Cisco, Google Latest to Announce Layoffs

Cisco Systems announced it plans to lay off hundreds of employees in the San Francisco Bay area next month, the latest tech company to conduct mass layoffs. 

The company said it would lay off 227 San Jose employees and 123 Milpitas employees by Oct. 16, 2023, according to documents from the California Employment Development Department. 

The documents indicated that the 350 employees were notified of the eliminations on July 17, 2023, and could choose Aug. 31 or Oct. 16 as their last day of work. Though the employees were notified in July, the layoff notices were received by the EDD on Tuesday, September 12.

Nearly 50 positions at Cisco's Milpitas facility and about 70 positions at the company's San Jose facility were cut. According to the WARN notice, the largest number of layoffs at both offices were software engineering positions. 

The news comes after the company cut nearly 700 positions in the Bay Area earlier this year, including 70 layoffs at its San Francisco facility, for “business restructuring,” SFGATE previously reported. In a November 2022 EDD notice, Cisco said it planned to cut 4,000 employees around the world. 

Tech Industry Layoffs

Cisco is just the most recent in a string of tech companies to announce similar layoffs. Google also announced it would lay off hundreds of employees this week, delivering the news on Wednesday, September 13. Other mass layoffs recently in the Bay Area included Intel, Wish and LinkedIn.

Earlier this month, Rapid7 announced a restructuring plan following disappointing second-quarter results, resulting in the layoffs of about 18% of the company’s workforce.

Similarly, AppSec firm Snyk laid off 128 people in April. Cloud security vendor Zscaler announced layoffs after what it called a rough fiscal second quarter. Software tools giant Atlassian laid off 5% of its workforce as it “shifted priorities.” 

Accenture axed 19,000 jobs last month, and Veeam laid off 3.8% of its workforce. 

Oxford, U.K.-based platform security vendor Sophos in January laid off 10% of its staff, or 450 workers while San Francisco-based identity security giant Okta axed 5% of its workers – or roughly 300 employees in February.

Layoffs.fyi, a website that has documented tech company layoffs since the COVID-19 pandemic began, reported that 1,012 tech companies globally have let workers go this year, totaling 235,639 employees.