I hate watching as Cisco slowly morphs from one of the best companies in the industry to the average mess we are right now. So much potential was wasted and for what? Short term gains that buffed bonuses of those on top and nothing else. As somebody who's been here for more than two decades, this is hard to stomach.
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There hasn't been a distinctive innovation delivered by anyone in Cisco for two decades. Of course, that's not what the ELT members and their staff are being held accountable for.
People that reach the level of the ELT are political beings that said and did the right things to make Chuck and Fran happy. When competent leadership enters Cisco from acquisitions, they typically leave as fast as their golden handcuffs allow. That tells you all you need to know.
Most posters are spot on. Chambers is largely responsible. Good charismatic salesman without a vision. Actually it's quite worse. He captured two major industry transitions and that's just about all: Ethernet and IP telephony. He surfed the internet wave for years, before everybody could no longer wait to see him step down. Remember back in 2000 when he was boasting about double digit growth for years to come? Everybody was cringing during earning calls openly wishing he'd just keep his mouth shut. Not only did he miss the cloud transition, or the shift to software and services, but he wandered so off the acquisitions path it makes one wonder if the man actually knew what he was doing. Dozens of billions wasted down the drain on irrelevant ephemeral tech. Not an ounce of cohesive strategy, no common thread, no end goal in sight. He even let CX make their own random acquisitions (JouleX, Pari, Composite, Tidal, newScale, etc) - all of them gone today. Think about that and how embarrassing this would be if you were CEO. He ultimately failed to put a proper organisation in place and ended up with dozens of fiefdoms all competing internally or stabbing each other in the beach. Under Chambers, Cisco appointed a couple of incredibly clueless CTOs. What we have today is a legacy of the Chambers era. Too large a chunk of the ELT served under Chambers and is just repeating what they saw him do. The board needs to eject most of the ELT to instill a culture of change.
Based on your comment you’re one of the good ones, but part of our problem
Is the large number of senior management that has been sitting around for decades while tech passes them by. Newer people with fresh ideas and new perspectives aren’t promoted on the regular so they pack up and leave.
When JC was CEO, his biggest slogan was "catching industry transition". Somewhere along the way the company due all it's internal quirks, missed the elephant in the room (aka, cloud) even to the point dismissed the idea initially when AWS started in 2006..., And that it's now reduced as oem network vendor selling hardware and software services for infrastructure networks.
Our leaders are squirrelly. Plain and simple. And they don't have a plan. What you ware witnessing is the direct result of that.
we've been average since 2001. selling network equipment from acquired companies doesn't require the best and brightest