Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

Making CoS a g13 position was nothing other than a way to elevate women to senior positions. Onex was loaded with utterly incompetent people who all of a sudden found themselves laughing all the way to the bank. I know of one CoS who is now a G14. A senior manager 3 years ago. WTaF…

Most patents in communications and wireless technologies and security. Then followed by AI, ML and few others.

Cisco Systems saw the highest growth of 127% in patent filings in November and 132% in grants in October in Q4 2023.

Most parents sim communications and wireless technologies and security. Then followed by AI, ML and few others.

Not everything is broken in cisco.

CX needs the days of Joe Pinto. He was respected, value add and got sh-t done. Maria was nothing more than diversity, call fresh ideas. Customer Success became a rapid downfall to action. Cisco had the #1 Services organization. Maria had to to change it up and rename to show value, though most knew it was hollow.

If leadership is doing their job...

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

...there is no need PMs, PMs are glorified secretaries.

Project and program management at good companies are roles performed by existing management, and for anything of decent scope both are critical. Updating spreadsheets and Gantt charts is an administrative assistant role that bad companies mistake for actual management.

Then there are the worthless dashboards...

PMs are cancers at Cisco, get rid of 95% PMs

If leadership is doing their job, there is no need PMs, PMs are glorified secretaries.

I personally worked with one BSA who advertises himself on LinkedIn as “CTO Defence and National Security United Kingdom”. The guy is nothing but a bag of hot air. Knows nothing technically. Has no intention of learning. Talks incessantly as if that’s what gives him the license to occupy airwaves. These are the people who we cherished at Cisco these days at the expense of dedicated, loyal employees. Pretenders and prima Donnas.

Customer Success Executive, Customer Sucess Specialist, Customer Success Analyst.. Well that's great we already had that in place with Service Delivery Manager, HTOM, and HTEC. We get on calls with customers and everyone points to TAC. Two different teams of highly paid people dumping work. It's pretty obvious we have 2 groups doing the same thing and neither accepting accoutability. PICK ONE! and actually make them do their jobs instead of dumping everything on TAC. That would be a start.

We have to remove some of the negatives because those are the causal events for the positives. Looking at the points from an overall Cisco perspective rather than just CX:

Cisco was never going to do anything in cloud - please get over it already. They were also never going to do well in anything with a low margin so the fact that Zoom is running on 10% operating margins says Cisco couldn't compete there even if they took it seriously. They did have some excellent AI/ML work going on 15 years ago but bungee management ki-led that dead. I thought they bought a wireless company capable of managing millions of concurrent sessions in the early 201Xs but I'm guessing they ki-led that too. It's not so much missing the transitions in the sense of not seeing them in advance, they blatantly failed to execute.

Many of Cisco's licenses didn't allow you to run their software on used hardware. The cost of getting second hand hardware back on contract so you could meet the licensing terms was so extreme it was often less risky and troublesome just to buy new hardware. That makes the hardware worthless as you're really paying to use the software, and when the license ends you have land fill. The rules on hardware spares is you pay essentially full price and open your facilities for audit any time to prove you aren't using that hardware.

The voice of reason at Cisco died at least 20 years ago. You have to make a decision as to whether you want to get paid to lose your skills doing stupid things which won't be profitable or fight the good fight believing you're skilled enough to get a new job. I went with the latter at multiple companies and somehow was never laid off for it. At every company other than Cisco everyone at my level saw both the problems and the solutions, but I was often the only one to speak up.

Cisco probably had major incompetence at the director level forever. It wasn't until the stock started its likely forever drop from $82 in 2000 that Cisco suddenly sent directors and other senior people "to spend time with their families," and often not on layoff cycles.

The key here is these failures were occurring one or more decades ago. When companies are growing by leaps and bounds everyone finds a way to work together, and when things slow it becomes an endless internal battle for power which was in full swing by the first layoffs in 2001 at Cisco. After this long Cisco's culture has been petrified.

BSA = Bul Sht Asset that do nothing, have no technical skills, can't close any business, boss over everyone, and are paid Grade 12 top salary. PURGE!

Hahaha. The last several posts have the CX org/roles and the BSAs pegged so accurately. Four to five years in, they are still trying to find work and where to fit in but doesn't have the skillset to provide.

BSAs are the same in every org. Waste of docs and payroll. They occupy a higher grade, have no technical knowledge ( storyteller is right) feed on the numbers like parasites and do absolutely nothing but talk way too much on customer calls. They occupy the airwave so much that they don’t allow the customers to talk and convey their pain points. It is unclear up me, to date, what a BSA does. What is their mandate? They clearly don’t sell anything, has never logged into router, non-technical and cannot close a business deal.

So why are these parasites pretending to be CTOs on Cisco’s payroll? No other company has this overlay functionality.

I am a CSS and same notion. I don't see how my work helps drive adoption...it is like opening a TAC case to drive adoption. SEs do this way better, day in day out because they already have the relationships and sold the gear with an end state in mind. We have too many parallel organizations (with only one being having real expertise).

