Cisco workforce reductions

https://blogs.cisco.com/news/our-path-forward

by ahmedomran8 • 2 months ago

284 299 2 months ago

blogs.cisco.com

Today we announced our Q3 FY26 earnings with record revenue of $15.8 billion, up 12 percent year over year, and double-digit top and bottom-line growth. The ELT and I could not be prouder of the growth you have all delivered for Cisco.

Interesting decision considering they aren't at any sort of risk.

marcus_holmes• 2 months ago

Wall St gonna Wall St

0xbadcafebee• 2 months ago

The casualness of mentioning record revenues in the same PR statement as laying off 4,000 people is fucked up on a new level. It used to be you were supposed to at least pretend you were forced into a layoff. But now it's like "Hey guys! It's time for our regularly scheduled layoff to juice profits! I got an extra $5M bonus for this!"

dcrazy2• 2 months ago

What’s really weird to me is they clearly wanted to convey to the Street that these layoffs were _not_ motivated by any of their financial results with the phrasing “fewer than 4,000”. But they conspicuously didn’t provide any other reason. No divisions closing down, no realignment of capital.

I wonder if someone in the C-suite simply decided that they had some rough percentage of underperformers on the payroll, but they can’t publicly call them performance based terminations without triggering a risk of lawsuits.

alistairSH7• 2 months ago

It's 100% normal these days. My employer did the same thing in January.

eurekahalting• 2 months ago

Normalized, but not normal

bitmasher9• 2 months ago

“We are running out of good ideas to execute on, so we are reducing our workforce to a quantity we can utilize.”

denkmoon• 2 months ago

but there's still so many bad ideas available to be executed on

OccamsMirror• 2 months ago

I want my LLM powered Firewall that checks with an agent on every connection request! AI powered security is the new hotness!

charlie0• 2 months ago

Revenue, not profit. A lot of that is likely inflation. I suspect we'll see this pattern repeat quite a bit with the oncoming oil shock

alemanek• 2 months ago

Their EPS is also up 37% GAAP / 10% Non-GAAP YoY and they beat their forecast. They aren’t hurting for money.

https://newsroom.cisco.com/c/r/newsroom/en/us/a/y2026/m05/ci...

StatsAreFun• 2 months ago

The earnings report does mention profit as well. For example, it states: "GAAP EPS of $0.85, up 37% year over year ..."

another-dave• 2 months ago

he explicitly said 'double-digit bottom-line growth'

0x0000000• 2 months ago

This kind of behavior is never tolerated in the market. Your revenue is flat; they lay you off. Right away. No trial, no nothing. Your revenue is down, right to layoffs, right away. Revenue grows but less than guidance? Layoffs. Record revenue exceeding guidance? Believe it or not, layoffs.

ivraatiems2• 2 months ago

We have the best market in the world, because of ~~AI bubble~~ layoffs.

alephnerd• 2 months ago

This kind of behavior is never tolerated in the market

This is Cisco. They do layoffs every quarter and have been doing so since the early 2000s.

Barbing5• 2 months ago

  This is outrageous. Where are the armed men who come in to take the protestors away? Where are they? This kind of behavior is never tolerated in Baraqua. You shout like that they put you in jail. Right away. No trial, no nothing. Journalists, we have a special jail for journalists. You are stealing: right to jail. You are playing music too loud: right to jail, right away. Driving too fast: jail. Slow: jail. You are charging too high prices for sweaters, glasses: you right to jail. You undercook fish? Believe it or not, jail. You overcook chicken, also jail. Undercook, overcook. You make an appointment with the dentist and you don't show up, believe it or not, jail, right away. We have the best patients in the world because of jail.

TSP00N3• 2 months ago

lol! For those that didn’t get the Parks and Rec reference: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eiyfwZVAzGw

mgh22• 2 months ago

"Gel" comment

holysoles• 2 months ago

Almost bought cisco shares today, glad I didn't.

A workplace that values job security is such a motivating factor for employees that I don't think is recognized enough. At a company that conducts layoffs, it feels like you're just waiting for the next one.

otterley• 2 months ago

If you had, your investment would be up 20% now. https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/csco

bigstrat20032• 2 months ago

There are more important things than making money. I assume that the parent poster was glad to not buy into a company that doesn't treat their employees well.

siren20263• 2 months ago

To profit you also need to get out at the right time.

Right now everything seems so inflated. I don't believe this economy represents any of the underlying assets correctly anymore. I really think we are on the verge of one of the biggest bubbles in history.

Time will tell.

dilyevsky• 2 months ago

They buy a lot of companies then restructure them and that causes these layoffs. I think it’s just normal way of doing business for them. And the stock is up 20% after hours =)

el_jay• 2 months ago

Who really cares about the lives of lim n —> 4k wagies? There is an opportunity to maximise shareowner returns here - failing to seize it would be little more than economic treason, a dereliction of our duty to be good capitalists. If those people wanted job stability, they should have worked harder to become indispensable to their employer. Frankly, they should have known better than to stake their livelihoods on unstable, declining industries like employment. Now, The Market Has Spoken, and only those let go are to blame for what it said - no one else.

ciscociscocisco• 2 months ago

We have important, impactful, and consequential work ahead

writing so bad claude could do better

izucken• 2 months ago

It's not just impactful, it's consequential

RachelF• 2 months ago

I really battled to read his memo. The it was written in English, but a very odd style indeed.

niij• 2 months ago

Re-read your comment.

