Rendered at 13:03:47 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
mplanchard 2 days ago [-]
I briefly worked for Cisco after an acquisition, and it was a great time: I would get my sprint’s worth of work done in two days, ask if I could do anything else and be told no, and then spend the rest of the two weeks doing whatever I wanted, which at the time was learning Rust.
All that is to say, I would not be remotely surprised if Cisco has more employees than they strictly need. But, this email from the CEO is comically out of touch. “We’re doing great, better than we’ve ever done, so we’re going to fire thousands of you” is a chef’s kiss encapsulation of American corporate culture.
alistairSH 2 days ago [-]
the CEO is comically out of touch
Maybe with normal people but that's not the target audience. The investors are the target and it's exactly what they want to hear.
eudamoniac 2 days ago [-]
When I worked for Cisco I was doing ~4hrs of work per week, excluding meetings, and always got top performance bonus. I didn't even have many meetings. I only left because my soul stopped being able to take it.
Actually it is the current comic trend. The business is sound and we are doing great but we will reduce workforce for pleasure.
I think that in most places the business is going bad in fact, but if you were to believe their words it will show a very despicable spirit of the current decade where the goal is to enjoy maximum profit without any care at all to do any good.
Before a boss might enjoy to have a sound business to be able to preserve the work/income of his employees.
Now they would not care to fuck employees first but also customers after if that provide with a second yacht for holidays.
Just see Elon Musk as the godfather of this discipline...
spjwebster 2 days ago [-]
My eldest is currently taking her GCSEs, and for the English Literature exam this week she had to write an essay on A Christmas Carol. Whilst helping her, I couldn't help but realise that the overarching messages around the importance of social responsibility are becoming increasingly relevant again.
AndrewKemendo 2 days ago [-]
I love how
“it was a great time” = “I worked two days a week”
Any job that pays a full week and only requires two days of work is a “great time”
tells you literally nothing about the actual job.
mplanchard 2 days ago [-]
Yeah I mean, I was being a bit sarcastic. As the sibling points out, I was getting paid a full time salary to largely do whatever I wanted. But, it was also soul crushing to have so little meaningful work to do. I left within a year of the acquisition as a result.
The actual job was working on a python server for the acquired company, and it’s not like there wasn’t more work to do, but we were not allowed to go outside the bounds of the work that had been allocated for a sprint, which was always conservative in order to allow for more accurate overall plans. It’s certain that it was different in other departments or areas or acquired companies, but that at least was my experience.
kqr 1 days ago [-]
That's interesting. Do you know what the fraction was of sprints that ended without all the work items associated with them being completed?
mplanchard 19 hours ago [-]
At least for our team, quite low. We had a very comfortable buffer, which allowed us to deliver in time to coordinate with the rest of the org. It may not have been a bad strategy overall from the top-down perspective, but it wasn’t a lot of fun as an IC
AndrewKemendo 2 days ago [-]
So, like every giant tech company with usury rats and stolen wages then :shrug:
ethbr1 2 days ago [-]
The way to read that is that parent was being paid 2.5x what their FTE hourly rate would be.
In which case, I'd say they struck a helluva bargain at salary negotiation. Kudos.
It's not like they didn't ask for more work to do.
panflute 2 days ago [-]
Funny that you expect an employee to view a great time as meaning more than successfully exploiting advantage to the employers disadvantage in a relationship with Cisco.
AndrewKemendo 2 days ago [-]
Imagine not working for a company that acts like
Crazy right?
DrJokepu 2 days ago [-]
The person you’re responding to has explicitly said that they worked there after an acquisition (so it’s not like they have chosen to work for Cisco) and that they only worked there briefly afterwards. I don’t understand why you’re being so hostile and judgmental.
panflute 2 days ago [-]
Crazy is imagining an employer is of high integrity for your self esteem. How can a company that is high integrity compete with one that gets the same rewards while being of low integrity?
AndrewKemendo 2 days ago [-]
Simple
There are no high integrity companies so it’s just a rat king
passive 2 days ago [-]
My extremely cynical, but not yet proven wrong view:
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.
ranguna 2 days ago [-]
I agree with you. Putting myself in the shoes of a tech CEO, I see other companies laying off and saying that their AI strategy made them so productive that they don't need 20% of their employees anymore, I see investors flocking to that company, I look at my company and feel investor FOMO, I layoff as well.
It's nothing personal, it's just how the US works. If this were to happen in Europe, your company would burn to the ground. The amount of compensation you'd have to do would eat your gains from the layoffs.
SK Hynix is making an absurd amount of money from the RAM shortage, and the employees are not unreasonably demanding their cut from it.
api 2 days ago [-]
People forget that all the training data to make these things was harvested with little concern for copyright or proper licensing.
A dividend or basic income or something funded by a tax on this stuff is not at all unreasonable.
The technology is cool but it’s basically mass piracy.
mathverse 2 days ago [-]
Yeah but when you get old enough you get sacked and cant get employed anywhere and have to start frying chicken. So..
monooso 2 days ago [-]
As opposed to what happens in the US, you mean?
_DeadFred_ 2 days ago [-]
Come on. We all know in the US a chicken place would never hire you, you would be 'too overqualified'. You have to do 'consulting' work for scraps as a tech person for out of favor industries as your wardrobe slowly goes out of date/becomes threadbare.
throwaway7783 2 days ago [-]
We use GitLab. They are no way in an incredible position to moonshot anything. They are yet another git provider with a management plane around it.
passive 2 days ago [-]
I've built a developer platform around GitLab, and it's got some nice stuff, but it's not revolutionary.
But that's not all that relevant to the opportunity in front of them.
The opportunity, generally, exists because of their place in an industry that most folk believe will be very different a decade from now.
That belief is going to lead a lot of CTOs to try new things. When a company tries something new, it almost always picks a new vendor to work with, rather than adding complexity or risk to an existing vendor engagement.
Yes, there are other alternatives, but they are less well known, require self hosting, and/or are secondary products of companies with very broad focus.
Atlassian might be another, given how much of the rest of the software development cycle they have their hooks in, but many tech leaders have unresolved JIRA trauma. :)
anal_reactor 2 days ago [-]
>My extremely cynical, but not yet proven wrong view
1. FAANG does something that's relevant to their company.
2. Everyone thinks that this is an universally good move because they're FAANG.
3. Market rewards copying FAANG regardless whether that strategy also applies to your company.
Simple as that.
2 days ago [-]
vrganj 2 days ago [-]
It's simpler than that.
It is in their class interest to try and beat workers that have gotten too uppity down and AI is a tool they see fit for purpose.
misnome 2 days ago [-]
> to the fragile dinosaur that Github has become.
GitLab has just as many outages, just nobody notices/cares so much
lionkor 2 days ago [-]
Our GitLab has fantastic uptime, because it's self hosted
misnome 2 days ago [-]
Then you should compare to self-hosted GitHub
estimator7292 2 days ago [-]
[dead]
somewhatgoated 2 days ago [-]
Which has an uptime of 0 because it doesn’t exist
andsoitis 2 days ago [-]
> it doesn’t exist
GitHub does provide self-hosting via GitHub Emterprise Server.
I don't think Fogejo offers CI/CD out of the box, for starters.
layoric 2 days ago [-]
It absolutely does and a very good effort of compatibility with GitHub actions. It’s not perfect but migrating is far less of a pain than I experienced moving to others
I look at it a bit differently. I bet Cisco's overall employment will only rise over time maybe even this year but certainly in the years to come. But the point is they do need to rebalance the kind of focus area they have. In other words someone who's great at one part of the technology stack might not be who they need for a different part and the priorities change over time. The reality is Cisco does a huge amount of large acquisitions and this brings more and more people with specialized talent all the time and you can't just do that forever without removing focus elsewhere.
Also if compensation has come down over the last couple of years sometimes you have to do this instead of lowering salary because for whatever reason our industry doesn't ever lower salary.
I do personally believe it would be wonderful if companies invested more in helping people retool and move to new parts of the stack and where compensation becomes non-competitive it should be okay to at least give an employee an option of a lower salary to stay.
eudamoniac 2 days ago [-]
I think the reason they don't do that is because in most cases, the employee will mentally check out and/or start looking for jobs immediately, so you're getting very little value from them after the salary reduction.
delusional 2 days ago [-]
> 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 think it goes a little deeper than that. In ways that seem to echo in your description of GitHub vs GitLab too.
Big Tech doesn't seem to attempt to generate value. The most positive attribute you can ascribe to a silicon valley startup is "disruptive" which in effect means eating somebody elses lunch. I think this is pretty natural for an industry that has pretty much achieved perfect penetration, but we're still dimensioning the industry for massive growth.
In that framework, silicon valley startups have to identify some sort of frontier they can expand into, and with pretty much all productive enterprise already interfaced with technology. They have to expand into simply replacing labor.
2 days ago [-]
simianwords 2 days ago [-]
[flagged]
dgellow 2 days ago [-]
Does that productivity increase translate into monetary gains for the company that are greater than the token+compute+other new inteoduced expenses? For smaller companies I can believe it, but massive orgs like Cisco I’m really not so sure. You can be extremely productive and not actually contribute to the company cash flow
dgb23 2 days ago [-]
I think you make a point that is worthy of discussion, but the first sentence is unnecessarily hostile. The comment you responded to already made a caveat that they might be too cynical.
simianwords 2 days ago [-]
Fair
Y-bar 2 days ago [-]
Maybe this is the reason why I will never be a C-suite person. But if my product/service workforce became 20% more productive I would direct my sales department that we have more capacity to overtake our competitors and/or deliver more from the backlog of requests from existing customers which we can invoice for. And at the end of the year celebrate a double-digit growth.
hansmayer 2 days ago [-]
Lol, so much "productivity" bullshit from the LLM-crowd but hardly any new innovations or products. Something is off here.
hansmayer 2 days ago [-]
> all evidence points to AI bringing at least 10-20% more productivity.
The "evidence" that you think about is probably that dopamine hit you felt when the shit-generator spat out a complete half-finished react app. But that's not evidence of increased productivity, unless we now measure productivity by the size of the codebase bloat.
No it doesn't - that data is self-reported, and the 2025 study explicitly compares _against_ self-reported data.
Granted, I agree models have improved since then, but still.
> Importantly, survey results are not necessarily grounded in reality. There are reasons to be skeptical of people’s responses to counterfactual questions such as about AI’s effect on productivity — for instance, our study in early 2025 found that people overestimated AI’s effect on their time spent on tasks by 40 percentage points on average.
- your linked study
simianwords 2 days ago [-]
> No, actually all evidence points exactly to a ~20% slowdown>
It contradicts this
weakfish 2 days ago [-]
Not really? I mean, the original study says this, in essence:
1. Developers _self_ report a 1.5-2x increase in productivity
2. Empirical measurements show 20% slowdown
Now, that study is from 2025, so it may be outdated.
The study you linked and claim contradicts the 20% slowdown is only _self reported_ data, which the original study proves is unreliable and overestimates productivity.
In fact, the study _you linked_ says this:
> In 2 of these 7 cases we were able to view public outputs from the work completed using AI. We are confident that in both cases the participants are overstating their change in value produced as we understand it; at least, the enormously more valuable work is not externally visible.
> In 2 other cases, we are somewhat suspicious of large changes in the value of work produced because qualitative claims do not match our intuitive sense of agent capabilities.
