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Cisco To Cut 1,100 More Jobs Amid a Worse-Than-Expected Business Outlook (cnbc.com)

Cisco said this week that it will cut an additional 1,100 employees as part of an expanded restructuring plan. From a report: The cuts come on top of the 5,500 job cuts, or 7 percent of its workforce, announced in August 2016, the enterprise technology company said. Cisco said it plans to recognize hundreds of millions of pretax charges related to the restructuring, which will end around the first quarter of the 2018 fiscal year.

26 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. well its nice by zlives · · Score: 2

    to at least once hear about cisco away from the US Cert alert emails. wonder why the outlook looks grim,
    build back doors, get caught... not profit.

  2. Re: Trump Trump Trump by manu144x · · Score: 1, Informative

    Are you dumb in any other areas? This is strictly due to the fact that no sane government or multinational corporation would ever touch another american security appliance due to NSA having a backdoor on all of them. I don't like the guy either but let's keep it real

  3. No flaming about job losses? by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 2

    Amid FortiNet and friends taking Cisco's business, nobody is flaming about jobs being lost in the industry while ignoring the growth in other competing businesses? Nobody's going to claim unemployment increases while unemployment continues to fall, even in the tech sector? Nobody's going to demand Cisco "just cut back profits" as they lose business and somehow keep paying their existing staff even as their customer base shrinks?

    What happened, Slashdot? All I see is Obama and Trump talk (both bullshit).

    1. Re:No flaming about job losses? by Junta · · Score: 2

      It's early in the thread, but I'll bite:

      Nobody's going to demand Cisco "just cut back profits" as they lose business"

      Well, if they don't cut back profits, they *will* lose business. That's the problem with the leaders of these businesses, they demand growth, but cut back. Of *course* you can't sustain or grow your business if you are defeatist and ditch your people. A good business will accept lower profitability for the sake of investing in some way that delivers growth next go around.

      Of course, if you are consigned to a reality that you *won't* grow, go ahead and do the layoffs to increase margin to milk your brand strength while the milking is still somewhat good. Don't expect that to last very long though, as you piss away the value that build that brand strength in the first place.

      It would be one thing if they were losing money and simply could not afford to invest in having good talent, but when you have the profit margin to spend, better spend it on your technical vitality rather than tossing it all at the shareholders just because times get a bit lean.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    2. Re:No flaming about job losses? by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 2

      Holy shit, their average quarterly margin for 5 years is 19.28%.

      Generally margins are slim, around 7%-12% (e.g. GM average is 4.53% ranging 0.6%-15.8% quarterly; Ford is 4.19% ranging -5.31%-20.86%; Restaurant Brands International owns Burger King, at 12.68% ranged -8.43%-28.75%). 20% average operating profits is sizable. CISCO can cut their margins and reduce their prices by at best 10% to try to compete; with the increased competition, they may very well need to.

      Still, that won't help, because...

      they demand growth, but cut back. Of *course* you can't sustain or grow your business if you are defeatist and ditch your people. A good business will accept lower profitability for the sake of investing in some way that delivers growth next go around.

      The only sustainable model of growth is technical progress. Trade is a form of technical progress, and wage trade (e.g. outsourcing to low-wage countries like China) is only the most-limited form.

      Technical progress reduces the labor invested in producing things. This allows the same invested time to produce more stuff--that means you work for 40 hours and can trade that 40 hours for more things, meanwhile you produce more things and so 40 hours of labor can trade to you for more stuff. We represent this with money, thus wages paid as money per time. Three big examples are the production of the hot-blast furnace, which allowed the same labor which previously produced 200 tonnes of iron to instead produce 86,400 tonnes (eliminated 99.8% of the labor involved); the wooden shipping pallet, which turned three days of 16-hour dock work into a 4-hour job (eliminated 91.7% of the labor at each transfer point); and computers, which have provided too much labor savings in too many fields to count.

      Trade on technical progress moves labor to a better climate. America has the largest fertile basin in the world and can produce food more-cheaply than anywhere else given the same technology. Canada has vast wood and oil resources. Even China has developed manufacture facilities and expertise, meaning an even-wage basis between America and China would still give you cheaper Chinese imports because they're just better at manufacturing things. There is a great advantage to letting them do what they can do with less labor and giving them our easy-to-make stuff in trade.

      Wage trade is advantageous to both economies: the importer reduces consumer costs, while the exporter gains a market to grow their economy. That growth allows the implementation of more-developed technologies, which further grows the economy. Over time, this means that relative wages increase (e.g. China suddenly doubling its wages in 5 years) while technical progress keeps cost down by reducing labor: that $5 thing is still a $5 thing because people make $3.20/hr instead of $1.60/hr and the massive export market has allowed them to fund the integration of technology that cuts the labor used for that $5 thing in half and sell two $5 things instead. Eventually, technology catches up, and wage growth drives prices up to near-even footing.