SpicyLemonZest3• 2 months ago

I do wonder if we're going to start seeing people intentionally writing poorly so it's clear their memo is not just "Claude, please write an email saying that..."

anal_reactor4• 2 months ago

I don't think so. I think that ChatGPT will just become the standard communication interface between humans. Sending someone a manually typed email in 2030 will be like sending a handwritten letter in 2026.

xboxnolifes3• 2 months ago

Maybe they will start writing better, so it stops reading like corporate nonsense all the time. Because I'd argue most corporate PR statements and such as not written well, they are just written grammatically correct.

totetsu• 2 months ago

To those leaving Cisco, thank you for your contribution, your dedication, and the mark you have made on this company. We are deeply grateful and are committed to handling this transition with the care, clarity, and respect that defines our culture.

Who the hell needs gratitude if you can't earn an income.. seeing all of these layoffs I cant help but think something along the lines of .. Those of use who greatest asset is our labor need to recognize the great risk it is at of going to 0 value in the near future, and renegotiate everything to get as much value out of that asset before it does. Like enough to retire on. And as with established theories of intelectual property rights protect creators moral rights to the profits of their work, there needs to be mandated moral rights that stop peoples labor being used as training data for AI without the consent, and without a path or compensation for the loss of income that will cause them.. Otherwise this is just one big transfer of power from most people, to people with capital, who can then wield that power in more capricious and selfish ways.

kjellsbells• 2 months ago

lately I've been stuck by the similarities between the conversations workers are having now (we are toiling to increase someone else's capital, and need to reverse the imbalance of power) and the conversations people had in the 1920s and 30s.

With the benefit of hindsight we know that marxism didnt help, but I can see why the siren song was so attractive back then. Time to reread Eric Hobsbawm.

UltraSane• 2 months ago

Starting around 1970 the rich started working very hard to expressly undo the power labor gained during the New Deal.

ivraatiems2• 2 months ago

And to think, if they could just take less, and be satisfied being billionaires, not tens of billionaires, this could all be avoided... people don't ask for much. Give them a little, you'll be fine.

But that won't please The Market.

leopld• 2 months ago

Look at social democratic European states for inspiration. High unionization (supported by the state), unemployment benefits, cheap or free higher education.

Companies can still do layoffs, but that’s how you manage the consequences at a societal level.

I know the unionization part is contested these days in Europe, too - but it is still much stronger than in the US.

Scroll_Swe5• 2 months ago

Here you get laid off you need a notice 3 month in advance. America is just a hellscape but no need to be so drastic... companies still need to lay people off...

blitzar2• 2 months ago

companies still need to lay people off...

The people who just gave you a 20% increase in profits in a year need to go?

sciencesama• 2 months ago

how big is the WFR ?

dpe82• 2 months ago

The press release states it clearly.

neilfrndes• 2 months ago

4k, <5%

33MHz-i486• 2 months ago

its sickening that these companies making 10s of Billions in profit annually at 60% gross margins are going to throw their employees that got them there under the bus.

layoffs are for at risk companies undergoing restructuring not semi-annual financial engineering of your earnings release

I’m not a big collective action proponent historically but in the face of this bs, it might be time.

wahnfrieden• 2 months ago

Layoffs are not “for” that. That’s your fantasy.

You believe more in the individual relationship each worker has with their employer to negotiate times like these? With what power? The employees did excellently so they are being let go. The individual worker has no leverage for anything.

renticulous4• 2 months ago

that got them there under the bus.

Do you employ construction workers for lifetime after they have built your house?

xboxnolifes3• 2 months ago

Ive seen this exact analogy on HN quite a few times now, and its a bit odd (read: nonsensical). You dont tend to employ construction workers directly to build your house. You contract a housing company, who contracts construction companies (or has inhouse workers), who do keep their employees employed.

zzrrt2• 2 months ago

Among other differences, a house construction contract is understood to be limited in time.

Imagine the construction company said "record profits this year, thanks for building great houses, you're fired." The message wouldn't go over well. They are being outrageously cutthroat or hiding bad news.

pnw_throwaway• 2 months ago

Found the corpo cuck

ralph84• 2 months ago

We will provide support in finding new opportunities, whether internal or external, through Cisco’s placement services – a program that has seen 75 percent of participants discover their next role.

25% unemployment doesn't seem like something to brag about.

alexandre_m• 2 months ago

Maybe they found something outside the program, but your cynical take is way more entertaining.

apgwoz• 2 months ago

How many layoffs does a company have to do before realizing it’s in their best interest to start asking other companies to take the employees they don’t want to employ anymore?

