[HN Gopher] Cisco Reportedly Lays Off over 4k
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Cisco Reportedly Lays Off over 4k
Author : jrwan
Score : 100 points
Date : 2022-11-17 15:03 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.forbes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.forbes.com)
| autotune wrote:
| I worked at Cisco for about 3 months as a contractor before not
| getting renewed a month ago. Most hilariously inept
| infrastrecture code base I have had the displeasure of working
| with so far, and this team was supposed to be the one paving the
| way forward for finally bringing them from on-prem to the cloud.
| Literally could only understand my manager about half the time as
| he had a thick accent and spoke quickly (did not have this
| problem with any other team members despite them having the same
| type of accent), and my laptop broke halfway through and it took
| them a week to send someone out to fix it. Making about $50k per
| year more full time in a new gig and get to work with an infra
| code base that I actually enjoy. AMAA.
| RomanPushkin wrote:
| Phraseology:
|
| Roku: "Current economic conditions"
|
| Cisco: "rebalance across the board"
|
| Amazon: "unusual and uncertain macroeconomic environment"
|
| Disney: "a targeted hiring freeze"
|
| Meta: "macroeconomic downturn"
|
| Salesforce: "performance issues"
|
| Stripe: "stubborn inflation, energy shocks, higher interest
| rates, reduced investment budgets and sparser startup funding,"
|
| Opendoor: "the most challenging real estate market in 40 years"
| flerchin wrote:
| Twitter: "" gestures vaguely at Elon.
| user_ wrote:
| > "Frankly, the economic picture ahead is dire"
|
| > "An increasingly competitive world"
| i_love_music wrote:
| Cool observation. Fascinating to see how corporate speak
| spreads and builds off each other. These are like memes in
| their technical definition - "behavior that may be considered
| to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic
| means, especially imitation"
|
| Once a company or two uses these phrases it become politically
| acceptable to repeat them because they have now been "vetted".
| Contrarian or outsider views are not well received most of the
| time despite all of us wanting to believe we're
| different/unique/contrarian.
|
| Humans are such an interesting species.
| apohn wrote:
| >Opendoor: "the most challenging real estate market in 40
| years"
|
| Didn't the subprime mortgage crisis happen in 2007? The current
| situation is worse than that???
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Also forget about a multi year slump of the early 1990s
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| About 5 years post dotcom bubble.
|
| I think it's worse considering the inflation in food and
| gasoline. A 6 pack of beer at the grocery store is $10 now. 1
| L of carrot juice is $6. It's unsustainable especially
| considering how wages barely moved for anyone. I don't see
| how people are getting by.
| soperj wrote:
| For the greater world I'd say definitely.
| apohn wrote:
| >For the greater world I'd say definitely.
|
| Could you elaborate? I honestly don't understand...
|
| The effects of subprime crisis was not limited to the US.
| And instead of people not being able to afford homes, there
| were lots of people worldwide who lost their homes after
| they lost their jobs and their properly values collapsed.
|
| https://www.globalpropertyguide.com/investment-
| analysis/The-...
|
| Opendoor is US only (as far as I know) so the layoff
| justification just seems silly.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I think it's possible market velocity is lower now (house
| prices still somehow insanely-high while mortgage rates
| are also much higher than they've been for many years)
| and expected to remain so longer, than in 2008, which
| might mean it is worse _for Open Door_ , if not overall.
| matt_s wrote:
| For them it is, I think they're one of those companies that
| buys property from you without listings, etc. then you can
| move and they clean it up and list it. My guess is the
| property is on their books and prices have been fluctuating a
| lot so they could be upside-down on a bunch of inventory with
| less home buyers because the interest rates rose.
|
| For a home owner selling and a realtor, the realtor likely
| has to compete to earn business but they are a third party to
| the transaction.
| mc32 wrote:
| I prefer this over everyone using the same excuse and or reason
| (contrast with Twitter talking points from pundits who use the
| same phraseology to push for or against something).
