Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

Cisco Licensing intentionally complicated. Customers will never know what they are actually are buying or pay for.

Cisco doesn't even understand its own licensing. Try to figure out what happens when you get a product already late in life and you go to renew your license which Cisco won't sell you. Cisco has no idea if it bricks the features making the box landfill or if the the box will simply go on unsupported and without updates where they could live a good long life as a device in a private lab.

Everyone whines about the long timers. ... Then the less than talented and experienced..

I was old when I joined Cisco and worked with those long timers and almost none had the skills I had when I graduated college. The idea that they are somehow by definition more talented and experienced than reasonably competent people at any age is simply false. Being at a company which pays people for years to do months worth of work severely distorts your view of your own value.

1. Completely change the culture of 80K-90K people to a productive, innovative culture that values quality.

2. Train your staff to do the jobs they should be doing rather than the jobs they are doing.

3. I don't know if the assertion that Broadcom is building better chips than Cisco, but if the hardware becomes commodified recognize your differentiation becomes limited to software and services.

4. Find a way to rewrite tens to hundreds of branches of four different broken operating systems into one small, well designed and documented collection of correct code.

5. By fixing the software you free up your services from looking back and finding workarounds to looking forward and helping your customers improve their business while improving your own.

6. As a customer concerned about security you can really differentiate yourselves by not requiring me to expose my management plane to the public internet like every network firm of every size is trying to do. I have legitimate and in some cases legal reasons I can't sell you all the data you want to collect, and I certainly don't want to give it to you for free along with the vast sums of money I already paid for the hardware, software and recurring licensing fees.

7. Recognize if you go off trying to enter new businesses without the vast improvements required of your staff you're going to get what you've always gotten.

If you've ever tried to bring a single small team up many levels to where they should be professionally you'll realize the above is many acts of G-d at the scale of Cisco. Wish all you want about removing one or a few leaders, finding replacements with the talent, charisma and pure force of will to make this happen company wide seems unimaginable.

Steve Jobs is heralded as righting a massive failing and flailing company, but he also brought with him the people and software that have been the foundation of every major product Apple has done since his return. If it was just him I doubt he could have succeeded.

I've read no lore of the CEOs at other networking companies, and Arista is the only networking company with great growth, margins and a single OS. Who thinks bringing that whole company in as Apple did with NeXT would succeed in the long run?

Why would I provide my ideas for free?

@euf+1rbM1cNR write:

Leave CA, that state is failing. I don't like to say that but unless things change it will only get more expensive to stay in CA.

If CA is a failing state, then how is it getting more expensive? House prices go up because the state is failing? People (that is, people with money) always want to live in CA. It has the best weather. It has unmatched natural beauty than most places on earth. It has fewer nut-cases who cling on to their prejudices.

If that is your great logic, then perhaps you should not suggest anything about how to fix Cisco.

Any ways, you and I cannot fix Cisco. It has to come from CEO + ELT and the decision makers. They have been an unmitigated disaster so far. That means, there is no hope!

Cisco licensing is the worst. Fix that would be a start. No one even internally knows how features are associated to what licenses. There is no document that even brakes it all down. Then forcing customers to either let every cisco device talk to the cloud or installs VMs just for licensing is a joke. Customers want to use their products not manage licenses.

Next, stop outsourcing all of TAC to contractors. A contractor in tac has no accountability. They are not invested in the company since the company is not invested in them. Outsourcing TAC is a knowledge drain because the retention rates are lower and knowledge is lost in each rotation. I'm pretty sure the work of 4 to 5 contractors is the same amount of work as one blue badge because typically a blue badge is more seasoned and can resolve issues faster or knows the tools better. Also, ensure people that you hire speak the language fluently, communications barriers are a real thing and lead to lost productivity, Oh! and stop using Templated emails. Customers hate that.

Make the BUs accountable for bad code. So many times the BU is focuses on a new feature and they have no ability or lack or head count or something to fix issues that arise in their code. Every BU is a bit different, but many are just the worst and some of that has to do with outsourcing as well.

Diversify your hardware manufacturing or at least don't do manufacturing in a communist country or a country run by a dictator.

