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Cisco Emerges From Restructuring 13,000 Employees Lighter
Joining the ranks of accepted submitters, Zibodiz writes with an article in PC World about Cisco restructuring. From the article: "Cisco Systems emerged from 150 days of restructuring on Tuesday ... The networking company started to streamline its operations and refocus itself on a few core businesses earlier this year after posting disappointing financial results. The subsequent restructuring shut down its Flip consumer camcorder unit and other businesses and eliminated 12,900 jobs, with almost 23,000 employees moved in the process. Executives laid out some more details on Tuesday at Cisco's annual financial analyst conference in San Jose, California. Cisco's five areas of focus now are its core routing and switching business, collaboration, data-center virtualization, video, and tying these elements together in an overall architecture."
Zibodiz further writes "Perhaps the most interesting thing to me is that Cisco had 12,900 employees that were doing things other than 'routing and switching, collaboration, virtualization, video, and ... architecture.'"
The traditional model towards profitability was to sell more product, grow your operation, hire more workers and build more factories, wash-rinse-repeat.
Today it seems like the road to profitability is to not grow, increase short-term profits by downsizing, make existing workers do more work, wash-rinse-repeat.
That's great news if you're a CEO only concerned with the short-term profitability of your brief stint as CEO (before you bail out with your golden parachute). But it's pretty shitty news if you're a worker or a long-term investor in said company. And it's even worse news if you're out of work and looking for a job.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Perhaps the most interesting thing to me is that Cisco had 12,900 employees that were doing things other than 'routing and switching, collaboration, virtualization, video, and ... architecture.'"
We call those people 'managers' in other industries.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Cheaper competitors have snatched market share out from underneath Cisco and they did nothing about it except chase terrible consumer grade products.
Good riddance
imho, the main problem with cisco is their inability to have a decent price list that one can count on, all hardware is sold at a variable discount different for each customer, seemingly depending on the direction of the wind. Also the necessity of having an active support contract to get firmware upgrades including the ones that patch urgent security bugs is a turn off, in particular when one has payed 5 or 6 figures for a piece of equipment...
We're witnessing the fall of corporatism in this country. It's quickly approaching the point where they won't have any producing employees left. I used to think there was some nefarious plan, but it's starting to look more and more like incompetence and shortsigtedness. Dunning-Kruger effect across the board. The sociopaths at the top in this country have been allowed to go on so long unchecked that human nature is kicking in and they are being self-destructive.
Car analogy: Stupid teenage driver runs red lights and takes corners too fast over and over again. The more he does it with success, the more brazen he becomes. Then he wrecks and hopefully dies.
Then someone trolls his memorial and goes to prison.
In the spirit of "sharing the pain" all groups were tagged with layoff requirements. This included lean teams doing critical operations in core businesses (routing, aggregation, security etc).
While the engineers are still excellent, Cisco is no longer a company run by skilled technical professionals focused on delivering quality products. Its an accounting operation infested with old-boys-clubs where decisions are primarily the result of office politics, not technical correctness. The smart people are leaving, the lucky ones are getting laid off with severance packages, the unfortunate are left holding the bag.
I hope they got rid of Robert Barr, the man from the redundancy detector van.
Well said.
Cisco is one of the most annoying, difficult companies to buy from.
They have so many products, with many different feature levels, with many different service contracts, that no one I have talked to understands what they sell.
I've actually had to say to them:
I AM TRYING TO GIVE YOU MONEY. THIS IS A VITAL FUNCTION FOR ANY BUSINESS. INSTEAD OF MAKING IT EASY FOR ME TO GIVE YOU MONEY, YOU ARE MAKING IT HARD FOR ME TO GIVE YOU MONEY!
That's great news if you're a CEO only concerned with the short-term profitability of your brief stint as CEO (before you bail out with your golden parachute)
Only an episode of Glee is more dramatic than you.
Just once, I'd like to read a headline saying something like
" announced plans to restructure and reduce costs by eliminating 1000 executive and managerial positions. In addition, the CEO, CTO, CFO and all other C level positions will see their salary cut to a mere 20 times the average salary within the company.
In other news, airborne pigs were spotted migrating south for the winter."
You were surprised they have 12,900 that checked facebook all day?
