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.'"

Re:Remember when hiring MORE workers was a good si

[Riceballsan]

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.

And *I* wish...

[kiwimate]

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.

Odd claims

[HockeyPuck]

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).

Re:Maybe they could add some people in sales...

[quetwo]

You could buy from a different vendor. There are lots of other manufactures that make great products -- most make products MUCH better than Cisco. Companies like Juniper, Extreme, Foundry, etc. all make products that end up being cheaper, more reliable and often faster than their Cisco counterpart.

Cisco lost a lof of their edge in the last 10 years when they stopped focusing on their core products. They only enhanced their products to make them work better with the products they were buying. Others have surpassed them in most products.