Leave CA, that state is failing. I don't like to say that but unless things change it will only get more expensive to stay in CA.

End DEI programs. There is a leadership program that says it's only for a certain type of people, but they technically can't stop you from doing it, but it seems silly since we should only care about talent not factors that none of us have control over. Also, the JUMP program for women seems silly they hire drama coaches to apparently teach women how to be leaders?

End busy work executive trainings that everyone just skips through anyways. I often wonder how much they spend on creating these pointless trainings and how much time is lost collectively on these trainings.

Does anyone really understand the figure eight life cycle just adds more confusion.

CX basically made everyone have the same job title in the directory. Can't really tell what someone's job really is.

Stop moving to new platforms every other year. wiki, jive, alfresco, smartsheet, sharepoint. I'm sure I'm missing some but this creates more confusion and slows down productivity when I have to move stuff around every couple years.

I thought Chuck came up through the ranks as a sales guy instead of a technical guy. During yesterday's Cisco Beat, he said that when MM joined Cisco, she had to teach him some sales accounting terms related to software sales & recurring subscription revenue.

I would have thought that as a sales person who moved up all the way to the CEO position and was directing the change in company operations from hardware (one-time sales) to software subscription (recurring sales) that he'd already have a firm grasp of those terms and their meanings.

Scary!

No, I can't. I was laid off last July.

It still comes down to the leadership. Even great ideas aren't going to matter with horrible leadership. People commented on other posts. The first step was to get rid of Maria Martinez; 90% knew that needed to happen years ago.

Now, keep going by getting rid of the bad leaders. Next is Alistair Wildman and the people he promoted and brought into his inner circle. Harry Caldwell is a nice guy, a poor leader, and not competent. Then, Jason McClaren, an absolutely horrible leader everyone in Sales knows how bad he is; CX can't stand him, actually, can't even use the word leader with him. Some great leaders were overlooked in CX when these guys all got put into these roles.

This isn't just my option but of the masses. If Cisco surveyed getting rid of Alistair, Harry, and Jason, 85% would say they should be replaced with competent leaders. I'm probably low on the percentage. It would be 99% in Sales. The 1% would feel sorry for them but agree they need to go to fix Cisco. We should do these types of Surveys to see the results and reality of the employees. Leadership never will because they'd then know the truth. It's not the case among other groups and leaders. We have some great leaders; they can't lead because they can't say anything these days. Except bow to Alistair. I think he's from England, so he thinks he's a King!

To fix Cisco get rid of the poor leaders, it's not about innovation. It doesn't matter with these poor leaders. Replace them with the ones already here that are good.

Just close.

Stop acquiring irrelevant companies and solutions.

Focus on a few solutions that solve customer problems. Target federal government and financial sector as prime customers - whatever they adopt, the broader customers adopt sooner or later. They are the acid test and prime success story.

INVEST in R&D and PEOPLE. Try to hire the best irrespective of colour, gender, race, caste, creed, s-xual orientation. F-U-C-K DEI. Hire the best with that criteria.

Developing solutions from ground up takes time. Invest in people and give them that time. Don't fire them and shut down the entire business unit like you did with VERA for Blockchain. That was such a waste!

Most importantly: get a technical CEO. One that is humble. Learn from NVIDIA, Google, Microsoft, Juniper. Juniper's Rami Rahim is an engineer who came from the ranks, not a sales weasel. He is humble, approachable by anyone in the company. Whether he has made a success of his tenure or not is up for discussion but he is not unanimously disrespected by the employees. I won't even touch on Huang, Pichai and Nadella. And yes, none of them are caucasian American born - you don't have to be. You just need to be good!

Can you make Cisco better?

By firing everyone and starting from scratch.

How to make Cisco better:

1. Focus on our strengths - there are some things we do well: Networking, Security, Observability is starting to pick up, Calling in the collab sphere does well, and gov/large enterprise contracts that need stability and privacy lean towards working with bigger business so they would also be good focus areas.

2. Drastically simplify our ordering process, it's too complex for the most adept of partners and customers.

3. Open up the ability to take risks without being on the next LR list - employees that try new and novel ideas are LRed with their first mistake. Some are LRed just for bringing up challenges that are facing a team or the company.