Also, 75% placement seems wildly successful. Why isn’t Cisco also a head hunting firm?!

alasano• 2 months ago

Coinbase, CloudFlare, Cisco.

Another round of layoffs at CrowdStrike would fit the pattern nicely.

maxdo2• 2 months ago

Meta , ms ( soft ) , Google .

markus_zhang• 2 months ago

OK looks like the horn has been blown. Now they are all doing layoffs. Wall Street waving its visible hand again?

dalmo3• 2 months ago

reduction of our overall workforce in Q4 by fewer than 4,000 jobs

Interesting use of fewer.

udave• 2 months ago

seems like the same trick as behind labelling price as $99.9

prerok• 2 months ago

Yeah, your work was so great that we are gonna fire just 3999 of you.

jjtheblunt2• 2 months ago

"Executive Leadership Team" is such an interesting phrase. Never in several years inside Apple spanning Steve Jobs and Tim Cook heard any such condescending nonsense.

I believe it's because they truly didn't think that way.

geekone• 2 months ago

XCOM (Executive Committee) was my least favorite at one of the soulless corps i worked at years ago.

dcrazy2• 2 months ago

Tim Cook has referred to the “E-Team” in many earnings calls. I am guessing that consists of the SVPs who are above the horizontal line on https://www.apple.com/leadership/

jjtheblunt2• 2 months ago

that's plausible, since i never listened to earnings calls, and since external communications might take different form than internal, i bet.

aiscoming2• 2 months ago

that horizontal line is hillarious. I can imagine the discussions with the designers "just put the fucking line there, I dont care how it looks, its important to separate the two sets of people"

absolutewinner2• 2 months ago

The other thing is that the laid off employees will lose all their unvested RSUs. These shares were granted as compensation for past performance but they can now be conveniently clawed back by the company just because they decide to lay you off. Stock can be a large part of someone's compensation in a tech company. Companies shouldn't be allowed to benefit this way if they decide to lay off employees.

cheevly• 2 months ago

False

mtucker502• 2 months ago

What particular point do you find false?

boguscoder2• 2 months ago

Alas this happens in all FAANG layoffs too, some lucky people get to received one more vest but nothing close to all unvested RSUs

fc417fc8026• 2 months ago

How is that legal? I thought the entire point of delayed vesting was to disincentivize jumping ship. If they're the ones throwing you overboard clawing back RSUs seems like a roundabout form of wage theft.

HDBaseT• 2 months ago

"I could not be prouder of the growth you delivered"

Note the "you delivered"...

---

A few lines later

"With this, we are making changes today that will result in the reduction of our overall workforce in Q4 by fewer than 4,000 jobs"

Rough, bit on the nose no?

3D30497420• 2 months ago

My company just did something like this. We completed a big redesign and the CEO sent an email saying how proud he was of our work. Layoffs started the next week.

atoav• 2 months ago

By this point I believe people like these should be excluded from all social contracts and reminded at every step that what they did is not ok. Maybe finally a positive use for facial recognition technology?

bigtex88• 2 months ago

This is how we got Luigi and it's why no one was really too upset with what he "allegedly" did.

lexoj• 2 months ago

This type of corporate behaviour should be highlighted as unacceptable. I’ll personally steer away from anything cisco from now on.

redbell2• 2 months ago

Came to post the same comment!

These statements are so weird to be joined together. In other words, he was able to just say: "I am proud to announce that we are going to reduce the overall workforce.."

banach• 2 months ago

This is why corporations need to be owned and operated by the employees.

tjpnz• 2 months ago

You'll also be less exposed in privately owned companies.

simianwords3• 2 months ago

these corporations would never work because they would optimise for the wrong thing - they would get their face eaten by other more efficient and ruthless corporations

dgb23• 2 months ago

These corporations exist and do work. Worker owned companies have their own challenges and their own advantages.

For example they tend to be more stable during crisis, because workers tend to vote for lowering salaries/benefits temporarily rather than doing layoffs. So they retain talent better. But they also tend to have difficulty to grow quickly, for obvious reasons.

Besides full on coops, there are also plenty of examples that are hybrids (partially worker owned).

they would get their face eaten by other more efficient and ruthless corporations

You're possibly of assuming that a company needs to have an adversarial relationship to their workers in order to be competitive. I don't think that's generally true. This approach has advantages in specific situations, but disadvantages in others.

asdfsa325• 2 months ago

Have you look at how efficient your local government is?

ethanwillis• 2 months ago

When local governments are captured by corporate interests this isn't the argument you think it is.

Kadecgos3• 2 months ago

Yeah - the answer is that the cost to deliver a service from my local government is a lot cheaper than it is when it's coming from the private sector.

People meme on 'lol government efficiency', but actually sit down and calculate your marginal cost for the services you pay for that are funded by taxation. It's not even close - the cost to operate these services per person is crazy low.

