Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

instead of for the ongoing obscure currently popular social themes of that current year.

For the bazillionth time, Cisco's quality has been garbage for the past 30 years, long before DEI and outsourcing.

Long-term turn-away from using profits for technological innovation;

Cisco knew even 30 years ago to give up trying to do development to do more than $100B in acquisitions over that time. Cisco could not develop, is not developing and will not develop - it's an acquisition company with fourth rate bug fixers.

Devaluing prior, proven high-earner senior technical development contributors;

If I had the power and could hire useful replacements I'd fire everyone right up to the CTO in software and sleep like a baby. Cisco's Principal Engineers are the Dilbert Principal in action, unable to do anything but plagiarize bits into incorrect and self contradictory white papers. Cisco has masses of Technical Leaders who got there by making trivial one line check-ins. Metrics from the majority of the development budget going to bug fixing to static analysis on any code base over the decades shows you don't and never did know how to develop software.

The forwarding and high touch services parts are a solved problem, only needing to add faster parts as Moore's law allows. Network management and security are the next major growth areas. Cisco had tried and failed miserably on the network management front and can't even integrate their acquisitions to attack that space. That's your current problem.

Chuck is a narcissist and only hires d-mb people under him

my mistake has been in exec meetings , being too smart, having a great idea and presenting it in intellectual way, its almost like I ran their dog over, they have fear in their eyes, clearly threatened by someone with a IQ higher than theirs, but they asked for me to attend due to my role? Now I just show up, keep quiet and agree with their stupid ideas and go get some of the yummy snacks and coffee, then go blow my per diem on steak, its a living.

@ pfr+1r1OsxeF although I do not agree with the current way we are handling our customer and the customer first mindset has gone. Wrt subscriptions, I could be convinced this makes sense in some ways . If only our customers and engineers did not need a phd to activate a license nowadays. In certain tech spaces if I was the customer i would return the pizza boxes and tell them to install the license themselves and leave me alone with this beta product.

Had the pleasure of sitting in an exec meeting at CL, and witnessed staggering levels of buffoonery.

Yep, pretty spot on take. Ive been at Cisco for 20+ years and some of the leaders with CX up to Maria fail to so even a basic understanding of how front line IT ops team do their work. They try to throw the minimum amount a $$ to an issue and just hope it works. When underfunded team fail leadership blames the team. This is not your fathers Cisco.

The desperation to show revenue growth led to the monetization of the IOS operating system. It used to be free..now its a subscription....turning Cisco into a "software company"...its slight of hand with revenue recognition is all. Innovation is at an all time low. Cisco used to be in markets where it was #1 or #2 and rising at the very least...now it can barely make the top 3 in many cases. The acquisitions used to provide a shot in the arm for the field to go sell..now they are obscure non-value add purchases or debt ridden behemoths that add little to the cisco story..see Splunk. The company is the epitome of a frog in boiling water...

Great post OP and I agree with everything. Especially bias and favoritism by leaders towards less skilled and less proven employees. That will only come and bite them in the behind. I have one such leader in my chain who thinks he actually did something to deserve the position

I think this is a good assessment of the situation today, and not just at Cisco. However, I will argue that the reality you pose is actually from 2022 and 2023. 2024 as I see it is a return to normalcy as the consequence of the failed approaches of previous years comes to fruition. At some point companies need to produce products for sale that customers want and need and make a healthy profit. However the subscription based models companies such as Cisco have been deploying are wringing the life out of their customers, especially when those customers are staring into the maw of weak demand, higher borrowing costs, and increasing expenses. Companies had the luxury of wasting resources on garbage initiatives which did nothing to improve their bottom line or future prospects, and now they’re paying the price. Leadership who had the foresight to see this is in very short supply. Cisco is no exception.

yaaaaa this is spot on. I've been at Cisco about a decade and even the change within that time has been pretty jaw dropping. I miss the good ol days when i didnt feel like i was working for a bunch of talking heads.