Remember when Cisco was THE place to work? Now, we're witnessing a continuous turnover, especially in the last five years. The majority of people are gone before they even hit their one-year mark. Some stay between a year and two and some are gone within a month. We've transformed from a company of "lifetimers" to a mix of people who are here just long enough to move on and long-timers who are just staying because their retirement is right around the corner. Now tell me that's not a weird switch to witness.
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Pretty familiar stories and opinions about Cisco culture and its organization, over and over again, day after day. Not just US, but APJ, EMEA already know how bad it is.
But the company is still boasting saying, "it's the place to work," "the most admired company..." Dream on. Those days were over 20 years ago.
Most people there have no skill nor have any professional experience, and yet, they can still be there and will be there with no motivation, no hard-working for years and years to come.
Simply put, it's a public school. An elementary school.
I've never worked at a company where when you raise a problem, the deniers and cover your assers come out left, right and center rather than focusing any energy on trying to solve the problem. It's complete madness.
When all good folks jump ship, the monkeys tear the company to shreds
our India manager/director can not run away his culture, after he joins, somehow he is based in India, managing usa resources, hence all the sudden, we have night meetings at our timezone, due to it is his day time, then for the next 4 years, usa team work day time and then attend meetings at night, the manager think he is so high that he asks us to submit impossible deadlines. One reason he asks us, is that x years before, he always works night and now he want us to suffer just like he does. It is very wielred to hear this. now the entire India based team think usa folks shall work their nights , and pay back time! One day, when the cuts come, the US team got cut most. Almost all the people got canned by Cisco if technical people hold grudge against this company, now if you are a Project manager, you will not hold grudge.. due to never suffered as technical people does.
I was canned, then hired by a great engineering manager (who also was canned), who works for an ex-Cisco VP (who was also canned). Between the three of us we have almost 60 years combined Cisco experience.
I have no hard feelings but the ex-VP does. We manage end-customer networks. When renewal time comes around, when our boss reviews the RFPs for new gear, he will mark up his notes with "ABC", which stands for Anything But Cisco. For some reason he doesn't share, he still holds a grudge; he was pretty prominent in firewall development space in early 2010s.
It's a consequence of putting people in charge who do not understand the technology they are responsible for. Does a Kellogg MBA/McKinsey guy really qualify to be head of product management for EN? Technology people here are kicked to the curb. And then our company check-ins are just wokeness. The mismanagement is so bad, why would anyone stay anymore.
"Remember when Cisco was THE place to work?"
It's not 2001 anymore... 20+ layoffs will do that