| RomanPushkin wrote:
| Upstart: "the challenging economy"
|
| Seagate technologies: "global economic uncertainties"
|
| Philips: "worsening macroeconomic environment"
|
| Microsoft: "valuate our business priorities on a regular basis
| and make structural adjustments accordingly"
|
| Intel: "sudden and rapid" economic decline
|
| Twilio: workforce grew "too fast" and "without enough focus"
| ryandrake wrote:
| I love how vague they all are. They might as well have said
| "We have a bad feeling about the world" or "We consulted an
| ouija board" as justifications. Do they really think a normal
| person reads these and accepts the reasoning?
| christophilus wrote:
| FTX: "drug laced penthouse orgy ponzi scheme blowup"
| [deleted]
| RomanPushkin wrote:
| SAP (2019): "fitness program"
| apohn wrote:
| It's hard to understand if this is actually related to layoffs
| based on larger market forces, or just a once a year house
| cleaning.
|
| I've worked at places that laid people off once a year. It's a
| common way to give managers a way to get rid of under performing
| employees without the hassle of going through a PIP. The manager
| gets rid of a bad fit, the employee gets some severance, so both
| sides get something.
|
| But since this is happening at the same time as other companies
| doing layoffs it can seem like it's all occuring for the same
| reasons.
| pinewurst wrote:
| I feel it's more market psychology in many cases - having to
| demonstrate to the analysts that you're being fiscally prudent
| (hence the commonly resultant stock price increase) rather than
| any particular internal need. It's a shame that perfectly
| decent people are being let go so that some Wall Street Chad
| can make a check mark.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I mean it doesn't matter in the sense if those laid off can't
| find a job easily. The numbers are starting to build up.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| It's the upheaval and the lack of security. Not everyone can
| get a job instantly, especially if they're older or fresh out
| of college.
|
| Another reason to favor worker-owned co-ops rather than
| publicly-traded companies.
| apohn wrote:
| You are correct that if you are unemployed and looking for a
| job it doesn't matter. All you see is increasing competition
| in the job seeker market and that sucks.
|
| But it does matter for people who are employed and looking
| for jobs. If you are unhappy and/or underpaid at your current
| job, layoffs all caused by larger market forces might be
| interpreted as a hint that you should think about staying at
| a "safe" job unless you really hate it. However, if some
| significant portion of the the layoffs is due to recent over-
| hiring and that has now swung the other way into layoffs,
| changing jobs might be less risky.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| > If you are unhappy and/or underpaid at your current job,
| layoffs all caused by larger market forces might be
| interpreted as a hint that you should think about staying
| at a "safe" job unless you really hate it.
|
| That's an excellent point. I'm itching to leave my company
| at the moment, but I've avoided looking elsewhere because
| it's relatively "safe" (for now), so you're spot on. This
| also appears to be the case with literally everyone I've
| spoken to about the topic in my social circle. That being
| said, all those people have reported recent layoffs at
| their companies; across many different sectors and income
| brackets. My sister works in healthcare and said the
| hospital just sent out letters notifying everyone of
| upcoming layoffs.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| I stayed at a company I hated for too long because it was
| safe - I was literally the only person who could fix the
| legacy system that was responsible for half of the
| company.
|
| After I left, I realised how much of a negative effect
| the company was having on me. I had coworkers point it
| out and say they were sad about it but I never realised
| it myself until after I left and realised the difference
| just in my dreams nevermind all the other stuff.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| The thing with people getting laid off is I think many of
| them are in the position where the only place they would fit
| in is a mega tech corp. And since all the mega tech corps are
| doing layoffs, it really doesn't seem like it's going to be
| that easy for them to find a job.
|
| For example, if you've been working on a database system for
| 8 years, there aren't that many companies that need to
| develop their own internal database system so the matches are
| slimmer. Or if you've been doing SRE on 1k k8s clusters,
| there aren't that many companies that are doing k8s at that
| scale and working at lower scales is completely different.
|
| Another thing with going from a mega corp to a
| startup/smaller business is the expected performance. Mega
| corps are slower with low acceptance of errors while smaller
| businesses are faster with a higher acceptance of errors.