Between this and Bank of America dropping thousands of jobs, I'm starting to wonder.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Hiring more workers is still a good sign. Layoffs means the company is having trouble, but at least they are cutting the fat.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Don't forget the "Helping Governments Spy on their Citizens" area. That's probably the reason for the virtualization, though. Hell, it was probably the reason they killed off that HD camcorder thing. Can't have people uploading high-def videos of the communist reptilian space aliens who run things, now can we? They probably thought they would be able to co-opt it in real time like all those UFO videos you see where the first one looks real and then the poorly-done fakes start pouring in and discredit the whole thing and before you know it it's all kooks and nutjobs who think that 9/11 was done with disintegration rays. Those 12,000 people were probably working on building $500 hammers for the CIA, amirite?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
But it's pretty shitty news if you're a worker or a long-term investor in said company. And it's even worse news if you're out of work and looking for a job.
So what? Should Slashdot only deliver good news from now on? Is this a religious thing where we make insincere genuflections to the people who are out of luck?
"Grow or die" leads to"Too big to fail"
Will companies ever focus on supplying a good product at a fair price over providing a consistant 3% ROR for thier stock holders at all costs?
The traditional model towards profitability was to sell more product, grow your operation, hire more workers and build more factories, wash-rinse-repeat.
Today it seems like the road to profitability is to not grow, increase short-term profits by downsizing, make existing workers do more work, wash-rinse-repeat.
That's great news if you're a CEO only concerned with the short-term profitability of your brief stint as CEO (before you bail out with your golden parachute). But it's pretty shitty news if you're a worker or a long-term investor in said company. And it's even worse news if you're out of work and looking for a job.
This is nothing new, actually if a company can come up with an excuse to get rid of workers aside from "our revenue is plummeting" is is almost always heralded as a good thing; after all it means that fewer employees will be taking up the work of those let go and the bottom line will most certainly improve. However poorly it bodes for the future, improvement to the bottom line this FQ makes investors happy. For a while it was "right-sizing" and then "restructuring" and the newest buzzword is apparently "delayering" but they always mean the same thing, cut the dead weight.
that's population, not dollars. that's pervasive non-accountable fatal distraction 'accounting', considering that the victims are never associated with the 'company'.
for each of the creators' innocents harmed in any way....
While you're talking of the Corporate side, let me speak on the customer side.
When purchasing networking gear, I don't ever consider Cisco anymore. They've put a bad taste in the mouth and consider them blacklisted until further notice. Sorry, but having questionably made networking gear just isn't in the cards.
Actually in general what I see, the fat is the last thing to go. First they cut out the muscle, then the internal organs, then they start to concider the fat. In general the initial cuts are to support, then to engineering/developing, insert a few more key links here, then finally they start to even consider the possibility of cutting their management buddies that helped drive the place into the ground to begin with. Usually they try and delay losing managers until the managers are close to a 1:1 ratio with people they manage.
Just once, someone would read the article before making stupid comments like this. Here, from one of the linked articles from back in July:
The layoffs will eliminate about 9 percent of Cisco's regular, full-time workforce. In the ranks of vice president and above, Cisco said it will cut 15 percent of employees.
There, does that make you happy? Here's another one:
{Cisco} moved from a controversial collection of boards and councils managing the company to named individuals being responsible for product lines.
Sounds like administrative middle management being eliminated to me.
Also note that in the announcment in July, they talked about transferring a unit to Foxconn, saying:
No jobs will be lost in that transaction, but about 5,000 Cisco employees will be transferred to Foxconn
Read the articles and get that chip off of your shoulder.
We have several of them and my family loves them. They were easy to use and took decent quality movies. They were 1000x easier to use than our regular Canon HD Camcorder. This you could just pull out of your pocket and make a video. The other required setup time, hooking up our Rode shotgun mic, digital tapes, etc.
Cisco purchased a great product and basically killed it. Probably mostly due to advertising. They had TONS of paid celebrities doing ads for them and 1,000s of posters everywhere. There had to be 1,000 posters up in Grand Central Station alone.
First Cisco offered an Early Retirement Package... this backfired since many of the senior technical folks, who would have no problems getting a job somewhere else took the package and immediately got a job at a competitor. Nothing like paying top talent to work somewhere else.
They as part of the layoffs they said that they would lay off 15% of all VP and higher folks. A few Distinguished Engineers were let go.
Then this morning they announced that FOUR new VPs were made Senior VPs.
Cisco's employee profile is shaped like an hour glass, you're either upper management or a grunt. There is no middle class here. I"ve also heard of this place like a upside down pyramid. Btw, VPs get a compensation that is orders of magnitude greater than any individual contributor (including Distinguished Engineers, for which there are 100 in the entire company).
