Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

MIG was put in C2E many months ago for AMER.

MIG (service provider) SA’s are next. All pooled for all accounts, globally. It’s essentially the same setup as TAC in a follow the sun model. On premises customer engagements limited to senior account management (RM and higher) only.

So basically the SA role is now akin to working in a call center.

C2E and Agile TSA are a complete disaster. SAs and TSAs are all going Agile TSA. EK is shoving this down every pre-sales engineering team. SEDs are too scared to speak up. Losing deals are a constant with C2E and Agile TSA. The competition is loving C2E as it is driving more opportunity to them.

@1yvc yes the AM. If your AM isn’t good enough to do those things (which are all clearly in their job description) fire them and hire a better one. Why have a technical sales engineer doing that sh-t?

This should NOT wait until FY23, or even 2H. The sooner we make this change the sooner Cisco will start winning deals again. The portfolio is too large for a single SE to cover it all.

Cisco will go badly wrong if this happens. How could generalist account SA's that meet high-touch customers regularly, explain Cisco value proposition, are their Cisco goto tech person, deal with licensing issues, TAC issues, they are the partner goto person for that account (since partner SA org has been dismantled) advise on the latest technologies and bring in the rest of Cisco as needed and paper over the gaping chasms of Cisco's labyrinthine processes? Who else is going to do that job? The AM??? Come on now, be serious...... AM does an important function at Cisco. But convincing the customer of Cisco technical value is not one of them.

• legacy products layed with heavy marketing
• self servicing leaders (yes-men) with their short term focus
• concerned/confused employees, with fear of constant annual layoffs
• performing employees slowing down due everything happening around
• Quarterly profitablity driven by shipping more work to low cost offshore locations
• constantly acquiring companies to stay relevant.. in house innovation is a lost art
• several individuals with strategy titles or that drive strategy hardly ever meet customers
• too many leaders/decesion-makers drinking too much internal kool aid and lack of competitive landscape understanding
• various groups infighting with in BU/CX/IT to stay visible to their leaders.. layered with constant reorgs
• some reorg resulting clueless leaders, that have jobs due connections
• ELTs focus on more social justice/diversity talk than running a technology business..

The above is there for everyone to see, post Covid

Boy.. the tail spin has begun in this company!

CR/board-members need to get real if Cisco needs to be relevant in the industry going into this decade.

I work in engineering. What is this about ? what is SA , C2E, Pool. In engineering Agile means something else - way to release software. Can some one explain all this stuff?

EK has diminished the SA role for his own gain. Cisco is paying a price for it.

@ahz so the problem is the quantity and talent of TSAs in the pool, not the fact that it’s a pool?

C2E is a disaster and EK knows it but wants it for a resume bullet point. He's saved tremendous amounts of OPEX by driving high levels of attrition of our best and brightest with only a fraction being backfilled at far lower cost.

EK is clueless to understand and realize the deals lost, relationships lost, tremendous friction along with lack of confidence between internal teams, and negative sentiment towards Cisco from customers due to the C2E disaster. EK is a completely disconnected out of touch ineffective "leader". He is also the best thing that has happened to our competitors and IT recruiters.

It has been ask to track via C2E deals lost and EK will not. He knows how much friction and issues it is causing the sales teams. Our region has already lost deals totaling over 7M due to C2E not being equipped in handle the meetings / derailing a deal and it being too difficult to get someone. Even after trying to use it, you get a TSA and they push back and say they can’t do it or better yet, they are told they have to do the meeting but they are not an expert. C2E simply is a disaster.

You are correct all this is in SFDC but EK still wants to use this tool. Why is that if the data is already in SFDC. The reason is so they can pool every SA and every TSA.

@1gc agreed, while there have been and still are some small bumps in the road, it’s working very well. Almost every company does it this way, it’s not like Cisco invented the model. It’s probably old school account SEs that are used to hiding out and now wish they had taken the ER since they’ll be found out.

I keep reading about deals lost because of C2E but nobody provides any anonymized data to substantiate their claim. Either provide some evidence or move to another false narrative of C2E.

@ani what’s the point of that? They are already tracked through Salesforce. There’s no economies of scale by looking at the region level. Or do you mean they’ll become mini-TSAs rather than account/generalists? Surely only got select and smaller accounts so maybe a hybrid of a few assigned accounts then specialist on the babies?

SAs are on the socialist plan. Their commission is already tied to the region and not the actual accounts they cover. It is very easy to put SAs into C2E then the AM will just request the SA in C2E based on the specific opportunity and SA expertise. They will expand this to where SAs will be available by Operation. It is coming so get used to it. EK is not sharing this yet cause he knows that the SAs are already leaving so he is going to ease into this SA pooling. The framework to do this is already there. There are already plans. FY23 is the first phase. SAs will not make money at all. Lower pay for SAs have been committed by EK and SEDs.

Let’s face it, most SEs just call TSAs in anyway.

Fake news. How can an “Account” SA be pooled?

C2E is a disaster. We have lost many deals due to C2E. The architectures are a mess in C2E. You never know what you will get. When raising concerns to leadership, all they say is this is the path forward and stop complaining about it. They won’t fix anything. We have been encouraged to say positive things about it even if it is not true.