Managing people is lot easier than doing actual work, and dealing with irate customers and account team.
Employees see becoming manager is getting a secured job with least stress.
Do most agree? How do managers see their jobs - more money, better job security, retirement job, etc.?
All of the whining about managers is from ICs that can be replaced by the urchins from offshore or from the urchins offshore that have replaced the whiners. Try managing around that lightweights. Guarantee most couldn't do it. I will agree that once you start looking at director+ there is a LOT of uselessness and a LOT of those directors were recently promoted. That makes you wonder.
Do most agree? How do managers see their jobs - more money, better job security, retirement job, etc.?
I've been a manager at other companies and if done well it's a harder job than being an individual contributor(1). Ages ago when Cisco was still growing significantly I was offered a management role and I immediately declined because at Cisco it was obviously a pointless 360 degree battle to the death with no prize rather than 360 degrees of cooperation to grow the revenue, income, skills, etc... of all involved.
For the record I saw Directors and even the occasional Distinguished Engineer sent off to spend time with their family starting as early as 2001, so there have been pockets of accountability.
(1) For some sets of requirements there is a nice black and white "you got it right" or "you got it wrong" on the technology side. In business the risks are driven by dozens of unpredictable forces over which you have little to no control. If you look at the research on successful people they're almost never the brightest - luck is the defining characteristic for their success. If the risk of being laid off is hard for you, understanding and living with the forces that could quickly result in everyone who reports to you including you being laid off and knowing at best you can only influence them will be far more difficult to deal with.
Another fact [...] While managers have annual budget to allocate, they [...] keep most for themselves.
A manager can give themself a salary raise???
The same kind of people scream "layoff next month", "10,000 will be axed, confirmed".
I clearly see a need for layoffs at Cisco.
Another fact to share working last 22 years in Cisco... as you go up in grade, raises and RSUs stop. Cisco does not believe in giving annual raises or other incentives because they think employees already making too much. While managers have annual budget to allocate, they give few to selected or in low grades, and keep most for themselves. Such a beast of managers ;-)
The best example is this guy, https://newsroom.cisco.com/c/r/newsroom/en/us/executives/chandrasekaran-ravi.html.
He got his position because he is related to https://blogs.cisco.com/author/pankajpatel. Even he has been demoted a few times, this thick skin loser is still there to milk Cisco. The best example why Cisco managers never quit IMHO.
Managers typically layoff anyone that understands the concept of inflation. They like employees that don't want stock and think a 2% raise is amazing.
It is not a trivial job, but they manage. Sometimes the hardest part is figuring out who to LR next. Have a heart please.
So true about managers and above being unemployable!!!!!!
Let me repeat again as this is so important and true - managers and above loose all their technical skills so they become totally unemployable outside Cisco. Hence they stay and rot within Cisco, but are still happy staying employed, and for fun get to torture good hard working employees and LR them when company provides an opportunity ;-)
It’s fun watching managers su-k up to each other, and harass employees to produce more. One manager who was promoted from a NCE confessed it took him six months to dump anything technical. What a Cisco culture!!!
I worked for an excellent manager who was LR’d. He was replaced with a fool, someone who didn’t understand the business, who had previously been demoted and was removed from several accounts. He didn’t last long before being moved to a lesser role. He is now busy torturing those that work for him. So how does this happen? How can a manager be that bad and still survive? In the meantime the person who was LR’d has suffered and for no good reason.
Based on my experience, the managers at Cisco are unemployable outside of the company. Many VPs surround themselves with incompetent Directors that will never challenge them... then Directors surround themselves with incompetent Managers
Also Cisco hires people without any skills or experience related to their organization. You will see Cyber Security Managers that know nothing about Security. In Finance, you will find managers that know nothing about accounting or business.
It's rather fascinating to watch.