When a market is new and fresh and there are still lots of simple but good ideas that haven't been thought of yet, rapid expansion is a good thing. Once the market has matured and all of the easy niches are occupied, you have to turn and focus on what you managed to get a good foot in the door on.
If you keep trying to expand out in every direction you're in trouble. It's a bit like life in a petri dish - when you have the dish all to yourself you can expand all you want and it's great. Once the plate is full you'd better consolidate and become efficient if you want to push out other established competition to make more room in the market for yourself to slowly expand.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
john chambers was never an engineer. he came up from sales
kind of hard to sell more routers and switches when your 10 year old products are more than enough for a lot of your customers
1;
Best way to vote is with your dollar. If you don't like the way corporate conservatism is further corrupting the US economic/political system then man-up and stop supporting the megacorps. There's other ways of routing/firewalling network traffic if you are not afraid to have the skills.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
I was wondering why the hell did cisco restructure 13 000 lighters
How long you been saving that one?
obviously we're just not shoveling enough money and special privileges at the "Job Creators".
maybe it's time to go into the guillotine business.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
You have no idea how correct you are. As someone who has worked in the "core" areas, Cisco leadership now comprises of people who have stayed there due to various reasons like politics, visa issues etc etc. Most of the really smart people responsible for the networking boom in Cisco have left for greener ventures or they got tired of the politics/incompentency that is rampant in Cisco. Another example that is really close to my heart - The unit I worked for has around 500+ people out of which it is safe to say 450+ are Indians. It is safe to say the situation is the same in other units as well. The culture has become so Indianized that managers often talk in hindi and organize lunches to Indian places even if there is maybe 1 non-indian in the group (what will he do , quit ? ). The situation is so bad that even within Indians there is politics. My group that I worked on comprises of 5 people out of which 4 are from the same part of India. The 2nd level Manager only looks for people that are from the same part of India as he is. This is also visible in other groups across my BU. No problem against Indians for me, but these people brought with them a highly non-professional and obsolete management style consisting of manager-worship, no questions asked style of leadership and that was suffocating for me as a developer. Any average person like me in Cisco is bound to get frustrated and leave!. Most people there choose to stay because they have their green cards being processed and they cannot leave. The managers know that well and they try to exploit that in every way possible. The end result is an extremely mediocre management team that now faces competition from Huawei, Juniper, HP etc and has no clue how to go about it.
I believe you are on the right track, however the question you SHOULD really be asking is, "Will share holders stop their insane expectations for massive quarter over quarter growth?" Unfortunately success is no longer grounded in reality - a company that can produce a solid product, employ a static, or perhaps slowly growing number of employees, and operate in the black on an annual basis is no longer considered successful. Your company must exceed single-digit growth year over year, or you are a failure to shareholders.
Here are reasons as to why it makes NO SENSE to hire American workers.
Full Congressional meeting.
2006 speech predicting the incoming problems.
discussion on the job destruction act
Text submitted to Congressional committee before the meeting.
You can't handle the truth.
It's a different economic climate. Most companies don't have the growing markets or high future expectation to justify hiring more people, especially in the expensive developed world.
But it's pretty shitty news if you're a worker or a long-term investor in said company. And it's even worse news if you're out of work and looking for a job.
So what? Should Slashdot only deliver good news from now on? Is this a religious thing where we make insincere genuflections to the people who are out of luck?
He never said Slashdot shouldn't report it, just that it was bad news. Call a spade a spade, I say.
I'm the sysadmin at a medium sized company, and we just ordered a bunch of USED 7206VXR's with NPE400's. Why? Because they're $1300 each and they haul ass & handle MPLS and VOICE. I'm happy with that for the price. :)
In the spirit of "sharing the pain" all groups were tagged with layoff requirements. This included lean teams doing critical operations in core businesses (routing, aggregation, security etc).
While the engineers are still excellent, Cisco is no longer a company run by skilled technical professionals focused on delivering quality products. Its an accounting operation infested with old-boys-clubs where decisions are primarily the result of office politics, not technical correctness. The smart people are leaving, the lucky ones are getting laid off with severance packages, the unfortunate are left holding the bag.
In the spirit of "sharing the pain" all groups were tagged with layoff requirements. This included lean teams doing critical operations in core businesses (routing, aggregation, security etc).
While the engineers are still excellent, Cisco is no longer a company run by skilled technical professionals focused on delivering quality products. Its an accounting operation infested with old-boys-clubs where decisions are primarily the result of office politics, not technical correctness. The smart people are leaving, the lucky ones are getting laid off with severance packages, the unfortunate are left holding the bag.
