Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

SLA is one month. Week wait time is non-issue

@1rdg+1hnfZH2x damn! That environment sounds demoralizing to work in. Hope you're able to find time to build your skillset outside of Cisco and find other options. Doesn't sound like things will get any better any time soon

"On top of that we get a guaranteed 2-3 cases a day, 4 on bad days, and 1-2 a week that are seriously messed up."

2-3 cases per day? Wow. I wonder what this means?

• The Quality of the products has significantly increased?
• The # of TAC engineers has increased?
• Customer are not calling TAC because they know the level of support they will/will NOT get?
• Or has cISCO LOST that many customers?

I am sure the list should be longer. I only ask because when I was in TAC 12-15 cases a day seemed to be pretty normal.

It’s a staffing thing. As a TAC engineer who REALLY cares, I can say that I cannot work all the cases I should in a day or week.

I have at least 5 cases at a time that could each take full days of troubleshooting, lab testing, and documenting/researching. On top of that we get a guaranteed 2-3 cases a day, 4 on bad days, and 1-2 a week that are seriously messed up.

Then we end up with things like being stuck 4 hours on one call for a customer demanding RMA uplift for a piece of equipment they already had on site…..there goes that whole day.

They ran out all the senior engineers, so now those that are left are 1. Way over worked and cannot help everyone who needs it.

2. In my opinion the people at those levels with those skills still staying through this have some kind of hate complex where they like to suffer and over work, so that has its own effect on things.

We are not staffed to do the old style tac beyond the fix, spend all day learning your network and optimizing it…..this should be PS work but the PS engineers try to dump everything to TAC.

If you try to bring this problem up internally you get told to “control what you can control” and enough “complaining” gets you labeled as a bad apple.

All of this breeds the fu-k it, check in check out and go DND at end of the day attitude. Everyone is burned out. When you realize that all anyone will notice are the four cases you didn’t get to, even though you made a topology diagram better than anything the customer ever could and ki---d the case—you start to say fu-k it why not just do what I need to maintain.

So because of all the other problems Cisco has, they are trying to support bottom line by gutting tac and pushing work off on tac, which is lowering CU sat gradually. People were willing to tolerate this at the beginning of pandemic, but as they see other companies rebound and Cisco keep the same cr-p quality support and maybe even get worse, alarm bells start going off.

Cisco has a long time left I think even in it’s current state with no trajectory change, but it’s sad because someone like me who might like to stay at Cisco is forced to think about making plans to leave.

Here’s another aspect of the problem—-because if that exact dilemma, we are faced with some options…..

Learn skills to get the same salary outside of your tac niche, which means less overtime on cases, less deeeeeep diving your product, because why do that when it isn’t applicable to the next step?

It’s either go super hard and deep in your tac role at the risk of not being really wanted outside because outside wants modern skills and for deep Cisco product knowledge “just call tac” —- but then you know all you have to look forward to is a meat grinder work life, and a decent base salary if you know how to play politics in Cisco.

But if you start to study the modern skills which aren’t much relevant to a tac role, you’re doing the minimum at work, cases are rotting, so on and so forth. I think a lot of us go through this.

Then they seem to be trying to make tac such a grind that no one (except the self hating people who think they are smarter for working more hours for same pay and getting beat on in tac is a badge of honor) wants to do for more than 3 years—-by making tac a stepping stone then on top of it gutting senior engineers…..you have a bunch of barely competent know enough to be dangerous people taking cases, and not enough leads to help them when they get stuck.

This is a little bit of what I think is wrong, and I don’t know how to fix it because my management certainly doesn’t wanna hear it

It's been weeks for several tickets we have open.

It's not new to me at all. It's just so typical at Cisco. That's the quality and level of Cisco. That's the reality.

You know why so? Because all BUs and departments are managed by directors and managers who have been at Cisco for more than 20 years (or more) with no experience outside Cisco, no skill, no expertise whatsoever. Yet, at Cisco, they can become managers or directors just because they've been at Cisco for so long and are supposed to be respected and "recognized" which word is loved at Cisco.

Obviously, they are NEVER considered to be competent, capable, or valuable outside Cisco, they can only live at the Cisco environment. They cannot survive outside Cisco.

In the meantime, those who joined Cisco from outside other tech companies with solid experience are not respected or "recognized" at Cisco and are simply ignored. And those genuinely skilled people soon realize it, feel sick of it, and leave.

This is just so true of the Cisco offices in any region or in any country.

As long as HR keeps this strange culture, the company will just remain the same.

Going through this scenario as I type.

Being ex-TA©, it is sick to experience.

I guess no one really cares.

"If your tickets aren't at least sev 2 they're not going to be touched the same quarter. I've had tickets open for 3+ months for log analysis. Sending messages to the engineer or manager for updates hasn't been very fruitful"

Old school TAC guy here. Hearing this makes sick.

If your tickets aren't at least sev 2 they're not going to be touched the same quarter. I've had tickets open for 3+ months for log analysis. Sending messages to the engineer or manager for updates hasn't been very fruitful

Its called leadership ! You know the folks who get rsu like crazy to create dysfunctional teams. And in that aspect a stellar job was delivered.
This is the end result of understaffing teams year after year. LR left and right.
And every month new focus on some very “innovative” projects. In the end it disconnects your tac engineer from caring. That and you might have tried your luck and see your case ending up in our partners , in that case if you are lucky you get a good engineer, in the other cases, you end up writing on this forum