Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

Why are the Cisco employees more immature and childish than other companies?

Joined Cisco CX from other technology company this month. Why are the Cisco employees very immature and childish? Even those who are in 40's and 50's with over 10-year tenure have very so little knowledge and experience with no motivation, and yet they're managers!? Why?

They are like no personality, very quiet, like a robot with no facial expression, like not supposed to utter a word, not supposed to speak with anyone.

Feeling very weird already. Is this supposed to be the greatest workplace in the US? Why? I guess I gotta leave here because I don't want to be like them.

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Post ID: @OP+1m7YIL5S

11 replies (most recent on top)

Bruh, I just came from IBM… this is nothing compared to there

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Post ID: @jajn+1m7YIL5S

Childish? Take one to know one. 👶🏽

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Post ID: @iahg+1m7YIL5S

You're question is basically, "Why are these employees here?" (including managers).

If you asked this at Lenovo, you'd find out that there's a whole bunch of brownnosers and favorites who get promoted over there without much regard for their achievements (or lack their of).

A former IBMer told me that at IBM, when you're good at your job, you're promoted to manager title, even if there's no one below you to manage.

Sounds like the corporate world!

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Post ID: @8fco+1m7YIL5S
Those outside of Cisco often perceive its employees as childish and overly sensitive...

When management shuts down world wide meetings to demand a person give an hour by hour accounting for everything they'll have to do to justify the use of the phrase "two weeks" instead of "ten days" in a schedule then everyone else in the group gets threatened with being fired if they use the word "week" it rightfully leaves people a bit cranky.

...with poor communication skills between colleagues.

When management shuts down world wide meetings to beat people for helping other people saying "we don't know what you do and don't want to know what you do so you'll be judged by how we feel about you, and if you help someone else and we feel better about them you're the one we're going to fire" people feel that communication is discouraged.

Sadly most engineers at most companies can no longer read or write. You can't communicate all that needs to be known over decades over many countries over an ever changing set of employees about endless branches each of which have tens of millions of lines of code through a decades long gargantuan game of telephone. In particular for the cross branch work you need people responsible for insuring features don't diverge so much that you can't bring them back together. Cisco is structurally incapable of managing systems of this scale and as a result the employees are implicitly trained to not communicate effectively.

Another one to add to the list: many believe the HR mantra "we're the top 10%." With no other reference points they've bought into the collective delusion that what they're doing and how they're doing it is the best that can be done when in most cases the opposite is true. When you believe you know all that can be known you actively reject learning anything new. I'll take an average engineer who can learn over a super-genius on paper who shoots from the hip breaking everything along the way, and Cisco has far more of the latter than the former.

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Post ID: @6fzv+1m7YIL5S

Over my 10+ years at Cisco, I've observed and experienced many peculiar interactions among colleagues, which I've shared with numerous non-Cisco professionals. Although subjective observation can be flawed, I'll proceed to share the feedback I've received.

The responses have been consistently unanimous. Those outside of Cisco often perceive its employees as childish and overly sensitive, with poor communication skills between colleagues. Again, I acknowledge the unreliability of human perception without objective evidence; however, the frequency of these claims from diverse sources, I feel, means something.

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Post ID: @6wbz+1m7YIL5S

MM pushed out leaders with personality. Everyone got the message, Maria hires bland and promotes beige... People quickly fell in line.

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Post ID: @6lgm+1m7YIL5S

As Alice Cooper said:

"We're all clones"

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Post ID: @2icg+1m7YIL5S

Children have energy, working in cx drains energy like a vampire drains blood. So your assessment is not correct.
If only it was childish as children love to learn and experiment. Those days have long long gone.
Run to the hills ! And escape

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Post ID: @1mdg+1m7YIL5S

It’s a great place to cruise! Love hiding in my CSE overlay roll. Lots of free time

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Post ID: @1vxz+1m7YIL5S

I haven't seen this immature/childish behavior and have been with the company for nearly 24 years. Maybe it's just in CX? I've heard time and time again how people can't stand MM. I work in Sales and even I don't like her!

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Post ID: @1tgk+1m7YIL5S

Leadership treats everyone below a VP level like a child, making decisions for them. They can't even travel without VP permission. Layoffs we done from above and managers (aka "leaders") have little say. The real leadership's actions create this childish environment to make themselves feel important and have everyone present to them. Putting together a Powerpoint to do a status report and report to VPs is the biggest core competency you need in Cisco to make it. It is sad. I was getting ready to leave and then they laid me off. I made out, so I'm happy, but I feel for others that had their head down really working and then got impacted.

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Post ID: @uvr+1m7YIL5S

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