Cisco, a US-based tech conglomerate has laid off nearly 700 employees in the US. On January 7, Cisco confirmed to the news portal SFGATE that it has cut nearly 700 positions in the Bay Area, including 80 in its San Francisco offices in the US.
According to the news portal, this layoff is part of the company’s “limited business restructuring” announced in November last year. The report said that at Cisco’s headquarters in San Jose, 371 workers were affected, including two Cisco vice presidents, while at the Milpitas office, 222 workers were asked to go, primarily engineers and technical employees.
Cisco spokesperson told SFGATE in November that the layoffs were not “about reducing our workforce.”
She told SFGATE in an emailed statement, “we'll have roughly the same number of employees at the end of this fiscal year as we had when we started.”
According to reports, the networking company is laying off 5 per cent of its workforce, or over 4,000 people. More than 52 per cent of its global staff is located outside of the US.
In its Q1, Cisco reported $13.6 billion in revenue, up 6 per cent year-over-year. At the time Chuck Robbins, Chairman, and CEO of Cisco, had said that he "be reluctant to go into a lot of detail (regarding layoffs) here until we're able to talk to them. I would say that what we're doing is rightsizing certain businesses".
"You can just assume that we're going to - we're not actually - there's nothing that's a lower priority, but we are rightsizing certain businesses," he said.
Cisco in November said, "we didn't take this decision lightly, and we will offer those impacted by extensive support, including generous severance packages.”
There has been widespread layoff in tech companies including Meta, Twitter, and Amazon. Amazon on Thursday announced that it would slash more than 18,000 jobs from its workforce, citing an ‘uncertain economy'.