In fact, you don't even have to look that far for government-adjacent programs. Co-ops for utilities are notoriously cheaper for their service area than a private utility, almost without exception.

So yeah - the government is not perfectly efficient. It's not going to give you exactly what you want all the time, but it's still 2-3x more efficient than the private sector when it comes to actually absorbing the costs as a citizen or user of a service. "Lol government efficiency" is not the burn you think it is.

alistairSH7• 2 months ago

Reasonably efficient. Local schools are good, local roads are good, job market is solid, housing is being built and the urban planning is better than most areas. Taxes are high, but not NJ/NYC high.

danw19792• 2 months ago

For the last 15 years I’ve been telling anyone who would listen about my idea for a John Lewis (British retail chain) model IT consultancy- employee owned, everyone is motivated, high quality, etc.

Except last month I met someone who worked there and got TUPE (involuntary contractual transfer of employment) to Wipro (Indian outsourcerer) a few years ago.

So even though this corporation is owned by the employees, and is one of the best examples of this in the UK, it seems you also need some kind of management structure that is also immune to the usual senior leadership trolls to avoid it turning out to be shitty.

skinfaxi• 2 months ago

Even under non-hierarchical systems someone has to take out the trash.

poncho_romero• 2 months ago

I don't know anything about John Lewis, but Les-Tilleuls (https://les-tilleuls.coop/en/the-co-op) sounds exactly like what you're talking about. Completely employee owned IT shop full of talented contributers. I'm not sure about their consulting work, but they're behind a ton of innovative open source projects in the PHP sphere.

Scroll_Swe5• 2 months ago

No, this never works... The socialism glaze on HN amazes me...

I am Swedish, in Sweden, and we are a market economy combined with unions. Companies can do layoffs but for a 3month agreement, they have to notify basically, WARN.

lbreakjai2• 2 months ago

If 51% of the employees would benefit from firing the other 49%, you'd be as good as gone anyway. Not saying it would be worse, but the same incentives are at play.

acdha2• 2 months ago

No, because the average employee has both a lot more in common with their peers and because the gains are lower for people whose stock shares are orders of magnitude lower. Joe from accounting isn’t laying off a department so he can sell shares worth the price of a Corolla before taxes.

throwaway0123_5• 2 months ago

Presumably ~100% of the employees want to feel secure in their jobs, so I don't think this would happen unless the benefit to the 51% is extreme.

declan_roberts• 2 months ago

This type of thing should come along with a reduction of allowed H-1bs.

csomar• 2 months ago

I think H1Bs are pretty much dead with the 100k fee.

b3ing• 2 months ago

They are still getting jobs non stop

AlexB138• 2 months ago

As I understand it, the fee doesn't apply in many situations and is fairly easy to work around. Apparently it was neutered immediately after being announced.

jimbob45• 2 months ago

I’d prefer a forced resignation of the CEO and board with no severance.

siren20263• 2 months ago

Cisco especially is absolutely full of H1Bs.

As someone that has worked for them a decade ago, some of their division are >90% Indian. Those are all good engineers and not dunking on them at all but it should be unacceptable to bring over competing workers on a visa while also laying off so many people.

truncate2• 2 months ago

What percent of laid of employees do you think are H1Bs?

spike021• 2 months ago

we were acquired and part of our org moved into cisco HQ.

the entire floor were Indian other than our org, and over time our org was filled out with incoming transfers and new hires.

i'll never forget some irony in that one of the engineering leaders brought us together for a mini townhall once and praised our "diversity" but by then the percentage of people in the room were basically the same as you described, including said leader. even our twice a week catered lunches were almost always indian.

just an interesting experience being part of cisco for a couple of years.

ribosometronome• 2 months ago

If a company is set on hiring foreign workers who will work for less than Americans and we don't let them bring them over here, won't they just offshore instead? I don't ask this to be contrarian but more to wonder how to combat it.

rayiner• 2 months ago

Do you think there was ethnic favoritism going on?

eudamoniac7• 2 months ago

There are more than a few entire divisions of Indians. Indian manager, 10-12 Indian subs. And these divisions are not in India. Not sure how this flies, legally.

jameson• 2 months ago

Unlikely to happen when H1B program benefit corporate and they run super PACs

Any policies to help the people are labeled as "socialist" nowadays

mavelikara2• 2 months ago

This type of thing should come along with a reduction of allowed H-1bs.

H-1Bs also lose jobs in these layoffs, so there is an implicit reduction.

Scroll_Swe5• 2 months ago

This. Once Indians get in, they hire other Indians only. It is a disgrace. They are here in Sweden too studying for masters, terrible. They should be barred from EU honestly... sadly we just did a trade agreement...

semiquaver• 2 months ago

OMG, press the “read aloud” button. Brings me right back to to computer class in 1995!

ing33k• 2 months ago

sounds like a daft punk song !

maxdo2• 2 months ago

Cisco do not have real ai strategy . Routers are routers. Even their ai factory is yet another box just with label nvidia on it . No major investment needed.