> There is 1 instance where our best sense is that the respondent does indeed have agents doing an impressive quantity of productive work, although we suspect that this work is better captured by improved speed or quantity of output, not improved value of output.
> In the remaining 2 cases we lack sufficient qualitative information to meaningfully interpret.
(edits for formatting)
protocolture 2 days ago [-]
ALL evidence?
I have seen data going both ways.
NewJazz 2 days ago [-]
But if you are the company delivering those productivity gains, why would you layoff and thus lose an opportunity to grow?
sensanaty 2 days ago [-]
Can you link to any actual evidence about this 10-20% productivity increase? And I don't mean anecdata like "I'm totally like 8200% more productive!1" that the AI bros love to spew.
From what I'm seeing at the Co I work for with ~1300 devs, productivity is more or less the same as it has always been. Projects aren't being done noticeably faster, there's no less bugs than before (if anything things are more unstable), the backlog remains endless. And we do all the crap that the AI hype tells us to do, we've got harnesses, complex agentic setups etc.
JSR_FDED 2 days ago [-]
All the recent academic studies disagree with you.
davidcollantes 2 days ago [-]
> Today we announced our Q3 FY26 earnings with record revenue of $15.8 billion, up 12 percent year over year, and double-digit top and bottom-line growth. The ELT and I could not be prouder of the growth you have all delivered for Cisco.
Great! A successful company, right? Ah, but then:
> we are making changes today that will result in the reduction of our overall workforce in Q4 by fewer than 4,000 jobs, representing less than 5 percent of our total employee base.
I wouldn't have put those two together so close, nor in the same announcement.
xinayder 2 days ago [-]
The same thing is happening at my company. We get meetings saying how the market and sales predictions are going well, we're doing so good... yet, budget within organizations inside the company keeps shrinking and we are having massive layoffs year after year.
When sales were bad we didn't have budget cuts. Now that we have stable profit margins, we are cutting costs.
alistairSH 2 days ago [-]
Why not? All that matters is the investors, and both of those are positives to that group. Sure, it's not particularly humane, and I'm sure those that were fired are angry, but this is the norm in American business and has been for many years.
roxolotl 2 days ago [-]
Why should we be ok with this? Just because something is the norm doesn’t mean it should be nor does it mean it’s moral.
alistairSH 2 days ago [-]
Does making separate statements suddenly make it moral or humane? How long between the statements should the CEO wait?
I agree, we've built an extremely inhumane economy in the US. And it feels like it's gotten worse since I entered the workforce in 1999. But calling out CEOs isn't going to change it - the only thing that will help is the force of law - higher taxes on executives and profits and stronger worker protections might make a dent.
coldpie 2 days ago [-]
> But calling out CEOs isn't going to change it - the only thing that will help is the force of law - higher taxes on executives and profits and stronger worker protections might make a dent.
The CEOs are the ones who are preventing those policies from being put in place.
roxolotl 2 days ago [-]
Sure but you know what doesn’t help, defending CEOs. Calling out CEOs expands the number of people who realize this is immoral and who find statements like this repulsive. The more people that find this announcement repulsive the more likely we’ll get actual political change.
As for the CEO the only moral response is to quit and force someone else to write this statement.
alistairSH 2 days ago [-]
I'm convinced most/all C-suite (at least at big enough companies) are sociopaths. It's the only explanation I have for how they do the things they do and sleep at night.
I've had to lay off a few people over the years. It's by far the worst part of my job. I loose sleep for weeks, can't eat, etc whenever it happens. If I was a normal part of my job, I'd have to quit because it's unhealthy.
roxolotl 2 days ago [-]
Myself as well it’s absolutely brutal. Sometimes it is the case that people must be let go for a company to continue existing. In those situations it’s awful but even someone as hostile to layoffs as I am understands that sometimes there is no other choice. Normal people can preside over those in a well meaning way.
These reason this statement and many like it are so heinous is because they do not even pretend to say they had no other choice in order for the company to survive.
Noumenon72 2 days ago [-]
Because it's just as beneficial to society to say "we're doing the same work with fewer workers" as "we're doing the same work with fewer trucks" or "we're doing the same work with fewer barrels of oil".
alistairSH 2 days ago [-]
But it would be ever better to say "We're doing more work, and therefore making even more money, with the same people/trucks."
And people who don't have jobs are a drain on society, unlike trucks. So we're left hoping those people find jobs quickly. And the impact on those individuals isn't great - they either lose or have to pay massively more OOP for health coverage, the stress has physical impacts, etc.
HDBaseT 2 days ago [-]
"I could not be prouder of the growth you delivered"
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?
3D30497420 2 days ago [-]
My company just did something like this. We completed a big redesign and the CEO sent an email saying how proud he was of our work. Layoffs started the next week.
atoav 2 days ago [-]
By this point I believe people like these should be excluded from all social contracts and reminded at every step that what they did is not ok. Maybe finally a positive use for facial recognition technology?
bigtex88 2 days ago [-]
This is how we got Luigi and it's why no one was really too upset with what he "allegedly" did.
wayeq 2 days ago [-]
speak for yourself, i'm not a big fan of murder
greycol 2 days ago [-]
Of course it's a classic trolley problem, plenty of people won't pull the leaver to move on to the track with 1 person even if it means the 5 people on the other track live. That doesn't mean that you can't argue about the morality of it in both directions it's why plenty of people believe that pulling that leaver is the correct option.
AlexeyBelov 6 hours ago [-]
Me too. I'm upset, but not _too_ upset. I'm not a big fan of other things as well, for example things CEOs do.
lexoj 2 days ago [-]
This type of corporate behaviour should be highlighted as unacceptable. I’ll personally steer away from anything cisco from now on.
redbell 2 days ago [-]
Came to post the same comment!
These statements are so weird to be joined together. In other words, he was able to just say: "I am proud to announce that we are going to reduce the overall workforce.."
peheje 2 days ago [-]
[flagged]
maxdo 2 days ago [-]
Cisco do not have real ai strategy . Routers are routers. Even their ai factory is yet another box just with label nvidia on it . No major investment needed.
All that observability tooling around is only benefiting ai wave . They can vibe re-write everything .
siren2026 2 days ago [-]
At this point Cisco is a conglomerate that does everything and nothing. They own so many different verticals that even people working there don't really know what cisco fully does anymore.
But I agree though, this is an artificial stock pump because of the rush for picks and shovels.
AndyMcConachie 2 days ago [-]
As someone who was impacted by Cisco's first ever round of layoffs, I can say with confidence that your statement was also true 25 years ago.
forgotusername6 2 days ago [-]
The real question is did the hardware stores back in the day care that the miners were digging for gold?
kotaKat 2 days ago [-]
Waiting for them to put AI into the Smart Licensing on my routers.
I guess when they said "insert token" they meant "insert quarter" and by "insert quarter" they meant "insert your entire fiscal quarter".
protocolture 2 days ago [-]
> Today we announced our Q3 FY26 earnings with record revenue of $15.8 billion, up 12 percent year over year, and double-digit top and bottom-line growth. The ELT and I could not be prouder of the growth you have all delivered for Cisco.
Interesting decision considering they aren't at any sort of risk.
marcus_holmes 2 days ago [-]
Wall St gonna Wall St
ciscociscocisco 2 days ago [-]
> We have important, impactful, and consequential work ahead
writing so bad claude could do better
izucken 2 days ago [-]
> It's not just impactful, it's consequential
SpicyLemonZest 2 days ago [-]
I do wonder if we're going to start seeing people intentionally writing poorly so it's clear their memo is not just "Claude, please write an email saying that..."
xboxnolifes 2 days ago [-]
Maybe they will start writing better, so it stops reading like corporate nonsense all the time. Because I'd argue most corporate PR statements and such as not written well, they are just written grammatically correct.
anal_reactor 2 days ago [-]
I don't think so. I think that ChatGPT will just become the standard communication interface between humans. Sending someone a manually typed email in 2030 will be like sending a handwritten letter in 2026.
RachelF 2 days ago [-]
I really battled to read his memo. The it was written in English, but a very odd style indeed.
niij 2 days ago [-]
Re-read your comment.
penguin_booze 2 days ago [-]
In the past week, we've had:
* Build for the future (Cloudflare)
* Our path forward (Cisco)
What else did we miss?
darksim905 2 days ago [-]
On and off for the past year or so, the commercials from TD Bank have been
* 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.
suddenlybananas 2 days ago [-]
You can't really complain that the Toronto Dominion Bank is hiring Canadians.
darksim905 22 hours ago [-]
Given the structure and size of the organization, I can. For every 2 or more folks that lose a job on the U.S side, they may hire one person, or none. And, as I understand it, with the disparity in exchange rates and currency and such, Canadians are getting shafted financially and make anywhere from .25 to .50 less compared to U.S. talent. They are being pushed (forced?) to RTO for no reason beyond 'real estate has to go up/we invested in TD tower'.
suddenlybananas 20 hours ago [-]
It's a Canadian company, its entirely natural they prioritize Canadians, it's not outsourcing.
Xunjin 2 days ago [-]
The journey ahead (next known layoff company)
ralph84 2 days ago [-]
> We will provide support in finding new opportunities, whether internal or external, through Cisco’s placement services – a program that has seen 75 percent of participants discover their next role.
25% unemployment doesn't seem like something to brag about.
apgwoz 2 days ago [-]
How many layoffs does a company have to do before realizing it’s in their best interest to start asking other companies to take the employees they don’t want to employ anymore?
Also, 75% placement seems wildly successful. Why isn’t Cisco also a head hunting firm?!
alexandre_m 2 days ago [-]
Maybe they found something outside the program, but your cynical take is way more entertaining.
jjtheblunt 2 days ago [-]
"Executive Leadership Team" is such an interesting phrase. Never in several years inside Apple spanning Steve Jobs and Tim Cook heard any such condescending nonsense.
I believe it's because they truly didn't think that way.
dcrazy 2 days ago [-]
Tim Cook has referred to the “E-Team” in many earnings calls. I am guessing that consists of the SVPs who are above the horizontal line on https://www.apple.com/leadership/
aiscoming 2 days ago [-]
that horizontal line is hillarious. I can imagine the discussions with the designers "just put the fucking line there, I dont care how it looks, its important to separate the two sets of people"
Barbing 2 days ago [-]
If you delete the first one but leave the line above “Board of Directors“, would you mind it?
(Edit - I wouldn’t have minded either line, at first glance on mobile, curious if it’s an “all bad” situation for you)
aiscoming 2 days ago [-]
I personally dont mind it, but apple is famous for ruthlesly removing decorative design and trying to make everything a slab of color, and this thin line goes so much against this
2 days ago [-]
jjtheblunt 2 days ago [-]
that's plausible, since i never listened to earnings calls, and since external communications might take different form than internal, i bet.
smugma 2 days ago [-]
ET is frequently used to describe Apple’s Executive Team.
geekone 2 days ago [-]
XCOM (Executive Committee) was my least favorite at one of the soulless corps i worked at years ago.
zamadatix 2 days ago [-]
[dead]
0xbadcafebee 2 days ago [-]
The casualness of mentioning record revenues in the same PR statement as laying off 4,000 people is fucked up on a new level. It used to be you were supposed to at least pretend you were forced into a layoff. But now it's like "Hey guys! It's time for our regularly scheduled layoff to juice profits! I got an extra $5M bonus for this!"
dcrazy 2 days ago [-]
What’s really weird to me is they clearly wanted to convey to the Street that these layoffs were _not_ motivated by any of their financial results with the phrasing “fewer than 4,000”. But they conspicuously didn’t provide any other reason. No divisions closing down, no realignment of capital.
