Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

@mtth. Well, this week we saw the exit email from the SVP of GAET. Word is that the field will be told what's happening to them next week. I have to say that I've worked with several of the senior leadership of DTG over the years, in various IOT guises, and found them to be good people. Unfortunately their performance this FY has sent my opinion of them right down the pan. No-one at Director level seems to have gone into DTG with a clear plan or strategy other than to s**k up to the VP. Ironically, the one IOT leader that I thought was a flake saw the car crash coming and decided to leave (no doubt with a decent package) rather than be involved.

Why are we still waiting to hear what is next for the people of DTX? The staff of the organization is miserably looking for jobs while the old VP is off vacationing, resting and vesting. No accountability from Chuck for her actions which brought us to this place. The senior leadership team members who made the poor decisions to land this whole team in the spot it's in aren't being held accountable as level 14's. The worst part of this situation is all of the smart people who are now stuck in a unfortunate situation with their lives impacted by reckless immature leadership. Where was the courage and conviction of any of this senior leadership team during the year? At a minimum own up the the mistakes you made as senior leaders and communicate don't disappear. Not all of us are just thinking about whether or not we pay in cash for another house in a resort place.

@MoedIEG-9urz

Stop pedaling the DTG BS. Reality is that engagements are bismal; Most of the teams are not engaged with directly with customers, planning for for customer engagement, but does not execute engagement, large number are idling with nothing to do and lots of internal activities. When engaged and not many, most of the engagements are at the wrong level, but yet developed manificent powerpoints showing remarkable engagements, influential relationships, transformational impacts and fabricated revenue generation. Bottom line is that taking credit for someone else's work and effort is not ethical. Fact check DTG claims of sucess and confirm the reality. Many unqualify folks in their assigned roles and responsibilities that are way over paid. The gravy train is over. No more deadwood. Way too much politics. There are much more accurate information on this thread from the folks below. Take a read.

@MoedIEG-9urz So, we have 200+ people under a Sales VP (so directory seems to say) that are on this "strategic initiative". That's probably $60m per year that somebody else needs to make - oh, and at >60% margin we're trying to keep above. I don't know what DTG do or did, but I don't see them helping my customers or account teams.

But we are working on products that are earning real money. We regularly turn a few million investment over a couple of years into $100m run rate business - and at the moment we cannot start on a new generation of product because we are starved of investment, and we cannot backfill engineers who are leaving in (absolute) droves.

It's all screwed up.

@9urz A lot of sales folk 'got' DTG. What they didn't understand was going to DTG for help only to be told "Sorry, not one of my designated accounts. You're on your own".

Unfortunately, because no-one is willing to admit they got it wrong, that mentality will likely continue and the remnants of DTG will become increasingly irrelevant within Theatre.

It's a shame because there are some excellent people in DTG and, actually, their Business Outcomes Approach is the right direction of travel for Cisco. It's unfortunate that those excellent people will probably pay the price for failures of leadership and strategy. It's equally unfortunate that big Cisco is, apparently, clinging to the old models.

One thing is clear, the future for Cisco doesn't involve cranking the handle and shipping boxes.

@MoedIEG-9urz no one can say that business outcome approach like DTG is not needed or that the team is not good enough, these were your two main points, the problem is somewhere else.

Cisco doesn't know how to do these kind of changes, it tried and failed many times, with Cisco consulting for example, that was let go recently. So, problem is not if this is needed or not, the problem is how Cisco is doing it, how we measure it and who can lead it.

Most of the SVP's who led these intitaives, where motivate mainly by personal growth objectives, look at s+cc or IOT, they were seeking something beyond what these intitaives can give them personally, that's why they kept inflating it till it created unrealistic expectations and had unrealistic objectives, they wanted to show that they are impacting the big number. They where looking more for their next big job, more than caring about the reality behind the fact that change has to take time and has to be real.

That's what created all the negativity inside the team and outside with the field sales.

