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Discussion (99 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
This is Cisco. They do layoffs every quarter and have been doing so since the early 2000s.
Interesting decision considering they aren't at any sort of risk.
I cringe at this attempt to soften the numbers by saying "fewer than" and "less than" here. Conversely, and ironically, it also puts inflated numbers in your head.
"How many people will be axed at Cisco?"
"3,998 ... but at least it's fewer than 4,000!"
As someone that has worked for them a decade ago, some of their division are >90% Indian. Those are all good engineers and not dunking on them at all but it should be unacceptable to bring over competing workers on a visa while also laying off so many people.
the entire floor were Indian other than our org, and over time our org was filled out with incoming transfers and new hires.
i'll never forget some irony in that one of the engineering leaders brought us together for a mini townhall once and praised our "diversity" but by then the percentage of people in the room were basically the same as you described, including said leader. even our twice a week catered lunches were almost always indian.
just an interesting experience being part of cisco for a couple of years.
Note the "you delivered"...
---
A few lines later
"With this, we are making changes today that will result in the reduction of our overall workforce in Q4 by fewer than 4,000 jobs"
Rough, bit on the nose no?
25% unemployment doesn't seem like something to brag about.
A workplace that values job security is such a motivating factor for employees that I don't think is recognized enough. At a company that conducts layoffs, it feels like you're just waiting for the next one.
Right now everything seems so inflated. I don't believe this economy represents any of the underlying assets correctly anymore. I really think we are on the verge of one of the biggest bubbles in history.
Time will tell.
Don't do the mistake of shorting Weimar Stock markets.
Virtue signalling about "treating employees well" is shortermist and doesn't consider the higher order effects.
Tech, more or less, has a group of investors centered around Silicon Valley. Not the only ones, but especially now, the most active. Generally, these folk have a lot of exposure to AI, and probably mostly believe the hype around it.
Which means they believe companies using AI should produce better results, which in the current market means short-term cash. So if a company doesn't do layoffs, no matter how well it is doing, it is seen as irresponsible and investment is withheld from it.
GitLab's announcement felt illustrative of this dynamic:
- The actual reductions were focused on simplifying org structure, nothing to do with AI
- They identified MORE work that was on their roadmap because of the way AI is changing software engineering
- They made sure to include a special section for investors
Seems to me they should have made the org changes in an unrelated announcement, and celebrated the opportunity for new work and the possible hiring that might be required to accomplish it all.
Like, GitLab is in an incredible position to moonshot the next generation of software. AI needs new substrate to work most effectively, and GitLab is the most popular "alternative" substrate to the fragile dinosaur that Github has become.
But AI needs to be seen as cutting costs above all else, so they can sell more of it everywhere, and this is what we get.
I don't think they offer anything unique. Forgejo[1] offers a similar platform.
[1] https://forgejo.org/
I have seen data going both ways.
writing so bad claude could do better
* Build for the future (Cloudflare)
* Our path forward (Cisco)
What else did we miss?
* More Human
as they've slowly laid off people due to the AML fines they've been dealing with in the U.S. and replacing folks with either AI, more Indian/Canadian/Ireland talent.
I believe it's because they truly didn't think that way.
(Edit - I wouldn’t have minded either line, at first glance on mobile, curious if it’s an “all bad” situation for you)
People meme on 'lol government efficiency', but actually sit down and calculate your marginal cost for the services you pay for that are funded by taxation. It's not even close - the cost to operate these services per person is crazy low.
In fact, you don't even have to look that far for government-adjacent programs. Co-ops for utilities are notoriously cheaper for their service area than a private utility, almost without exception.
So yeah - the government is not perfectly efficient. It's not going to give you exactly what you want all the time, but it's still 2-3x more efficient than the private sector when it comes to actually absorbing the costs as a citizen or user of a service. "Lol government efficiency" is not the burn you think it is.
I wonder if someone in the C-suite simply decided that they had some rough percentage of underperformers on the payroll, but they can’t publicly call them performance based terminations without triggering a risk of lawsuits.
All that observability tooling around is only benefiting ai wave . They can vibe re-write everything .
But I agree though, this is an artificial stock pump because of the rush for picks and shovels.
Interesting use of fewer.
Those extra hours? Only if the team really needs them.
Naturally this tends to be something only seniors see, thus ageism.
Who the hell needs gratitude if you can't earn an income.. seeing all of these layoffs I cant help but think something along the lines of .. Those of use who greatest asset is our labor need to recognize the great risk it is at of going to 0 value in the near future, and renegotiate everything to get as much value out of that asset before it does. Like enough to retire on. And as with established theories of intelectual property rights protect creators moral rights to the profits of their work, there needs to be mandated moral rights that stop peoples labor being used as training data for AI without the consent, and without a path or compensation for the loss of income that will cause them.. Otherwise this is just one big transfer of power from most people, to people with capital, who can then wield that power in more capricious and selfish ways.
With the benefit of hindsight we know that marxism didnt help, but I can see why the siren song was so attractive back then. Time to reread Eric Hobsbawm.
Companies can still do layoffs, but that’s how you manage the consequences at a societal level.
I know the unionization part is contested these days in Europe, too - but it is still much stronger than in the US.
But that won't please The Market.
This is not an AI job elimination story. I think the next recession will trigger that. The AI hype train ironically needs engineers of all stripes to run.
Another round of layoffs at CrowdStrike would fit the pattern nicely.
layoffs are for at risk companies undergoing restructuring not semi-annual financial engineering of your earnings release
I’m not a big collective action proponent historically but in the face of this bs, it might be time.
Do you employ construction workers for lifetime after they have built your house?
You believe more in the individual relationship each worker has with their employer to negotiate times like these? With what power? The employees did excellently so they are being let go. The individual worker has no leverage for anything.
https://newsroom.cisco.com/c/r/newsroom/en/us/a/y2026/m05/ci...