All that observability tooling around is only benefiting ai wave . They can vibe re-write everything .

siren20263• 2 months ago

At this point Cisco is a conglomerate that does everything and nothing. They own so many different verticals that even people working there don't really know what cisco fully does anymore.

But I agree though, this is an artificial stock pump because of the rush for picks and shovels.

forgotusername6• 2 months ago

The real question is did the hardware stores back in the day care that the miners were digging for gold?

AndyMcConachie• 2 months ago

As someone who was impacted by Cisco's first ever round of layoffs, I can say with confidence that your statement was also true 25 years ago.

kotaKat• 2 months ago

Waiting for them to put AI into the Smart Licensing on my routers.

I guess when they said "insert token" they meant "insert quarter" and by "insert quarter" they meant "insert your entire fiscal quarter".

passive2• 2 months ago

My extremely cynical, but not yet proven wrong view:

Tech, more or less, has a group of investors centered around Silicon Valley. Not the only ones, but especially now, the most active. Generally, these folk have a lot of exposure to AI, and probably mostly believe the hype around it.

Which means they believe companies using AI should produce better results, which in the current market means short-term cash. So if a company doesn't do layoffs, no matter how well it is doing, it is seen as irresponsible and investment is withheld from it.

GitLab's announcement felt illustrative of this dynamic:

- The actual reductions were focused on simplifying org structure, nothing to do with AI

- They identified MORE work that was on their roadmap because of the way AI is changing software engineering

- They made sure to include a special section for investors

Seems to me they should have made the org changes in an unrelated announcement, and celebrated the opportunity for new work and the possible hiring that might be required to accomplish it all.

Like, GitLab is in an incredible position to moonshot the next generation of software. AI needs new substrate to work most effectively, and GitLab is the most popular "alternative" substrate to the fragile dinosaur that Github has become.

But AI needs to be seen as cutting costs above all else, so they can sell more of it everywhere, and this is what we get.

tragiclos• 2 months ago

GitLab is in an incredible position to moonshot the next generation of software.

I don't think they offer anything unique. Forgejo[1] offers a similar platform.

[1] https://forgejo.org/

allarm2• 2 months ago

I don't think Fogejo offers CI/CD out of the box, for starters.

throwaway77832• 2 months ago

We use GitLab. They are no way in an incredible position to moonshot anything. They are yet another git provider with a management plane around it.

passive2• 2 months ago

I've built a developer platform around GitLab, and it's got some nice stuff, but it's not revolutionary.

But that's not all that relevant to the opportunity in front of them.

The opportunity, generally, exists because of their place in an industry that most folk believe will be very different a decade from now.

That belief is going to lead a lot of CTOs to try new things. When a company tries something new, it almost always picks a new vendor to work with, rather than adding complexity or risk to an existing vendor engagement.

Yes, there are other alternatives, but they are less well known, require self hosting, and/or are secondary products of companies with very broad focus.

Atlassian might be another, given how much of the rest of the software development cycle they have their hooks in, but many tech leaders have unresolved JIRA trauma. :)

anal_reactor4• 2 months ago

My extremely cynical, but not yet proven wrong view

1. FAANG does something that's relevant to their company.

2. Everyone thinks that this is an universally good move because they're FAANG.

3. Market rewards copying FAANG regardless whether that strategy also applies to your company.

Simple as that.

ranguna2• 2 months ago

I agree with you. Putting myself in the shoes of a tech CEO, I see other companies laying off and saying that their AI strategy made them so productive that they don't need 20% of their employees anymore, I see investors flocking to that company, I look at my company and feel investor FOMO, I layoff as well.

It's nothing personal, it's just how the US works. If this were to happen in Europe, your company would burn to the ground. The amount of compensation you'd have to do would eat your gains from the layoffs.

pjc50• 2 months ago

Meanwhile in Korea:

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/south-korean-offi...

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/sk-hynix-employee...

SK Hynix is making an absurd amount of money from the RAM shortage, and the employees are not unreasonably demanding their cut from it.

misnome3• 2 months ago

to the fragile dinosaur that Github has become.

GitLab has just as many outages, just nobody notices/cares so much

lionkor• 2 months ago

Our GitLab has fantastic uptime, because it's self hosted

delusional• 2 months ago

But AI needs to be seen as cutting costs above all else, so they can sell more of it everywhere, and this is what we get.

I think it goes a little deeper than that. In ways that seem to echo in your description of GitHub vs GitLab too.

Big Tech doesn't seem to attempt to generate value. The most positive attribute you can ascribe to a silicon valley startup is "disruptive" which in effect means eating somebody elses lunch. I think this is pretty natural for an industry that has pretty much achieved perfect penetration, but we're still dimensioning the industry for massive growth.

In that framework, silicon valley startups have to identify some sort of frontier they can expand into, and with pretty much all productive enterprise already interfaced with technology. They have to expand into simply replacing labor.

chrsw• 2 months ago

It's not cynical, it's accurate. If you give corporations a free excuse for staff reductions most will grab it with both hands.

vrganj• 2 months ago

It's simpler than that.