As a Corporate customer with a long history of using Cisco Products, I could not agree more.
Cisco's solution for poorly written ,documented, and tested code seems to be to sell you "advanced services". No thanks, that's why we pay you for Suppoot.
It would seem they've outsourced themselves to the point they can no longer deliver.
The reason it makes no sense to hire American workers is because we allow unfettered outsourcing, and refuse to level the playing field with countries like China which heavily subsidizes its industry and artificially controls prices. I don't see why companies should be able to benefit from American infrastructure while moving production elsewhere.
Today it seems like the road to profitability is to not grow, increase short-term profits by downsizing, make existing workers do more work, wash-rinse-repeat.
Makes perfect sense in a world where the road to better government is to eliminate the government.
Some of the 12900 employees that were laid off or had voluntarily retired were doing things outside of the 5 areas of focus. Some on my development team were in one these areas but the bulk of the development in this area was shifted overseas. A large number of the voluntary retirees were doing work in these areas as well. With some of these folks in very key roles.
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" -- Dr. Strangelove
there are things worse than being laid off; like the despair foxconn inflicts on its employees.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
The problem is that companies add links to the command chain during expansions, but seem unable to remove them when consolidating. If anything, they add layers even then, which is counter-productive and hinders integration.
The end result is that over time, companies get heavy around the middle (to continue the fat anology).
Any company - ANY - where there are more than five steps from the top boss to the lowest worker is going to be grossly ineffective. Not only because all the superfluous management is a big money drain, but because it will suffer from sluggishness and Chinese whisper effects in the chain of command.
Cutting down on this fat is always harder than just cutting individual bosses and everybody below them. But doing the latter will always leave the company more top-heavy. It's simple maths, and thus too hard to understand for CEOs and CFOs.
So the sturdy pyramid turns into a tower, and one day it topples. Cisco isn't too big to fall, it's just a bit more wobbly now.
No, Cisco probably is firing many thousands of workers who were working on those core business activities that Cisco is retaining. There's no simple relationship between what a worker was doing and what the corporate rulers say the corporation will now do, when the corporation fires so many people at once. Especially when the corporation was profitable and known for quality before the firings.
But yes, Cisco surely had many employees who were doing other things. Like all the corporate execs and their ecosystem who are responsible for pure finance, including managing the company's publicly traded equity (stock) and publicly/privately juggled debt (bonds, mortgages, government loans, private loans, credit default swaps, other derivatives). When you're a big brand with lots of property like Cisco, especially when you define an industry - or a whole sector (like "the Internet), you make (and lose) lots of money in business purely derivative of your actual operating business.
And no, those finance parasites are probably not being fired. You almost never hear about these corporations firing lots of their banking interface infrastructure. Because the financial system is so deeply rigged to be both a money and an influence machine. Even when distracting a company out of real profitability. The guy who gets you into the casino is more tightly held than the guy who worked to give you your first ante.
--
make install -not war
if production is elsewhere, then by definition companies are not profiting from American infrastructure.
And since the CEO is CEO of a much smaller company, his pay is going down, yes?
Good read on the back of the recent WSJ article by Andreessen about 'Software eating the world'. The post makes the case that Cisco is 'doomed' on the basis that 'If the output of your hardware is information or the manipulation of information then you are going to get eaten. If the output is something else then you are not.'
http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2011/08/software-eats-part-of-world.html
With Intel buying Fulcrum, Vyatta and other virtual networking plays entering this space, the current method of buying hundreds and thousands of standalone firewalls, load balancers, switches, routers, WAN accelerators, VPN boxes, SSL terminators etc. as seperate appliances is going to start looking antiquated quickly. There will be exceptions where dedicated single purpose hardware is still required but even those exceptions are shrinking.
Honestly, I was at Cisco for ten years and saw the same issue you bring up with homogenized groups of cultures leading to people being ostracized. However, I would point out that for different groups of people there was more heterogeneous people and less so in others. There is a lot of politics and racial division... not sure if the old Italian mafia has any influence left, but they certainly had their own little Italy in the core 6k switching.
I left Cisco and went to a company that was mostly mainland Chinese in one group and mixed cultural background in another group. This was fine as long as the whole structure was that culture and you were a part, but interacting with that group is all but impossible for example too when even documents and meetings are not in English. Certainly, how can you ask them to switch if half your team is in China, half in the U.S. but that is what most of them speak? You by default are the odd man/woman out. You'll just have to deal and leave in my view. My favorite anecdote is the one Korean guy who they have to speak English too since he is the only competent chip-level engineer.