4. Make the LR process more functional. As we take in acquisitions it makes sense that we will also need to remove employees, but right now layoffs are basically a game of survivor - based on the managers favorites. Because of the political nature of the culture currently, most high performers (people who question things and have ideas for good changes) are let go because they rock the boat. Letting managers choose LRed individuals with very little background on why... just leads to getting "yes man" silos that do not provide innovative changes.

5. Innovate and lead rather than following the pack. Right now - we see what works in the marketplace and make some mediocre products we can sell to large customers that everyone else is doing. We need a market, something to pin our name to, a vision.

6. Stop the woke nonsense. Spending 10 hours of each employee's week on inclusivity, arts and crafts, and pandering is not making us any more customers. We can pander after we stop the bleeding (if you really want to).

Yep. Let’s implement an Agile C-Suite program with pooled executives and a Click-To-C-Suite website. Don’t forget the Deal ID! :)

It would be ideal if Chuck was a visionary technologist but not necessary if he had a strong ELT that could pick up the slack. LC and VP should be replaced ASAP. DE/Fellows have completely failed Cisco on the visionary leadership front (AI etc...). Largely because our execs lack the skills to know the difference between a networking expert and a visionary technologist. Stop the innovation by FOMO, it's so far beyond not effective that it's embarrassing. Move back to a merit based system where merit is associated with actual $$$ (deals/revenue/...) not arbitrary KPI's that can make complete losers look good and winners look bad. Easy right? Pack your bags folks... odds of this happening are close to zero.

Rethink the entire BE / empires-within-Cisco structure that functionally stifles cooperation, motivates executive dysfunction and drives overlapping silos of “solutions”. A good example is the decade long lack of integration of Meraki into Cisco — a stupefying and seemingly political non-strategy that confused our customers and was foisted onto sellers to “work through” and "put a good face on" — a giant miss that enriched a few people in Meraki, and destroyed a market opportunity for Cisco to dominate Cloud Networking. Cisco can’t get out of its own way and as a result, innovation never gets beyond the seedling stage, and competitors are strengthened.

• > How would you fix the company?

Frankly, I think the opportunity to better position Cisco for the future was irrevocably lost when John Chambers left - when, instead of recruiting a technology visionary as its CEO, Cisco promoted someone from inside, someone Chambers and the board were comfortable with. Cisco needed new energy - a new vision - and did not receive it.

Sadly, I don't know if the company can be fixed.

Maybe Chuck wants the company to go the HP way - aren’t they succeeding?

A networking unit and a software based unit that will the split. Give new splunk guy the software unit and keep the NW unit for himself.

Break the company up into smaller, more dynamic pieces. Three separate public entities.

"It is hard to do business with Cisco. Opaque sales team, complicted purchasing, even more complicated licensing,"

Cisco Licensing intentionally complicated. Customers will never know what they are actually are buying or pay for.

No.

1. Some markets are not profitable yet we keep investing. For those market we shall either invest a lot and hire some amazing talent, and execute. For everything else, exit the market. Do it, or drop it. I have some opinions about which products but this is irrelevant here.

2. Go back to quality - customer experience expectations are much higher these days, where everything is "easy" to use. We as a tech company must simplify user experience, make our products more likable. More user friendly, easier to troubleshoot. Quality means we may have to stop looking for the cheapest possible labor to develop products.

3. It is hard to do business with Cisco. Opaque sales team, complicted purchasing, even more complicated licensing, this is really tough as a customer and as a sales team. Partners are unfortunately not playing their role enough, but being merely resellers with no added value. Partners should be either real partners with competency and added value, or else don't bother with Cisco.

4. Research - it exsists under Liz Centoni, and none of this is usefull in any shape or form. Great works the team is doing, but not applicable to the business. We need to invest more in applied research to stay on top of things. When was the last time Cisco invented something great? Was it tag-switching / MPLS?

5. Stop that woke madness, focus on business, innovation and execution.

Everyone whines about the long timers. Offer a decent ER and I guarantee most will take it. I would bet 80%+ would. Then the less than talented and experienced can take over and finish off what chucky boy, mm, and jc started.