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.
2 days ago [-]
alistairSH 2 days ago [-]
It's 100% normal these days. My employer did the same thing in January.
rnxrx 2 days ago [-]
Cisco's fiscal year closes at the end of July, which makes this time of year the season for reorgs, LRs (as they're colloquially known) and the usual maneuvering that leads up to establishing budgets, sales quotas and the like. It sucks that this kind of thing has become so normalized now.
absolutewinner 2 days ago [-]
The other thing is that the laid off employees will lose all their unvested RSUs. These shares were granted as compensation for past performance but they can now be conveniently clawed back by the company just because they decide to lay you off. Stock can be a large part of someone's compensation in a tech company. Companies shouldn't be allowed to benefit this way if they decide to lay off employees.
boguscoder 2 days ago [-]
Alas this happens in all FAANG layoffs too, some lucky people get to received one more vest but nothing close to all unvested RSUs
fc417fc802 2 days ago [-]
How is that legal? I thought the entire point of delayed vesting was to disincentivize jumping ship. If they're the ones throwing you overboard clawing back RSUs seems like a roundabout form of wage theft.
boguscoder 2 days ago [-]
The legalese around it is that it’s always contingent on your employment on those futures dates. It’s based on past performance, yes, but it’s not payment for past work (that’s what bonus is for), its incentive to stay longer and contribute to company’s success. When you are out of the door (for whatever reason) company looses need to incentivize you to:(
senordevnyc 2 days ago [-]
I always viewed them as future comp that was locked at a certain rate (in terms of number of shares per quarter). I got four years of unvested stock on day 1 when I joined a tech company, why on earth would I think I'm entitled to all that if I leave before it's vested?
fc417fc802 2 days ago [-]
If you see it as dangling future compensation in front of you then you wouldn't, obviously. But then why is it structured in that manner? What's the purpose?
If you view it as a signing bonus it makes perfect sense. They want to get you in the door but also don't want you to take advantage of them by quitting immediately. In that case you wouldn't be entitled to it if you left voluntarily or were fired for cause but being laid off is entirely their choice.
solatic 44 minutes ago [-]
> But then why is it structured in that manner? What's the purpose?
This is bizarre. When you agree to take a $100k base salary, you don't get all $100k on the first day; your salary is split into pay periods, and if you leave earlier (voluntary or not) then you don't get the rest of the year's salary by default (severance aside).
I'll agree with you that RSUs for public companies should not have cliffs. But the idea that you agree to a large amount of compensation up-front (so that re-negotiation is infrequent) which is then paid out in portions on a regular basis is very standard, for both cash and equity.
senordevnyc 2 days ago [-]
It’s structured that way to disincentivize leaving voluntarily, which I think is fine. What’s the problem with that? And why would that imply that if I’m laid off, I’m still entitled to that future compensation?
eudamoniac 2 days ago [-]
In the worst case, it's highly misleading. Imagine you get paid a pittance but with a huge RSU grant vesting on a 2 year cliff. Salary 50k, total comp 500k. Then they fire you after 23 months. You took the job because of the stock grants, you had no intention of quitting, but they got 2 years of good talent for 50k.
senordevnyc 2 days ago [-]
Well sure, we could throw out all kinds of theoretically abusive situations, but how often does that happen in the real world? I haven't seen any companies granting RSUs that pay a pittance in salary. And it seems many tech companies have dropped their one year cliff as well. Who has a two year cliff?
Now to be clear, stock options are completely different, and in the vast majority of cases, I'd value those at zero or near-zero.
fc417fc802 2 days ago [-]
> I haven't seen any companies granting RSUs that pay a pittance in salary.
If you recognize something as wrong in principle when taken to the extreme shouldn't you also regard milder instances to be wrong as well? "Well sure, if you steal $1M that's obviously immoral but that guy only stole $100."
Of course in this case I recognize that there's quite a bit of uncertainty over how exactly the intent and representation of RSUs ought to be interpreted. I had always seen them as akin to a signing bonus but it's clear now that many people don't share that perspective.
senordevnyc 2 days ago [-]
I’ve read probably thousands of negative comments about layoffs over the years, and I don’t think any of them centered on unvested RSUs.
devsda 2 days ago [-]
I know cisco doesn't do yearly vesting but at the companies that follow yearly vesting, losing job a week or a month or even 6 months before next vesting date is absolutely wage theft unless they do a full or pro-rated vesting of shares in the upcoming tranche.
absolutewinner 2 days ago [-]
Cisco absolutely does yearly vesting.
eudamoniac 2 days ago [-]
No they don't. I worked there until recently. They do bimonthly vesting I believe, or something close to it; I had somewhere between 5 and 10 vesting events per year. There is a 1 year cliff sometimes, but that's not the same thing.
senordevnyc 2 days ago [-]
It's not wage theft, by any legal definition. The terms you agree to when you take the job are extremely clear. Wild to think that you're entitled to whatever you want, despite agreeing to the terms.
fc417fc802 2 days ago [-]
The practices that consumer protection laws guard against often historically took the form of contracts so I'm not sure you've got much of an argument there. IMO the much stronger position is to argue the intent behind the common practice but cisco vesting monthly seems like a decent counterpoint.
senordevnyc 16 hours ago [-]
My argument is that it’s not wage theft by any legal definition.
And yes, obviously a contract can be declared void, but have consumer protection agencies started going after companies for not vesting immediately after a layoff? If not, then I don’t see how that’s relevant.
cheevly 2 days ago [-]
False
mtucker502 2 days ago [-]
What particular point do you find false?
hansmayer 2 days ago [-]
> Today we announced our Q3 FY26 earnings with record revenue of $15.8 billion, up 12 percent year over year, and double-digit top and bottom-line growth. The ELT and I could not be prouder of the growth you have all delivered for Cisco.
What a sick, deeply disconnected opener. Essentially a big FU to their employees. All these AI-first geniuses will eventually bring about is people intentionally slowing down their "productivity" while maxxing the shit out of the company token budget.
> We have important, impactful, and consequential work ahead. Your focus, resilience, and leadership are vital to our growth and relevance in FY27 and beyond.
The message here is - generate more with less, so we can layoff even more of you. At some point even the dumbest, most loyal corporate shills will start to get it.
eudamoniac 2 days ago [-]
> people intentionally slowing down their "productivity" while maxxing the shit out of the company token budget.
I have actually started doing this. At first I was just slowing down productivity, but then I realized that if everyone is going to breathe down my neck about token use, I can just use a shitload and not utilize the output for anything. I consider this game theory optimal and possibly most ethical.
hansmayer 2 days ago [-]
Of course it's ethical - these guys have been persistent in creating a jungle-like environment for all of us. In such a situation, acting primarily for your own egoistic interests is indeed the most ethical choice you could make. I applaud you for doing so.
senordevnyc 2 days ago [-]
A bit off-topic, but I'm curious: why do so many people seem to be outraged when companies do layoffs? I genuinely don't understand. It's like there's this unspoken agreement that once you get hired, you're entitled to that job for life. Of course, you are free to leave whenever you want, nothing wrong with that, but many seem to see it as immoral or unethical for the company to decide they don't need you anymore, and let you go. Why? What exactly is a company's moral obligation when it comes to who they employ and for how long?
For context, I was most recently employed at a public tech company as a staff engineer. I was there for five years, got paid very well, and then was part of broad layoffs last year. I got a generous severance, and moved onto the next thing. I don't have any bitterness about it; I was selling my time and expertise to the company, and they no longer felt it was worth buying. I wouldn't have felt bad about leaving the job, so why should they feel bad about ending the employment?
Don't get me wrong, I know how stressful layoffs are. But all kinds of things in life are stressful (like a breakup, for example), but that doesn't imply you've been morally harmed in some way. You aren't entitled to keep your job for life!
Help me understand.
eudamoniac 2 days ago [-]
Yeah I'm with you, I think 99% of the reaction is just anger that big corp took away small workers' job, with no further thought.
To try to steelman it best I can, maybe it's the feeling that a successful company should (ethically) pass on the success to the workers in some way. Like, my labor resulted in record revenue, but instead of a raise I'm getting fired. Feels bad.
Also if workers reacted game theoretically correctly to this situation, they would work just enough to not get fired for cause, since working hard is not rewarded. This is overall bad because if everyone starts doing the bare minimum it's not a pleasant place to work. So it's basically the company forcing the workplace into becoming worse, and actually harming themselves in the long run if everyone reacted that way, so the company is being shortsighted. So then the workers are mad because the company isn't even laying them off for "rational" reasons.
Once you accept that employment is just a roulette wheel that you spin quarterly, it becomes less frustrating, but also becomes more soul sucking.
senordevnyc 2 days ago [-]
Yeah, I suspect that some of my bewilderment is that I've been self-employed for the vast majority of my career; that 5-year stint at a big tech company was an anomaly, and I always viewed it as just another client, essentially. And clients and customers come and go, constantly. I've never felt entitled to their business, and I suppose I extend that same thinking to employment.
I will say that I don't think game theory would dictate that you do as little as you can to not get fired, for at least a few different reasons.
First of all, that's pretty difficult to do, since you don't know in advance exactly what the dividing line is between who gets fired or laid off, and who doesn't.
Second, my experience has been that people who do take that approach are statistically more likely to get laid off, when compared to people who really push hard at work, trying to win. And even if the latter group does get laid off, they're much more competitive in the job market if they have a solid body of work and a network of former colleagues who view them favorably.
And third, having gone through a phase like that when I was getting divorced, it just feels shitty. I'd much rather pull my weight, regardless of whether my job continues in the future.
I do think that game theory would certainly imply that you should not have any loyalty towards your employer, and be willing to jump ship whenever it makes sense for you. But that has always been the case, at least in my lifetime.
banach 2 days ago [-]
This is why corporations need to be owned and operated by the employees.
lbreakjai 2 days ago [-]
If 51% of the employees would benefit from firing the other 49%, you'd be as good as gone anyway. Not saying it would be worse, but the same incentives are at play.
acdha 2 days ago [-]
No, because the average employee has both a lot more in common with their peers and because the gains are lower for people whose stock shares are orders of magnitude lower. Joe from accounting isn’t laying off a department so he can sell shares worth the price of a Corolla before taxes.
lbreakjai 2 days ago [-]
"Joe from accounting" would perhaps do it for free, if he thought it would affect the slackers. I've seen colleagues cheer at the news of layoffs because they saw themselves as the rockstars being dragged down by "useless office drones".
throwaway0123_5 2 days ago [-]
Presumably ~100% of the employees want to feel secure in their jobs, so I don't think this would happen unless the benefit to the 51% is extreme.
danw1979 2 days ago [-]
For the last 15 years I’ve been telling anyone who would listen about my idea for a John Lewis (British retail chain) model IT consultancy- employee owned, everyone is motivated, high quality, etc.
Except last month I met someone who worked there and got TUPE (involuntary contractual transfer of employment) to Wipro (Indian outsourcerer) a few years ago.
