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Cisco to lay off more than 4,000 employees to focus on artificial intelligence

https://nypost.com/2024/02/15/business/cisco-to-lay-off-more-than-4000-employees-to-focus-on-ai/

Cisco revealed plans to slash its headcount by 5% — roughly 4,250 employees across the tech behemoth’s global workforce — as it steps up its focus on artificial intelligence. San …

Cisco to lay off more than 4,000 employees to focus on artificial intelligence::Cisco revealed plans to slash its headcount by 5% on Wednesday, which will affect roughly 4,250 employees across the tech behemoth's global workforce.

40 comments

MeepsTheBard

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"AI isn't good enough to replace workers yet, but it's good enough to convince CEOs it can."

ChocoboRocket

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AI isn't good enough to replace workers, but it could probably replace C-suite executives at astronomical savings to the company

demonsword

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One of the truest things I know about AI is: "we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job"

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

umbrella

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i hope they rightfully lose a lot of money over this

NotMyOldRedditName

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/16/air-canada-chatbot-lawsuit

Convinced the Air Canada CEO who just lost a court case over it

herrcaptain

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With all these companies pivoting to the creation of AI products, this seems like a great opportunity for someone to step in and create ... Checks notes ... absolutely anything else.

MajorHavoc

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I can't wait to watch these companies all get their marketshare eaten by "ToddCo", a company where a guy named Todd figures out that be can poach Starbucks employees and get better results than these AI deliver.

The sixty minutes interview is going to be epic:

"Then it struck me! Sure, James writes my name wrong on my cup every day, but he's never once misjudged how many limbs I have!"

N0body

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"Our company is invested in the dynamic strategy of using people to solve problems. Person Intelligence or PI, as we call it. We know our strategy is out of favor now, but given that it has worked consistently throughout all of human history, we are hopeful for the future."

ThePrivacyPolicy

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Like all the companies I've worked for that have off-shored work, and then later brought it back on shore after realizing the horrible quality work and drop in delivery times their attempts to save money resulted in.

BrianTheeBiscuiteer

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poach Starbucks employees and get better results than these AI deliver.

Newsflash: Starbucks coffee already isn't that great. Then they'll take the savings from firing all the baristas and buy out "ToddCo".

Liome

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How do you lay off people to focus on something?
Did they went "daaaamn, we want to focus on AI, but we already have people for that job, let's fire them"?

gt24

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>> "We are an AI company now! Hey Bob, do you know AI?"
## "No... ?"
>> "FIRED!  Joe, do you know AI?"
## "I can learn about..."
>> "FIRED! Bill, do you know AI?
## "... yes?"
>> "You can stay. I'm heading to the next floor to ask if they know AI!"

BrianTheeBiscuiteer

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They asked ChatGPT for a good explanation of why people are getting laid off.

Shadow

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Really kind of them to let their investors know first, rather than the people impacted. I bet morale there is wonderful.

normalexit

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One of my friends is a developer there, they knew vaguely it was going to happen after a town hall meeting, but didn't know who was going to make the cut.

Grass

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Have any of these companies gotten anywhere after dumping people to focus on ai whatever that even means?

dylanTheDeveloper

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They'll be fine for a time until competition emerges and their products become obsolete.

And thus the cycle begins again

sebinspace

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I’m not really sure Cisco would fall even if the company fell. Cisco isn’t just a company that makes networking equipment, they’ve been influencing the architecture and paradigms behind the Internet for so long that their influence would be felt for years, even if they were to disappear today..

afraid_of_zombies

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What about juniper?

BrianTheeBiscuiteer

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No matter what happens they'll tell investors it was a huge success.

normalexit

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Their stocks are going up with every layoff and costs are going down. It's working marvelously for the executives.

Is it sustainable? God I hope not.

phillaholic

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I don’t know, but Microsoft’s free copilot stuff is so not useful that it doesn’t make me feel the need to pay them for the business product

captain_samuel_brady

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I paid the $30 today for their 365 Pilot and asked it to summarize a meeting for me that was recorded and it couldn’t even find the meeting.

But hey, I’m sure Cisco will do a better job. Everybody I know keeps asking about Cisco’s AI. Maybe it will finally give a good answer as to why I should pay a subscription to own an access point.

drislands

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I'm in agreement that this stuff is painfully useless.

But "it couldn't even find the meeting" sounds more like a configuration problem and less like a comment on the product's quality.

phillaholic

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From time to time Teams doesn’t show me a teams meeting that I have on my outlook calendar, so I’d believe it.

captain_samuel_brady

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I’m not even sure how it’s configured. I added the license, added the app to Teams, and asked it to summarize a meeting that I knew had been recorded. When it couldn’t find the meeting, I asked it for a list of meetings that I had on that day. It responded with a partial list, not including the correct meeting. The correct meeting was visible in both the Outlook and Teams calendars.

phillaholic

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That’s my bad. I was trying to say it was so not useful. Poor wording on my part.

8ender

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I feel like the smart move is to find AI tools that are actually good and help your workers be more productive, then use all that extra productivity to smoke your competitors but what do I know I’ve only been in management 15 years now.

NotMyOldRedditName

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That's how you get thrown out a 6th story window

MajorHavoc

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AI is going to be awesome, and I am so down for it.

But today, the emperor has no clothes.

Butt naked.

Not a fucking scrap of clothing is on that guy.

Good luck Cisco, you're going to need it.

sonymegadrive

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Has “laying off staff to focus on AI “ become a common euphemism for “we hired too many people”?

realitista

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No, it's a euphemism for "screw the people who are left, we need a quick reduction in our cost structure so that we can take bigger bonuses"

asdfasdfasdf

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I mean, I'm all for reducing cost and optimizing efficiency. We've been doing that in every industry since the dawn of time. Coal miners hopefully don't exist in a decade from now.

But it's stupid to think AI is already there for most things, and it's bad to lay off people who could easily be working on things AI can't.

danielfgom

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Another idiot company who seriously thinks this will work. All that will happen is the remaining employees will have to work twice as hard to keep things afloat but the CEO will give Ai the credit....

BrianTheeBiscuiteer

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Padme: But then you'll hire some back right? Right?

thorbot

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I stopped ordering Cisco hardware for my customer’s stacks. Too expensive and they are pushing everyone towards subscription models. If you don’t have $300 a month your wireless access points brick themselves. Fuck that noise. Fuck Cisco.

Asafum

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So where are the 300,000+ AI computer companies that all these tech workers across the whole sector will so easily just migrate to?

The argument is always "the new scary tool will just come with its own needs that need to be serviced which is where the displaced workers will go."

Yeah... IDK about that. The coal miners were supposed to be retraining to be programmers, we just decapitated that idea, so now what?

I never had much of a great view of the future, but it only seems to be getting worse...

dylanTheDeveloper

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The coal miners will be mining for burgers at McDonald's

flambonkscious

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But what will the burger flippers move to?

Nomecks

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This is probably them trimming their Splunk acquisition

>> "We are an AI company now! Hey Bob, do you know AI?" ## "No... ?" >> "FIRED! Joe, do you know AI?" ## "I can learn about..." >> "FIRED! Bill, do you know AI? ## "... yes?" >> "You can stay. I'm heading to the next floor to ask if they know AI!"