I apologize because this is not a topic about layoffs, but I'm wondering if you think that Cisco is losing focus on the customers? I think the answer is yes, unfortunately, and that it will greatly affect this company in the long run.
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The problem is not the fault of the employees
I was a Cisco customer, then a Cisco employee, and then a customer again. I joined Cisco because the company was chock full of smart technical SEs, that were highly focused on customer success and would do anything to make both Cisco and their customers successful. Cisco and their SE/SA workforce is an entirely different animal now. SEs (or SAs...whatever they call them now), are mostly watered-down secondary salesman. FWIW - I don't blame the SEs/SAs, I'm sure it's by design. Now even simple questions get P4 TAC cases opened, or get pushed off to a DSE to answer. I see zero initiative to learn anything new, answer real world questions, or provide even a sliver of IT thought leadership. Where did the 'own the room' and 'never lose alone' mission of the Cisco SE workforce go? Cisco SE/SA resources are now the least useful of every IT company I've worked with over the five years, and it's not even close. That's a 180 from where it was in the 90's and early 2000's, when it was the benchmark of what great looked like. There was a thread about a year ago on this board called 'What is it you say you do here' or something to that effect (reference to the movie Office Space). I think that applies to the much of the current SE/SA roles as redefined by the mo--ns that run the company. Buggy, expensive, late to market, complex products supported by increasingly unhelpful and incapable customer facing resources is the path of IBM in the 1990s, followed by Sun Microsystems and Nortel. Good luck with that.