So even though this corporation is owned by the employees, and is one of the best examples of this in the UK, it seems you also need some kind of management structure that is also immune to the usual senior leadership trolls to avoid it turning out to be shitty.
poncho_romero 2 days ago [-]
I don't know anything about John Lewis, but Les-Tilleuls (https://les-tilleuls.coop/en/the-co-op) sounds exactly like what you're talking about. Completely employee owned IT shop full of talented contributers. I'm not sure about their consulting work, but they're behind a ton of innovative open source projects in the PHP sphere.
skinfaxi 2 days ago [-]
Even under non-hierarchical systems someone has to take out the trash.
asdfsa32 2 days ago [-]
Have you look at how efficient your local government is?
Kadecgos 2 days ago [-]
Yeah - the answer is that the cost to deliver a service from my local government is a lot cheaper than it is when it's coming from the private sector.
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.
fc417fc802 2 days ago [-]
The flip side is that sometimes things go poorly and the (lack of financial) incentives are such that costs might not get reined in for a long while.
asdfsa32 2 days ago [-]
You're making it sound like I am not already paying taxes for those "absorbing of costs".
Kadecgos 9 hours ago [-]
That is where the income is coming from, of course. That is also exactly what I'm saying. The tax cost of paying for a public service tends to be, nearly universally, less than the cost of paying for the same service in the private sector.
While there are some pretty easy examples here, the easiest one is probably health care: The country that pays the most - by far - for 'average-ish' health care is the one where the system is privatized.
alistairSH 2 days ago [-]
Reasonably efficient. Local schools are good, local roads are good, job market is solid, housing is being built and the urban planning is better than most areas. Taxes are high, but not NJ/NYC high.
ethanwillis 2 days ago [-]
When local governments are captured by corporate interests this isn't the argument you think it is.
asdfsa32 2 days ago [-]
"captured by corporate" is a feature. It is either Corporate or the Vanguard. We are almost agreeing.
simianwords 2 days ago [-]
these corporations would never work because they would optimise for the wrong thing - they would get their face eaten by other more efficient and ruthless corporations
dgb23 2 days ago [-]
These corporations exist and do work. Worker owned companies have their own challenges and their own advantages.
For example they tend to be more stable during crisis, because workers tend to vote for lowering salaries/benefits temporarily rather than doing layoffs. So they retain talent better. But they also tend to have difficulty to grow quickly, for obvious reasons.
Besides full on coops, there are also plenty of examples that are hybrids (partially worker owned).
> they would get their face eaten by other more efficient and ruthless corporations
You're possibly of assuming that a company needs to have an adversarial relationship to their workers in order to be competitive. I don't think that's generally true. This approach has advantages in specific situations, but disadvantages in others.
simianwords 2 days ago [-]
Im literally saying the opposite that no adversarial relationship needs to exist.
That’s exactly why you don’t need worker owned companies
tjpnz 2 days ago [-]
You'll also be less exposed in privately owned companies.
Scroll_Swe 2 days ago [-]
No, this never works... The socialism glaze on HN amazes me...
I am Swedish, in Sweden, and we are a market economy combined with unions. Companies can do layoffs but for a 3month agreement, they have to notify basically, WARN.
dalmo3 2 days ago [-]
> reduction of our overall workforce in Q4 by fewer than 4,000 jobs
Interesting use of fewer.
udave 2 days ago [-]
seems like the same trick as behind labelling price as $99.9
prerok 2 days ago [-]
Yeah, your work was so great that we are gonna fire just 3999 of you.
pm90 2 days ago [-]
Cisco is well known to do annual layoffs, this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.
holysoles 2 days ago [-]
Almost bought cisco shares today, glad I didn't.
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.
To profit you also need to get out at the right time.
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.
jjmarr 2 days ago [-]
Had OP immediately sold, they would've provided a price signal that layoffs are bad in addition to making money.
2 days ago [-]
renticulous 2 days ago [-]
Someone commented on X. US markets are never going down again just like Weimar Republic stock markets never did.
Don't do the mistake of shorting Weimar Stock markets.
Barbing 2 days ago [-]
Anyone know a good article that lays out what the bubble pop might look like?
Rp8yXmdmr 2 days ago [-]
[dead]
bigstrat2003 2 days ago [-]
There are more important things than making money. I assume that the parent poster was glad to not buy into a company that doesn't treat their employees well.
unmole 2 days ago [-]
Why would an individual buy stocks other than to make money? Certainly not for charity. And if it's just virtue signalling, there are far cheaper ways to feel morally superior.
2 days ago [-]
simianwords 2 days ago [-]
The companies in the stock market are not primarilay a jobs program. It is not the primary role for companies to pay their workers. Such a system would never work and would collapse.
Virtue signalling about "treating employees well" is shortermist and doesn't consider the higher order effects.
dilyevsky 2 days ago [-]
They buy a lot of companies then restructure them and that causes these layoffs. I think it’s just normal way of doing business for them. And the stock is up 20% after hours =)
el_jay 2 days ago [-]
Who really cares about the lives of lim n —> 4k wagies? There is an opportunity to maximise shareowner returns here - failing to seize it would be little more than economic treason, a dereliction of our duty to be good capitalists. If those people wanted job stability, they should have worked harder to become indispensable to their employer. Frankly, they should have known better than to stake their livelihoods on unstable, declining industries like employment. Now, The Market Has Spoken, and only those let go are to blame for what it said - no one else.
epolanski 2 days ago [-]
I have a question.
If so many companies out there are doing layoffs, ignoring whether they are right/wrong or the motives being real or investor signaling, who's gonna benefit from it?
I would tend to think that talent being freed would imply that newcomers have a wider pool to find great contributors, but is it really happening?
lain98 2 days ago [-]
Whenever a company does layoffs willy nilly frequently I stop trusting them with my career.
The AI excuses are lazy.
I was laid off last year by one of the big tech companies, and they called me again for a rehire but I just dont trust them anymore even if they pay more. The layoff completely disrupted my life and I developed health issues because of the stress. Not worth the mental hassle.
I have seen a few workplaces which are more deliberate in their hiring and are not on 24x7x365 hire and fire mode unlike many of the big names.
I would rather work in such a place rather than have 10 varieties of coffee and condiments in the pantry.
Frankly i'm pissed off.
Sorry for the people who pinned their hopes on cisco and were laid off yesterday. It's not easy.
declan_roberts 2 days ago [-]
This type of thing should come along with a reduction of allowed H-1bs.
siren2026 2 days ago [-]
Cisco especially is absolutely full of H1Bs.
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.
spike021 2 days ago [-]
we were acquired and part of our org moved into cisco HQ.
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.
shell0x 2 days ago [-]
Shocking. I had an interview for an Australian job with JP Morgan recently and even the interviewers were based in India. Super rude, could barely understand him due the strong accent, he couldn’t ask a single intelligent question and it was kinda clear that the org basically just hires other Indians. They always end up talking a lot while doing almost nothing and only hiring their friends and family while Chinese engineers just get stuff done. I’m sure there are exceptions but in my 15 years in tech I can count with two hands how many good Indian engineers I worked with.
truncate 2 days ago [-]
Or maybe you just aren't that good of an engineer (or whatever profession you are into) and find the easiest group to blame on your failures. I found that people who often are quick to judge and group of people in one bucket based on their color/ethnicity/gender/... are often not that bright people and like to focus on directing it on others. Somewhat like MAGA.
nixass 2 days ago [-]
> Somewhat like MAGA.
Wow this escalated quickly. What OP is saying is not anecdotal but true to every major US tech company. You can cope all you want, won't make a difference
Scroll_Swe 2 days ago [-]
[flagged]
tdeck 2 days ago [-]
> Indians hire only Indians.
I've worked for Indian managers several times and they all hired non-Indian people.
siren2026 2 days ago [-]
I think both can be true.
I have seen teams that are 100% Indians with a manager actively pushing Indian resumes and friends/family on top. They don’t play nice and by the DEI rules like a lot of Americans do.
But I have also seen amazing Indian managers that don’t act like this.
It’s ok to acknowledge that culturally Indians will favor themselves heavily. As bad as some of you want to make it sound like racism to close that conversation at all cost.
sometimes_all 2 days ago [-]
Way to paint with a really broad brush...
Scroll_Swe 2 days ago [-]
I use my real life experience to form my opinions, yes.
sometimes_all 2 days ago [-]
I'm sure you do. But your real life experience is not everyone else's real life experience, so there's no really need to make blanket statements about people.
Scroll_Swe 2 days ago [-]
Blanket statement - western europe is where people want to live
Wrong?
Ok good, don't come here then.
sometimes_all 2 days ago [-]
Oh wow, you went from one place to some totally different place at the drop of a hat. Where did me "coming" to Western Europe come into the discussion about racial stereotyping about Indians? I'm not in Western Europe, and I don't plan to live there, not sure how you got that impression.
I think there's no reasoning with someone who only wants to deal in absolutes. Have a good day.
OutOfHere 2 days ago [-]
There is some bias in some teams, but it's not universal, and such a bias for one's ethnicity really exists in teams of all ethnicities. You just see it more because there are plenty of xxxx in IT.
truncate 2 days ago [-]
[dead]
truncate 2 days ago [-]
[dead]
i67vw3 2 days ago [-]
The reason is basically that you are "required" to hire other "Indians".
If you get a job at a good company on your own merit, you immediately start getting calls to "refer" your college friends, family, people from your region/state.
Refer here means refer it to HR and make some "setting" that you are guranteed to be hired based on your "reference".
Naturally reference would mean that considering you are an employee you would know about open positions and may refer the position to your friend, who would later on get the job on his own merit considering that he is skilled for the position along with required experience.
But the case for Indian employees is that a reference entails to scam the company itself, by letting a less skilled person into the company by making a "setting" with HR etc, who may themselves be from the same region/state.
And if you try to be morally upright person to deny such a scammy "reference", you would then get to listen verbal abuses from your friends and even from your own family members. To deny such a reference leads to straight up "banishment".
Tip:- Among 100 Indians if you see, only 1 or 2 are actually good at their job (or by morality).
cumshitpiss 2 days ago [-]
[dead]
mavelikara 2 days ago [-]
Polydactyly can be treated surgically! /s
Jokes aside, if in 15 years you have worked with only few good Indian engineers, you probably have not yet worked at places with high talent density. I could understand if you had said you have (a) worked with many low quality engineers from India, or (b) worked with far more low quality engineers from India than high quality ones. But if, in absolute numbers, you haven't come across many good engineers from India, I can only infer than you probably haven't worked with very good engineers across the board.
keithxm23 2 days ago [-]
Gotta love the covert racism here.
boelboel 2 days ago [-]
Where's the covert it's open racism
ponector 2 days ago [-]
The best thing in such companies like Cisco is discrimination by caste within Indian workers.
jakeydus 2 days ago [-]
Yes what the fuck is this entire thread
Scroll_Swe 2 days ago [-]
[flagged]
OutOfHere 2 days ago [-]
It's a half-truth because it totally ignores that it's not universal and people of other ethnicities do it too to their own.
