Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

Sales team should always be positive. If they feel negative it shows when they speak to the customers . That could be the reason why sales kick off is held in almost every company

umm.... customers dont go to Impact. so that set of comments here can be disgarded.

MGM is a cheap customer does not want to pay, everything for MGM is free. Waste time have MGM as a customer.

MGM is a huge customer, I’ll leave it at that.

Have you ever worked at a company that didn’t have an annual sales kickoff?

0. 1% of revenue. You have Technical Leaders and Principal Engineers who have each wasted more than that in single failed decisions. It's infinitesimal compared to what Cisco spends on customer found defects, not to mention the years of project overruns trying to fix bugs before they reach the customer and the year or more customers will spend testing a formally released image before even attempting to field it.

It's no surprise Cisco "engineers" write all sorts of cr-p code to "optimize" away a handful of instructions before a one second delay in code executed one time during boot rather than finding an actual hotspot that affects the whole system.

"The returns back to the company are massive and it keeps you employed and provides your family healthcare coverage, 401k, etc, etc."

So says the sales person who takes advantage of those perks.

It’s so weird needing to even have impact at all. If our products were actually good they wouldn’t need the annual sales hype party.

Let’s go with the lower estimate of 50-60 million for impact. What bookings come out of it? Based on the rumored numbers for Q2, I’d argue that the money could be utilized elsewhere.

The returns back to the company are massive and it keeps you employed and provides your family healthcare coverage, 401k, etc, etc.

Impact is a massive waste of time and money - but a perfect opportunity for non value add emplyees to kiss _ss with senior non value add directors and extend their every second friday deposites.

Maybe you should get a life instead of worrying about how Cisco spends its money

@tmg+1qJiEGCo Ok, I’m sure customers and sales people love it. But can Cisco actually quantify an ROI?

@kkb+1qJiEGCo that is not true. My old sales director told me that the entire event including airfare, hotels, food/drinks, speakers, renting venues, etc. is way north of $150M.

It's a good question, however, IMPACT costs $50-60M, not 100's of millions. Divide the fully loaded cost of most employees and you are talking about 100 to 150 people saved by not having that event. Personally, I get more done in those few days connecting with people face-to-face than I can get done in two months. I hate the annual and becoming bi-annual layoffs as much as anyone, unfortunately, this is not the job saver you would think it is. 150 ppl is better than none the layoffs of 5 - 20% are thousands of people. What would fix this is if the company would start to innovate AND recognize that most of the core products are commoditized so we cannot keep expecting 75% margins.

Like it or hate it, those kinds of things drive revenue. It isn't my favorite part of the business world, but customers LOVE to be schmoozed.