Efforts for example were made to "standarize" the work force operational procedure, but it did not really work and business as usual took place. :)
Heck even the Taiwanese Chinese feel left out... it is amazing!
-Aaln
Yep, most CEOs like to remove R&D, engineers, programmers. Eventually they're left with a "Dilbert" corp of Managers, Sales, and Lawyers.
How many billions of $$$ in Flip Cameras did they expect sell?
Until the competition keeps releasing higher and higher bandwidth switches/router and someone comes up with a new killer apps that makes use of it. Then you're left in the dust, and you lose most of your customers. Network admins don't like to have lots of different switch brands, then there's more to keep track of. Cisco falls behind and maybe HP and/or Juniper fill the void, and in the several years it takes to release a competing product, most of their customers have already jumped ship and gutted their infrastructure of anything Cisco.
Humans hate change. There needs to be enough incentive to change, and even more incentive to change back. It will leave people with a sour taste.
It's a different economic climate. Most companies don't have the growing markets or high future expectation to justify hiring more people, especially in the expensive developed world.
They would if they would stop outsourcing jobs to third world countries. Then first world people would be able to buy their products and their market would grow.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Until your critical MPLS router goes belly up and you complain to Cisco about an unsupported piece of hardware you didn't have a warranty on. Then you'll start buying non-used devices.
We have 10 year old Catos switches that are dying left and right, I wouldn't think about buying a grey market replacement for production.
Glee viewer, eh?
"hire more workers and build more factories"
That made sense when you needed more workers and more factories, both of which are COST centers.
Remember the great "smokestack" industries, like "Big Steel"?
We use vastly more steel nowadays, made with far fewer steelworkers.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
That's great news if you're a CEO only concerned with the short-term profitability of your brief stint as CEO
Even if you are there for a long term, it's still a good strategy. Because "long term" these days means something like 10 years.
Companies that are run by their owners, instead of some managers, are usually build to last, because the guys want to live until retirement and then some off the profits of the company, and hopefully leave it for his kids afterwards.
And managers... well, I'll just point out that there are quite a few scientific studies that show that the average manager is not really any better at managing than any average joe picked off the street. There are - and that's important - exceptions. People who really shape a company or a division, department, team around them and without whom it wouldn't be the same.
But when you have a random manager in front of you, your chances are much better than average that you could literally exchange him for anyone else in the company and the result would be the same. Interesting, isn't it? You'd think that there is something in their jobs that requires some kind of expertise. Turns out networking and politics may be the only areas. Really much like todays politicians - good at getting into power, getting elected, etc. - no idea what to do with that power once they got it, no vision, no plans no nothing. Again, there are exceptions. But if you can name half a dozen for your country, you're probably deluding yourself.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Spend-and-spend has worked so much better than tax-and-spend.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
Best thing is to allow market to earn and spend. Spending occurs in market absent government mandates and free money, and the inflation is created by the federal reserve devaluing the currency by printing it out of existence, which provides reason to gamble with money and create waste, and then market solution is a recession, but the government in power wants to be reelected, so its only SOP is to pour as much counterfeit currency into the system as possible, providing a temporary high, which still doesn't help to improve the economy, as no jobs are created, then bogus Jobs acts are pushed forward as a measure to get reelected, while the ignorant are trying to apply old failed ideas, but they will of-course fail, just like they always do even though some people predict and warn about the coming failures.
Some people are trying hard to warn others , but very few listen.
You can't handle the truth.
The traditional model towards profitability was to sell more product, grow your operation, hire more workers and build more factories, wash-rinse-repeat.
This was the bad idea. Or rather, it was once they took it beyond the point at which it ceased to be a good idea.
Note Cisco bought a company with the intention to sell more of it's product, grow the operation, etc etc. Evidently, they weren't very good at it. Those jobs might or might not have gone already had Cisco never bought the company, so it's hard to determine whether the net position is that Cisco's involvement shortened or lengthened those jobs.
A problem with giant corporations is they can get so much cash kicking about from their good operations that the bad ones are kept afloat for far too long. This partly explains some of the utterly shitty products/services offered by some companies, they really shouldn't be in the industry at all yet at the same time are just too powerful and established for smaller companies to move in and do the job properly. Sounds like Cisco intends to go back to doing what they know best.