2 days ago [-]
carabiner 2 days ago [-]
I was a contractor at Cisco as the only non-indian in my group. But, I think the entire floor (100+ people) was Indian except for me. I'd always heard of "toxic work environments" but was pretty dismissive, until working at Cisco. I never knew people could bring high school bullying, manipulation into a supposed professional workplace.
hirako2000 2 days ago [-]
Diversity is the term to disguise cheaper labor. Call it women, ethnic minorities, trans, neuro divergent, on wheelchair, or those having criminal records.
It's a brilliant slogan, not just because virtue signalling, but because it spawns cross cultural factions, all selfishly united to defend it. At no further brainwashing cost to you.
You dare to attack it? You are out. Pack your stuff, and your shame.
Consolation? It would at least provide opportunities to those who always suffered injustice. Yet many who claim their right to a seat don't bother with competence.
It works, because the goal isn't more talents, we never lacked them: it's to pressure the overall labor cost.
danw1979 2 days ago [-]
I can think of at least one fairly large “cultural faction” in the US that doesn’t like DEI
hirako2000 2 days ago [-]
One faction, whether we adhere to its other political views or not, hating DEI doesn't disprove the mechanism. The other factions still defend it selfishly. That's exactly why it holds.
anal_reactor 2 days ago [-]
This is so obvious now that you point it out I'm embarrassed not to have noticed it.
By the way, I was wondering if learning Hindi would be the winning strategy here. Be the only white guy speaking Hindi, instant hire.
hirako2000 2 days ago [-]
Don't be embarrassed. Most don't see it, because the moral framing blocks economic analysis.
As for learning Hindi, it may help. But don't make the mistake of confusing cultural diversity with competence uniqueness. One expands the number or silos in the labor pool. The other justifies better pay.
anal_reactor 2 days ago [-]
My thinking was, the goal of "diversity" is to have people reject their cultural backgrounds and form a shapeless blob that absorbs commands more easily and resists less. Basically "divide and conquer" applied to workplace.
hirako2000 2 days ago [-]
Dividing implies having to preserve, if not reinforce differences.
Of course those difference aren't meant to object the dominant force. They are meant to counter act each others.
I see more push for integration than assimilation in the workplace.
pixelatedindex 2 days ago [-]
lol that depends. If they are mostly from South India, learning Hindi might not move the needle as much. Might want to pick up some Kannada, Telugu and/or Tamil. Would be pretty cool for trying, and it’ll probably make your outlook favorable
Conscat 2 days ago [-]
In the bay area, I've met relatively few NRIs who don't know Hindi well, even if it's not their first language. Most of them that I've met are not even Kannadiga, Mallu, Telugu, or especially not Tamil. Sample size of at least several dozen.
hirako2000 2 days ago [-]
The irony is ethnic Indians in the U.S barely speak any of those.
Conscat 2 days ago [-]
Studying Hindi has felt very rewarding to me, and it impresses people disproportionately to my actual skill, but I don't feel it has affected my ability to communicate with coworkers whatsoever.
dinkumthinkum 2 days ago [-]
No. Very large numbers of Indians, particularly ones in the US do not even really speak Hindi or use it much. It is more common for them to speak their local languages and good luck learning all of those. Also, the culture is such that I think they would just have a good laugh as they click delete on your resume or whatever.
intended 2 days ago [-]
Maybe America should export US labour and safety standards.
Outsourcers don’t just compete on price, they compete on hours worked, and support given.
You do it in outsourcing contracts to a degree, just go further - holidays available, work hours, firing procedures, support and health services.
I do know that FDA inspectors travel to factories around the world to ensure they are compliant.
You’d remove the incentive to undercharge based on sweat shop practices, and then it’s only a cost of living arbitrage.
At that point you could set up in a lower CoL region in America over outsourcing.
I’m probably missing some incentives but I think this would work, and it’s an easy political sell.
simonra 2 days ago [-]
Please don't export US labour and safety standards. The amount of paid time off is hard to argue is not unethical, the conflation of vacation time and sick time clearly is unethical, the amount of parental leave (especially maternity) is a crime against humanity. The firing procedures are also something you'd expect to read about in a history book besides a picture of a child visibly yearning for the coal mines, contracts with a mutual resignation period giving both parties adequate time to transition is a bare minimum. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. Please please America spend serious efforts developing your labour standards to a humane level instead of exporting them.
intended 2 days ago [-]
Ah yes. Missed that part.
Factory Safety standards I would make an argument for, you should see some of the things I see in developed nations.
> Please please America spend serious efforts developing your labour standards to a humane level instead of exporting them.
This is possibly the critical weakness in the idea. Maybe EU labour standards?
suddenlybananas 2 days ago [-]
That's essentially colonialism. You can't go into other countries and change their labour laws, it's a violation of their sovereignty. Obviously there's a huge problem with uneven development across the world that makes outsourcing possible and difficult for workers in the developed world, but I'm not sure such a solution would be politically feasible.
intended 2 days ago [-]
Eh? That’s such a stretched definition of colonialism that it ceases to have meaning.
Firstly, This is how things are being done now - post colonialism. America has many laws and drives to avoid labour from sweatshops. This was a whole thing, it may not have been the most effective, but it was a political force that drove change.
Foxconn factories having workers commit suicide and place safety nets around buildings was a huge issue for Apple, and it resulted in changes to working conditions.
And as I mentioned before, the FDA inspects factories around the world to ensure that something sold within America that has the FDA approved label actually meets standards.
The idea is feasible I just don’t know how effective it will be. Political will can be found in America, and this affects only foreign outsourcing while supporting American workers. You don’t need political will in other nations.
On top of that, it moves competition away from a race to the bottom, which reinforces worker rights. If worker rights in India and America are at parity, then the attractiveness to move to America changes as well. America will remain attractive because of standard of living.
It’s an issue for outsourcing, and firms that buy outsourced services, but not that much of an issue.
One issue is that worker rights in America are kind of a low bar.
suddenlybananas 2 days ago [-]
>You don’t need political will in other nations.
Yes you do if you want to change their labour laws.
intended 2 days ago [-]
> Yes you do if you want to change their labour laws.
You aren't changing the labour laws in their nations.
If firms want to trade with American firms, then they have to have certain work norms that they abide by in their contracts/.
suddenlybananas 2 days ago [-]
Which is an extremely aggressive trade policy that would not be accepted by other states and would be viewed as an infringement on their sovereignty.
intended 2 days ago [-]
I think you are unaware that this is the status quo as of this moment, and is not aggressive in the least.
America (or any country) can set whatever rules that it likes on firms that exist within its boundaries.
Those rules currently cover things like not taking bribes, not using sweatshop labour, not enabling terror groups - all which America is well within it's rights to set.
Those firms float contracts goes out, and international firms that can satisfy those rules, take them up.
If they don't want to, or cannot fulfill those contracts, they don't win the contract.
hirako2000 2 days ago [-]
Abolishing restricted borders, collectively would push the logic to its final destination. Such sweat shops exist because humans are confined.
Cross border inspectors is mostly PR theater. Even if it was feasible, local verticals spill into others, so it would always be lower costs in less developed/regulated nations.
2 days ago [-]
riedel 2 days ago [-]
The way you can phrase it: you may jsut get people that are happy to do a good job for the pay they get. In many areas your typical white/cis/hetero/neurotypical male is not present, because you cannot get the maximum reward for their well-trained ego. I think diversity/pay is pretty munch confounded for plausible reasons.
hirako2000 2 days ago [-]
That's saying the white/cis/hetero male is absent because ego demands more reward. Exactly. Diversity fills that gap at lower cost. That's my point, or a counter?
The scheme's motive is the overall effect. Lower wages. It doesn't care about white hetero, or black trans who happen to participate in paralympics.
2 days ago [-]
cumshitpiss 2 days ago [-]
[dead]
heggerd 2 days ago [-]
[flagged]
truncate 2 days ago [-]
What percent of laid of employees do you think are H1Bs?
2 days ago [-]
z0mghii 2 days ago [-]
0
vkou 2 days ago [-]
Do you have anything but prejudice to support that, or..?
bakugo 2 days ago [-]
When tech companies lay off large amounts of workers like this, they often immediately replace them with H1Bs. These layoffs are almost always cost-cutting measures, not caused by lack of work - the work is still there and still has to be done, they just don't want to pay expensive white people to do it.
It makes no sense to lay off H1Bs only to immediately re-hire them afterwards.
vkou 2 days ago [-]
Thank link does not provide any evidence that no h1bs were laid off.
How many non-h1bs did they hire in that fiscal year? How many h1bs did they lay off?
> It makes no sense to lay off H1Bs only to immediately re-hire them afterwards.
"It doesn't make sense to lay off programmers only to immediately rehire them afterwards", yet that has been happening for the past 4 years in every company.
It does if you stop seeing them as labels like 'H1Bs' or 'Programmers' and start seeing them as human beings with particular skills and strengths and weaknesses or members of particular teams (who get grown or cut at the very high-level whims of directors or VPs, without any regard for who is on them.)
Laying someone, or a team off happens for any one of a million reasons, most of which have fuck all to do with their immigration status.
You're mixing a combination of prejudice with a poor understanding of how businesses actually operate. When some corporate shithead chooses which team to cut in half, they aren't looking at the immigration status ratio in them. And for these mass layoffs, the team's direct and next level managers have next to zero say in them.
bakugo 1 days ago [-]
I'm sure they don't look directly at immigration status when deciding who to lay off, but they do look at their expected pay and benefits, which just so happen to be strongly correlated with immigration status more often than not.
vkou 1 days ago [-]
The expected pay and benefits of anyone in a FAANG firm have everything to do with their level. Within levels, the bands are fairly narrow.
An L5 SWE performing at S gets paid about the same, and receives the exact same benefits, regardless of their status.
Actually, scratch that, the H1B is often awarded an extra benefit - sponsorship and legal fees for converting to a green card.
2 days ago [-]
ribosometronome 2 days ago [-]
If a company is set on hiring foreign workers who will work for less than Americans and we don't let them bring them over here, won't they just offshore instead? I don't ask this to be contrarian but more to wonder how to combat it.
SpicyLemonZest 2 days ago [-]
An offshored worker is already much cheaper than an H1B worker, I would expect any easy substitutions along those lines to already be performed. Probably some effect on the margins, but I would doubt it outweighs the primary effect.
(Of course, it would be a problem if you think H1Bs are for hiring people who cannot be found domestically, but it does not seem like many people think that these days.)
fc417fc802 2 days ago [-]
By penalizing offshoring. I don't say this as a particularly nationalistic person either. All companies in all countries should be heavily incentivized to hire local labor and sell to the local market. Globalization is extremely beneficial of course but the various side effects need to be managed.
rayiner 2 days ago [-]
Do you think there was ethnic favoritism going on?
2 days ago [-]
eudamoniac 2 days ago [-]
There are more than a few entire divisions of Indians. Indian manager, 10-12 Indian subs. And these divisions are not in India. Not sure how this flies, legally.
2 days ago [-]
mavelikara 2 days ago [-]
> This type of thing should come along with a reduction of allowed H-1bs.
H-1Bs also lose jobs in these layoffs, so there is an implicit reduction.
jimbob45 2 days ago [-]
I’d prefer a forced resignation of the CEO and board with no severance.
