Cisco Systems Inc. announced today that it is laying off up to 700 employees at its Silicon Valley headquarters in an effort to restructure, according to a source linked with the company.
In its announcement today, Cisco released a statement acknowledging the cuts, saying “this limited restructuring is part of our ongoing, targeted realignment of resources and was previously discussed on our fiscal second- and third-quarter 2009 earnings calls.”
In February, Cisco stated that it planned to cut 1,000 to 2,000 positions worldwide to undergo “limited” restructuring. John Chambers (CEO) had clarified that the company had no plans to make major job cuts in a statement made during a conference call. “In very direct terms, we are not going to consider a layoff at this point in time,” he said while defining the term “company layoff” narrowly to mean “ at least 10% of your workforce.” Cisco has roughly 66,560 employees worldwide. It has previously announced layoffs of 1500 to 2000 in its second quarter earnings call of February 4th.
Even so, Chambers added: “While there are no guarantees, we think the odds are reasonable that if we execute effectively as outlined in this call, that we may be able to avoid large downsizing events.”