|
| This doesn't even factor in that it also seems like smaller
| companies are also doing downsizing at the moment. I'm seeing
| smaller companies add in policies which are clearly designed
| to make people want to quit to companies getting rid of all
| of their remote devs because they're the easiest to fire. The
| job market doesn't look good right now.
| shagie wrote:
| Yes... with qualifications.
|
| I saw the dot com crash up close (wasn't laid off, but I
| saw the people who were recently laid off in the local pub
| with a pager that wasn't buzzing next to a pint glass... or
| the guy with a masters working the late shift at
| Blockbuster). When the housing crash came with its
| recession and layoffs, I was part of that.
|
| If I had done a "I want to keep living in SF and maintain
| my big tech standard of living in an expensive city" it
| would have been difficult since there were thousands of
| other people who had that same idea.
|
| Instead I moved to the midwest and got a job working in the
| tech department of a retail company. I did not have too
| much difficulty finding that job.
|
| I've since switched to public sector and that job was not
| hard to get either (and for those who have applied, we've
| hired every competent dev who has shown up in the stacks of
| resumes - as this is public sector, not many apply).
|
| There are a lot of jobs out there. Pull up
| https://careers.walmart.com and go to 'technology' and
| follow it from there. Hundreds of open positions.
|
| If one moves away from expecting that the median job is the
| big tech job in SF or one that they can get remote... there
| are a lot of jobs out there.
|
| However, from many that I've see on tech career sites, the
| mere thinking of getting a job at Wallmart is beneath them.
| That SRE with 1k k8s clusters?
| https://careers.mcdonalds.com/global-
| corporate/jobs/40600010... or https://careers-
| chickfila.icims.com/jobs/12125/lead-site-rel...
| slt2021 wrote:
| Cisco has been known to have constant annual layoffs
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Interesting how stripe lists "sparser startup funding".
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| Cisco recruiter hit me up on LI today!
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| I believe it was 2001 or 2 post dotcom, Intel fired a fraction of
| the company by algorithm. A lead architect of a critical project
| was fired. Oops.
| swframe2 wrote:
| A pundit pointed out that in several cases, the tech firms laying
| off have returned to their employee size of 1 year ago and that
| there are still many jobs available in the industry. Have you
| seen articles on how long people are taking to find their next
| job and if they are better off?
| autotune wrote:
| DFXLuna wrote:
| This is something I'm interested in as well. It feels like last
| year, I saw every tech company fighting tooth and nail to
| scrape up every last engineer. We even had trouble making
| modest pickups at my own megacorp because candidates were
| getting multiple offers during our accelerated interview
| process.
|
| This seems weird though because I have no doubt that every
| financial analyst at each of these companies saw the incoming
| downturn a mile away. If it was just a few of the companies
| making recent questionable decisions (Twitter, meta) it would
| make more sense to me, but the list of companies laying people
| off keeps growing.
| RomanPushkin wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Wt7Rp
| clavalle wrote:
| The only shocking things about this layoff at Cisco, which happen
| about once a year, is that it didn't happen during their normal
| time in the summer and that the numbers are so modest.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Ikr? They've been laying off thousands from botched
| acquisitions and what not for as long as I can remember
| Giorgi wrote:
| All of these companies seem to rely on pandemic lockdown - demand
| for remote job influx. As pandemic is over, surge of the demand
| evaporated and now they need to downsize again.
|
| What's ironic I remember articles actually predicting that at the
| end of the pandemic people will not go back to offices and would
| rather quit than work inside the office again.
|
| But here we are, companies firing en masse
| willio58 wrote:
| I'm one of those that would rather quit than work in an office.
| Remote life is too hard to give up now. Im healthier physically
| and mentally, have more time to spend with friends and family,
| why would I give that up?
| candiodari wrote:
| Been there done that. Part of a cisco layoff due to department
| moving ... 15 years ago I think. Caused me to sell my shares,
| which turned out to be an excellent decision.
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