Scroll_Swe 2 days ago [-]
This. Once Indians get in, they hire other Indians only. It is a disgrace. They are here in Sweden too studying for masters, terrible. They should be barred from EU honestly... sadly we just did a trade agreement...
jameson 2 days ago [-]
Unlikely to happen when H1B program benefit corporate and they run super PACs
Any policies to help the people are labeled as "socialist" nowadays
csomar 2 days ago [-]
I think H1Bs are pretty much dead with the 100k fee.
AlexB138 2 days ago [-]
As I understand it, the fee doesn't apply in many situations and is fairly easy to work around. Apparently it was neutered immediately after being announced.
b3ing 2 days ago [-]
They are still getting jobs non stop
semiquaver 2 days ago [-]
OMG, press the “read aloud” button. Brings me right back to to computer class in 1995!
ing33k 2 days ago [-]
sounds like a daft punk song !
alasano 2 days ago [-]
Coinbase, CloudFlare, Cisco.
Another round of layoffs at CrowdStrike would fit the pattern nicely.
maxdo 2 days ago [-]
Meta , ms ( soft ) , Google .
darkwater 2 days ago [-]
Here we have a PR statement of a company announcing at the same time record revenues AND cutting 4000 jobs and the longest thread is complaining about Indian workers instead of bitching about the dystopian reality we live in where Cisco's behavior is accepted and acceptable.
Also, H1B are issued and requested by the company. Blame the system, not the immigrants .
dial9-1 2 days ago [-]
those 4000 laid off people will be replaced with 6000 H1B's.
also why can't we hold both of them accountable?
darkwater 2 days ago [-]
Exploiting the visa system (especially if using some loophole) is still totally 100% on the company and not on the immigrant workers.
peyton 2 days ago [-]
What immigrant workers? H-1B is a non-immigrant visa. Immigrants get screwed too.
ValentineC 2 days ago [-]
Most "work" visas are non-immigrant visas. H-1B is dual intent, at least.
darkwater 2 days ago [-]
Were they born on US soil?
walrus01 2 days ago [-]
5% reduction returns them to the headcount on what date? Something like mid 2022 if the info I'm finding is correct.
pech0rin 2 days ago [-]
Cisco fires people all the time. They have a huge workforce this isn’t really newsworthy.
markus_zhang 2 days ago [-]
OK looks like the horn has been blown. Now they are all doing layoffs. Wall Street waving its visible hand again?
pjmlp 2 days ago [-]
This is why you owe nothing to your employer, record revenue with management bonus, and layoffs for those that helped get there.
Those extra hours? Only if the team really needs them.
Naturally this tends to be something only seniors see, thus ageism.
Scroll_Swe 2 days ago [-]
>Those extra hours? Only if the team really needs them.
? I started a new job a year ago. Overtime pay in contract. I gladly work and report overtime as I get paid way more :) BUT there has to be a real reason, such as deadline, alarm/alert and such.
You people are just lost. But I am in Sweden with a union job hehehe
pjmlp 2 days ago [-]
Same here, some of your southern neighbours also have unions on IT, as a union in general covers specific industries, regardless of what job each person does in the building.
As a tip for others as well, even without an union it helps to be aware of the country labour laws even if superficially.
dinkumthinkum 2 days ago [-]
Yeah, but compare the salaries to the US and then factor in taxes.
acdha 2 days ago [-]
Do this comparison both ways and factor in what you pay in addition for American high-stress/low-quality healthcare, college, retirement, etc. If you’re on the higher-end of the SV tech salaries, you’ll probably still come out ahead but for everyone else even Denmark tends to be cheaper.
pjmlp 2 days ago [-]
And healthcare, public transport, vacations, sick leave, maternity and paternity leave, layoff notice, layoff package, ....
Personally the salary isn't worth it.
dinkumthinkum 1 days ago [-]
Most tech companies give paternity/maternity leave. There is the WARN act and most companies provide severance. Are the packages always great? No, but I don't think equivalent in Europe are that much better. Public transport? That's your preference and lifestyle, I don't think that factors in here. Most tech companies provide decent insurance and don't require being part of some socialized wait-list system. And the salaries are quite a bit higher and without the Byzantine level of taxes. I think you might want to analyze it a little more.
motbus3 2 days ago [-]
Im sure all these layoffs will increase profit hence taxes right?
gothicbluebird 2 days ago [-]
one would think that those jobs identified as superfluous or dispensable are in administration more than in engineering. The lay-off procedure itself looks very bureaucratic and makes HR, lawyers, and managers indispensable. Cunning plan.
clearstack 2 days ago [-]
the cuts are a mix shift play. AI networking orders are higher margin than legacy hardware. they want that ratio to improve. income statement will show it within 2 quarters
redbell 2 days ago [-]
> Workforce Reduction
A synonymous but more gentle term to layoff.
fny 2 days ago [-]
It's important to keep in mind Cisco made a billion AI and cybersec acquisitions in the past few years and they've downsized to 2022 levels.
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.
33MHz-i486 2 days ago [-]
its sickening that these companies making 10s of Billions in profit annually at 60% gross margins are going to throw their employees that got them there under the bus.
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.
renticulous 2 days ago [-]
> that got them there under the bus.
Do you employ construction workers for lifetime after they have built your house?
zzrrt 2 days ago [-]
Among other differences, a house construction contract is understood to be limited in time.
Imagine the construction company said "record profits this year, thanks for building great houses, you're fired." The message wouldn't go over well. They are being outrageously cutthroat or hiding bad news.
xboxnolifes 2 days ago [-]
Ive seen this exact analogy on HN quite a few times now, and its a bit odd (read: nonsensical). You dont tend to employ construction workers directly to build your house. You contract a housing company, who contracts construction companies (or has inhouse workers), who do keep their employees employed.
renticulous 2 days ago [-]
The individual is his own construction company in this scenario. Just like the construction company has to advertise itself to keep getting contracts, here the individual has to do the same with employers. The analogy is not superficial.
xboxnolifes 2 days ago [-]
The analogy is superficial because it makes absolutely no sense. Analogies are supposed to be analogous.
renticulous 2 days ago [-]
You want the company to share surplus with you but you won't share your surplus with construction workers. Is that fair?
zzrrt 1 days ago [-]
temporary contractor != employee. Many people expect employees should get some of the surplus, or at least get to keep working when the company is claiming they're financially secure.
I suspect you'll say the company owes them nothing in the US, which is true, but companies aren't/weren't always this stingy (or lying about financial strength), and you could have just said so without this strained analogy.
pnw_throwaway 2 days ago [-]
Found the corpo cuck
wahnfrieden 2 days ago [-]
Layoffs are not “for” that. That’s your fantasy.
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.
2 days ago [-]
bitmasher9 2 days ago [-]
“We are running out of good ideas to execute on, so we are reducing our workforce to a quantity we can utilize.”
denkmoon 2 days ago [-]
but there's still so many bad ideas available to be executed on
OccamsMirror 2 days ago [-]
I want my LLM powered Firewall that checks with an agent on every connection request! AI powered security is the new hotness!
totetsu 2 days ago [-]
>To those leaving Cisco, thank you for your contribution, your dedication, and the mark you have made on this company. We are deeply grateful and are committed to handling this transition with the care, clarity, and respect that defines our culture.
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.
Scroll_Swe 2 days ago [-]
Here you get laid off you need a notice 3 month in advance. America is just a hellscape but no need to be so drastic... companies still need to lay people off...
blitzar 2 days ago [-]
> companies still need to lay people off...
The people who just gave you a 20% increase in profits in a year need to go?
Scroll_Swe 2 days ago [-]
Yes, in a market economy layoffs still needs to happen.
What is your option? Companies keep people forever? In what economy does this work?
Please ask the Poles, Baltics and Eastern EU, when did their living standards increase? Was it joining EU or communist Soviet?
blitzar 2 days ago [-]
layoffs at earnings results time never ever need to happen.
in a market economy you layoff people when functions, business, products or roles actually become redundant (or fire for cause / underperformance) rather than waiting potentially months till the end of the financial year to do it in a mass firing.
when you need new headcount, inventory or inputs to your supply chain you don't wait 7 months selling no products to see how full year revenue looks before you decide
if you are managing a team and have poor performers or functions that are no longer necessary, you should bring them up to scratch or manage them out immediately, not wait 11 months till the next eoy layoff round. these stupid layoff rounds promote dysfunctional organisations with bloat and keeping around dead weight or overhiring to sacrifice people at the altar of the consultant / mba / earnings juicing layoff rounds.
kjellsbells 2 days ago [-]
lately I've been stuck by the similarities between the conversations workers are having now (we are toiling to increase someone else's capital, and need to reverse the imbalance of power) and the conversations people had in the 1920s and 30s.
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.
leopld 2 days ago [-]
Look at social democratic European states for inspiration. High unionization (supported by the state), unemployment benefits, cheap or free higher education.
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.
UltraSane 2 days ago [-]
Starting around 1970 the rich started working very hard to expressly undo the power labor gained during the New Deal.
ivraatiems 2 days ago [-]
And to think, if they could just take less, and be satisfied being billionaires, not tens of billionaires, this could all be avoided... people don't ask for much. Give them a little, you'll be fine.
But that won't please The Market.
SpicyLemonZest 2 days ago [-]
Chuck Robbins is not a billionaire. Yes, he's still extremely wealthy, but I really feel it's important to understand that that labor-capital relations are not primarily defined by people being greedy and wanting Bad Wealth when they could be satisfied with Good Wealth.
noncoml 2 days ago [-]
The irony is that Cisco engineers have a limit of 200K tokens per day for AI usage, because it is getting too expensive for Cisco...
selcuka 2 days ago [-]
> I could not be prouder of the growth you have all delivered for Cisco.
I think you could be. Just saying.
sciencesama 2 days ago [-]
how big is the WFR ?
dpe82 2 days ago [-]
The press release states it clearly.
neilfrndes 2 days ago [-]
4k, <5%
stack_framer 2 days ago [-]
"...fewer than 4,000 jobs, representing less than 5 percent of our total employee base."
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!"
hirako2000 2 days ago [-]
Dear reader, let's put it that way, the precise number is even more insignificant than 5%.
Contrast with the benefits of the path set onward. Small steps for humans, but a leap forward for humanity!
myst 2 days ago [-]
The message is for the investors.
bodegajed 2 days ago [-]
cisco executives will be rewarded with fat bonuses soon!
0x0000000 2 days ago [-]
This kind of behavior is never tolerated in the market. Your revenue is flat; they lay you off. Right away. No trial, no nothing. Your revenue is down, right to layoffs, right away. Revenue grows but less than guidance? Layoffs. Record revenue exceeding guidance? Believe it or not, layoffs.
> This kind of behavior is never tolerated in the market
This is Cisco. They do layoffs every quarter and have been doing so since the early 2000s.
Barbing 2 days ago [-]
This is outrageous. Where are the armed men who come in to take the protestors away? Where are they? This kind of behavior is never tolerated in Baraqua. You shout like that they put you in jail. Right away. No trial, no nothing. Journalists, we have a special jail for journalists. You are stealing: right to jail. You are playing music too loud: right to jail, right away. Driving too fast: jail. Slow: jail. You are charging too high prices for sweaters, glasses: you right to jail. You undercook fish? Believe it or not, jail. You overcook chicken, also jail. Undercook, overcook. You make an appointment with the dentist and you don't show up, believe it or not, jail, right away. We have the best patients in the world because of jail.
ivraatiems 2 days ago [-]
We have the best market in the world, because of ~~AI bubble~~ layoffs.
cfgeorge 2 days ago [-]
[flagged]
dgb23 2 days ago [-]
[flagged]
charlie0 2 days ago [-]
Revenue, not profit. A lot of that is likely inflation. I suspect we'll see this pattern repeat quite a bit with the oncoming oil shock
alemanek 2 days ago [-]
Their EPS is also up 37% GAAP / 10% Non-GAAP YoY and they beat their forecast. They aren’t hurting for money.