      Once the economy is developed and wages come even, the advantage of importing from a low-wage labor force is lost.

      That means your only advantage is whether they're running on better technology: are they capable of producing the thing with less labor than you'd invest, whether that be because of being right next to a resource, or having more experience, or a better installed basis of infrastructure, or just a greater amount of experience and thus the ability to handle those jobs better than you can? If so, it's cheaper to import.

      That eventuality is the development of technology. If your technology is better than theirs but your experience is not as good, you can still do it cheaper; if they're so good at this and have such a huge market, they'll upgrade their technology and pass you again.

      So do you know how a $30,000 CISCO router at 20% operating prof

  4. I used to work at Cisco back in the day.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I remember at one particular meeting that John Chambers had at the RTP campus (back when they didn't have layoffs every year). And John said something to the effect of "Whenever we have layoffs, it means that management has made some poor decisions."
    It seems like management has been making the same poor decisions over and over again.. Im so glad I got out when I did.

    -db

  5. Something to be expected by manu144x · · Score: 2

    I remember when I was selling a European made security appliance that one of the sale points was that unlike Cisco, it doesn't have a backdoor. It wasn't a conspiracy either it was just something everybody knew. And this was way before the NSA revealings. Also, american security appliances are strictly forbidden in the central EU institutions, with no exceptions. Personally I think they are the clunkiest hardest to use appliances of all, you need 6 certifications just to install it.

  6. Lower margins equal less money to spend by ErichTheRed · · Score: 2

    Even with Cisco making their own SDN gear, they have a pretty big problem - companies aren't as willing to spend the Cisco premium anymore, even those that do have big on-site footprints ("on-prem" makes me sound like a douchebag brogramming hipster, so I'll just use "on-site.") That means they're selling less gear and having to discount it more. Couple that with them trying to extract as much revenue as they can with their SmartNet contracts, which you have to buy if you want firmware upgrades, and it's no wonder they're hurting.

    I wonder how the whole SDN thing will shake out. It's interesting because no one would have ever thought of buying dumb white box hardware to do physical connections a few years ago and controlling the whole thing from an abstraction layer. What I wonder is whether they're going to start believing their own hype and just stop investing in the hardware altogether. It's really easy to let the hype train carry you too far over to the extreme edges - like everything, there will always be a middle ground.

    What also makes me wonder is how they can just snap their fingers and lose 1,000 people. First, that's a lot of well-paid people to dump onto the labor market all at once. Second, what were these people doing that made Cisco decide they weren't useful anymore?

    1. Re:Lower margins equal less money to spend by Drakonblayde · · Score: 1

      This is why Cisco isn't bothering to innovate on SDN anymore and they're just buying folks up. The Viptella acquisition is a good move for them, since it's packet-centric (as opposed to application-centric) just like most of Cisco's offerings.

      Don't forget that they're also adding headcount with all the acquisitions they're making as well.

  7. SDN is *part* of the story... by Junta · · Score: 1

    The other part is that a 'normal' connection can be 100 gigabit, and most of even the more aggressive networking environments don't usually go beyond 10gbit a part, and the industry standard switch chips are readily available to do those at full line rate with large numbers of ports.

    With that, the things that used to be cisco's bread and butter (proprietary switch 'stacking', chassis switches, etc) become less relevant. In fact, in many product areas they allowed themselves to be leapfrogged in many performance areas (cisco was one of the last switch vendors I could remember trying to sell gigabit switches that were internally oversubscribed, for example).

    --
    XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
  8. Not even news by mattsday · · Score: 2

    I was at Cisco for over 12 years and this kind of announcement isn't really news any more. Employees at Cisco are little more than yearly contractors. John Chambers, the former CEO, used to talk about Cisco being a family. If it is, then it's a highly dysfunctional one now!

    --
    Now there's one hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is!
    1. Re:Not even news by udachny · · Score: 1

      Well, families are not that different today, marriage is a contract and often it is terminated (by one side or sometimes mutually).

    2. Re:Not even news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      10 Years with Cisco here; and this will be my last.. I'll be one of these numbers; oh well good riddance...

      Fall short of market predictions on the billions of income? No Bonus for you!
      Slightly exceed market predictions on billions of income? Here's your layoff notice..

      Next job will not be for a public company.. screw this. captcha: dramas

    3. Re:Not even news by GESUS · · Score: 1

      Scientology business model.

  9. This has been coming for quite some time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The bottom line is that Linux is starting to eat Cisco's lunch in one form or another. This is happening to UNIX servers(RedHat), phones(Android), and desktops(Chromebook).

