What is the role of Account SEs? They need TSAs in every deal. They aren’t even route switch experts any more.
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If Cisco employees can't understand the Cisco portfolio, imagine what it's customers are thinking...
How many SDA installs are in full production? I'm going to guess it is >10 and <99, after 4 years of selling. Is the SJC campus full SDA? Considering nobody has been there for 15 months would be easy to roll it out and nobody notice if its broken.
couldn’t define the high level proposition of software defined access
To be fair, there isn’t one beyond marketing.
As a former Cisco SA I always tried my best to go as deep as possible within a given architecture. It was a matter of pride. But there are just times where it made more sense to get someone who spoke about said product/feature every day. Especially when there was little room to have a follow-up. This became exacerbated as each architecture became expansive with high levels of “solution integration”.
On my way out I interviewed several internal candidates and was absolutely shocked at how bad the talent/skills gap was for someone who had been in role in other regions. Like literally couldn’t define the high level proposition of software defined access.
Why does that dude from central always rag on SS in every thread? Did he pip him?
Agree there is too much portfolio for account SAs. We need specialist TSAs but not every meeting though. Unfortunately, our engineering leadership all the way up the chain has done little to advocate for us as SAs. We have been turned into glorified admins. That is on engineering leadership. I thought our engineering leaders were supposed to be advocating for us. They are not. They are advocating for their next career move. Our SED in Central talks a great game but is all talk. He is one of the worst engineering leaders in my career. More SAs keep leaving to architecture TSA positions or the competition cause the SED is out of touch and does not advocate for us. Time for a new SED and a SED that actually will represent and advocate for the SAs.
The SEDs have done an injustice to the SEs / SAs. SEDs have done more to hinder the role than anyone else. SEDs should be technically leading but our SED in Central is too busy trying to show he is something he is not, then trying to actually lead the engineers and architects. SEDs are trying to act like AVPs rather than technically lead.
Yes it is too much to cover so why have them?
Some of the architectures are very complicated and its completely unrealistic to expect SE's to know it. I dont know how any SE could know security, data center, and even complex EN. Meraki and collaboration sure that is about it. Beyond that bring in a TSA who can know deep and knows all the caveats with every solution.
Cisco does not care about technical knowledge anymore. A lot of SE new hires do not know basic R/S, and it is getting worse.
Rotate them how?
Does it even matter? I mean, if every time a customer calls they rotate them?
Most don’t know R/S any more. We took our eyes off core to focus on the ATs. As if ATs mattered other than to pull in switching. So we hired people with other specialities. And also lots of noobs because beggars can’t be choosers.
At least on the security side, not to defend SE/SA's, but the security portfolio is HUGE (YUGE) today. But R/S... everyone should have a good foundation of R/S, if you do not, then how are you employed here?