Slashdot Mirror
Cisco Slashes 4,000 Jobs
Dawn Kawamoto writes "Cisco's CEO John Chambers dealt employees a blow Wednesday, saying the networking giant would cut 4,000 workers from the payroll. Not quite a death blow, but this 5 percent cut could leave some employees gasping. Chambers took the knife to Cisco last year, cutting 2 percent of its workforce."
The layoffs come as Cisco anticipates a rocky economic environment and seeks to ensure its expenses remain in line with its revenues, said John Chambers, Cisco CEO
Does he not suspect that the revenues may drop as a result of a 5% workforce cut?
Also -- how much of a salary cut is the CEO taking (in those rocky economic times), anyway?
Is there any reason to believe it's the deadwood that will be laid off? You have a lovely theory, but my experience is that's not what happens at most companies.
If the guys I was working with are any indication, you could fire 90% of them and still not get all the deadwood.
I'm one of the technical cofounders of a software startup. I'm often dumbfounded by how shortsighted my business counterparts are. Some of their behavior can be legitimately justified on account of their concern for the company's bottom line- but only some. For example, they have recently tried to outsource app development for the fourth time (that I know of), thinking it was a quick solution. And for the fourth time, it failed. After talking to them and hearing them go on about how it was still cheaper to outsource development work instead of hiring someone, I still don't think they've learned their lesson.
Their core problem is nothing more and nothing less than the fact that they are "business school" graduates. Because instead of running businesses in a technocratic manner with the intention of selling a good product, we instead need to train a separate class of people to do this nebulous thing called "business", which involves short-term thinking, buzzwords, and a ton of ass-kissing. And it seems that the ultimate purpose of this thing called "business" is just more "business".
It's always a pleasure to hear from someone like you.
Reminds me of a time when I worked for a company that said they didn't have the money for a new project. I thought, how much could the new project cost? 90% is salaries, and they're being paid regardless. I figured I didn't understand the business side well enough. Then I was traveling with the manager of the facility I worked at (who was quite successful in that position). Out of the blue, and without prompting, he said exactly what I'd been thinking. From then on I realized that an awful lot of what seem like idiotic business decisions really are idiotic, and they come from people who don't think clearly. In that case they were wrapped up in an accountant's version of what the project would cost, without realizing they were paying most of the cost anyway!
Your argument would carry a lot more weight if the executives were let go. But no, management is untouchable. It's always the people who do the actual work that pay the price when those sociopathic assholes get put in charge of companies. They can fuck up royal on their job, tank the company, and still get a generous severance package and another gig at some other place where they can do it all over again.
I agree with what you are saying but I think it has more to do with the nature of what Cisco does and it's unique technology that helps it retain acquired employees.
If you work in R&D of networking equipment you have a very very limited job market place.
So the options to move on somewhere new, once Cisco has acquired you, are very limited.
Unless you move into another technology area, which isn't imbedded software and networking devices, that can be a big leap
I know as I made that leap and it wasn't easy (former Cisco employee 1994-2006).
The problem Cisco has is that the router has gone from being the building block of an industrial revolution to a mass produce product.
The router is now a commodity.
Given the Snowdon revelations about the NSA would you buy USA made networking equipment to carry your data if you were Asian or European?
That's why Huawei was born.
The US national security initiatives (or paranoia's) are doing most of the harm to US technology companies global growth.
Their core problem is nothing more and nothing less than the fact that they are "business school" graduates. Because instead of running businesses in a technocratic manner with the intention of selling a good product, we instead need to train a separate class of people to do this nebulous thing called "business", which involves short-term thinking, buzzwords, and a ton of ass-kissing. And it seems that the ultimate purpose of this thing called "business" is just more "business".
This encapsulates what's wrong with the world. I actually did a degree called "Engineering, Economics, and Management". The hard bit is the first bit. The bit where you learn stuff that's not trivial is the first bit and parts of the second bit. And the bit where you sit with MBAs and read self-explanatory "cases" that makes everyone think you can "strategize" is the last bit.
I've run businesses myself, and quite simply if you're on the technical side, you can use common sense to decide what to do. If your business is really big, you might stop doing technical stuff, but the best managers "get it" because they know what they can ask for and what's a realistic way to work.
And yet I find myself looking at various organisations, both public and private, where the idiots are running the show. There's productive people who are generally technologists (but I don't have a lot of exposure to eg creative business), and there's fools "managing" them. And the fools have degrees too, just in the BS subjects. But those degrees are somehow qualifying people to run pretty large organisations. And they are paid better, because they have a good basis for pretending to create value.
At one point I thought maybe there really is value in management. After all, you do need someone to motivate the team and make certain decisions. Someone to hold everyone accountable. But actually that someone ought to be someone who could take a place in the team, not some guy who could never be smart enough to do the job himself.