I see a lot of Cisco bashing here. And I agree with some of it. But companies are often trapped in their DNA. And sometimes, as they fight for mid term survival, the worst in the company's DNA comes out, the reptilian instincts take over and it simply accelerates its demise. I am not sure where exactly on that journey Cisco is.
My first Cisco journey lasted only 3 years, all the way into the bubble. We were invincible. I left the company before the bubble burst and did just enjoy myself for a few years. Cisco had been good to me.
I then rejoined the workforce and rejoined Cisco in 2005. It has become a very different company. The arrogance of the late 90's was completely shot, the company had been humbled. However, it was an empowering environment for top contributors, you didn't have to be a Director or VP to speak at major industry conferences, and some cool new technology good productized that gave Cisco a successful run. It was no longer based on hype, they were very useful -yet not groundbreaking- innovations based on simply listening to customers' needs.
A couple of horrible executive runs later (no names), the culture had changed. More and more, senior individual contributors were confined to anonymity and the only visible figureheads were Directors and above. I don't mind making my managers look great, but throw me an effing bone here and there and give me visibility. The company culture took a vicious turn with that. I forgot when the retirement incentive stuff went down, but I was devastated I didn't qualify. Those were some lucky, lucky m-fers and I pity the ones that didn't take that package.
After that, the company culture took a freefall. Everybody knew their job was under scrutiny. The massive 2014 layoff event happened, where long standing super-loyal employees were stabbed in the back by management (please no McKinsey recommendation excuses, as another poster in the know mentioned) that were extremely important to Cisco knowledge and had loyal customer respect were let go.
That is when I decided to go. One thing not many people know is that many of those people had a lot of money "parked" with loyal ecosystem partners and vendors that made a lot of stuff happen for Cisco. I think the loss to Cisco was in the billions. One of those departing people offered me to take over a parked fund of $250k to do "whatever needs to be done", I cringed and declined and have never talked to them again because I wanted no association with that. Yes it violated policy, but it got things done.
Things got even worse after 2014. There was immense internal backstabbing. There was a lot of management that had been promoted way beyond their competence level that had lost their ability to listen to anyone, you felt like "I may not be at your level, but I really know this subject area more than you'll ever do... at least listen to me?". But no, it was the Trump management style, "nobody knows more about X than I do!"... and RIP went the business.
The politics behind the move to subscriptions were Byzantine and ridiculous. And the journey of course slow, because Cisco can't wean itself off overpriced hardware, a model that will freefall just like DEC's minicomputers did. Or Sun's stuff.
Anyhow good luck. Cisco was good to me. I don't wish it any evil, but it did become a dictated clown-show from the top. I left in 2016 and life has been good. Never as good as that initial 3 year run with Cisco, ever, which was epic.
Oh and wash your hands and stay safe, everybody.