It's a problem when VP's and SVP's wants only to work with you-scratch my back and I scratch yours, always keep being positive (even if you know its vapor and not real) as long as you can do so, unless a conflict of interest arises between VP's, these changes we saw will not have happened. With this culture, again and again we will see this happening.

I can't speak for DTG leadership but some of the DTG people were very very good and uncovered business and opportunity where Cisco previously never did business before with providing real value to the customers they worked with. Unprecedented is the best way to describe that.

DTG was like a new venture, a startup, with <300 people. In a company of over 70,000 that's a needle in a haystack. You can't cover all of Cisco's customers with that few people, nor do all customer need this type of business consulting. What you have to realize is that DTG did not work with all Cisco customers and did not work with all of Cisco sales. It's no surprise that some internal teams didn't yet understand the DTG value when they didn't have DTG working with them and their customers.

Change does not happen over night and the trajectory of DTG was up, what was needed was the fortitude during transition. <300 people trying to change 70,000 is a journey. To change a company from an IT mindset to a Business mindset take times and resilience.

Change is always good and what will hopefully happen is a refresh of DTG, letting go of the wrong talent and keeping the right talent, aligning better with regions and targeting where business consulting resources like this are needed going forward. There is no question that business mindset resources like this are needed. Almost every other technology firm is undergoing the same transition. Who has the strength to weather needed transition.

Official announcement of DTG being s---ed into theatre turned up today.

http://www.bradreese.com/blog/10-1-2013.htm

http://www.bradreese.com/blog/1-27-2014.htm

https://www.thelayoff.com/t/INtnFfx

To cisco board of directors & major shareholders:

“Six years back you have been promised by billions of dollars in Smart City, cisco justified huge investments in S+CC, has there been any significant impact? Four years back you have been promised by Billions in IoT & IoE, cisco justified another huge investment into these groups, have you realized these Billions or even a fraction? a year back it was DTG with another promise of reaching the moon, and now, where are they? What does that tell you about the people who are telling the stories? Even worse, what does that tell you about your ability to read beyond slides?”.

Please look an inch deep into these verticals and don’t just accept what is presented, we have no smart city reference (please ask what do we have in Paris or Barcelona. it's a joke), there are insignificant incremental numbers because of S+CC, the IoT/IoE business is in the range of $300-400M never more, and doesn't justify that Buzz and the number of people who were around, and true we created IoT and others are getting the benefit, now DTG same story different name, new faces.

Credit stealing and tagging opportunities with no value addition, became the norm of these overlays, and it is not their problem, it how they are measured and it is the people who allowed this to happen by keep buying these stories and accepting without asking enough. Who will pay the price now?

Waoo, I never realized that most of the comments confirming my believe that these groups doesn't add any value, just fat, and I wonder why the shareholders are not questioning this huge amount of base cost.

@MoedIEG-5jqq exactly true, masters of collaterals and masters of reporting fake activities and work which is not theirs. And I totally agree, if they disappear tomorrow no impact will happen to the number, I hope that shareholders give some attention to these inputs.

Inflating impact and taking credit for others work is Cisco culture. What is the latest buzzword?

IoT-> Data Science -> Digitization

It's a sham that DTG is inflating on what they have impacted and claiming false credits to justify their existence. Hopefully, all that gets cleaned up and the good folks survive. With Cisco pushing for recurring revenue, I see less and less need for DTG activities. Selective or pockets of needs at most. Same for the Architect VT = No Cisco value

Dtg were masters of collateral creation and marketing other people's work. Closing it down would have ZERO impact to business. It's a nice to have function we can't afford as full of grade 13/14 .

Keep doing the same sh-- over and over again and wondering why share price and market cap is where it is. Just sell Spark, it's the answer to all your problems.

We sell boxes. That's it. Nothing more nothing less. If your in a group (sales or engineering) that does not cater to that you are doomed.

