1. No headcount in US. Manager given headcounts in India, Eastern Europe, etc. 2. Management forces ICs to take vacation. 3. Goes from X days of paid vacation to unlimited paid time off 4. You're not coding or architecture work as a manager or IC 5. You're a senior IC but doing junior IC work 6. Last year's layoffs happened around the same time Anything else I've missed? Just my observation from Cisco layoffs in 2021, 2023 and this year.
Typically, management dodges any question about layoffs instead of answering explicitly on the negative.
“Management forces ICs to take vacation.” ? What??
Yeah. We get 20 days of vacation per year, but 4 days have to be used on the week of July 1 and some on last week of December
May be to avoid unused PTO payout
Cusco did 4200 layoffs just last week. Now chill man if u didnt get hit
I think the #1 sign you’re going to get laid off is you can’t write in clear, complete sentences, or re-read what you write before posting it.
7. Your company is buying Splunk for 28 billion CASH!!!
lol. Well according to our very industrious ELT it’s cash and debt. But frankly not sure I trust them - they may have right sized the workforce to pay for splunk too.
Debt is even worse.
You are describing my position right now except the vacation ones. My manager did let me know layoffs for us are possible..... 😳
7. Hiring freeze 8. Contractors being cut
Contractors on furloughs T&E cut down, including off sites Crappy holiday gifts Someone in your team left but role isn’t backfill, hiring freeze Your office misc Ariba POs are scrutinized “that’s a very expensive standing desk” “why do you need this fancy mouse” Your manager is never available, endless budget meetings….they’re talking about how to cut. If you have any friend in Finance and they tell you layoffs are coming they’re already budgeting for it. Same with HR. This is easy - your company miss forecast revenue and or revenue goes down. Employees are where they head to dispose off. Employee costs is usually the biggest expense for companies so cutting cost there will make the biggest dent that’s why they head there first. Cutting travel etc isn’t gonna make much difference. If you were the only one who does task A, all of a sudden your manager wants John smith to do it with you and join the meetings for whatever bogus reason, buckle up you are on the LR list and John smith is the backup. Same with if any of your major responsibilities got assigned to a different person for a bogus reason…. You’re on the LR list. Also - before you take any job offer, look into how the company’s revenues are. If they’re poor first the offer will be crappy, stingy negotiations and high chances of LR.
Your company revamps performance review processes, and HR people tell you how great it is while their face looks like they are in a hostage video.
Remember, these goals aren't really for us. They're for you.
My manager doesn’t even code lol but his skip implemented a caching system within few hours