People are realizing that there are much better options and that it is not worth being stuck here. Perhaps Cisco is trying to retrain people, but it's just not enough. What would keep you here?
Every day I see people leave, and not only those who felt undervalued leave, but also those who were relatively comfortable here. That speaks volumes about the situation in the company.
To the Cisco UK SE all I can say is, welcome to a CX engineer's world! We've been in "watch a video" training mode for at least 6 years already, maybe longer. Moreover, we in CX are being pushed to do your pre-sales work. I have a customer now where the entire project is advising them on what to buy for their next gen network. Of course, I don't receive a commission or bonus for this but hey some AM somewhere will get a new Porsche.
Everybody gets full Udemy access. Just take the time. Tell your boss if he doesn't like upskilling folks, he's not going to like become irrelevant either
Cisco is great to work for easy time stress. Wage is okay. Engineering is good place for hide 3-5 yrs then leave.
I am in Cisco UK and there is no training budget for SEs in technical area. We get pushed to do all kinds of weird free sales-weasely stuff even though we are supposedly technical SEs. Last year I asked to go for a Cisco 5G internal training and was told to go lookup powerpoints and videos in Salesconenct.
There is a strong trend (among Cisco UK management) of discouraging presales tech in getting stronger technically. It wasn't always like this. But the trend during last 2.5 years has been to push SE s to do internal free Account Manager type training via Salesconnect. Anything that is technical, offers deep technical knowhow even in Cisco's own product line, is discouraged citing budget. Sad state of things. I am always having to constantly train myself as I am paranoid of losing my market value in this technical wasteland. What are we to do if we get LRed ?
ELT needs to have a deeper look at what is happening at Cisco UK&I and why so few of the SEs are getting any actual training in Cisco's own solutions.
Cisco is a great place for old folks like me, work on legacy boring stuff. TC 200k. I am happy because no stress but no future in career. Ok for 50year old engineer. For young or talent, Cisco is a toxic place for them because TC is too low. Therefore we need to hire more H1 to abuse them
I agree with the previous poster. Stay if you’re looking to coast, within reach of retirement or just starting out (don’t stay long). Otherwise, just take the salary increase working for someone else.
I left a few months ago after a few years. Didn’t hate it, didn’t love it. Here’s my take: For reference I am not in ENG or Sales.
I live in the Bay Area and here Cisco is just an average company paying average salaries. Maybe in RPT or some international locations it’s viewed differently, but here it’s just considered a solid old school HW company despite its attempts to pivot. Almost no one at my new company was impressed that I had Cisco on my resume- they were sympathetic that I wanted to move on. My previous experience was what interested them.
Cisco also has a culture of fear (Sr Dirs and VPs are very afraid of losing their job) paired with a death by meetings culture. I also felt that it lacked innovation: even small things like trying to approach a problem without a PowerPoint deck were quashed because that’s all VPs know. Unlike some of the other big tech companies or start-ups Cisco doesn’t have a fail fast mentality. Example: look at the cycle time for Cisco to bring EA 3.0 to market (and it’s still fully rolled out), almost 2 years!
Lastly, in our Dept it was a struggle to move past a grade 12 (and that salary really doesn’t cut it as an adult In the Bay).
To change these ills require a new mindset. And Cisco won’t accomplish that with the same ELT and senior leaders in place yet it doesn’t seem willing to acknowledge that is the problem.
If you are comfortable and fairly young it’s a high risk to stay too long. Talented people recognize this. I would only stay if I was 55+ and shares vesting.
I remember many teams was aging and young folks left. I can recall the old saying “this is how we do things around here”