Products and services don't magically teleport into homes and businesses. Roads, rails, ports, telecommunications networks, electric grid, water/sewer, etc., not to mention intangible infrastructure (economic, social, etc).
a. get hedge funds as new investors (grow your investor base)
b. schmooze wall street analysts
c. tell your majority shareholders (CEO, main board members/angel investors) to dump stock/options
d. ask gov't for a bail out, ask for lower taxes
e. horde cash into the company
f. buy up competitors
g. layoff duplication of resources
h. tell wall street you made a huge profit
I. Profit! Go back to step a and repeat.
Cisco appear to have acquired Tandberg (video conferencing stuff) and are hiring. This huge layoff/outsourcing doesn't give me a great deal of confidence in them, so what's going on?
What are they up to?
I suppose they could get some new development going and then outsource to India it after 12-18 months.
Stick Men
I have only worked at one organization that went through any significant downsizing, but it played out differently than you laid out. First they cut from the bottom and did away with as many redundancies as possible. They also aimed at parts of various departments that were not critical to the operation of the company. On the second round of layoffs they took out most of the middle management. That is what sucked the most for me. I lost my boss (no big loss, he didn't do much anyway) but then had to pick up his work, plus my work, and didn't receive a bump in salary. Even my suggestion that they split the difference and bump me up to half way between what I made and he made was rejected.
I have since moved on. The people who rarely get cut are the senior management. You know, the people who are so out of touch with what is really going on that they fail to actually lead.
Profit extraction is not wealth creation. The measure is not the thing. Metrics can be decoupled, gamed, perverted. What responsible people do in an unregulated market is one thing. What the people advocating lately do is something else entirely. Believing that all wealthy people are good, or that bad people with wealth won't do horrible damage, or that government shouldn't stop them, is beyond merely naive.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
Sales, and Management tends to get cut too. Most companies don't hire lawyers are part of their payroll.
Yes A lot of R&D projects get cut especially ones that are not part of the core business model. And when R&D gets cut the Engineers and Programmers who are working with the R&D Projects get cut.
Most of the time a Manager should be managing 5-8 People. if there is 2 Groups with managers managing under 5 then one manager will get cut and the other will take both spots (After a bunch of Reorganization) So it is usually 4 employees per 1 manager. then 4 managers per 1 director. 4 directors for 1 vp.
However what happening is companies really don't like killing off units, so they will take out 1 or 2 employee from each department leaving no layoffs in management. So they don't kill off a future profit center, or a cost saving center.
It isn't a conspiracy it is just the numbers working out to the end guys disadvantage.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
But at the price for used you can buy double the number of switches, keep the spares on hand for quick replacements, and still pay 1/4 what you would have for new gear. And that's not even including what SMARTnet coverage would cost you.
I believe that this is largely an unintended side-effect of the democratization of the capital markets and specifically the stock markets. Before companies like Schwab opened the stock market to household investors, the ownership profile for publicly-traded companies typically included a handful of investors who as a group owned a large share of the company. Those investors could collaborate to chart a long-term course for the company. Compare that to Cisco, where no single investor owns more than 1% of the company (or thereabouts). In essence, "the market" owns Cisco. And the market has a very short-term perspective.
Believing that all wealthy people are good, or that bad people with wealth won't do horrible damage, or that government shouldn't stop them, is beyond merely naive.
- that's why I don't believe anything (and I am an atheist).
I don't believe in good intentions, I believe in self interest.
Self interest is what makes people want to make a profit. Self interest and making a profit is what makes people try to come up with products that other people may want to buy, thus providing the profits for those, who are self-interested.
Profit is the best motivator we have. Government can also profit some people by stealing money via taxes/counterfeiting and inflating/borrowing and then it can distribute this money based on whatever political agenda, but none of it actually is good for economy, as none of it works based on market regulations - which are: make me a product that I like and I will buy it. Make a better product, and I'll buy that one instead. Make it a cheaper product and I'll buy this one.
You can't handle the truth.
First world people do not have the jobs, and now do not have the credit to buy the products. New markets are being developed overseas where the locals have not yet sold themselves up to their eyeballs into credit/debt slavery. Unless there is a serious change to the global economic order, on the scale of "one world government" type change, that dynamic will not change.
