In early June, dutifully doing its part to virtue signal along with the rest of the world, Cisco Systems hosted an "all hands on deck" meeting on race, hosted via videoconference. In the comments of the online forum, visible to everyone, some workers questioned the Black Lives Matter movement and were subsequently fired from their jobs, proving once again that you can have an opinion, as long as it's the right opinion.
Chief Executive Officer Chuck Robbins talked with Ford Foundation President Darren Walker, who is Black, and Bryan Stevenson, a Black lawyer and author who founded the Equal Justice Initiative, during the company's June 1 meeting in front of 30,000 employees, according to Bloomberg.
Several people spoke out online against Black Lives Matter during these online forums. For example, one employee wrote: “Black lives don’t matter. All lives matter,” while another wrote that BLM "reinforces racism". A third employee commented: “People who complain about racism probably have been a racist somewhere else to people from another race or part of systematic oppression in their own community!”
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-WiscoDave
Why not start at the top?
ReplyDelete“According to Cisco’s (NASDAQ: CSCO) latest diversity report, 3.8% of its overall workforce is Black, along with 2.2% of its ‘leadership and people managers.’ No board members are Black: Cisco’s report states the board is 90% white and 10% Asian."
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2020/07/17/cisco-fires-workers-racial-comments-diversity-race.html
Several years ago, my employer (very large) decided to implement diversity training. They started with warehouse and dock workers. Part of the training was role playing with people of different races facing each other, knees almost touching, and each playing the race of the other to "better understand their feelings". Most of the initial sessions ended in fist fights. The classes were cancelled and never restarted.
ReplyDeleteSo I work for a large corp.. We've had a company 'town hall' where the 'executive management' repeatedly referred to the Floyd issue as 'the murder of George Floyd'. What ever happened to the concept of innocent until proven guilty?? We also had another smaller town hall for my specific business unit.. Again, management referred to the issue as 'the murder of George Floyd' and one of the 'leads' went so far as to suggest we 'consider how we vote'. There was third one but I skipped it.. If I think this is fucked up then I figure half of my coworkers feel the same way but, what's next? Employment being contingent on who you vote for? Whether you own firearms? Who you associate with?
ReplyDelete** Disclaimer: I'm actually a pretty dark individual (Sicilian and American Indian among other things, who is often assumed to be something other than Caucasian (Yes I get usually get pulled out of line by TSA when I travel). And no, I didn't post this on company time so fuck off!
A thousand years ago I had a SeaBee friend from Louisiana who was a really dark Italian. Small guy too. He was like dark Mexicans (prietos they are called) and there is no negro blood in them. They are all hard working and good people.
DeleteNow some of the few hispanics I have met from Puerto Rico are mixed negroe, you can tell from the way they act.
Fortunately, I retired in '98 and missed the worst of it. Our diversity training was just small groups of half-dozen people presenting the "difficulties" faced by a spouse or friend of a different race. Then we were each asked how we identified. I identified as "White, Southern, male". No problem. Actually, a normally hostile Black woman became friendly. That was long ago and far away.
ReplyDeleteThere's going to be a bunch of wrongful termination and hostile workplace lawsuits that are going to cost Cisco millions. Get woke, go broke.
ReplyDeleteThe only problem there is a boycott probably won't work as Cisco has major market share in network infrastructure at the corporate and national (and not just US) levels which is the lion's share of their business. That doesn't make them any less dumb, however. Now Huawei is licking their chops at a stupid blunder by an another American company.
Nemo
Company I work at is now starting to sell BLM apparel to the employees. Fortunately I've been working remotely for them for the past 8 years and do not have to go into the office. The IT department where I work is mostly Indians anyways.
ReplyDeleteIf BLM licensed its logo, it should be raking in some capitalist dollars. Or maybe all monies will go to poverty-stricken neighborhoods.Yeah, that's it.
Delete“The IT department where I work is mostly Indians anyways.”
DeleteYou mean the native Americans?
Buddha
Don't forget: you need to be a participating member of Die Nanzi Partei before you are allowed to have a job.
ReplyDeleteIs negro worship ever going to run its course?
ReplyDeleteI've been in the tech business for decades and deal with Cisco dudes all the time. I thought they were smarter than that. I'd think that after the James Damore debacle at google, they'd know that a "Dialog" isn't what they want. They want you to nod in affirmation like a good comrade. Don't say 'nuthin just do it.
ReplyDeleteThe company I work for was bought by bigrainbowcorp. In an instant, the camaraderie cultivated in our group over 20 years was shattered as they split us up to different divisions. Before the recent silliness, the CEO's shtick was "We have to get more women into tech!". Puzzling, since I'm on calls all day long, 2/3 of those on the calls are women. Then, After St. George died of Fentanyl under a cop's knee his thing was - Michael Brown was shopping..Ahmaud Arbery was jogging...Travon Martin was just buying skittles. I've never seen such a supposedly smart person so deluded. Now, he want's more brothers in Tech, as if amazing code was in their heads if only the honkies would lift their boot off their noggins. I was gobsmacked
This is a worldwide tech corporation, 20K+ employees all over the world. All colors, all races and sexes work here. We have absolutely nothing to apologize for. I was gobsmacked.
I'll be looking to go elsewhere. Until then, Smile and wave, boys, smile and wave.
"Now, he want's more brothers in Tech, as if amazing code was in their heads if only the honkies would lift their boot off their noggins"
DeleteHeh. Just like we would have Chinamen NBA starters and male pornstars if only it wasn't for white racism. Because a guy with a three-inch, er, vertical leap, is qualified for either job.
