Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

Who are you?

Sedona? That was a big mistake. No real customers, no real product, terrible story. Managed to find a f'ta-d in BU to buy it.

Kenna? That's a bit of a travesty. Caught up in SecureX and FSO debacles. Security experts like it, but tough sell vs Tenable etc. And Cisco has no relationships to speak of in App Sec, so big Hill to climb.

Socio labs? Bought to tick boxes in RFx responses as a feature. The team were never going to survive. Also, no one knows how to sell collab any more - they all left to Zoom, then MSFT.

I hope you're from Sedona - attitude matches the clueless nature of the whole team.

Cisco seems to acquire companies, su-k them dry, fire all their staff, and then rinse and repeat. Someone in executive management must think that software is a shelf product like socks or toilet paper. They don't understand that software companies succeed because of their engineering staff manage customer requests and are always innovating.

A great product, becomes a terrible product, if you can't get bug fixes in. Same if you can't make the changes customers request via the customer support and sales teams.

Cisco acts like the junk dealer of the tech world. And until it stops that behavior - it's never going to do better than a junk dealer at making money. You have to give something of deep value to the customers in order to get them to want to pay well for it. Cisco needs to provide something of high value. Get an internal development team - and make something worth selling. And keep it worth selling over the years.

I am Locutus of Cisco. You will be assimilated. Your knowledge will be added to the collective (20 subfolders deep into our mangled namespace but not actually merged into anything). Your customers are irrelevant. Your teams are irrelevant. Your products are irrelevant. We will assimilate your polished value message into the collective. We will transform your message into how this will turn AI market on its head and make the Borg (err... Cisco) very important. (turns and silently walks away)....

Cisco knows it can't innovate internally so it's forced to acquire companies to create new revenue streams. Unfortunately, those revenue streams don't move the needle when compared to Cisco's legacy networking business. Because of that, OPEX continues to go to the legacy business and new businesses get bupkis. Once the revenue streams of the new businesses dry up, new acquisitions are made and the corpses of the previously acquired companies are discarded.

This has been Cisco's business model now for almost two decades. It's why many acquired employees run out the door as soon as their golden handcuffs come off. In fact, there have been some enterprising people that have been through the acquisition/business deceleration/Cisco exit cycle multiple times.

They left AppD alone but it's product development stopped cold. As I mentioned in an earlier post, IDK if these acquisitions are ever intended to work. They give a short term boost to earnings and Cisco probably has a way of writing off the corpse.

I was brought in via an acquisition too and it’s been going downhill steadily. Albeit it seems like it has been accelerating recently. Just so much chaos for no reason, poor execution and bureaucracy. Seriously the last person I interviewed was probably over a year and a half ago.

Google did open plan offices even though everyone hates them and everyone else went "Google did it, it must be good" and they followed. I'd guess this pattern worked once somewhere and everyone else is blindly following.

My direct interaction from the lowest worker bee to the Senior VP level shows most buy into the HR Koolaid that "everyone is in the top 10%" so they blindly assume what they are doing must be the best that can be done and therefore they don't question anything. I've also asked many levels of management "what kind of management training have you received at Cisco" and the answer was always "none."

It might be interesting to run a survey to see how low the stock has to drop before they make a good faith effort to get much better. My guess is panic with a lot of headless chickens running around as it crosses under $30 and seriousness doesn't start until it crosses under $15 if they get serious at all.

It is almost like you are telling our story.
Same thing happened here ; Sales, marketing, and hiring freeze.

I am sorry to hear this. Good luck!