America fell with NAFTA and the loss of the manufacturing base. There is nothing short of armed revolution that will bring that back. And even if that happens, America does not have the resources to feed into the manfacturing process to make it work. Our economy and country was built on exploiting the resources of the rest of the world for the last three generations. The only way to try to maintain our "quality of life" at this point is to have everyone else build things for us, and then pay for those goods with dollars.
Once the dollar crashes, as it is trying very hard to do right now with Europe getting ready to default in a big way, America is going to have some real problems. On the bright side of things, most of the rest of the world depends on us to IMPORT from them. We still EXPORT large amounts of food. Sure, our quality of life will take a big hit, but at least we will be able to feed ourselves.
Sure, but means of delivery do not matter, if those, who the products are delivered to are paying with counterfeit money. This vendor financed consumption will stop in a bad way, once the currency is destroyed.
What you described seems to be nepotism at best and outright racism at worst. If this is true, that is a class-action suit waiting to happen. Can you please answer the following questions? I honestly don't know:
-> Networking isn't exactly a `hot' field at the moment, most of the action is on web infrastructures, social media and the like. Are there a lot of American applicants for Ciscos engineering positions?
-> If there are plenty of American applicants, are they screened out by HR, or the hiring managers?
-> Are there blatant examples of less-qualified Indians being hired over better qualified Americans?
-> Are Indians paid less than Americans on the whole?
Internal empire building is part of that. A manager who acquires lots of projects and lots of people is 'more powerful'. They try and become "the indispensable wo/man". It's an illusion that many businesses are learning to shatter before it damages their bottom line. Cisco had to get smacked hard to do it.
A company should have an overarching 'anti-cancer' auditor/hatchet man to defrock such 'indespensables' and break up and get rid of those cancer cells.
still doesn't stop them selling their 'Linksys (by Cisco)' rubbish.
They took a big hit in my eyes when I made the mistake of getting a WAG120N...what a piece of junk in the wifi dept...got a DLInk604gt to take over the AP duties and things are much better now
And managers... well, I'll just point out that there are quite a few scientific studies that show that the average manager is not really any better at managing than any average joe picked off the street.
There's a good reason for that.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
They would if they would stop outsourcing jobs to third world countries. Then first world people would be able to buy their products and their market would grow.
Or they can continue to outsource jobs to developing countries and grow those markets. The developed world isn't the only game in town. Most of the economic growth in the world comes from places that aren't overridden by bureaucracy and regulation.
Have you never been to San Jose ? You would know the answers to most of these questions yourself otherwise ! Are Indians paid less than Americans as a whole ? - No Are Indians exploited more than Americans ? - Absolutely
I couldn't agree more. I rarely contact TAC, and typically when I do it is due to a bug. Last bug I ran into was with their Botnet DNS and alias code in the ASA. Could not get TAC to continue working the issue without giving them my configs, which I cannot. I didn't have time to lab a clean config with the minimum portions to reproduce, and they won't carry the ball without. Worthless support.
How many investors you know are in for the "long term ?" If companies and CEO behave like this, is due to the pressure from the investors. They want their 5%+ annual growth, and if a company can't pull this off they'll just change the board, the CEO, or sell the stock. This is what needs changing, and the rest will be fixed by ricochet.
Self interest is what causes people to band together and form governments to help protect them from others who control vital resources and would otherwise take advantage of them, or who fraudulently or deceptively trade (as two examples).
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
Well, at the very least in USA, the government was formed for a very specific function: protection of liberties and freedoms in order to achieve a 'more perfect union'. The point was to occupy the space that would otherwise be power vacuum, and would be filled in with something that would appear spontaneously.
This is was like a programming effort, but eventually it was hacked, cracked to do something that it was not intended to - the exact opposite, to steal your freedoms, to steal everything from you.
You can't handle the truth.
Actually, why the Peter Principle is a good laugh and we all know we've felt that way at one time or the other, the main reason is that manager is one of those jobs that we put on people without anyone having, say, received the equivalent of a diploma. And no, the MBA doesn't count, check out its usual contents and then ask yourself how much will be useful for the day-to-day activities of that a middle manager.
It really is a lot like politics. You can study politics, but actually running a country is not something where there's a HOWTO anywhere. Since we don't have nobility (at least in power) anymore, we don't have people who were educated in how to run the place. So they make it up as they go, which I think pretty much sums up most current governments in the western world.
And the same is true for managers. Most people promoted to a management position have no clue about what it is they should be doing, so they're making it up as they go. That includes many CEOs. And yes, I have worked closely with several, I've not come to that conclusion from "down in the trenches".
