Cisco Layoffs To Total More Than 200 In Bay Area

On the heels of the news that the company is refreshing its channel leadership, Cisco is cutting 221 workers in the San Francisco Bay Area by mid-October.

Cisco Systems is cutting 221 workers from its Milpitas, Calif., campus and at its site in San Francisco, the tech giant revealed in two August Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) filings.

The latest cuts include 157 employees in Milpitas and 64 roles being cut in San Francisco. The positions will be eliminated by Oct. 13, according to the WARN notices.

The news of the job cuts comes days after Chair and CEO Chuck Robbins said the company would not be eliminating jobs due to AI in an interview with CNBC.

[Related: Cisco Channel Chief Rodney Clark Out; SVP Of Partner Sales Org Tim Coogan In To Lead Global Channel]

“I don’t want to get rid of a bunch of people right now. I don’t want to get rid of engineers,” Robbins said. “I just want our engineers we have today to innovate faster and be more productive, and that gives us a competitive advantage.”

Cisco last August, however, cited AI among the reasons for cutting 7 percent of its workforce at the time.

Cisco did not respond to CRN’s request for comment on the latest round of layoffs.

A variety of roles from junior level to vice president titles are among those facing the most recent round of layoffs, according to reports.

The WARN notices were filed in the state of California following Cisco’s fiscal fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings call earlier this month. For Cisco’s fourth-quarter 2025, which ended July 26, revenue was up 8 percent to $14.63 billion compared with the same period a year ago. Cisco posted non-GAAP earnings per share of 94 cents, a 14 percent increase compared with a year ago, and non-GAAP net income of $2.8 billion in the fourth fiscal quarter of the year, which was up 12 percent year over year.

Cisco earlier this week also announced to partners that Rodney Clark, its global channel chief of less than two years, is leaving the company. In his place, effective Monday, is Tim Coogan, Cisco’s former senior vice president of U.S. commercial business, who has taken on the senior vice president role overseeing Cisco’s Global Partner Sales organization.

At the end of Cisco's fiscal 2024 last summer, the company had approximately 90,400 global employees, according to Cisco’s own workforce demographic statistics.