I know there are a lot of people who are planning to leave Cisco, and I was wondering what - if anything - would make you change your mind? What should happen for you to say, "okay, maybe this is the place I want to stick around for a bit longer?"
33 replies (most recent on top)
Nothing… I’m out!
i would stay for sizzler all you can eat shrimp
bring back the mcrib that would make me stay
Get rid of the entire security chain. JP, Tom, Shaila and the many VPs under SS.
Have we not noticed how little if at all the security business is doing ? Outside of acquiring companies and always playing catchup we have done nothing.
Some people are excited to see Gary from Splunk take over sales and begin making changes.
Unfortunately, its still a culture where they allow toxic leaders and think ‘moving fast’ means assigning aggressive deadlines without understanding the size of the problem.
You would think with how many companies the acquire they would have figured out how to integrate without destroying the business in the process. In my 7 years, I have yet to see leaders held accountable and be reviewed. Cisco is not afraid to roll out an idea and fail and do it all over again.
Having said that, they’ll likely fail to see they grow slower than the market bc they run like sh*t.
It won't change. I've checked out mentally as said above. 2.5 years and I'm gone. Can't wait.
@1cdz+1tEUibm3 is Fran
End the DEI junk and stop the mass layoffs. Who would be loyal to a company that will axe them in a heartbeat?
Whack the bottom 30% and most of the people on this board.
Nothing. I was laid off after I made significant contributions to Cisco. My inept management laid me off and took all the credit of my hard work. This shows how desperate the inept management are to keep their jobs by stealing the employees accomplishments.
As the first step fire both Chuck and Fran and take legal actions against both of them to pay penalty for the damage they have caused to Cisco, taking the company to a place of no return. Both are extremely low performers. Chuck is a conn man and Fran is his puppet.
what, you don't like working two hours a day and goes back to India for a month once a year without submitting PTO while collecting big paychecks? What other companies allow that :O
I'm not India and I don't take trips to India for a month. But a co-worker saved up all his PTO to take a little over 30 days off to go to Beijing for the '08 Summer Olympics. His wife had family there, so they went to stay & didn't have to pay for a hotel. But due to the Internet practices by China, he definitely wasn't able to work from there.
I can say, however, that I've had to take several extended periods where I travelled home to be with family who were ill and worked from their homes w/out taking PTO. It's a nice perk that other companies do not offer. If you're working, does it really matter where you work from when you're a remote worker?
Anyone with any skills left before 2010. No one stays at a dead company if they aren't getting VP money.
Not necessarily. I left via an LR several yrs ago and ended up at a small (<1k employees) company that got bought out by a much larger company. The work/life balance su-ked, the remote access was terrible, and management was nothing but micromanagers. The lead DBA got promoted to manager to try to insulate the tech team from a Director who continued to bypass the manager to manage his team. It was so bad that I voluntarily quit to take a red badge job back at Cisco and gave up all the employee perks at that company. Now I'm back to being a blue badge.
Sometimes a simple job with good pay, easy deadlines, good benefits at a reasonable cost, good PTO, great work/life balance, and (in my case) a good management chain are enough to stay and hope that Cisco lasts long enough for me to retire. I know there are teams at Cisco that have terrible management chains, and I'd be switching teams or quitting if I was part of them, but I'm in a good place at Cisco.
what, you don't like working two hours a day and goes back to India for a month once a year without submitting PTO while collecting big paychecks? What other companies allow that :O
Anyone with any skills left before 2010. No one stays at a dead company if they aren't getting VP money.
I need it to keep feeding my hobbies. And my family too
actually think most don't want to stay
I can guarantee CVs are floating around
Mentally tired just here for the paycheck as we all have mortgages
Leadership should realise we don't realise if some players leave you are no longer getting the best in class
You are replacing capable technical sales folks with people from recruitment
From a full time blue badge - Just F U Cisco, die already.
Money money money
Everything else is optional and can’t feed my family
There is a lack of upward mobility for seasoned engineers and architects (10+ years of experience) who are stuck in the same positions or limited roles. There is no reasonable way to find management opportunities. New managers are either from acquisitions or hired from outside and do not help due to "Hunger Games" survival mentality. How do you motivate anyone to work at Cisco when the management, from immediate managers to Senior Directors, are all from outside and have less knowledge about Cisco culture and products than you do?
End outsourcing of engineering outside US. Retain passionate employees who pay taxes here at the HQ.
Fire everyone between middle management and ELT. Aquire Arista and put them in charge.
- A technical CEO or, in general, more tech-savvy people in key positions
- A completely new ELT
- An independent consulting and law firm to identify and hold accountable all the internal corrupt string-pullers
- An investigation of the upper management for breach of fiduciary duty by the justice
- An immediate end to the DEI hype
Chuck falling off stage in Vegas
We need a visionary direction. If we have a focus on something interesting and inspiring - it'd be a good place to be.
We could be the security specialists for AI. Or with our abilities now in splunk (observability) and our data center background, mixed with security - we could be the one stop shop for large corporate / government data management that is secure and centralized. Maybe a mix. "Secure, central, observable data - enhanced by AI".
We need customer experience to organize all our product line offers into one easy to understand set - that customers can add or remove products from at will - with no hassle, simple offer structure.
I'm a high producer, working on million/billion dollar inniatives, generally getting tired of the same old BS coming out of our sales, stock, and employee meetings. The lack of vision is what makes me consider the recruitment offers sent my way, despite the general decent working environment.
Literally nothing. Staying here damages your career and development imo. Unless you get the golden ELT parachute. 🪂 💴
Left five years ago. Contracting since. Life good. Went back for a six month red badge contractor gig about a year ago. My manager was one of the most inept people I have ever worked with. She is still there; I know not how. A once great company now existing as a work-politic stew, wrought with layers of inept and disfunction ridden org-charts of process woe and product despair.
Hi Fran. Nothing.
Cisco needs a haircut, similar to what happened at Apple in the 90's when Steve Jobs returned and ousted nearly all ELT and scrapped most of their product line.
Stick to core products, quit poorly jumping into markets both unprepared, and long after other leaders have already emerged.
And I hope you don't trash Splunk. They could be a great asset if you don't run them into the ground.
Public firing of the ELT. End all the DEI initiatives.
Nothing
Hundreds have already mentally left
Too late, I already left. Fir good.