Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

When interviewing w/ a company after working at Cisco, I looked up the team lead and the hiring manager who was a director before the interview. After the interview, I looked up everyone who's name I could remember.

Looking at the # of years of experience, their career progression (based on their job titles), etc. doesn't help you figure out the team dynamics, leadership management style(s), company policies, et.

Just because someone has been with a single company all their professional career doesn't mean they are a bad person, leader or manager. I've had great managers at Cisco, a terrible manager at Cisco, and I've had leadership chains that have been a mix of good to great as well as watching one leadership chain turn into a caste empire building team. I've also had terrible leaders at other companies with managers who've changed companies often, probably because they are so terrible.

That company I interviewed with after Cisco looked and sounded good during the interview, but once I started I found out that they were "time" driven where you had to track how much time you spent working on "tickets" and everything you did had to be tied to a ticket and you had to log 35+ hours a week to tickets instead of tons of meetings. The director had been the team's manager, but she was promoted to director and the lead DBA was promoted to team manager to try to buffer the team from her micromanagement, but she just bypassed him and continued to micromanage everyone.

I'm a person with 15+ years of professional experience and I don't need to be micromanaged. Give me my task(s), the deadline associated with each task, and get the he-l out of my way so I can get the work done. All I need from you at that point is help with escalations if I run into issues.

"You didn't look him up on Linkedin? You didn't interview with him and ask questions?? Really??"

Really? There is someone here who believes everyone at Cisco is on LinkedIn... I bet he/she is still so young, baby.

Really? At a job interview, there are appropriate questions to ask and not appropriate. Obviously, asking his/her time span/tenure at Cisco and asking if he's/she's been hired as newly grad are both inappropriate.

What an absurd comment...

You didn't look him up on Linkedin? You didn't interview with him and ask questions?? Really??

There are experienced engineers and managers who work for Microsoft, google, FB, Intel, chip companies for more than 10 or 20 years.
Just like every field needs experienced people, even cisco needs it.
You can try to change the culture in the group, make them to be more open and fun.
Learn as much as possible and move of things do not change.
Not sure why you picked this group, you need to do your homework before you join a group. Again, looks like you are a novice and not experienced as your manager. Lol

Yeah, we have one guy in our BU who is over 60. 15 years at Cisco. Just wrote a (truly groundbreaking) technical book. I’m sure it would be great to have him working for Juniper.

"HR first needs to remove those who've been working for over 20 years, then over 15 years. Even 10 years too long"
You obviously don't have much in the way of experience. I would also submit that you care nothing about discrimination of any kind. People that have been at cisco 15-25+ years have been involved in many different technology domains or they wouldn't be there. I'm betting you are just an average one trick pony watching dummy lights and doing industrialized deliverables for some nothing outfit. You are certainly coming off as an arrogant punk that has zero knowledge of labor laws, nor what it takes to make it that long at one company like a cisco.

OP, I'm sorry you are in the situation you are in. Ultimately, you need to decide what's best for you and execute on that.

Yes, Cisco has a lot of out-dated processes and technology. It's a company that's been around for 30+ yrs, built a lot of internal processes that drove the business. Only in the past 5-7 yrs has Cisco started getting rid of internal tools to buy/license products that can be customized to fit different businesses. It's very slow to remove the entrenched processes and update them with newer tools & processes. Many of these changes suck because trying to customize ServiceNow, Workday and other tools to fit into Cisco make them worse than they are out of the box or at other companies.

As to your manager, I can say I had a manager who sounds a lot like him, but he never stayed on the same team/in the same business unit for more than 3-5 yrs because his BS couldn't hide his incompetence for longer than that. My current manager is also a college hire who's been at Cisco all his adult life. Yes, his technical skills are outdated because he was a network engineer. Now he's a manager of a software development team. Unlike your manager, he puts the onus upon his team to make the right decisions about technical issues. Pick the right database type, pick the right language to write this code in, purchase plug-ins or buy this license. We make the decisions, but we have to defend them if the costs are not cheap. If we can show a business case, he does all the PowerPoint decks and spreadsheets to get us the budget or makes the higher up's know why we can't get xyz functionality because it was too expensive and they refused the budget increase. He's basically a shield between us and our director, senior director or SVP. I've had one other manager that was that way, but he came to Cisco that way and only managed 10 yrs before he had to leave or suffer burn out. How long my current manager can survive as a manager with his work ethic will be interesting to see. But at this point, with 27 yrs experience at Cisco he's probably ready to retire whenever they offer an ER that doesn't have a minimum age limit of 50. And I'll be sad to see him go. Managers like him are hard to find.

He's also one of those work/life balance hardliners someone else mentioned in another thread. He expects you to work a night or a weekend when a release needs to roll out or we're migrating hardware, but if there's not some business deadline that needs people to work long or non-business hours to meet, then if we need time off to deal with family, go to the doctor, dentist, DMV, parent/teacher conference, whatever, we're free to do so.

One of the replies that said "Unfortunately ... with competition" are all true and correct!

Cisco has fundamental problems. It's the most behind the times company I've ever worked!

HR first needs to remove those who've been working for over 20 years, then over 15 years. Even 10 years too long! They're are just barring the company and its people from changing and growing and people who've joined the company with lots of ambition and motivation. There's absolutely nothing good for anyone who's been sitting at the same company for over a decade.

It's just hard for me to believe anyone who stays at the same company over 10 years! Don't they have any motivation or feeling of growth? What are they?

It's refreshing to see such hubris on the internet. Very rare indeed.

Do yourself and Cisco a favor—Speak UP! What do you have to lose. With your skills and this job market you’re going to find a new job fast if you need to. Stop allowing the “old” guard to have control over your voice and your ideas. Back up your ideas up facts and figures. Don’t hide your talents any longer, showcase them and be proud of it! If you’re not prepared to do this, then move on to your next adventure. Life is to short to be unhappy in a job that takes up 8-10 hours of your day everyday of your life!

Welcome to Cisco! First lesson - promotion to leadership positions is driven by relationships NOT by results, at least at the lower levels. Our prior CIO was fond of saying "relationships over issues" or something to that effect. Rumor has it that he got squeezed out when he couldn't delivery the changes needed. He'd spent so much of his career taking the path of least resistance that he didn't have the skills or the team to drive major change. Where did he learn that? From Rebecca Jacoby, who went on to run Ops for 3 years. That culture really is entrenched. True of many many large companies.

Our new/current CIO moved a lot of the old guard VP level out but there are many layers of people who's only experience was that Cisco model. Quite a few of them exited or were exited with last years LR/early retirement. That's not to say that everything our new/current CIO has done is great, just that she's shaken things up a bit.

Unfortunately most of Cisco these days is PowerPoint driven not merit driven.

Managers/directors/VPs with 20+ in the company have mastered the art of deflecting with PowerPoints and make it look rosy. It's the art of taking and saying nothing!

Some of these management staff drink the internal marketing koolaid and are clueless of what is happening in the industry. Any external perspective goes against their thinking and seen as trouble maker. This culture has led to people not speaking and going with flow, and mediocrity rules inside several parts of Cisco with no accountability.

This is the unfortunate truth inside most parts of Cisco, that's what you are experiencing as an external hire with diverse industry experiences.

Company would not transform unless this management layer leaves or let go, but they are too many and everywhere, on the contrary individuals and talent people are leaving in this hot job market.

Try your luck with other groups inside Cisco (again you need minimum 12months with a team per policy) or the door is always with competition.