The Cost of Cisco’s Company Meeting

This morning, traffic was the worst its ever been for me coming to work.  It was over 2 hours, and everyone in the office is complaining.  Even those with what is usually only a 10 minute commute suffered for 90 minutes or more.  The cause?  Cisco decided to have a company meeting at the Shoreline Amphitheater this morning.

According to the radio, 30,000 Cisco employees descended upon Shoreline this morning.  I suspect that number is inflated, but regardless, traffic in all directions was completely snarled from 8am to 11am.  Several people decided to bail on work altogether.

I don’t care much about how much this meeting cost Cisco, as they did it on their own.  But what did they cost the two other major employers in the Shoreline area?

Assuming the average employee makes about $100K per year here, and assuming the average employee was delayed about 1 hour, and assuming about 80% of employees were impacted:

Microsoft, 1500 employees: $60,000

Google, 8000 employees: $320,000

Ouch.  And we don’t even work for Cisco. 

If you had trouble getting to work today, please link to this article with “Cisco Sucks” in the link text!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *