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  • Hacker News
  • "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.

    by jjtheblunt
  • XCOM (Executive Committee) was my least favorite at one of the soulless corps i worked at years ago.
    by geekone
  • 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/
    by dcrazy
  • 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!"
    by 0xbadcafebee
  • It's 100% normal these days. My employer did the same thing in January.
    by alistairSH
  • 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.

    by dcrazy
  • > 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.

    by ralph84
  • Maybe they found something outside the program, but your cynical take is way more entertaining.
    by alexandre_m
  • 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?!

    by apgwoz
  • 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.
    by absolutewinner
  • False
    by cheevly
  • Alas this happens in all FAANG layoffs too, some lucky people get to received one more vest but nothing close to all unvested RSUs
    by boguscoder
  • In the past week, we've had:

    * Build for the future (Cloudflare)

    * Our path forward (Cisco)

    What else did we miss?

    by penguin_booze
  • The journey ahead (next known layoff company)
    by Xunjin
  • 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.

    by darksim905
  • > 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.

    by protocolture
  • Wall St gonna Wall St
    by marcus_holmes
  • 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 .

    by maxdo
  • 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".

    by kotaKat
  • 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.

    by siren2026
  • > We have important, impactful, and consequential work ahead

    writing so bad claude could do better

    by ciscociscocisco
  • I really battled to read his memo. The it was written in English, but a very odd style indeed.
    by RachelF
  • > It's not just impactful, it's consequential
    by izucken
  • 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..."
    by SpicyLemonZest
  • "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?

    by HDBaseT
  • 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.."

    by redbell
  • This type of corporate behaviour should be highlighted as unacceptable. I’ll personally steer away from anything cisco from now on.
    by lexoj
  • 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.
    by 3D30497420
  • > 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.

    by davidcollantes
  • 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.
    by alistairSH