Hiring non-billing "consultants" not accountable to achieving a quota never works. Waste of money.

MoedIEG-4rsb

Read my post. I am saying exactly the opposite. Having a ruggedised switch is not a digital strategy.

DTG was not perfect by far but imo was a step in the right direction.

@5hpw The Architect VT (to use the correct name) predates DTG by about 18 months. However, the old BTX organisation was involved in its creation. It's true that the last VT, held two weeks ago, included a lot of content from a DTG event that happened in December.

On the broader subject of DTG vs IOT Group, a number of mistakes have been made at various levels of the organisation.

We have been using the term IOT for several years but no-one has overall strategy: hardware, software and sales all report into different members of ELT and there is no evidence of any over-arching strategy. My view - we've missed the IOT opportunity, but we've created lots of business for others.

One of DTGs big mistakes was to arbitrarily convert CSEs to Business Architects without consultation and to stop them doing what they were good at - providing deep technical knowledge of IOT products and solutions. Instead they were told to do BOA and talk business strategy with customers. In markets where there are existing architects doing that role, that approach was never going to end well.

Another was to select focus accounts rather be opportunity led across the vertical. The upshot of that is that DTGs numbers are in the toilet but IOT sales overall are up YoY.

They had no clear strategy when formed. Most people only got goalsheets in the last week of Q2, and even then many were wrong.

The people taking the lead in BOA came from verticals like healthcare and retail. They had no experience of the industrial verticals or the challenges of selling to those verticals. It's primarily an engineering sale with long sales-cycles of 18-36 months on average. That's where the CSEs added real value.

But the biggest single failure is one of culture. DTG was built for long term (i.e. Multi year) business engagement. Cisco does not (has not and, IMO, never will) been able to embrace that concept. It is still driven by weekly/monthly/quarterly sales in this FY. I hear there's an issue in AS where they've been successful in selling multi year deals but they are now being told to focus on transactional stuff that will book this FY.

As far as DTG goes (and IOTG before it), yes there have been significant failings in leadership but, actually, that business model is always doomed to failure within big Cisco.

@MoedIEG-5lzz totally agree with you that there has to be an assessment to what value does this group brings.

However the issue is not solely in the assessment, it's in the way the results of these assessments are presented.

During CW time with IOT, the way it was portrait was that this is a 4Bn business, the truth was it was a 400M business, and it was real work done to bring 400M but not 4Bn, but VP's and SVP's always want to play it to their favor, name it greed, or love of showing big numbers with an organization that measures them only in $$ and promote them on that. Same story with S+CC and DTG.

The problem is that they don't want to challenge SVP's, because they want to and need to justify positions, and may be they want to be in good terms with them so themselves get to the next level (you scratch my back and I scratch your back).

The problem occurs only when there is a conflict of interest on the higher levels, that's when they say "you what we need to change to be better", it is never because it is a business issue, it is mostly a power struggle or a fight at the top.

The people who really suffer are the guys at the end of the food chain. This organization is not able to understand, measure or evaluate properly any role other than AM and SE. Look at all the overlays who dissappeared, or the teams that we all say that they never brings enough value or we never been able to see the impact they say they bring, S+CC, IOT, DTG, and the list goes on.

Heard that DTG did several sessions at the Architecture VT and one consitent DTG person is always telling tall tales at these events. There's also a DSE somewhere in the mix here. I am sure they're all working together. Time to clean this VT up like DTG. If no value, no impact and all BS, then let's cut to reduce cost.

Is the Architecture VT the brainchild of DTG? Seems like similar approach, extraordinary stories and use cases with amazing transformational impacts. Are these use cases and stories real or fairy tales?

+1 with @MoedIEG-5xgm . So true

@MoedIEG-4mva No one knows what DTG is outside of Cisco and probably the same within Cisco. Check @MoedIEG-4vzg's post. Is that a clear enough indication of the impact or the value that this group provides to Cisco or Cisco's customer? Search DTG on the web and nada. Hmm...Very telling.

