you were smart and talented enough to find employment at Cisco for however many years, you're smart and talented enough to find employment elsewhere too.
Also, the assumption that the affected departments should've known this was coming doesn't match up with a lot of what we've heard from many other of the "cut x%" layoffs the last few years.
Regarding "entitled" to a job, you're responding to a comment that suggests considering it as an economic problem: many people don't want to be laid off, so hopefully those people (part of the market) can apply negative feedback to that undesired behavior.
Sometimes circumstances change and thats OK.
Why would we want to apply negative feedback? I dont want any company to employ workers they dont want. Heck, sometimes I wish my employer would do layoffs to get rid of some of the dead weight.
The intentions of the company are to benefit the shareholders. Employees are paid for their time and expertise - nothing more. That's the end of the relationship unless said employees also hold an ownership stake, in which-case they'd get a vote/say in how the company governs itself and strategizes for future unknown climates.
> If you expand this theory of economics
It's not theory, it's how business has been operating for many many decades.
> why shouldn't the market of labor punish an employer for undesirable properties as an employer?
Be more specific. What punishment for what properties?
It does. Good employees leave bad companies (and bad bosses) all the time.
Fair enough. sfgate.com has no obligation to not relate profit and layoff either.