It's quite surreal. Never a word about tech trends, competition, new products, nothing.
Exactly. It's a sign of a dying company. Unfortunately, I do not believe that Cisco will ever get back on track and focus on new products or trends again. You?
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Chief Social Impact Officer. Get it right.
new VP of Social Justice or VP of Diversity…
I can just feel the innovation, can”t you?
Cisco probably is a dying company. But the good news is that it will probably be a slow death. So those still working here will be able to collect easy money for many years to come.
Everybody knows DNA Center is a disaster and unsellable product. It tried to do too many things, and does nothing well or easy. But to say that internally at Cisco is heresy. I think a factor in TN leaving the EN head spot was seeing what an unfixable mess DNAC and Smart licensing were.
I'm in sales. I presented an ultra-competitive Wireless RFP bid recently to a customer. I was asked, "What's Cisco's feature they like to brag about? Aruba, Mist, Extreme all have a 'shiny' thing that the other can't do. What's Cisco's?"
I tap-danced and came up with a good response but it really got me thinking. DNA Center is cr-p and simply doesn't work. The Meraki Dashboard has a solid story around Simple-IT but there's no unique feature that makes people go, "WOW!"
There's zero ingenuity in our "Bread & Butter" products. That's a problem.
Robbins didn't even bother showing up on this week's Check-in. Innovation now means announcing a new VP of Social Justice or VP of Diversity. Check-ins solely focus on age-old American societal issues nobody seems able or willing to fix. How and why would a handful of freshly appointed useless VP change anything? Each and everyone of us gets a chance to reflect our discontent. Score very low in questions that pertain to Cisco's future and mission in Pulse Surveys. Make it stick out like a sore thumb. If that doesn't wake up the board or the ELT, it's over.
Cisco has run off all of the technologists, and the senior leadership has no idea what's happening in the customer base. All that's left is the cannon fodder for regular layoffs.
RIP Cisco.
A CEO now living and working part time in Atlanta is only going to accelerate the end
They may still be able to get back in the saddle but that depends on the ELT.
- They have these useless layers of directors, managers, etc. especially in sales and CX, who do absolutely nothing. They do not add value, do not build business and definitely are not instrumental to generating revenue. All they do is talk and jive and make lives of sincere, loyal engineers, very, very difficult. They need to get rid of these managerial fat, use a collapsed management model. VPs have to take more responsibility , have more visibility to employees, not just hide and have the psychotic sales and CX directors make lives a living he-l for sincere working people who actually have kept the company running.
- They need to take away these perpetual threat of LRs every quarter, every year, all the time. The ELT has to understand that this toxic culture takes away the peace of mind of their employees, inhibits them from giving their best. Most people are looking for a backup opportunity in case of LRs almost all the time. This cannot be a productive healthy environment for employees to grow and build a career. Irrespective of how many so-called "Execs" come to this site and brazenly state that "technology is a commodity" in a technology company (shame on you CP!) , Cisco IS a technology company. If our directors treat that same technology and technologists as commodities then the onus is on the ELT to get rid of these Prima Donnas and clean the house!
- Once the above two steps are done, they should have more than enough money and leanness to budget for R&D and developing next generation technology. Build the next disruptive tech be that AI/ML or whatever else. The salaries , bonuses and RSUs of those Sales and CX directors and managers who are fattening themselves on our sweat and effort should be more than enough to compensate for the R&D OPEX. Then Cisco , in another 2 to 3 years, can once again claim to be one of the best (not because someone pays off some dodgy survey to rank us as the best).
Cisco is the only company who does so many layoffs all the time, every year. Google, Amazon, Meta - they are laying off people now, but very rarely does so. Cisco is the ONLY one because the ELT do not have a technology hat. They are focused on Wall St. numbers and treat employees as numbers. Starting to treat employees as human beings will likely bring back Cisco's lost glory from the 90s and early 2000s. If you want something, then you need to invest into that. Cisco has forgotten to invest in its employees - the ELT just wants to exploit the workers.
Some sales directors talk to people as if they do not believe in Cisco anymore themselves, they are just in it for the benefits and the "margins" (again, as one of the Execs have pointed out in this site). Every internal training for the SEs is designed to turn them into an AM. This is a tech company and you need technical presales, no matter how much you jive on webex Mr. Director. Change the culture and the culture will change the company. To get dividends out of something, you need to invest.
ELT are responsible for every disastrous decision, be that business, technology or internal administration. Onus is on the ELT to stop prioritising fattening themselves and having a thought or two about the company, business and employees. But soul-searching is probably not the strongest point of our management!