    In the end, you can't compete with Free (both definitions).

  10. Nothing of value was lost? by ilsaloving · · Score: 1

    I really hope that the majority of those lay-offs were of people who came up with their ridiculous product pricing.

    Cisco should change their mission statement to, "You probably can't afford it."

    1. Re:Nothing of value was lost? by LostMyBeaver · · Score: 1

      Their pricing is a starting point. Generally, no one actually pays those prices. You just call someone and just saying hello gets you 50% off and playing hard to get for a few seconds will get you 70% off and if you claim "I think at that price we can fit it next quarter, but HP said they can meet our financial needs today" and Cisco will come in at 80% off... and they'll still have their 20% margin.

      The high list prices have a lot of purposes... though I'm not an accountant, but it makes sense for insurance, earnings reports, etc... to be able to claim the equity based on the high list values of the products.

      Chances are, you can easily afford Cisco... 99.999% of the time, they're cheaper than everyone else if you just ask. The issue is, whether you can justify the cost of owning Cisco stuff. I spent 7 hours last week troubleshooting an MPLS label switched path in a carrier supporting carrier environment. Apparently, a process on a router had crashed and I had to reboot the router.

      The problem is,
          - I can't fix the problem, it probably won't come back.
          - I can't write a meaningful bug report for the problem. Even if I provide the 5 pages of documentation I generated while troubleshooting, there's not nearly enough detail to say much more than "ping didn't work... had to reboot"
          - I know I have a buggy IOS version, but if I upgrade to a newer version, I'm probably getting rid of one bug I know for 10 I don't.

      So what's the problem.... this time it was one me to fix this, so I worked 7 hours on what basically was a Cisco bug... that I won't fix... but rebooted. If this was billable, I'd have invoiced $1400 to effectively reboot the device without actually fixing the problem and for the $1400, I'd provide beautiful documentation with diagrams and automated verification scripts and I'd make up excuses for why Cisco shouldn't be tossed out on their asses for this or held responsible for this.

      Now the real issue is that the router I had to reboot which was causing these problems (list price $5000) only cost us $900... but to find out it needed to be reboot cost $1400... this time. Altogether, the TCO of that $900 router is probably $9000 over 3 years.

      Now the bitch of it is... while Cisco is what I feed my family with (most often), I would LOVE to find something better. I have tried many different products from different vendors. There are always, cost, deliverability, availability, technological, support and otherwise issues. Every single vendor in the entire networking world are a bunch of assholes.

      Cisco ends up being the lesser of all assholes, but there's no comfort found when you're tossed into a pit of venomous snakes knowing you can at least choose which one will bite you.

    2. Re:Nothing of value was lost? by ilsaloving · · Score: 1

      That's..... really depressing. :\

  11. Let me guess... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    The CEO needs a new yacht to keep up with the other CEO's who bought bigger yachts? I've heard that back in 2013.

    1. Re:Let me guess... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Do toy boats even fit in the bathtub with your fat ass?

      Plenty of room for the HMS Titanic .

  12. Pretty much expected by HyperStasis · · Score: 1

    Once cisco moved from being a technology company, to one focused on licensing, it was just a matter of time.

  13. Re:First signs... by Pascoea · · Score: 1

    My portfolio has gone up nearly $690k since Trump was elected

    Smells a little like bullshit to me. I wonder how many people with $10M portfolios slum around on Slashdot?

  14. Re:Important question by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

    Cookie Monster, Inc.?

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  15. victory by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

    I've noticed that Trump is fairly quick to claim victory when he saves a few jobs, but where is he when there are layoffs? Why did he feel Carrier more worthy to use his magic sparkles on than Cisco?

    --
    Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  16. Contractors... by antdude · · Score: 1

    Also, he changed the contract's maximum time limit to 18 months/1.5 years. :(

    --
    Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  17. Re:They will never recover from this by GESUS · · Score: 1

    Well yeah, they did steal alot of stuff sure.

    But you guys gave them the experience to use it by manufacturing every component over there.

    Then the Chinese realize they need there own network and they don't want NSA bits.
    When the Chinese decide to do something they do it like you guys built space rockets in the old days.
    Billions where spent with a guaranteed enormous market in China and the rest of the world as a bonus.

    During which Cisco walk in AT&T leash and make equipment that fit basically only the US market. They maintain there stunningly silly pricing and rebate policy.
    There internal systems are horrendous and exist only to maintain the archaic rebate policy.

    Your saleperson at Cisco is more like a lawyer you have to work there system then a salesperson.

    But, much of the stuff is rock solid, I have personally had one device running in public IP space for over 10 years without a reload. That is 10 years + of actual uptime.