All that is to say, I would not be remotely surprised if Cisco has more employees than they strictly need. But, this email from the CEO is comically out of touch. “We’re doing great, better than we’ve ever done, so we’re going to fire thousands of you” is a chef’s kiss encapsulation of American corporate culture.
Maybe with normal people but that's not the target audience. The investors are the target and it's exactly what they want to hear.
I think that in most places the business is going bad in fact, but if you were to believe their words it will show a very despicable spirit of the current decade where the goal is to enjoy maximum profit without any care at all to do any good.
Before a boss might enjoy to have a sound business to be able to preserve the work/income of his employees.
Now they would not care to fuck employees first but also customers after if that provide with a second yacht for holidays.
Just see Elon Musk as the godfather of this discipline...
“it was a great time” = “I worked two days a week”
Any job that pays a full week and only requires two days of work is a “great time”
tells you literally nothing about the actual job.
The actual job was working on a python server for the acquired company, and it’s not like there wasn’t more work to do, but we were not allowed to go outside the bounds of the work that had been allocated for a sprint, which was always conservative in order to allow for more accurate overall plans. It’s certain that it was different in other departments or areas or acquired companies, but that at least was my experience.
In which case, I'd say they struck a helluva bargain at salary negotiation. Kudos.
It's not like they didn't ask for more work to do.
Crazy right?
There are no high integrity companies so it’s just a rat king
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.
It's nothing personal, it's just how the US works. If this were to happen in Europe, your company would burn to the ground. The amount of compensation you'd have to do would eat your gains from the layoffs.
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/south-korean-offi...
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/sk-hynix-employee...
SK Hynix is making an absurd amount of money from the RAM shortage, and the employees are not unreasonably demanding their cut from it.
A dividend or basic income or something funded by a tax on this stuff is not at all unreasonable.
The technology is cool but it’s basically mass piracy.
But that's not all that relevant to the opportunity in front of them.
The opportunity, generally, exists because of their place in an industry that most folk believe will be very different a decade from now.
That belief is going to lead a lot of CTOs to try new things. When a company tries something new, it almost always picks a new vendor to work with, rather than adding complexity or risk to an existing vendor engagement.
Yes, there are other alternatives, but they are less well known, require self hosting, and/or are secondary products of companies with very broad focus.
Atlassian might be another, given how much of the rest of the software development cycle they have their hooks in, but many tech leaders have unresolved JIRA trauma. :)
1. FAANG does something that's relevant to their company.
2. Everyone thinks that this is an universally good move because they're FAANG.
3. Market rewards copying FAANG regardless whether that strategy also applies to your company.
Simple as that.
It is in their class interest to try and beat workers that have gotten too uppity down and AI is a tool they see fit for purpose.
GitLab has just as many outages, just nobody notices/cares so much
GitHub does provide self-hosting via GitHub Emterprise Server.
I'm not so sure, and I'm looking at the friggin' thing: https://enterprise.github.com/trial
For the small, small price of your business email address, it's yours.
I don't think they offer anything unique. Forgejo[1] offers a similar platform.
[1] https://forgejo.org/
Also if compensation has come down over the last couple of years sometimes you have to do this instead of lowering salary because for whatever reason our industry doesn't ever lower salary.
I do personally believe it would be wonderful if companies invested more in helping people retool and move to new parts of the stack and where compensation becomes non-competitive it should be okay to at least give an employee an option of a lower salary to stay.
I think it goes a little deeper than that. In ways that seem to echo in your description of GitHub vs GitLab too.
Big Tech doesn't seem to attempt to generate value. The most positive attribute you can ascribe to a silicon valley startup is "disruptive" which in effect means eating somebody elses lunch. I think this is pretty natural for an industry that has pretty much achieved perfect penetration, but we're still dimensioning the industry for massive growth.
In that framework, silicon valley startups have to identify some sort of frontier they can expand into, and with pretty much all productive enterprise already interfaced with technology. They have to expand into simply replacing labor.
No, actually all evidence points exactly to a ~20% slowdown> https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o...
The "evidence" that you think about is probably that dopamine hit you felt when the shit-generator spat out a complete half-finished react app. But that's not evidence of increased productivity, unless we now measure productivity by the size of the codebase bloat.
Granted, I agree models have improved since then, but still.
> Importantly, survey results are not necessarily grounded in reality. There are reasons to be skeptical of people’s responses to counterfactual questions such as about AI’s effect on productivity — for instance, our study in early 2025 found that people overestimated AI’s effect on their time spent on tasks by 40 percentage points on average.
- your linked study
It contradicts this
1. Developers _self_ report a 1.5-2x increase in productivity 2. Empirical measurements show 20% slowdown
Now, that study is from 2025, so it may be outdated.
The study you linked and claim contradicts the 20% slowdown is only _self reported_ data, which the original study proves is unreliable and overestimates productivity.
In fact, the study _you linked_ says this:
> In 2 of these 7 cases we were able to view public outputs from the work completed using AI. We are confident that in both cases the participants are overstating their change in value produced as we understand it; at least, the enormously more valuable work is not externally visible.
> In 2 other cases, we are somewhat suspicious of large changes in the value of work produced because qualitative claims do not match our intuitive sense of agent capabilities.
> There is 1 instance where our best sense is that the respondent does indeed have agents doing an impressive quantity of productive work, although we suspect that this work is better captured by improved speed or quantity of output, not improved value of output.
> In the remaining 2 cases we lack sufficient qualitative information to meaningfully interpret.
(edits for formatting)
I have seen data going both ways.
From what I'm seeing at the Co I work for with ~1300 devs, productivity is more or less the same as it has always been. Projects aren't being done noticeably faster, there's no less bugs than before (if anything things are more unstable), the backlog remains endless. And we do all the crap that the AI hype tells us to do, we've got harnesses, complex agentic setups etc.
Great! A successful company, right? Ah, but then:
> we are making changes today that will result in the reduction of our overall workforce in Q4 by fewer than 4,000 jobs, representing less than 5 percent of our total employee base.
I wouldn't have put those two together so close, nor in the same announcement.
When sales were bad we didn't have budget cuts. Now that we have stable profit margins, we are cutting costs.
I agree, we've built an extremely inhumane economy in the US. And it feels like it's gotten worse since I entered the workforce in 1999. But calling out CEOs isn't going to change it - the only thing that will help is the force of law - higher taxes on executives and profits and stronger worker protections might make a dent.
The CEOs are the ones who are preventing those policies from being put in place.
As for the CEO the only moral response is to quit and force someone else to write this statement.
I've had to lay off a few people over the years. It's by far the worst part of my job. I loose sleep for weeks, can't eat, etc whenever it happens. If I was a normal part of my job, I'd have to quit because it's unhealthy.
These reason this statement and many like it are so heinous is because they do not even pretend to say they had no other choice in order for the company to survive.
And people who don't have jobs are a drain on society, unlike trucks. So we're left hoping those people find jobs quickly. And the impact on those individuals isn't great - they either lose or have to pay massively more OOP for health coverage, the stress has physical impacts, etc.
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?
These statements are so weird to be joined together. In other words, he was able to just say: "I am proud to announce that we are going to reduce the overall workforce.."
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.
I guess when they said "insert token" they meant "insert quarter" and by "insert quarter" they meant "insert your entire fiscal quarter".
Interesting decision considering they aren't at any sort of risk.
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.
25% unemployment doesn't seem like something to brag about.
Also, 75% placement seems wildly successful. Why isn’t Cisco also a head hunting firm?!
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)
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.
If you view it as a signing bonus it makes perfect sense. They want to get you in the door but also don't want you to take advantage of them by quitting immediately. In that case you wouldn't be entitled to it if you left voluntarily or were fired for cause but being laid off is entirely their choice.
This is bizarre. When you agree to take a $100k base salary, you don't get all $100k on the first day; your salary is split into pay periods, and if you leave earlier (voluntary or not) then you don't get the rest of the year's salary by default (severance aside).
I'll agree with you that RSUs for public companies should not have cliffs. But the idea that you agree to a large amount of compensation up-front (so that re-negotiation is infrequent) which is then paid out in portions on a regular basis is very standard, for both cash and equity.
Now to be clear, stock options are completely different, and in the vast majority of cases, I'd value those at zero or near-zero.
If you recognize something as wrong in principle when taken to the extreme shouldn't you also regard milder instances to be wrong as well? "Well sure, if you steal $1M that's obviously immoral but that guy only stole $100."
Of course in this case I recognize that there's quite a bit of uncertainty over how exactly the intent and representation of RSUs ought to be interpreted. I had always seen them as akin to a signing bonus but it's clear now that many people don't share that perspective.
And yes, obviously a contract can be declared void, but have consumer protection agencies started going after companies for not vesting immediately after a layoff? If not, then I don’t see how that’s relevant.
What a sick, deeply disconnected opener. Essentially a big FU to their employees. All these AI-first geniuses will eventually bring about is people intentionally slowing down their "productivity" while maxxing the shit out of the company token budget.
> We have important, impactful, and consequential work ahead. Your focus, resilience, and leadership are vital to our growth and relevance in FY27 and beyond.
The message here is - generate more with less, so we can layoff even more of you. At some point even the dumbest, most loyal corporate shills will start to get it.
I have actually started doing this. At first I was just slowing down productivity, but then I realized that if everyone is going to breathe down my neck about token use, I can just use a shitload and not utilize the output for anything. I consider this game theory optimal and possibly most ethical.
For context, I was most recently employed at a public tech company as a staff engineer. I was there for five years, got paid very well, and then was part of broad layoffs last year. I got a generous severance, and moved onto the next thing. I don't have any bitterness about it; I was selling my time and expertise to the company, and they no longer felt it was worth buying. I wouldn't have felt bad about leaving the job, so why should they feel bad about ending the employment?
Don't get me wrong, I know how stressful layoffs are. But all kinds of things in life are stressful (like a breakup, for example), but that doesn't imply you've been morally harmed in some way. You aren't entitled to keep your job for life!
Help me understand.
To try to steelman it best I can, maybe it's the feeling that a successful company should (ethically) pass on the success to the workers in some way. Like, my labor resulted in record revenue, but instead of a raise I'm getting fired. Feels bad.
Also if workers reacted game theoretically correctly to this situation, they would work just enough to not get fired for cause, since working hard is not rewarded. This is overall bad because if everyone starts doing the bare minimum it's not a pleasant place to work. So it's basically the company forcing the workplace into becoming worse, and actually harming themselves in the long run if everyone reacted that way, so the company is being shortsighted. So then the workers are mad because the company isn't even laying them off for "rational" reasons.
Once you accept that employment is just a roulette wheel that you spin quarterly, it becomes less frustrating, but also becomes more soul sucking.
I will say that I don't think game theory would dictate that you do as little as you can to not get fired, for at least a few different reasons.
