Cisco 2024 layoffs, anyone impacted?

Is it true that CISCO is going to lay off 7% of its employees? Why are there so many layoffs happening in these times? Is technology taking our jobs?

I was laid off in February. Finally after 2.5 months of boring interviews and life, landed a job. Today was Day 1. I was outside India for a while doing crazy stuffs. I returned in June and then started applying. Here is the summary. 1. Lots of applicants in the job market. Every job would attract 1000s of applicants 2. Most jobs require high experience - 5+ 3. Applying and finding companies who are hiring is tough. 4. Emailed everyone in network, took referrals from all friends, took referrals from LinkedIn (very low response), Applied on instahyre, Wrote to startup founders, applied Wellfound, Workday(worst of all), Naukri 5. Startups are the worst - gave petty assignments and ghosted after getting solution. Had to follow up multiple times but to no avail. They ate my whole 1 month 6. Some interviews were different - in one I had to code in python very fast. That's it. Wasn't selected as I was looking up for syntax on internet. 7. Overall it was a very boring and tiring process. I somehow maintained my sanity. YoE- 2 TC- 29L ( Base +PF)

Last December there were planned layoffs at Cisco which was known to everyone in advance along with the dates and the percentage of people to be laid off. This seemed fair at the time. Now they have laid off people on a random Monday with no prior information or any talks in the company about the same, managers just told that people who are affected have been informed and not to spread rumours, etc (all managers lingo). Most people were in a higher position in Tech and PMs(as per what I have heard), but surprisingly the managers were not involved and no one knows the criteria of layoff(upper execs did the layoffs). The performance issue was not the cause(confirmed by the manager) then what is the criteria? Does anyone here have any idea what these people see when they do the layoffs? Assuming the project is still on, and the person did not have any performance issues? I am curious. FYI - I wasn't affected (luckily).

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/14/cisco-cutting-5percent-of-global-workforce-in-restructuring-move.html

https://www.reuters.com/business/cisco-cut-thousands-jobs-it-seeks-focus-high-growth-areas-sources-2024-02-09/

Cisco will be laying off people next week. Numbers can be in 1000s https://officepulse.live/cisco-layoff https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cisco-cut-thousands-jobs-seeks-175409508.html

Source is someone from Cisco. Can anyone else validate or reject this leak/rumour?