Cisco to axe almost 700 jobs

Cisco has shared more details of its restructuring plan, following similar mass job cuts by vendors Amazon and Salesforce this week

Cisco Systems has announced it is cutting 673 jobs as part of the tech giant's previously announced plan to maximise cost savings.

The company is eliminating 371 jobs at its San Jose location, 222 jobs in Milpitas and 80 in San Francisco, according to Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notifications (WARN) filed with the state of California.

The majority of the layoffs that the company is planning will affect software engineers, technical engineers, hardware engineers, product managers and supervisors, the tech giant stated in three WARN letters filed with the state's Employment Development Department.

Cisco employees affected by the cuts were notified on Dec. 12 and have the option of selecting a termination date of Feb. 1, 2023, or March 13, 2023, the notice said.

"The termination will be effective on those dates or on a date within a 13-day period immediately following those dates," Cisco said in the notice.

"This action is expected to be permanent in nature."

The most recent Cisco layoffs come on the heels of the company's November announcement that it would lay off approximately 4,000 employees, or about 5 per cent of its workforce and reduce some of its real estate in an effort to right-size some of its business units, including the Collaboration segment.

San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco did not comment further on its most recently announced rounds of layoffs slated for this year.

"None of the affected employees are represented by a union, nor do any have bumping rights applicable to the positions in question," Saidah Grayson Dill, a Cisco deputy general counsel, said in the most recent WARN letters to California's Employment Development Department.

The Cisco layoffs follow several other tech giants in the Bay Area that have also announced job cuts at the start of 2023.

Amazon this week announced plans to lay off 18,000 people and neighbor Salesforce is also carrying out a round of job cuts that will likely eliminate 7,000 jobs or upwards of 10 percent of its workforce this month.