Joined TAC in right before the pandemic really kicked off.
In the years since there is an increase focus on “metrics” in tac, and management uses them to paint a sh---y picture of whoever they don’t like.
I have watched initiatives to literally “get g10+ who aren’t technical leaders off TAC payroll” and seen many talented engineers forced out, then I am watching Cisco replace them with college new grads that take minimum 12 months to be actually useful, and red badges.
This limits the guidance new folks can get, and makes everyone work harder.
At the same time all this is going on, they are telling tac things like “we sell an experience more than anything else, so always do what’s right for the customer, even if they are asking for a service they haven’t paid for”
So less seniors, less engineers with less experience in general, increased focus on bullsh-t metrics that can be made to tell basically any story you want and used to pressure engineers, and you are steadily increasing the scope of the tac engineer.
On top of increasing the scope, they are increasing the scope on people without the experience to navigate the gray area between break fix and design
If you speak out against any of this you are severely punished…why?
Because this is a part of the business model. TAC contracts are some of the highest margin and most profitable offerings of Cisco. Of course cutting staff and salary here pads the bottom line.
They don’t want constructive criticism on how to fix this because it can’t really be fixed. This is a recipe for disaster. Exposing this whole trajectory lowers morale, when they really need everyone to be scared of getting laid off and convinced they earn way more than they should.
By the time the new hires become productive they are burned out and have had the curtain lifted. They leave tac, the cycle repeats, customers get more and more pi---d, and this is what we called a managed decline eh?
I’m done with TAC. I could easily become a technical leader but not with the way these id--tic managers treat engineers like robots and numbers in a spreadsheet.
On top of it all, the ever-promised “people are dying to hire tac engineers” reputation has been destroyed, so I’m up against the assumption that I’m a lazy piece of case dodging sh-t who sucks at everything and have to work on disproving the stigma first.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.