Only a month ago at Cisco Live, CEO John Chambers and other executives appeared confident, even triumphant. The company was executing a course correction and focusing on core businesses after having fearlessly jettisoned bad bets like the Flip camera and surgically reduced its headcount by 10,000.

But this week, Cisco Systems Inc. acknowledged another 1,300 layoffs, and the move has inspired anything but confidence. In fact, it induced a slew of current and former employees to hit the Internet with complaints of red tape, bloated middle management and cronyism (like those in the comment section of this