So true on Business Solutions Architects bullsh*t in CX having seen 10+ large customers accounts in delivery personally. They are head munchkins and mafia boss who have zero technical skills, and show off to account team, and customers as CTO, technically oriented, only to pull others on first hint and to blame technical folks for getting in trouble. BSA accountability non-existing, keep account team, CSE, CDE (customer success/delivery Exec), and themselves “safe” having a cozy bizarre business model, while technical people do all the real work, and get rotated. BSA and SIA (System Integration Architects) roles must be abolished in CX, and delivery must go back to technology experts, not bunch of “supervisory” id--ts having a ball.

Throw in the Business Solutions Architects, many of whom are pulling Grade 12, in that mix and you have a circus led by the clowns. These BSAs are apparently “story tellers “. WTF Cisco needs story tellers for is something I’d never understand - this is a tech company not a kindergarten.

These BSAs are technically zero, over the top numpties. Some even introduce themselves as “CTO” on a customer call and then palm off when anything actually technical crops up, claiming they are “not technical”. They do nothing and somehow encroach into every opportunity via Salesforce tagging. How long is the technical community supposed to carry these non-technical, story-telling CTOs who need a road-map to find their behinds when those itch? why were they hired in the first place and then retained at the cost of genuine technically able, delivering, dedicated folks? Bizarre is the word.

I left CX (working in the PS/AS side) last year. One of the reasons was because of this, lots of Cisco people turning up with no real useful input, normally one or two talking (sometimes useful, but normally not) with at least 5 or 6 other people on the call not even saying anything.
I’d inevitably end up doing a lot of the work, whilst some Customer Experience person or PM would ask for a summary of what happened as they didn’t have a clue.
Cisco needs to go back to the old ways pre-cx when that side of the business added actual customer value.

Several times I've been drafted in to work on CX projects when they don't have the expertise in my specialty (I'm in a (LARGE) BU). First thing you notice is that there are very few people that actually produce anything. As soon as you're identified as "the resource" then EVERYTHING is left up to you, and all you get for "assistance" is a whining (female) Proj manager that pings you constantly for project milestones and updates and task completion ratios.
On the other hand, every time you talk to the customer, about 4-5 people show up on the call with doozy titles like "Customer Experience Director" or "Chief Technical Empathy Officer" or some rubbish. They say nothing until the end of the meeting, at which point they summarize the meeting as though it was all their idea, and then disappear without action items "onto the next meeting".
Bizarre place.

CEO and the board is responsible for this mess. Poor management and poor decision skills were displayed by multiple SVP and VPs.

Focus on hiring the best managers and talent at Cisco. Stop outsourcing jobs and destroying the local talent and future talent.

Many talented engineers left for the growth companies and FANNG companies in the Bay Area.

I learned the hard way at the expense of promotions and pay that speaking your mind, or offering a different perspective than the one you are told is a great way to stay stuck in a pay grade or watch the bu tt kissers move up as pets. Bad actors are rewarded where the good workers are paid with more and more work, its sad I have to act a certain way to be in the club, sold a part of my soul for the high pay and RSUs , so my kids can have college and vacations , new ipads and shoes. I will spend one night reflecting during retirement with a tall glass of old whisk-y , only regrets are the people who fostered behavior and childish unwritten rules, but if you in the game, play or get out.

I’ve been here like 5 years and RSU performance is depressing.

The Peter Principle is an excellent analogy and so applicable in CX. There are multiple examples where you just can’t imagine how they got their positions. Perfectly explains why they are all so happy with achieving success on the impertinent KPI’s.

Excellent summary. Such a stark difference from the optimism, energy, and revenue growth, of the Bryan Palma years. Instead we get treated to the Peter Principle object lesions with fools like Thimaya and the like.

Hire back any active CCIE LRed. Expertise is hard to earn & update. Sr Managers & Directors should be on technical ladder or time to move. Anyone need administrative bosses pushing their propaganda? Simplify from top.

Sn-t Status: Green, Green, and Green

Unreal

50-75 % Reduction across - Engineering, Sales and CX for Director, Sr. Directors and VP Roles. In addition, strategy and planning (each VP has those clowns) folks who has failed this company

Very well done. It’s a text book example of a poorly executed transformation. I would add the dilution of the services portfolio and the change in culture to one of distrust and fear to your summary.

“Muzzling the voice of reason” really resonates with my last 5 years (after 20*). The entire people deal was non negotiable and technical/business concerns were “muzzled” due to a culture of nodding heads. I remembered a Cisco where healthy disagreement was encouraged and different viewpoints were seen as a positive towards achieving great products and outcomes.

Great summary!

This post is a work of art.

Truth hurts but the headcount should be under 50K.

First step. CX folks should know their peers and how to coordinate as a team instead of asking us to introduce the other groups and telling them what the other groups do.

Turn managers and directors into billable productive customers facing resources or let them go. No one needs layers of bosses who do nothing but check on employees and provide zero leadership. It’s estimated up to 75% of fat can be trimmed adding to Cisco growth.

Captured the mess well !