Couple of weeks ago some fool (of a white girl, naturally) at work proposed a teleconference/Zoom thing where all would "gather" and observe 8:46 of silence in memory of Saint George, to be followed by "voluntary" expressions of anti-racism. This was enthusiastically endorsed by senior management and promulgated throughout the division. I somehow failed to get the memos and tragically missed the event. I somehow also failed to notice the two text messages that were sent to me personally regarding the upcoming worship of St George. Afterwards one of my people asked me if I would be "in trouble" for missing the revival. I asked her if she thought my attendance would have enhanced the event. She thought about it. "Oh God. They would have fired you." Yep.
Now the company has put out an email poll ("your answers will be completely anonymous") asking for comments on BLM. Yeah, being candid and honest on that one sounds like a good idea.
Hell, I forgot the best part!
DeleteWe had our FY kickoff. Every executive crowed about what we've done, and what they have coming up. Every one, even the CEO, finished their talks by a struggle session on what they are doing for diversity and inclusion.
Back in the day I was an Sales Engineer at bigtelecomcorp. Every customer team had a 'diversity director', usually a black woman. To this day, I have no idea what these people's roll was, other than to attend meetings and gurn like an imbecile. I've never seen anyone so happy to be in a bullshit meeting. It was mystifying how one could work 'diversity' into selling gear. I think they had them around for the brochures and powerpoints. Because anyone that actually did anything there was a white or asian male.
Ah...virtue signalling from corporate hypocrites.
ReplyDeleteHey Cisco - you're on the list!
https://64.media.tumblr.com/4a2bbf001fc04e47ebaa472c276ca856/bbccb172cf878ac8-f5/s1280x1920/545b87626de6adcbef47942c4273176b6d5cdc55.jpg
Above is a list of companies that as of 2019 the ASPI identified as either benefiting from the Uyghur slave labor.
This isn't meant to shame anyone because most all of us have a few products from this list.
These companies will not tell us they are using slave labor. We have to be more vigilant in what we buy and what company we buy from.
The corporation that I spent over 35 years at, also helping to build the company from a job shop into one of the biggest suppliers of high quality steel to the investment cast industry. That includes both air melted and vacuum melted, for things like gun parts and frames, barrels, etc. to boat propellers, artificial hip and knee parts, to the aerospace industry.
ReplyDeleteWe were bought several times, by companies trying to make money off of us. The last company that bought us, when I was there, had yearly meetings with the company lawyer who spelled out, to the letter, about both racial expectations, and also sexual harassment issues.
They got into such things as, you could not have a calendar with pictures of women on each month, even if they were fully clothed, and not meant to be sexual in any way. Even if it was just showing women standing looking out to sea, fully clothed, if there were no men, boop, you could not have it. Forget about having any kind of pictures of white people unless the blacks represented were in much higher concentrations than actually existed in the real world.
I worked 3rd shift by that time, to get away from the idiots in management. I was #2 on the seniority list of around 120 people or so, on the floor, with a similar number in the front office. Yet I volunteered to go on nights, due to the ridiculous rules that management came out with.
They also introduced the program of work process that Toyota uses called Kaizen, meaning the process of continual improvement. The problem is, you cannot implement that sort of a method of work improvement that includes the idea of having things like a painted board for all of your tools, so you don't spend time chasing down your crescent wrench, or a certain sized screw driver you use quite often. Things to try and get rid of waste involving time, scrap, etc.
It also means to get rid of things that you don't plan on using immediately, sometimes called Just In Time. The idea of bringing in engines just in time to put in cars that are ready for them, within no more than 4 hours, or something on either side of that goal. Avoid excess inventory, as it costs money. The problem with my old shop was that the management only bought into the idea partway. They loved the idea of having a board that showed your tools and where they went. The loved the idea of not having any dust or dirt, or dirty corners, that were not swept every day. In other words, they liked the idea of putting rules onto the workers. But they brought in raw materials based not upon when they would use them, but on cost savings, for things like raw cobalt, or pure nickel, chrome, ferro/chrome, moly, columbium, etc.
A system like that, which our company called 5S, can only be useful if the management buys into it completely, and tries to incorporate it on all levels, not just in the floor workers.
Also, the company had bi weekly meetings with the employees to both report on how well we were doing on meeting company goals and to report on injuries. It got to where I quit going, since I would ask questions, and the bosses would get mad, being pinned down on things that they didn't like to have to answer.
pigpen51
Worked BIG company, long, long ago. Our little part of it was circling the drain like a smelly turd that wouldn't go down, so luckily we weren't subjected to too much of the diversity shit, other than having to train low IQ AA hires who would move on inside of 2 years. Yet the mid-level management mentality was beyond idiotic when they were tasked with implementing new "fixes" that did nothing but destroy decades of good will and extra mile performance by most employees. I had a reputation with the HR hacks when they themselves were running some kind of half assed training program of not paying attention and asking embarrassing questions. Toward the end they could have had monkeys running the place. Come to think of it, they did.
ReplyDeleteYears ago Cisco supposedly had a policy that they would fire/lay off/let go ~5% of their head count every year. The thinking was they had made about that percentage hiring mistakes, so why not get rid of the people who weren't going to work out. As time went on I came to believe that they probably were on to something good for their business. Since they were acquiring smaller companies all the time back then it probably was a good move to jettison deadwood that came in with the big $$ purchases.
ReplyDeleteMan I'm glad I'm out, I'd never survive in today's workplace.
ReplyDeleteWhat it will be like in twenty years I hate to guess. God help us.