Adding up to the ongoing layoff spree, IT and networking multinational company Cisco has laid off close to 700 employees. This comes after the company fired nearly 4,000 employees in December.

Cisco sacked employees from many departments, including software and hardware engineering, programme management, product design, marketing, and others. 

A total of 371 staff are impacted at the company's San Jose, California, headquarters, 222 employees (mostly engineers and technical employees) are laid off in the nearby city of Milpitas, and 80 employees are being terminated from the company's San Francisco office, as per several media reports. 

This is not the first time Cisco has bid adieu to its employees. The company earlier laid off around 5 per cent of its workforce, which is more than 4,000 employees. 

In an exclusive conversation with People Matters, the company's spokesperson said, "We had a strong first quarter, and to capture the opportunities ahead, we continuously evaluate our business priorities to ensure we are investing for future growth and unlocking new opportunities while remaining financially disciplined."

"Along with our earnings results in November, we announced a rebalancing of investments including a limited business restructuring impacting our real estate portfolio and approximately 5% of our workforce starting in December. This is not about cost savings - in fact, we'll have roughly the same number of employees at the end of this fiscal year as we had when we started, and we will do everything we can to help place affected employees in other open roles. We didn't take this decision lightly, and we will offer that impacted extensive support, including generous severance packages," added Cisco's spokesperson. 

Top tech companies like Meta, Amazon, Twitter and others are also firing thousands of employees.