Cisco to lay off over 4,000 employees in a 'rebalancing' move

SAN FRANCISCO: Joining the Big Tech layoff season, networking giant Cisco is reportedly laying off over 4,000 employees, or about 5 per cent of its workforce, in a "rebalancing" act while "rightsizing certain businesses".

According to a report in the Silicon Valley Business Journal, the move will result in approximately 4,100 jobs cut at Cisco which has a 83,000-strong workforce globally.

In its first quarter earning report (Q1 2023) this week, Cisco reported $13.6 billion in revenue, up 6 per cent year over year.

Chuck Robbins, Chairman and CEO of Cisco, did not divulge any detail on laying off employees, saying he would "be reluctant to go into a lot of detail 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 told the analysts.

Cisco Chief Financial Officer Scott Herren described the move as a "rebalancing" act.

"Don't think of this as a headcount action that is motivated by cost savings. This really is a rebalancing. As we look across the board, there are areas that we would like to invest in more, Chuck just talked about them. Security, our move to platforms and more cloud-delivered products," Herren said during the company's earnings call.

He said that if we look at the number of jobs that the company has opened in the areas that it is trying to invest in, "it is just slightly lower than the number of people that we believe will be impacted".

"We're going to be working really hard to help match our employees to those roles to the extent there's a skill match. So, we're going to work really hard at that," said the company CFO.

Cisco joins a growing list of tech companies like Meta, Twitter, Salesforce and others which have laid off thousands of employees to weather the rough macroeconomic conditions.