A real GSSO Engineering Executive is needed if there is to be any hope. TS has been a disappointment. He rarely knows what he is talking about when it comes to our solutions. He still refuses to listen to the field. The field morale is awful and he thinks he is doing all this great stuff. Our TSAs are demoralized and burned out. The pressure on them is real. TS does not know how to lead a Global Engineering organization. SS needs to bring in his own Engineering VP that is a real leader.
8 replies (most recent on top)
So G2 is going to fix it ?
It was completely foolish to get rid of specialists. One's delusional to think that a GSSO TSA can be an SME in so many disconnected and unrelated products. Meanwhile, the competition is laser focused on their streamlined offerings. It's stupid to think a GSSO TSA can properly position products against SEs focused in one or two swim lanes: Crowdstrike (EDR/XDR), Zscaler/Netskope (SSE/CloudSec), PAN (FW/SSE), Okta/Ping (IAM), Proofpoint (EmailSec), etc.
Between random layoffs and ki-ling specialists, much of the best talent has left the building.
Why would anyone that can both explain complex technology concepts to potential customers and gain those customers' trust during the sales process want to work at Cisco?
Seriously.
TS is in over his head. His interjections on calls are awkward. He made the wrong decision last year by getting rid of technical specialists. He has not done one thing that has had a positive impact. He wasted millions of dollars on the Boston summit that proved to be worthless.
The top pre sales engineers went to our competitors that are growing and no smart engineer will come to Cisco
Well I think EK decision of making SE more BSA led us to this part.
They need to have stringent hiring practices -
Hire atleast 3 years of engineering experience
Let AM do AM work and not SE doing there’s
Se to focus on demo lab and solutions
They’ve been trying to make SEs more salesy for years, because they’re smarter than the AMs so better at doing their job too. But that came at the cost of losing technical ability. They realize now they effed up but aren’t making them less salesy, they’re just explicitly demanding more technical training, certs, etc. Look at the fortune cookie wisdom dorks they promote - like MM. Go to Arista if you want to be a real SE.
I feel like this fall off in sales engineering executive quality has taken place everywhere. What in the he-l was the point to take EK out of the Americas and into the specialist org… to do absolutely nothing. It’s not like the engineering VP’s already tied to an architecture are performing at an acceptable level either- just look at collaboration’s multi-year death march. TSAs continue to follow BB’s direction off a cliff and these folks have no accountability. The only tool they had was convincing people to dig deep but that only lasts a year at the max. Then everyone looks to YOU as the leader to do something, anything!! The SE orgs were the last line of defense for us, and it’s been squandered unfortunately.