Cisco Announces Mass Layoffs Just After Soaring Revenue Report (sfgate.com)
- Reference: 0178811158
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/08/21/1858221/cisco-announces-mass-layoffs-just-after-soaring-revenue-report
- Source link: https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/bay-area-tech-titan-announces-layoffs-strong-20826542.php
> According to Aug. 13 WARN filings with California's Employment Development Department, the company will eliminate 221 positions across its Milpitas and San Francisco offices.
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> WARN documents are generally required by the state in the event of mass layoffs. Employees were notified of the layoffs on Aug. 14 and their terminations will be effective Oct. 13. The most cuts, affecting 157 jobs, largely in software engineering roles, were at Cisco's Milpitas office at 560 McCarthy Blvd.
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> Cisco's San Francisco office at 500 Terry A. Francois Blvd. will cut 64 positions, according to the filing. The filings came the same day Cisco released its fourth-quarter earnings, which reported $14.7 billion in revenue, an 8% increase from the same quarter last year. Revenue for the 2025 fiscal year was $56.7 billion, up 5% from the previous year.
[1] https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/bay-area-tech-titan-announces-layoffs-strong-20826542.php
If I were a shareholder... (Score:2)
I would be asking if it's wise to be getting rid of your most valuable assets.
Re: (Score:2)
People that actually make products we could sell tomorrow? Why would we keep those? Profits are great now!
I guess in 10 years, Cisco will mostly be dead. Another one for the trash-heap of tech history. To be fair, not much of value will be lost.
Re: (Score:1)
Yea sure, it's a less than 1% layoff so threatening. Sounds likes you have no idea what the company is or does.
Re: (Score:1)
Programmers are hardly Cisco's most valuable assets.
It's a hardware engineering company with an overwhelming emphasis on Network Eng's (TAC).
The majority of the firmware development is done in Australia not California even TAC is in Texas and India not California.
Any programmer in California will not be a design hardware role it's all MBA's.
The sky is falling (Score:4, Interesting)
Cisco has over 40,000 employees in the U.S. alone and roughly that many again worldwide. This isn't even 1% of their U.S. workforce and is probably the company cutting people that don't do anything or from some team that was working on something that never materialized. Of course that doesn't sound nearly as alarming.
Re: (Score:3)
I can't help but wonder if eliminating upper management and then replacing them with AI could improve earnings. There's 100's of millions to be saved there.
Re: (Score:2)
Not yet. Maybe next year.
Some pretty basic business logistics are missing (Score:4, Interesting)
While I get the whole Snidely Whiplash image being projected here, a few things need to be said:
- Revenue isn't profit
- High profit doesn't mean you still need every job position that you currently have
- There's no sense in paying for something that you don't need
This isn't the fifth element where Zorg is just picking arbitrary numbers of people to fire.
Re: (Score:1)
Profits are looking sky high [1]https://investor.cisco.com/new... [cisco.com]
[1] https://investor.cisco.com/news/news-details/2025/CISCO-REPORTS-FOURTH-QUARTER-AND-FISCAL-YEAR-2025-EARNINGS/default.aspx
Re: (Score:2)
...Which doesn't really mean anything...
A bet (Score:2)
Want to bet, that these layoffs won't affect the decision making chain involved with the [1]hard coded root password [schneier.com] in Cisco's professional networking products?
[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/10/cisco-cant-stop-using-hard-coded-passwords.html
Re: (Score:2)
In these layoffs, the keep the idiots and fire the people that pointed out the stupid decisions, because they are "troublemakers". "Shoot-the-messenger" type of "management".
Re: (Score:2)
If Cisco is anything like the company I work for, we actually like those because they've saved us from many potentially costly mistakes. We never penalize anybody for finding issues related to safety, even if they cause them. The only thing we penalize is repeating the same mistake multiple times, or blatant policy violations.
"I got mine" (Score:2)
"Screw the rest of you peons."
The World Is Finite (Score:2)
Unlimited growth isn't possible so one way of showing quarterly profits is to cut damn dirty labor.
Correlation =/= Causation (Score:2)
> Cisco Announces Mass Layoffs Just After Soaring Revenue Report
The thing is, those layoffs were planned for a while to reduce cost and increase profit. It's hard to tell if the layoffs are simply vampiric bizness shenanigans to reduce cost by any means and make the numbers look better for the next quarter, or if the layoffs are indeed strategic and necessary.
There's a good chance that layoffs were going to happen no matter what, but the number of people getting the axe was going to be inversely proportional to the revenue or profit.
It does suck to get canned (been
Why do people have jobs in the first place? (Score:2)
I heard an economist pose this question once. Why do companies have employees at all? Why not use contractors? Then you could hire just as much labor as you need, when you need it, then not pay for labor when you didn't need it.
His reason was the costs involved with finding contractors then negotiating agreements with them. I think there are other reasons, but for sure that's part of it.
But I think technology is pushing us into an intermediate position between the semi-permanent, often lifelong employme
Acquistions (Score:2)
Don't need too many employees to badly integrate acquisitions together. Just buy another Splunk or Isovalent and squeeze their clients with expanding into your suite.
And for the long term enterprise network equipment customers, they are too locked in. So strategy looks just like Oracle/Broadcom playbook, got the virtual monopoly on the big enterprise market. So squeeze them for more because who are they going to switch to and find plug & play engineers or big enterprise features they need. So screw payi
Re: (Score:2)
> screw paying for R/D
R&D became extremely expensive since Trump 1's elimination of same-year tax exemption for R&D expenses went into effect.
He had timed it, and the mass layoffs it'd cause, for the next president after him, assuming he'd be reelected. His sucessor, likely a democrat, would have taken the blunt, with the GOP then pointing at the horrible state of employment under that future president as during in the then distant 2026 mid-terms.
Things didn't go as planned though. Trump lost the reelection, Biden was el
Re: (Score:2)
EDIT: president as during in the then -> president during the then