It is in their class interest to try and beat workers that have gotten too uppity down and AI is a tool they see fit for purpose.

redwood• 2 months ago

I look at it a bit differently. I bet Cisco's overall employment will only rise over time maybe even this year but certainly in the years to come. But the point is they do need to rebalance the kind of focus area they have. In other words someone who's great at one part of the technology stack might not be who they need for a different part and the priorities change over time. The reality is Cisco does a huge amount of large acquisitions and this brings more and more people with specialized talent all the time and you can't just do that forever without removing focus elsewhere.

Also if compensation has come down over the last couple of years sometimes you have to do this instead of lowering salary because for whatever reason our industry doesn't ever lower salary.

I do personally believe it would be wonderful if companies invested more in helping people retool and move to new parts of the stack and where compensation becomes non-competitive it should be okay to at least give an employee an option of a lower salary to stay.

eudamoniac7• 2 months ago

I think the reason they don't do that is because in most cases, the employee will mentally check out and/or start looking for jobs immediately, so you're getting very little value from them after the salary reduction.

pm90• 2 months ago

Cisco is well known to do annual layoffs, this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.

walrus01• 2 months ago

5% reduction returns them to the headcount on what date? Something like mid 2022 if the info I'm finding is correct.

fny• 2 months ago

It's important to keep in mind Cisco made a billion AI and cybersec acquisitions in the past few years and they've downsized to 2022 levels.

This is not an AI job elimination story. I think the next recession will trigger that. The AI hype train ironically needs engineers of all stripes to run.

rnxrx• 2 months ago

Cisco's fiscal year closes at the end of July, which makes this time of year the season for reorgs, LRs (as they're colloquially known) and the usual maneuvering that leads up to establishing budgets, sales quotas and the like. It sucks that this kind of thing has become so normalized now.

pjmlp3• 2 months ago

This is why you owe nothing to your employer, record revenue with management bonus, and layoffs for those that helped get there.

Those extra hours? Only if the team really needs them.

Naturally this tends to be something only seniors see, thus ageism.

Scroll_Swe5• 2 months ago

Those extra hours? Only if the team really needs them.

? I started a new job a year ago. Overtime pay in contract. I gladly work and report overtime as I get paid way more :) BUT there has to be a real reason, such as deadline, alarm/alert and such.

You people are just lost. But I am in Sweden with a union job hehehe

pjmlp3• 2 months ago

Same here, some of your southern neighbours also have unions on IT, as a union in general covers specific industries, regardless of what job each person does in the building.

As a tip for others as well, even without an union it helps to be aware of the country labour laws even if superficially.

dinkumthinkum3• 2 months ago

Yeah, but compare the salaries to the US and then factor in taxes.

penguin_booze• 2 months ago

In the past week, we've had:

* Build for the future (Cloudflare)

* Our path forward (Cisco)

What else did we miss?

Xunjin• 2 months ago

The journey ahead (next known layoff company)

darksim9052• 2 months ago

On and off for the past year or so, the commercials from TD Bank have been

* More Human

as they've slowly laid off people due to the AML fines they've been dealing with in the U.S. and replacing folks with either AI, more Indian/Canadian/Ireland talent.

suddenlybananas5• 2 months ago

You can't really complain that the Toronto Dominion Bank is hiring Canadians.

stack_framer• 2 months ago

"...fewer than 4,000 jobs, representing less than 5 percent of our total employee base."

I cringe at this attempt to soften the numbers by saying "fewer than" and "less than" here. Conversely, and ironically, it also puts inflated numbers in your head.

"How many people will be axed at Cisco?"

"3,998 ... but at least it's fewer than 4,000!"

hirako20008• 2 months ago

Dear reader, let's put it that way, the precise number is even more insignificant than 5%.

Contrast with the benefits of the path set onward. Small steps for humans, but a leap forward for humanity!

myst• 2 months ago

The message is for the investors.

bodegajed• 2 months ago

cisco executives will be rewarded with fat bonuses soon!

selcuka• 2 months ago

I could not be prouder of the growth you have all delivered for Cisco.

I think you could be. Just saying.

lain98• 2 months ago

Whenever a company does layoffs willy nilly frequently I stop trusting them with my career. The AI excuses are lazy.

I was laid off last year by one of the big tech companies, and they called me again for a rehire but I just dont trust them anymore even if they pay more. The layoff completely disrupted my life and I developed health issues because of the stress. Not worth the mental hassle.

I have seen a few workplaces which are more deliberate in their hiring and are not on 24x7x365 hire and fire mode unlike many of the big names. I would rather work in such a place rather than have 10 varieties of coffee and condiments in the pantry.

Frankly i'm pissed off.

