I can't escape the impression that leadership has become extremely destructive.
Maybe it's a harsh to say, but often they seem not at all interested in the welfare of this company nor its future. The proof of that isn't hard to find, is it?
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Challenge any ELT member on technology trends and see for yourself.
I've been asking here for years what could Cisco acquire that will substantially increase its revenue and that Cisco can actually execute on long term. Crickets. A few crazies in other threads still think Cisco, which provides pipe fittings, should rule cloud despite the fact that neither IBM nor Oracle with infinitely greater systems experience has cracked 10% of that market.
I've also asked what CEO could fundamentally change Cisco's broken culture and clean everything up so the majority of development dollars went to new development and would actually take the job instead of leading a company that doesn't have these problems. Again, crickets. Clearly no one can see anywhere Cisco can legitimately grow nor see someone coming in to fix things.
Old companies rarely stay on top for decades. Look at the companies that have been the most valuable over the past 50 years. You'll find many are acquired by more capable firms, minor legacy players or extinct. Cisco is right on course going from the most valuable company to being valued less than 1/14th of Apple.
Chambers with his failed execution on tablets, personal cameras, personal telepresence and other efforts did get one thing right: "you have to deal with things the way they are, not the way you think they should be."
"Challenge any ELT member on technology trends and see for yourself."
Cisco is not a technology company. We sell & market legacy network equipment that was acquired 30 years ago. The ELT is focused on marketing Cisco as a technology company to pension funds & novice investors.
There's simply no vision or leadership of any kind left. Challenge any ELT member on technology trends and see for yourself. None has the faintest clue what's going on in the world. Centoni's kindergarten pitch on AI last week is a great testimony to what I'm saying.
Because V2MOM was a diversity hire, they can't get rid of her. It would be admitting that DEI is a failed idea - which they won't do.
Agreed, V2MOM and Maria are both a net negative for Cisco. You can barely understand her during her micro-managing Saturday calls.
The Dow and NASDAQ have doubled since Chuck took over, so that's not really saying anything.
Cisco's previous CEO took us from a high of $82 when networking companies couldn't lose money to $25 (neither number inflation adjusted) after 15 years before handing the reigns to Chuck. That says a lot.
On metrics other than stock price, compare Cisco's return on equity of 27.74% to Juniper's 11.51%. Arista is doing notably better at 31.99%.
Now lets look at the business. I've been in the room when Cisco executives sh0t themselves in the head in front of a customer and seen that customer threaten to move $1B of business out of Cisco on the spot. If that business were moved to either Arista or Juniper they'd see around a 20% revenue increase while Cisco would see a less than 2% revenue decrease. The fact that the business was never moved says the other vendors couldn't get the job done.
On the technology side Cisco has massive volumes of extremely poorly written legacy code where the same thing is rewritten multiple times for each router or switch and cut and pasted many times more. Fixing the same bug 100 times on 100 branches and then doing it again for all the cut and pasted versions is why most of Cisco's development budget was spent on bug fixing. My understanding is Arista learned an engineering concept that far predates the concept of a programming language called "refactoring" so they write one instance and simply call that wherever it is needed. With this along with not having to support four different routing and switching operating systems and the power of more recent merchant silicon I'm at a loss to understand why Arista isn't doing much better than it is.
It's amazing the amount of lip service that is going on since the days of Chuck taking over and Maria joining.
The ELT tries to tell us how much value her V2MOM process adds to Cisco, but as it filters down, VP's and Directors are telling us to just copy and paste from the person above you. If all I'm doing is copying and pasting, then what value is it and where is the return on investment of thousands of individual contributors spending a hour or two copying it, then having managers spend a couple of hours reviewing and approving them?
Due to the deadlines rapidly approaching, directors are not really reviewing what they've copied and "d-mbed down" from the VP levels, and when it gets down 3 layers to me, it's got the same stupid skipped sections or typos all the way up to that director.
Someone show me how my V2MOM has business value when it's full of errors due to copy and paste of someone who got rushed and didn't review it.
The stock price doubled under Chuck, and some of its main competitors like Arista and Juniper after 15-20 years are turning in 10% or less of Cisco's revenue.
The Dow and NASDAQ have doubled since Chuck took over, so that's not really saying anything. And saying that Arista and Juniper are turning in 10% or less of Cisco's revenue doesn't compare their stock prices or how much they've grown (or lost) since 2015. Revenue could be 10% of Cisco's, but the important metric is not overall revenue but profits after costs are subtracted from revenue.
Find some real numbers to compare the two and then I'll listen
"They love visiting an office and getting a photo-op with the people like they are some sort of celebrity."
To them it's like visiting the zoo and getting some good fun pictures.
"They love visiting an office and getting a photo-op with the people like they are some sort of celebrity."
You just described politicians, academics, and corporate/religious leaders. It's called Narcissistic Personality Disorder
I'm guessing you never took a business course? Cisco is in a managed decline, which means cost cutting is the #1 priority. The leadership is attempting to slowly manage the decline of the company.
Cisco generates profits from legacy network equipment, we will make a great case study for how to cut costs while maintaining brand value.
...but often they seem not at all interested in the welfare of this company nor its future. The proof of that isn't hard to find, is it?
The stock price doubled under Chuck, and some of its main competitors like Arista and Juniper after 15-20 years are turning in 10% or less of Cisco's revenue.
Stockholders whose only concern is their own wealth elect the board who choose the leadership, and the fact is Cisco has had an intractable culture for decades. The idea that a magic CEO will ride in on a unicorn and fix everything by "caring" is nuts.
Tech leaders today exploit constant interactions with hundreds of millions to billions of customers and there is no path from "expensive boxes with relatively few high end business customers" to something with the reach of current tech leaders. For the few still screaming about "cloud" IBM and Oracle have infinitely broader systems experience and yet each only has a single digit percentage of the market.
Cisco is a leader in a legacy market with a high cost of entry. Their only obvious card is to maximize what value they can still extract. Look at the life cycles of what were among the most valuable companies in the market over the past 50 years. They very rarely sustain that role and the downfall always involves squeezing every last dime out of a company.
I was so excited in my first few years in Cisco, and then I started to see in the check-ins Sr leadership is more focused on themselves and giving lip service to the employees. I fell for it and people continue to fall for it! The execs just want to make themselves feel "above the rest" and their portfolio valuation. They love visiting an office and getting a photo-op with the people like they are some sort of celebrity. They hardly mingle, just jump in a photo, and then leave right away. Reach-out to one Exec on Webex and see if they get back to you. Nope! What has this company come to?