Incompetent colleagues think they're great at their job. And how could they not think that when mediocrity is more respected here now than ever. Cisco doesn't care that it affects team performance and morale and I am disappointed that incompetence is being rewarded. How much room is there for really competent and knowledgeable employees here?
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Incompetence has been rewarded en masse for decades. There is a reason the big product lines like Catalyst were built from acquisitions.
How is it that every week or two someone else thinks they’re the first Wile E. Coyote to figure this out despite years of previous posts here on the subject? Does everyone there just do it for their 24 hour hackathon now?
You have a problem with "more money than brains" theory for growth?
"Its really amazing that Cisco has hung on this long and maintained but no grown its market position."
Cisco embedded its products in many federal, state, and local governments... with Cisco receiving blank government checks.
IBM must be doing the same thing, selling legacy technology to governments unable to change technology vendors. This will take DECADES to unravel.
The embrace of incompetence is largely driven by the sales culture that drives Cisco. The only accountability is to the quarterly numbers which drives short-term, reactionary decision-making. It allows managers to act like a flag in the wind responding to the latest customer conversation versus diligently sticking with a long-term plan to create new value and to never be held accountable.
The only time Cisco ever did create new value that was in the 90s when they largely commercialized networking/routing as a new mode of communications. Everything else has simply ridden on the laurels of that innovation.
Its really amazing that Cisco has hung on this long and maintained but no grown its market position. It still has many years of profitable cash generation left despite the complete rot on the inside.
This won't end well, but it might last another 10 years or more before the ultimate collapse. The end of this story is clear. The eventual timing of it is not.
It's the side effect of the "It's not WHAT you know, it's WHO you know" work culture. Too many people are being promoted based on who their work friends are.
Plenty of room for incompetence. Why do you think Cisco has spent $20,000,000,000+ on acquisitions in the last 5 years?
We can't accomplish anything internally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Cisco