It would be very interesting to assess this group's individual claimed work with their customers or the account teams to see how engaged this group really is and the actual impact as opposed to what was claimed. This might a great way to assess integrity and ethic to ensure that Cisco keeps the right folks. Why should Cisco keep folks that have no ethics and can Cisco trust them in the future with their customers?

DTG = Didn't Transform Group

Sorry, but what does DTG stand for?

@MoedIEG-4mva pretty telling that your idea of IOT is just ruggedized switches. I wasn't arguing the idea of digitization, but rather what DTG actually did and how they moved the needle for Cisco or rather the stagnation that they introduced. For the leadership or yourself quite frankly to think that IOT wasn't and isn't focused on outcomes and solutions is ludicrous. If I recall the IOT group did pretty well in sales last year and the loss of CW was the start of demise for that organization. The DTG org couldn't understand that when you are part of sales, you still have to sell those "boxes" to make quota; futures and feel goods don't pay the bills. Powerpoints, stories, roadmaps, etc. don't cut it in the sales organization, welcome to the real Cisco. Poor leadership, poor vision, and even worse execution prompt announcements like you saw yesterday.

I am hoping that this transition will be a well thought out and surgical process to ensure that Cisco do not lose the talented and hardworking folks. This can be a new beginning of quality process and an opportunity to properly cut the fat. Although there are so much smokes and mirrors with a lot of these folks and their previous claimed works so it will be very difficult. They are just so good at hiding behind fake achievements, effort level they previously provide and the impact to the organization. Hope the transition team have these goals in mind, see through the fog and make rational decisions.

To the person commenting about DTG was just taking the IOT message and rebranding it. Clearly you have no idea about what DTG was about and you are stuck inside a bubble that thinks digitisation is about selling ruggedised boxes! It is this narrow thinking that has prevented Cisco in capturing the wider opportunity in the market.

When has a CxO ever woke up in the middle of the night or engageed an advising consultantcy to say I need a ruggedised switch??

They have however more likely asked themselves the question do we have the right digitisation strategy and is it aggressive and compelling enough.

Also DTG was about digitisation across many verticals and not just industrial.

You should consider with views like you have if you are the answer to Cisco's problems or if you are part of the problem!

Logged on to the site just to see if this would be one of the topics, knew it would be. Seeing this org be addressed by leadership mid year (which is very rare at Cisco, not waiting for year end) gives me a little more confidence in the SLT.

DTG has been an open secret for a long time - wish it could have been addressed quicker but at least we didn't let a crisis go to waste.

GSP is going to thin overlays out as well. Not sure if timing but it's coming.

@MoedIEG-3inv it's like we are the same person. There is no value in telling a story that doesn't yield revenue; nor is respect given when you take someone else's hard work and write up a one pager like you were involved for the sole purpose of self-promotion. This organization has tried to take what was created in the IoT group, rebrand it, and make it their own; while shoving some wild business architecture ideology down everyone's throat. Good riddance I say..

"The Fish Rots from the Head down" - That is Gold right there....

The Fish Rots from the Head down. Long overdue but Universal Justice has the final say.

Tough to hear folks lose their jobs but this will actually improve effectiveness and morale of direct sales force - long over due

It's about time. I've said here before that group did nothing but fly around the world to hold strategy meetings about how to create the best buzzwords and powerpoints

Another bad leadership decision, so instead of saving $125M estimate annual of base cost, they moved DTG under regions, so it became the regions' problem to deal with these resources now. What a mess this company became.

Wow. That is quite surprising. I dodged a bullet there. I almost got hired back into that org before I landed my current gig outside of Cisco.

Dismantle of DTG confirmed today, public by Friday. Expect LRs as team is cut down in size.

@2zgk thanks for clarifying. Amazing to hear the change nevertheless on this much heralded org.