Cisco, Oracle, IBM Workers ‘Anxious’ About Job Cuts
Cisco, Oracle, and IBM topped a list of companies with employees that constantly feel anxious about losing their jobs, according to a recent survey conducted by Blind and released by job board Dice.
The survey found that 62% of Cisco employees said that “yes, I am constantly anxious” about getting fired, which was just ahead of the 55% of Oracle employees with the same response. Half of IBM employees said they had the same feeling.
In parsing through those numbers, Dice Insights wrote that the Cisco numbers were likely high for a reason. He pointed to the company recently coping to having cut about 3,500 jobs since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which came despite Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins pledging to not cut any jobs because of the pandemic.
“Other companies have also engaged in restructuring, with varying amounts of layoffs, which no doubt is making technologists nervous about their prospects going forward,” Kolakowski wrote.
VMware, Google, and Microsoft employees were slightly less on edge, as a majority of their employees that were surveyed expressed that “sometimes the feeling comes and goes.”
When combining those two response choices, 100% of Oracle employees expressed some level of anxiousness, 92% of Microsoft employees were working under that cloud, and 90% of workers at IBM noted they feared for their jobs at some point.
One caveat to the Dice/Blind report is the decidedly lack of depth in some of the survey base. IBM, for instance, included responses from only 10 employees, while Oracle included only 11 employees, and Cisco just 13 employees. However, the Google results came from 97 employees, 82 Microsoft employees responded, and VMware was represented by 21 employees.
Despite the concern, a recent Dice technology job report found “job stabilization” in the third quarter of this year, and a sector unemployment rate of just 3.5%, which is well below the national average.
It noted an increase in job postings tied to cybersecurity, systems, and architecture, and hiring trends shifting in favor of remote jobs. And similar to what has been generally reported, major technology hubs like San Francisco and New York are continuing to drive hirings, “there’s also been a substantial amount of job postings in up-and-coming cities such as Raleigh and Charlotte, [North Carolina].”
End Note: This story has not been edited by SightsIn Plus, published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text.
