I am at grade 10 and recently I submitted 5 patents which are all got approved.
overall i have 10 patents at cisco. I know some tech leads and principal engineers don't have these many number of patents. My manage gave me average rating saying that
i have delayed one project and my speed of execution is slow. He disregarded the patents and other good ideas I proposed to the team. Is this kind of normal. basically he is giving the rating based on how much I am useful to him and not for the comapny. He didn't protect me for the schedule delay? Any inputs?
21 replies (most recent on top)
patents are like Masters degree, and somewhat now the CCIE ,that and 8 dollars gets you a starbucks. Its all about the perception, who you know and what VP is willing to go to bat for you , if not , you will lanquish at your grade forever, no one cares.
Check the profiles of influenced people, they mention about the number of patents and products they built, ...
Check the celebrations on this board when Dave Ward left. No one mentioned patents. More programs shipped from Cisco despite their technical leadership, not because of it. Only the people who actually saw what happened know the truth about these cases.
@3jrs+1om0ORim
What I am mentioning here how an engineer will be remembered in the history, not the history of the company. Check the profiles of influenced people, they mention about the number of patents and products they built, no one really mention about the bugs fixes or number of lines they wrote or they kissed their manager's a$$.
But what history remembers is the patents, not the code.
What history remembers is sustainable earnings growth, not patents or code.
Unless you contribute something big to open source like Linux or nginx.
Unless you patent a rectangle with rounded corners, because a rectangular screen and not having sharp edges on something people handle had never been thought of before.
This statement sums it up perfectly
“Cisco is a sinking ship, and everyone left are just rats, trying to stay on the titanic as long as possible.“
I didn't see someone who excelled both at writing code and doing patents/paper equally well, unless he is part of some evolving technology. It is up to the person to go on the router. Manager certificate won't matter much in long run.
For cricket fans,
write code, fix bugs and respond fast, make manager happy by working 15hrs per day are like T20 match. You will see results soon, win or loss.
Do all the above, have some space for patents, reading out side your job, participate in multiple research initiaites like playing test matches. Resulsts are only 30%. 70% matches are no results, no fun.
But what history remembers is the patents, not the code. Unless you contribute something big to open source like Linux or nginx.
Academics, patents and execution speed are different aspects. I don't think the person who filed patents is only patent guy, he is delivering. but somewhere results are slow.
I have gone through this when working on new source code base and external factors influence. Reasons, patents comes let;s once every 6 months, you need fix bugs and write code every day. That's where mediocre people gain skill set in wring code/debugging and delivering what manager asked and everyone starts disregarding patents and ideas as that won't contribute to core business. Cisco wants programming monkeys and many people in this forum support it.
Cisco doesn't encourage academic aspect of the employees. That's why i know most IItians either join IBM/Google or start their own start-ups rather work for companies like Cisco.
don’t work on patents. work on kissing a$$. that is your issue.
I worked at many high tech companies, and there are always some people who get very good at the patent game. Most times they are not the smartest person, and never produce functional products....but they figure out how to develop/write patents, and articulate ideas (and most patents are just that...."ideas"). But hey....someone's gotta do it.
Patents are nice achievements but can be overrated. I’ve seen folks overkill on patents but neglect the core part of their job
Cisco is driven by dashboards. They only measure what is easy to measure and if yours goes red it affects everyone up the line. They don't measure if the code even compiles and the probably don't measure patents granted. If your VP sees a red dashboard you are a problem child.
More than 90% of the time patents are show pieces that bring no value. Cisco is not known for being excessively offensive with patents so for a patent at Cisco to have value its competitors would really need to use the technology in an obvious way for Cisco to either collect licensing fees or block competitors altogether.
As for for your Principal Engineer pals, some have made individual decisions which cost the company tens of millions of dollars which would be a problem anywhere else, but Cisco's dashboards don't measure such things so there is no accountability. Now here's your accordion.
If your patents are just sitting on the shelf collecting dust, no promo for you, sadly. Cisco does not invent things, it acquires companies. I know lots of tech leads at Cisco who can't explain what TCP/IP is.
You need to leave. Or get a new boss.
An ex-colleague of mine used to write patents for Cisco, don't know how many exactly. Wrote a book too. Then our manager in UK called him one day for career dev meeting. Apparently when he asked what he had to do to progress his career was told "that was her (the manager's ) priority and had nothing to do with deserving a career progress". He also left after a few months.
Cisco is a sinking ship, and everyone left are just rats, trying to stay on the titanic as long as possible.
The reason your manager doesn't care about your patents, is that unless he can show them up the chain, they won't keep him or you on the sinking ship.
Cisco isn't looking for innovation, in fact - we purchase innovation just to squash competition then dismantle the companies we bought - trashing the pieces after we've su-ked every dollar we can out of them.
Anyone who isn't looking - should be. I give this company 5 more years unless Bla-ck-rock keeps funneling more money into Cisco. I don't know if they will bother, Bla-ck-rock has plenty of other businesses they can utilize instead to acquire and dismantle startups.
Yeah, what it takes some people a long time to realize at Cisco is that how much talent and how much work you do no longer matters - maybe it did a few years ago.
Now, it only matters how much your manager can use you. Wish I was exaggerating, but this is the truth.
The number of patents you hold does not automatically make you a good employee.
There are other managers and companies in this world that will appreciate your talents and your contributions. GET OUT of this group, or the company. Go find your place. You deserve better!
Happened to me. Wrote at least 6 patents for Cisco , research papers, worked in several high-tech, high visibility projects inside the company but was totally ignored by Manager as they were not “aligned to my core business”. I left
Yes. Leave.