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The government of the United States, formed under the Constitution, was intended to fulfill the following functions:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;--And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
There's more, you can read for yourself on a website provided by the Government.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
The government of the United States, formed under the Constitution, was intended to fulfill the following functions:
- your wrote that, and then you wrote the MEANS by which the actual GOAL was to be obtained.
You didn't write the GOAL.
The GOAL is to provide a more perfect union by protecting individual liberties and freedoms, to protect people's rights, property, to uphold criminal and contract law.
The GOAL is NOT to "collect taxes and duties" - those are MEANS to the GOAL.
So you are so confused when it comes to the PURPOSE of government, why don't you take 5 minutes to think about this: do YOU exist so that government can collect taxes, or does government exist, so that you have liberties and freedoms protected in this life?
You can't handle the truth.
The only solution to this would be to completely change the way stock markets operate, presumably by nationalising them so that they are forced by law to abandon short term trading gains but instead have to concentrate on helping long term investment, which is supposed to be their purpose.
The likelihood of that happening is about the same as me winning the lottery. Three imes in a row.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
"Grow or die" leads to"Too big to fail"
Will companies ever focus on supplying a good product at a fair price over providing a consistant 3% ROR for thier stock holders at all costs?
You're a funny guy, have a cigar.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Profit is the best motivator we have.
I am not motivated by profit in any aspect of my life, including work. And, yes, I do work for a commercial for-profit organisation. Profit makes no difference to me, my motivation is to do my job well.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
YES WE HAVE! already jumped ship and gutted our infrastructure of anything Cisco.
Go Vyatta!
Those who employ you are not driven by the same motivations as you are. Your employment is a function of difference between the value that you deliver to your employer and the cost of your employment, or profit that you generate for your employer.
Your employment comes as a function of profit and capital available to your employer. Profit is what keeps you there and capital is what makes you productive, as capital provides you with tools and everything you need to do your work.
Whether you are driven by it or not (and you are going to work rather than sitting doing nothing, so you are driven as well, since you do need to eat), your employer is driven by profit.
You can't handle the truth.
that made sense when you needed more workers and more factories, both of which are COST centers.
No, factories are profit centres, things like HR are cost centres.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I believe that this is largely an unintended side-effect of the democratization of the capital markets and specifically the stock markets
In the UK at least, overseas investors and large insurance companies and pension funds own the majority of shares in companies. The proportion held by private investors is only about 10%:
Whatever the comparable figures for the US may be, here in the UK short-termism can't be blamed on democratization of the stock markets.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
He never said Slashdot shouldn't report it, just that it was bad news. Call a spade a spade, I say.
The "call a spade a spade" adage is for situations where people dress up bad news. That's not happening here.
No wonder all my TAC support calls are handled by Indians. Not that I've every had a problem, but I just wondered why. I thought they were routing calls overseas, not having H1-B workers in the US. Granted, this is motivated by profit, but you think an American company like Cisco would be interested in helping our own economy by hiring local... You know with this 10-15% unemployment issue could be handled better if we didn't just approve more H1-Bs to come over and take our high tech jobs. *frowns*
M
Browse at 1. You'll thank me later.
Who said it had to be financial profit?
For a while it was "right-sizing" and then "restructuring" and the newest buzzword is apparently "delayering" but they always mean the same thing, cut the dead weight.
That's what they'd like you to believe. It's not what happens though. Because this is /., I'll phrase this in the form of a car analogy:
Four executives are cruising down the highway in their limo, and decide they need to go faster, so they order the driver to floor it. However, try as they might, they just can't make the car outrun the limo in the next lane, no matter how many times they order the driver to floor it some more. He points out that there's just too much weight to go any faster.
So, they look around and add up various weights including their own collective 800 pounds, the 160 for the driver, the ton of ice and drinks in the minibar, the 5 pound stereo system, etc and they make the hard decision. They will simply have to make a few cuts. So out goes the driver, the heavy engine (after all, as the consumer of the expensive fuel it's a cost center) and the transmission (the thing that keeps making the car jerk and spilling their Dom). They pop the cork on the champagne and congratulate themselves on their ability to be decisive and keep their priorities in order.
Then they are mystified as to why the car seems to be slowing down and what's the deal with heading straight for the cliff? Perhaps if they move one seat to their left.
Read the first paragraph again. I even bold part of it as a hint.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
General Welfare doesn't have anything to do with personal welfare, but it has everything to do with making sure that the field is level, there are no abuses, especially by government.
You can't handle the truth.