Cisco Job Cuts Impacting More than 670 Workers in California

Cisco is planning job cuts targeting more than 670 employees in California.

The IT giant disclosed the job cuts in Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices with the California Employment Development Department. It’s cutting 371 workers in San Jose, 222 workers in Milpitas and 80 in San Francisco.

Cisco notified the impacted employees on Dec. 12. The employees have the option of choosing a termination date of either Feb. 1 or March 13.

Among the impacted jobs are engineering technical leaders, software engineers, marketing managers, product designers and more.

Cisco Job Cuts Will Be Permanent

Cisco expects the layoffs to be permanent. Any impacted employees on approved leaves of absence will be laid off 14 days following their return. None of the affected employees are represented by a union, nor do any have bumping rights applicable to the positions in question.

Cisco sent us the following statement:

“We had a strong first quarter, and to capture the opportunities ahead, we continuously evaluate our business priorities to ensure we are investing for future growth and unlocking new opportunities while remaining financially disciplined. Along with our earnings results in November, we announced a rebalancing of investments including a limited business restructuring impacting our real estate portfolio and approximately 5% of our workforce starting in December. This is not about cost savings. In fact we’ll have roughly the same number of employees at the end of this fiscal year as we had when we started, and we will do everything we can to help place affected employees in other open roles. We didn’t take this decision lightly, and we will offer those impacted extensive support, including generous severance packages.”

In November, Cisco said the restructuring plan will “enable further investment in key priority areas.” That restructuring included layoffs, as Cisco revealed that it plans to incur pre-tax charges for expenses that include severance.

The company said it will execute the restructuring plan in the second quarter of fiscal year 2023, which started Nov. 1, and spend about $600 million in severance and other termination benefits, as well as real estate-related charges. Approximately $300 million of the charges will occur in the second quarter of fiscal year 2023, and another $200 million in the second half of the fiscal year.

Cisco reported strong gains in cybersecurity and software in the first quarter of its fiscal year 2023. Overall, it reported $13.6 billion in revenue. That was the highest quarterly revenue it has ever reported.