Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

My entry got deleted because I mentioned culture sensitive. Completely harmless post. Not only that, but that put a ban on my IP address.

Me too - but I have lots of IP addresses. I put in an entry that said CSCO started to change under Chambers when it basically became an Indian company - and the culture changed appropriately - as one would expect. At one point I was about 10 layers down in the organization, and everybody between myself and Chambers was Indian with 2 Chinese mixed in. But now, the company has changed again, and now becoming more left-coast wokish cult.

"@1iit+16tx3ME5 blame this on the over 50 dudes at Cisco. As you age, your brain cells keep on dying. Less brain cells, less innovation. The average age at google is 29, at AWS it's 30 years. Average age at Cisco is 44. In a layman's term, Cisco is 15 years behind google, 14 years behind AWS. No wonder Cisco missed the cloud bandwagon."

Hey genius. 15+ years ago when Cisco should have been working on Cloud tech and solutions. Those people were 29-30. It was the ELT that did not see this coming and take action. Almost 100% of the issues Cisco has faced were caused by ELT and it incredible lack of vision.

Geesh. How is this not obvious?

The Cisco decline started to happen with the boards/councils and the “collaboration” philosophy 10 years ago. This created full employment for those who’s purpose is to “coordinate” across the company vs. do real work that benefits the company. Those with job titles ‘operations’, ‘planning’, ‘strategy’ etc. should be heavily scrutinized for the value they provide. For example, Cisco has fewer engineers now in switch/route/etc, than 15 years ago. While the ‘collaborators’ have grown 10x. How many sales people actually deal with customers vs. call another sales person to ‘coordinate’ their forecast so they can present internally with no value. Not just in sales, ca/service, etc. Imho, next CEO needs be more of an engineer/visionary and cut the bureaucracy/invest in innovation for Cisco to return.

My entry got deleted because I mentioned culture sensitive. Completely harmless post. Not only that, but that put a ban on my IP address.

Cisco became a social justice warrior and a "diversity is our strength" company at the expense of talent, effort, and innovation.

Just look at the partner sales team in your country- look like an old peoples home. It is like going back in time- they do nothing and rake in the money. Cisco need to oust the 20 year veteran partner facing foogies to get its gtm reorganised

@1iit+16tx3ME5 blame this on the over 50 dudes at Cisco. As you age, your brain cells keep on dying. Less brain cells, less innovation. The average age at google is 29, at AWS it's 30 years. Average age at Cisco is 44. In a layman's term, Cisco is 15 years behind google, 14 years behind AWS. No wonder Cisco missed the cloud bandwagon.

It is all because of J Chamber.
What he did was horrible.
He missed to buy VMWARE, EMC, and NSX but he bought FLIP and Scientific Atlanta and many others.
Most biggest problem is he missed CLOUD.
CISCO should have built CLOUD service but he never did.
Then he pointed Chuck as next CEO.. Chuck is just sales man, no visionary at all.
What do we expect from sales man.
CISCO became IBM.. or even worse than IBM.
CISCO is too slow. Broadcom took over SW ASIC market.
No one will use Cisco Switch. Why they would? Everyone knows how to build linux based Switch OS with Broadcom ASIC. And, CISCO ASIC is 1 year behind Broadcom and Innovium.
Router is next target for Broadcom.
Cisco is going to be slowly dead in 5 years.

As soon as the focus moved to getting a booking by 5 on PST on a Saturday vs 8 AM EST on a Monday we were doomed.

Pathetic behaviour by incompetent manages with little or no self esteem.

I was let go last last year at this time - total surprise as I had just been awarded RSU's by my AVP along with a personal note of gratitude. I joined Cisco in the 90's so it was over 20 years in for me - massive changes in the company - but I was in my 50's and naive in thinking I would retire here. IMO - the company was not focused on visionary technology, R&D, market making strategy any longer. It was all about EPS, lowering the cost of sales and growth through acquisition. We had monthly forecast calls with Financial Controllers reviewing expenses - much more focused here than strategy, customer success and technology. I have "blue in my veins" and it pains me to see the anxiety in so many friends at Cisco - but I'm happy to have moved on and found a good life, better balance away from CSCO. I could feel the change during the monthly "Beat" meetings when ELT would talk about painful decisions and then joke about RSUs (not given the street level) and share price.

The TAC support used to be excellent in 2000s. Now outsourced and mediocre. Go elsewhere for troubleshooting responsiveness.

It's easy: one word....layoffs. Layoffs is what increased the internal politics, back stabbing, and fighting. If the manager/Dirs/VPs/etc had done the hard work....ie the hard work of reallocating/retraining resources, instead of ditching them, they would have a loyal and happy workforce, from the low performers to the high performers. Now, the happy ones tend to be the top 10%. Not a good way to run a company, or a society......it all catches up to you in the end.

Cisco first messed up when they let the group of employees leave that went on and founded Juniper.

Everything changed when Chambers left.

I hope Cisco does not resort to more acquisitions. There are tons and tons of slackers within the company. They have figured out how to keep their boat floating without doing anything. It is impossible for someone with a sense of action and urgency to survive in that culture, forget thriving, and innovating. Without fixing this issue, more acquisitions will only be a big waste of dollars.

When John Chambers left, Cisco replaced him with a sales executive instead of someone with unassailable technology chops. Cisco choose...poorly.

Cisco is a relationship based sales culture. All the leading decision makers are bureaucrats that only know high-level buzzwords.

Employees that brought up the cloud or enterprise software were sidelined and eliminated. Too much incompetence and corruption at Cisco.

Everything changed. Cisco missed the cloud (a big shift in the industry. Thanks Chambers). Companies are not buying Cisco products any more. Additionally Cisco was incapable on reinventing itself due to lack of leadership. Thanks Chuck.

Well, the Cisco I loved was focussed on Innovation, getting things right for Customers and having a fun workplace. Things started to fall apart when quarterly numbers ended up important than doing the right things, instant margins vs long term profit, power decentralization vs centralized. I can see how new acquisitions were not integrated but hid behind separating walls (literally, from NDS) the supposed synergy died and it ended up 1+1=1 instead of supposedly 3. Glad I am out but wish the place good luck where I spend a good prime portion of my life.

I don't know what changed. But the levels of mediocrity is alarming. Cisco lays off either the execs or the bottom rung and does not touch the managers in between. Most of them should go. First, you don't need so many people managers. Second, you don't need 50+ product managers for a product that is not even making $5M in annual revenues. Third, they are unable to just shut down failing products.

new ceo brought layoffs to replace performance management, cisco family mindset - vanished, we hire top 10% no longer a goal and hr says move people who dont do their job vs firing those that dont pull their weight.
treat employees poorly - it shows!