Sorry for the people who pinned their hopes on cisco and were laid off yesterday. It's not easy.

gothicbluebird• 2 months ago

one would think that those jobs identified as superfluous or dispensable are in administration more than in engineering. The lay-off procedure itself looks very bureaucratic and makes HR, lawyers, and managers indispensable. Cunning plan.

darkwater3• 2 months ago

Here we have a PR statement of a company announcing at the same time record revenues AND cutting 4000 jobs and the longest thread is complaining about Indian workers instead of bitching about the dystopian reality we live in where Cisco's behavior is accepted and acceptable.

Also, H1B are issued and requested by the company. Blame the system, not the immigrants .

dial9-1• 2 months ago

those 4000 laid off people will be replaced with 6000 H1B's. also why can't we hold both of them accountable?

darkwater3• 2 months ago

Exploiting the visa system (especially if using some loophole) is still totally 100% on the company and not on the immigrant workers.

epolanski• 2 months ago

I have a question.

If so many companies out there are doing layoffs, ignoring whether they are right/wrong or the motives being real or investor signaling, who's gonna benefit from it?

I would tend to think that talent being freed would imply that newcomers have a wider pool to find great contributors, but is it really happening?

redbell2• 2 months ago

Workforce Reduction

A synonymous but more gentle term to layoff.

hansmayer2• 2 months ago

Today we announced our Q3 FY26 earnings with record revenue of $15.8 billion, up 12 percent year over year, and double-digit top and bottom-line growth. The ELT and I could not be prouder of the growth you have all delivered for Cisco.

What a sick, deeply disconnected opener. Essentially a big FU to their employees. All these AI-first geniuses will eventually bring about is people intentionally slowing down their "productivity" while maxxing the shit out of the company token budget.

We have important, impactful, and consequential work ahead. Your focus, resilience, and leadership are vital to our growth and relevance in FY27 and beyond.

The message here is - generate more with less, so we can layoff even more of you. At some point even the dumbest, most loyal corporate shills will start to get it.

eudamoniac7• 2 months ago

people intentionally slowing down their "productivity" while maxxing the shit out of the company token budget.

I have actually started doing this. At first I was just slowing down productivity, but then I realized that if everyone is going to breathe down my neck about token use, I can just use a shitload and not utilize the output for anything. I consider this game theory optimal and possibly most ethical.

hansmayer2• 2 months ago

Of course it's ethical - these guys have been persistent in creating a jungle-like environment for all of us. In such a situation, acting primarily for your own egoistic interests is indeed the most ethical choice you could make. I applaud you for doing so.

davidcollantes• 2 months ago

Today we announced our Q3 FY26 earnings with record revenue of $15.8 billion, up 12 percent year over year, and double-digit top and bottom-line growth. The ELT and I could not be prouder of the growth you have all delivered for Cisco.

Great! A successful company, right? Ah, but then:

we are making changes today that will result in the reduction of our overall workforce in Q4 by fewer than 4,000 jobs, representing less than 5 percent of our total employee base.

I wouldn't have put those two together so close, nor in the same announcement.

alistairSH7• 2 months ago

Why not? All that matters is the investors, and both of those are positives to that group. Sure, it's not particularly humane, and I'm sure those that were fired are angry, but this is the norm in American business and has been for many years.

roxolotl3• 2 months ago

Why should we be ok with this? Just because something is the norm doesn’t mean it should be nor does it mean it’s moral.

xinayder• 2 months ago

The same thing is happening at my company. We get meetings saying how the market and sales predictions are going well, we're doing so good... yet, budget within organizations inside the company keeps shrinking and we are having massive layoffs year after year.

When sales were bad we didn't have budget cuts. Now that we have stable profit margins, we are cutting costs.

mplanchard3• 2 months ago

I briefly worked for Cisco after an acquisition, and it was a great time: I would get my sprint’s worth of work done in two days, ask if I could do anything else and be told no, and then spend the rest of the two weeks doing whatever I wanted, which at the time was learning Rust.

All that is to say, I would not be remotely surprised if Cisco has more employees than they strictly need. But, this email from the CEO is comically out of touch. “We’re doing great, better than we’ve ever done, so we’re going to fire thousands of you” is a chef’s kiss encapsulation of American corporate culture.

alistairSH7• 2 months ago

the CEO is comically out of touch

Maybe with normal people but that's not the target audience. The investors are the target and it's exactly what they want to hear.

AndrewKemendo4• 2 months ago

I love how

“it was a great time” = “I worked two days a week”

Any job that pays a full week and only requires two days of work is a “great time”

tells you literally nothing about the actual job.

ethbr1• 2 months ago

The way to read that is that parent was being paid 2.5x what their FTE hourly rate would be.

In which case, I'd say they struck a helluva bargain at salary negotiation. Kudos.

It's not like they didn't ask for more work to do.

mplanchard3• 2 months ago

Yeah I mean, I was being a bit sarcastic. As the sibling points out, I was getting paid a full time salary to largely do whatever I wanted. But, it was also soul crushing to have so little meaningful work to do. I left within a year of the acquisition as a result.

