I guess many are waiting for bonus letters
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At one time we would win the security business almost as a dead certainty in a campus deal. We'd get some ASA, IPS and VPN in there. Now, we lose many FW deals and the ones that we do win we end up in post sales issues. Feedback from customers who left Cisco and went PA is that PA is built ground-up as application level 7 firewall with extremely easy GUI and simple API. Firepower is cobbled together ASA/SourceFire concoction and it shows, so customer say. PA SA/TSA equivalent are experts at that one product and can demo it brilliantly and they happy to leave it on site for a month for customer to see the value and generate fabulous reports. At Cisco account team have to articulate a million different devices, softwares, architectures and solutions and loaning equipment is a massive PITA with justification from Jo Biden/The Pope required. Any wonder we are not winning this discussion? It's a big pity it came to this. Security message is complex and confusing and needs dramatic simplification.
Only at Cisco can you move up the rankings quick by editing slides and have no knowledge of how the BG operates.
Oh jeez...I lost track of how many times folks at Cisco quit, went to the competition at a level higher, and then a few years later came back even higher at Cisco. It was disgusting, because most of them were just con men/women...and still are. What a joke. I even had to work for one of them.....had ZERO respect for him.
Yes, only way to get a promotion in Cisco
"No they go to become senior managers at the competition and then come back as directors or VPs."
Oh jeez...I lost track of how many times folks at Cisco quit, went to the competition at a level higher, and then a few years later came back even higher at Cisco. It was disgusting, because most of them were just con men/women...and still are. What a joke. I even had to work for one of them.....had ZERO respect for him.
Cisco will not be able to buy PAN, nor will PAN and its shareholders allow it. PAN has already beat Cisco when it comes to cyber security. Cisco blew this market transition. They put inept leaders into place like SB and her VP Engineering friend. It will take years for Cisco to recover from this. By then, Cisco security is going to be irrelevant.
PAN has acquired 4-5 companies recently to build cloud solutions just like cisco acquiring other companies.
They also laid off employees in 2017-2019.
Their stock is going up but it is little inflated now.
If you can get more money 25-40%, like security technologies, don’t like your manager and RSUs and stock going up, go for it !!!
No RSUs for the worker bees at cisco and it all distributed to the top level.
PAlo alto stock is going up and as a new hire you get RSUs that keep going up and up. No brainer, just leave and join Palo Alto.
RSUs plus a pay bump of 25-30% is not bad. Greedy manager and directors will learn a lesson when many top talent leave and go to other companies.
What if Cisco ends up buying PAN? Those folks who left for PAN would be back at Cisco "against their will". Hahahahaha.
What if Cisco ends up buying PAN? Those folks who left for PAN would be back at Cisco "against their will". Hahahahaha.
Palo Alto Networks is simply using Cisco’s playbook against them. PAN is customer focused. They are not perfect and have their issues but they are just executing better. PAN does not have leadership putting obstacles in the way of selling. PAN is simply selling and minimizing the internal noise.
The direct side leadership is the biggest hinderance to GSSO in selling security. Yes, SB is a disaster and agree with previous posts that she is unqualified but you also have the direct side that thinks they know how to sell security but they are clearly not able to. Cisco is not even getting to the table and when the AMs hear about a security opportunity, then it is all about trying to make a diving catch.
I remember our security RM who came to the team I was on a couple of years ago from the direct side who said he has been selling security for years. He is a joke and can’t hold his own in real security meetings whether they are internal or customer meetings. He is too busy playing golf skipping out half days and thinks he is being sneaky but the whole team knows he is golfing.
GSSO needs real executive sales and engineering leadership. Until that happens, you all will continue to grow at 1%.
No they go to become senior managers at the competition and then come back as directors or VPs. Our VP did just that, although he’s now been promoted to SVP (for his brilliant work in exceeding the huge demands in our forecasts).
Of course, his success is because of the people that developed the product portfolio over the last five years while he was at the competition. All of those leaders who sewed the seeds of our current success during that time left since they were passed over for promotion. And he’s gotten the big bucks for a stunning year of success, and yet all the underlings who stayed with Cisco are now being told there to no money for Focal (I.e. rewards).
That's ok. They will all come back to Cisco as Managers, before transferring back to Cisco Bangalore team.
Over half the leadership CSCO Enterprise Networking leaderships of 3 years ago now works at PAN. Why would it be surprising? PAN first ate up half the ASA business, innovated in security, and now they are expanding in networking so of course they will hire Cisco leaders who of course bring in their trusted team, who in turn etc etc
Best move
Cisco not paying great
Palo Alto paying great and their stock is going up up
Palo Alto Networks, VMware and Google are snatching qualified, underpaid Cisco employees up rapidly.