First of all, that's pretty difficult to do, since you don't know in advance exactly what the dividing line is between who gets fired or laid off, and who doesn't.
Second, my experience has been that people who do take that approach are statistically more likely to get laid off, when compared to people who really push hard at work, trying to win. And even if the latter group does get laid off, they're much more competitive in the job market if they have a solid body of work and a network of former colleagues who view them favorably.
And third, having gone through a phase like that when I was getting divorced, it just feels shitty. I'd much rather pull my weight, regardless of whether my job continues in the future.
I do think that game theory would certainly imply that you should not have any loyalty towards your employer, and be willing to jump ship whenever it makes sense for you. But that has always been the case, at least in my lifetime.
Except last month I met someone who worked there and got TUPE (involuntary contractual transfer of employment) to Wipro (Indian outsourcerer) a few years ago.
So even though this corporation is owned by the employees, and is one of the best examples of this in the UK, it seems you also need some kind of management structure that is also immune to the usual senior leadership trolls to avoid it turning out to be shitty.
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.
While there are some pretty easy examples here, the easiest one is probably health care: The country that pays the most - by far - for 'average-ish' health care is the one where the system is privatized.
For example they tend to be more stable during crisis, because workers tend to vote for lowering salaries/benefits temporarily rather than doing layoffs. So they retain talent better. But they also tend to have difficulty to grow quickly, for obvious reasons.
Besides full on coops, there are also plenty of examples that are hybrids (partially worker owned).
> they would get their face eaten by other more efficient and ruthless corporations
You're possibly of assuming that a company needs to have an adversarial relationship to their workers in order to be competitive. I don't think that's generally true. This approach has advantages in specific situations, but disadvantages in others.
That’s exactly why you don’t need worker owned companies
I am Swedish, in Sweden, and we are a market economy combined with unions. Companies can do layoffs but for a 3month agreement, they have to notify basically, WARN.
Interesting use of fewer.
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.
If so many companies out there are doing layoffs, ignoring whether they are right/wrong or the motives being real or investor signaling, who's gonna benefit from it?
I would tend to think that talent being freed would imply that newcomers have a wider pool to find great contributors, but is it really happening?
I was laid off last year by one of the big tech companies, and they called me again for a rehire but I just dont trust them anymore even if they pay more. The layoff completely disrupted my life and I developed health issues because of the stress. Not worth the mental hassle.
I have seen a few workplaces which are more deliberate in their hiring and are not on 24x7x365 hire and fire mode unlike many of the big names. I would rather work in such a place rather than have 10 varieties of coffee and condiments in the pantry.
Frankly i'm pissed off.
Sorry for the people who pinned their hopes on cisco and were laid off yesterday. It's not easy.
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.
Wow this escalated quickly. What OP is saying is not anecdotal but true to every major US tech company. You can cope all you want, won't make a difference
I've worked for Indian managers several times and they all hired non-Indian people.
I have seen teams that are 100% Indians with a manager actively pushing Indian resumes and friends/family on top. They don’t play nice and by the DEI rules like a lot of Americans do.
But I have also seen amazing Indian managers that don’t act like this.
It’s ok to acknowledge that culturally Indians will favor themselves heavily. As bad as some of you want to make it sound like racism to close that conversation at all cost.
Wrong?
Ok good, don't come here then.
I think there's no reasoning with someone who only wants to deal in absolutes. Have a good day.
If you get a job at a good company on your own merit, you immediately start getting calls to "refer" your college friends, family, people from your region/state.
Refer here means refer it to HR and make some "setting" that you are guranteed to be hired based on your "reference". Naturally reference would mean that considering you are an employee you would know about open positions and may refer the position to your friend, who would later on get the job on his own merit considering that he is skilled for the position along with required experience.
But the case for Indian employees is that a reference entails to scam the company itself, by letting a less skilled person into the company by making a "setting" with HR etc, who may themselves be from the same region/state.
And if you try to be morally upright person to deny such a scammy "reference", you would then get to listen verbal abuses from your friends and even from your own family members. To deny such a reference leads to straight up "banishment".
Tip:- Among 100 Indians if you see, only 1 or 2 are actually good at their job (or by morality).
Jokes aside, if in 15 years you have worked with only few good Indian engineers, you probably have not yet worked at places with high talent density. I could understand if you had said you have (a) worked with many low quality engineers from India, or (b) worked with far more low quality engineers from India than high quality ones. But if, in absolute numbers, you haven't come across many good engineers from India, I can only infer than you probably haven't worked with very good engineers across the board.
It's a brilliant slogan, not just because virtue signalling, but because it spawns cross cultural factions, all selfishly united to defend it. At no further brainwashing cost to you.
You dare to attack it? You are out. Pack your stuff, and your shame.
Consolation? It would at least provide opportunities to those who always suffered injustice. Yet many who claim their right to a seat don't bother with competence.
It works, because the goal isn't more talents, we never lacked them: it's to pressure the overall labor cost.
By the way, I was wondering if learning Hindi would be the winning strategy here. Be the only white guy speaking Hindi, instant hire.
As for learning Hindi, it may help. But don't make the mistake of confusing cultural diversity with competence uniqueness. One expands the number or silos in the labor pool. The other justifies better pay.
Of course those difference aren't meant to object the dominant force. They are meant to counter act each others.
I see more push for integration than assimilation in the workplace.
Outsourcers don’t just compete on price, they compete on hours worked, and support given.
You do it in outsourcing contracts to a degree, just go further - holidays available, work hours, firing procedures, support and health services.
I do know that FDA inspectors travel to factories around the world to ensure they are compliant.
You’d remove the incentive to undercharge based on sweat shop practices, and then it’s only a cost of living arbitrage.
At that point you could set up in a lower CoL region in America over outsourcing.
I’m probably missing some incentives but I think this would work, and it’s an easy political sell.
Factory Safety standards I would make an argument for, you should see some of the things I see in developed nations.
> Please please America spend serious efforts developing your labour standards to a humane level instead of exporting them.
This is possibly the critical weakness in the idea. Maybe EU labour standards?
Firstly, This is how things are being done now - post colonialism. America has many laws and drives to avoid labour from sweatshops. This was a whole thing, it may not have been the most effective, but it was a political force that drove change.
Foxconn factories having workers commit suicide and place safety nets around buildings was a huge issue for Apple, and it resulted in changes to working conditions.
And as I mentioned before, the FDA inspects factories around the world to ensure that something sold within America that has the FDA approved label actually meets standards.
The idea is feasible I just don’t know how effective it will be. Political will can be found in America, and this affects only foreign outsourcing while supporting American workers. You don’t need political will in other nations.
On top of that, it moves competition away from a race to the bottom, which reinforces worker rights. If worker rights in India and America are at parity, then the attractiveness to move to America changes as well. America will remain attractive because of standard of living.
It’s an issue for outsourcing, and firms that buy outsourced services, but not that much of an issue.
One issue is that worker rights in America are kind of a low bar.
Yes you do if you want to change their labour laws.
You aren't changing the labour laws in their nations.
If firms want to trade with American firms, then they have to have certain work norms that they abide by in their contracts/.
America (or any country) can set whatever rules that it likes on firms that exist within its boundaries.
Those rules currently cover things like not taking bribes, not using sweatshop labour, not enabling terror groups - all which America is well within it's rights to set.
Those firms float contracts goes out, and international firms that can satisfy those rules, take them up.
If they don't want to, or cannot fulfill those contracts, they don't win the contract.
Cross border inspectors is mostly PR theater. Even if it was feasible, local verticals spill into others, so it would always be lower costs in less developed/regulated nations.
The scheme's motive is the overall effect. Lower wages. It doesn't care about white hetero, or black trans who happen to participate in paralympics.
https://www.newsweek.com/microsoft-layoffs-h1b-visa-applicat...
It makes no sense to lay off H1Bs only to immediately re-hire them afterwards.
How many non-h1bs did they hire in that fiscal year? How many h1bs did they lay off?
> It makes no sense to lay off H1Bs only to immediately re-hire them afterwards.
"It doesn't make sense to lay off programmers only to immediately rehire them afterwards", yet that has been happening for the past 4 years in every company.
It does if you stop seeing them as labels like 'H1Bs' or 'Programmers' and start seeing them as human beings with particular skills and strengths and weaknesses or members of particular teams (who get grown or cut at the very high-level whims of directors or VPs, without any regard for who is on them.)
Laying someone, or a team off happens for any one of a million reasons, most of which have fuck all to do with their immigration status.
You're mixing a combination of prejudice with a poor understanding of how businesses actually operate. When some corporate shithead chooses which team to cut in half, they aren't looking at the immigration status ratio in them. And for these mass layoffs, the team's direct and next level managers have next to zero say in them.
An L5 SWE performing at S gets paid about the same, and receives the exact same benefits, regardless of their status.
Actually, scratch that, the H1B is often awarded an extra benefit - sponsorship and legal fees for converting to a green card.
(Of course, it would be a problem if you think H1Bs are for hiring people who cannot be found domestically, but it does not seem like many people think that these days.)
H-1Bs also lose jobs in these layoffs, so there is an implicit reduction.
Any policies to help the people are labeled as "socialist" nowadays
Another round of layoffs at CrowdStrike would fit the pattern nicely.
Also, H1B are issued and requested by the company. Blame the system, not the immigrants .
Those extra hours? Only if the team really needs them.
Naturally this tends to be something only seniors see, thus ageism.
? I started a new job a year ago. Overtime pay in contract. I gladly work and report overtime as I get paid way more :) BUT there has to be a real reason, such as deadline, alarm/alert and such.
You people are just lost. But I am in Sweden with a union job hehehe
As a tip for others as well, even without an union it helps to be aware of the country labour laws even if superficially.
Personally the salary isn't worth it.
A synonymous but more gentle term to layoff.
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.
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?
Imagine the construction company said "record profits this year, thanks for building great houses, you're fired." The message wouldn't go over well. They are being outrageously cutthroat or hiding bad news.
I suspect you'll say the company owes them nothing in the US, which is true, but companies aren't/weren't always this stingy (or lying about financial strength), and you could have just said so without this strained analogy.
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.
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.
The people who just gave you a 20% increase in profits in a year need to go?
What is your option? Companies keep people forever? In what economy does this work?
Please ask the Poles, Baltics and Eastern EU, when did their living standards increase? Was it joining EU or communist Soviet?
in a market economy you layoff people when functions, business, products or roles actually become redundant (or fire for cause / underperformance) rather than waiting potentially months till the end of the financial year to do it in a mass firing.
when you need new headcount, inventory or inputs to your supply chain you don't wait 7 months selling no products to see how full year revenue looks before you decide
if you are managing a team and have poor performers or functions that are no longer necessary, you should bring them up to scratch or manage them out immediately, not wait 11 months till the next eoy layoff round. these stupid layoff rounds promote dysfunctional organisations with bloat and keeping around dead weight or overhiring to sacrifice people at the altar of the consultant / mba / earnings juicing layoff rounds.
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.
I think you could be. Just saying.
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!"
Contrast with the benefits of the path set onward. Small steps for humans, but a leap forward for humanity!
Watch the video above to get the reference :)
This is Cisco. They do layoffs every quarter and have been doing so since the early 2000s.
https://newsroom.cisco.com/c/r/newsroom/en/us/a/y2026/m05/ci...