The actual job was working on a python server for the acquired company, and it’s not like there wasn’t more work to do, but we were not allowed to go outside the bounds of the work that had been allocated for a sprint, which was always conservative in order to allow for more accurate overall plans. It’s certain that it was different in other departments or areas or acquired companies, but that at least was my experience.

panflute2• 2 months ago

Funny that you expect an employee to view a great time as meaning more than successfully exploiting advantage to the employers disadvantage in a relationship with Cisco.

greatgib• 2 months ago

Actually it is the current comic trend. The business is sound and we are doing great but we will reduce workforce for pleasure.

I think that in most places the business is going bad in fact, but if you were to believe their words it will show a very despicable spirit of the current decade where the goal is to enjoy maximum profit without any care at all to do any good.

Before a boss might enjoy to have a sound business to be able to preserve the work/income of his employees.

Now they would not care to fuck employees first but also customers after if that provide with a second yacht for holidays.

Just see Elon Musk as the godfather of this discipline...

spjwebster• 2 months ago

My eldest is currently taking her GCSEs, and for the English Literature exam this week she had to write an essay on A Christmas Carol. Whilst helping her, I couldn't help but realise that the overarching messages around the importance of social responsibility are becoming increasingly relevant again.

mgh22• 2 months ago

Their stock went up w/ Nvidia: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48075500

eudamoniac7• 2 months ago

When I worked for Cisco I was doing ~4hrs of work per week, excluding meetings, and always got top performance bonus. I didn't even have many meetings. I only left because my soul stopped being able to take it.

senordevnyc8• 2 months ago

A bit off-topic, but I'm curious: why do so many people seem to be outraged when companies do layoffs? I genuinely don't understand. It's like there's this unspoken agreement that once you get hired, you're entitled to that job for life. Of course, you are free to leave whenever you want, nothing wrong with that, but many seem to see it as immoral or unethical for the company to decide they don't need you anymore, and let you go. Why? What exactly is a company's moral obligation when it comes to who they employ and for how long?

For context, I was most recently employed at a public tech company as a staff engineer. I was there for five years, got paid very well, and then was part of broad layoffs last year. I got a generous severance, and moved onto the next thing. I don't have any bitterness about it; I was selling my time and expertise to the company, and they no longer felt it was worth buying. I wouldn't have felt bad about leaving the job, so why should they feel bad about ending the employment?

Don't get me wrong, I know how stressful layoffs are. But all kinds of things in life are stressful (like a breakup, for example), but that doesn't imply you've been morally harmed in some way. You aren't entitled to keep your job for life!

Help me understand.

eudamoniac7• 2 months ago

Yeah I'm with you, I think 99% of the reaction is just anger that big corp took away small workers' job, with no further thought.

To try to steelman it best I can, maybe it's the feeling that a successful company should (ethically) pass on the success to the workers in some way. Like, my labor resulted in record revenue, but instead of a raise I'm getting fired. Feels bad.

Also if workers reacted game theoretically correctly to this situation, they would work just enough to not get fired for cause, since working hard is not rewarded. This is overall bad because if everyone starts doing the bare minimum it's not a pleasant place to work. So it's basically the company forcing the workplace into becoming worse, and actually harming themselves in the long run if everyone reacted that way, so the company is being shortsighted. So then the workers are mad because the company isn't even laying them off for "rational" reasons.

Once you accept that employment is just a roulette wheel that you spin quarterly, it becomes less frustrating, but also becomes more soul sucking.

senordevnyc8• 2 months ago

Yeah, I suspect that some of my bewilderment is that I've been self-employed for the vast majority of my career; that 5-year stint at a big tech company was an anomaly, and I always viewed it as just another client, essentially. And clients and customers come and go, constantly. I've never felt entitled to their business, and I suppose I extend that same thinking to employment.

I will say that I don't think game theory would dictate that you do as little as you can to not get fired, for at least a few different reasons.

First of all, that's pretty difficult to do, since you don't know in advance exactly what the dividing line is between who gets fired or laid off, and who doesn't.

Second, my experience has been that people who do take that approach are statistically more likely to get laid off, when compared to people who really push hard at work, trying to win. And even if the latter group does get laid off, they're much more competitive in the job market if they have a solid body of work and a network of former colleagues who view them favorably.

And third, having gone through a phase like that when I was getting divorced, it just feels shitty. I'd much rather pull my weight, regardless of whether my job continues in the future.

I do think that game theory would certainly imply that you should not have any loyalty towards your employer, and be willing to jump ship whenever it makes sense for you. But that has always been the case, at least in my lifetime.

pech0rin• 2 months ago

Cisco fires people all the time. They have a huge workforce this isn’t really newsworthy.

clearstack• 2 months ago

the cuts are a mix shift play. AI networking orders are higher margin than legacy hardware. they want that ratio to improve. income statement will show it within 2 quarters

motbus3• 2 months ago

Im sure all these layoffs will increase profit hence taxes right?

noncoml• 2 months ago

The irony is that Cisco engineers have a limit of 200K tokens per day for AI usage, because it is getting too expensive for Cisco...

Cisco workforce reductions

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